27th May 2010

Responding to Iain Duncan’s Smith announcement on welfare reform, Yvette Cooper said;

“We’ve seen a lot of hype but no actual policies.

“These plans for sickness benefit reform are the ones Labour was already introducing.

“And they are cutting £300m from employment help that was getting young people into work – abolishing the Future Jobs Fund and cutting 80,000 youth jobs when unemployment is still too high. How can you get more people into work if you’re cutting the work for them to go to?”


Key facts:

• The coalition government will cut over £320 million from employment programmes this year, including the Future Jobs Fund which is helping thousands of young people into work.
• Labour’s welfare reforms - including stronger benefit condition requirement and extra help to get work - have dramatically kept down unemployment. The claimant count is now 5% rather than 10% in 90s and 80s.
• There are over 350,000 less people on inactive benefits now than there were in 1997.
• Over half of unemployment benefit claimants move off benefits within 3 months. 
• A tougher test for sickness benefits was introduced in 2008 to get more people back to work and has led to falling numbers of people on sickness benefit. Under Labour’s plans all existing claimants were due to be reassessed this autumn.
• Iain Duncan Smith’s claims that you are better off on the dole than working in a job paying £15,000 or less are wrong.

Facts from the DWP tax and benefit tables show:

• A one earner couple with two children working 30 hours at the minimum wage (around £9000 a year) is over £30 a week (over £1500 a year) better off in work than on benefit.
• A single person with no children working 30 hours at the minimum wage (around £9000 a year) is over £40 a week better off in work than on benefit.
• A lone parent with one child working 16 hours a week at the minimum wage (around £4,800 a year) is over £40 a week better off in work than on benefit.