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Only 1 percent of people outside the workforce for health reasons find a job within six months, although 20 percent want one, according to research that highlight the challenge the government faces in reducing the Draft Welfare Law of the United Kingdom.
The Institute of Learning and Labor said that its findings, published on Tuesday, showed the need to change financial incentives for sick and disabled to work, but this better support would be more effective than Reduce the benefits suddenly.
Only one in 10 people with disabilities received help to find a job every year, Think-tank said. Her intervention reflects the growing fear among disability charities that pressure on the UK public finances will make ministers pursue short -term savings at the expense of vulnerable people than the reform they would pay in the long run .
Liz Kendall, the Secretary of Labor and Pensions, will publish plans to regulate the benefits of health and disability of the working age before next month’s spring statement. The twin goal is to strengthen employment and shorten the costs of benefits – which has increased 40 percent in real terms since 2013 and is on the course to reach £ 100 billion per year by the end of the decade.
The focus so far has been at approximately 3.5MN people receiving so -called disability benefits as they were considered too sick to work or look for work. This group, which has grown by one million people since the pandemia, receives £ 5,000 a year than those with the basic rate of unemployment benefits, without any demand for work.
L&W said the combination of sculpted financial incentives, inadequate support to return to work and the lack of very flexible employers had “created a trap”.
However, there has been an even sharper increase since pandemia, the number of people receiving disability benefits, or personal payments of independence – which are paid regardless of the status of work for those who face higher living costs because of their health.
Stephen Evans, the chief executive of L&W, said it would be a mistake if the ministers rushed to shorten and limit any of these benefits without doing more to help people return to work.
“My concern is, he does not steadily reduce costs. People are still there and are fighting.. In a sensitive investment world a little will now pay in 5 to 10 years,” he said.
The former Conservative Government had planned to limit acceptability to benefit from disability, with a savings of about £ 1 billion a year between 2026-27 and 2028-29 that is still proven in the office for fiscal budgetary provisions.
Labor ministers now intend to convince OBR that their reforms can provide at least as much as possible. But previous well -being reforms have repeatedly failed to reduce costs as much as it aimed, making fiscal guard ready to “mark” nothing but safe savings.
An option that the government is considering – although it would be deeply controversial – is to completely remove the benefits of disability, to channel all financial aid to the sick and with disabilities through personal independence payments and the re -burial of the rules for these.
But ministers in the Department of Work and Pensions are also struggling to ensure that at least some of the money saved by limiting the benefits go to support for people with disabilities to find work.
The L & W report argues that spending about £ 450m per year to increase employment support can provide savings of £ 4 billion per year in a longer term, in the form of lower benefits and higher bills of taxes.
Evans said this would allow a duplication of the number of employment support sites, and a new initiative to invite the inability to benefit in “Talking” quarterly to discuss their options – instead of leaving They in support of the state for years.
A government spokesman refused to comment on the specifics of the Green Gazette, but said the reforms were intended to provide “sick and disabled people were really supported by work while being more right for taxpayers”.
