Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Incapacity Benefit, Rendition and the Education White Paper
Incapacity Benefit
Asked if there was not a lot of fraud in the incapacity benefit system, why had the numbers of people claiming gone up from 700,000 to 2.7 million over the past few decades, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) replied that what was important to realise was that we were now seeing one third less people joining the list than in 1997. If people looked at the rate of increase in 1997, if that had continued, then by this stage, there would have been approximately 4 million people claiming benefit, whereas there were now 2.7 million. Therefore, some of the measures that had been taken to help people were important. The basic root of our approach to incapacity benefit was that if people were on incapacity benefit for two years, it was highly unlikely that they would ever come off it as things stood at the moment.
The PMOS said that we did not believe that that was either healthy for individuals, or healthy for the overall state of the nation. We recognised that 90% of those people on incapacity benefit said that they wanted to return to work. We therefore believed that the best way forward was not to write people off, but rather to help them back to work. The PMOS said again that it was in their best interests, the best interests of the economy, and of the country as a whole.
The PMOS said that there were genuinely people who because of injuries, etc, were unable to go back to work, and we did recognise that, and the Green Paper did deal with the situation of those people.
Asked if there was an actual figure of people who could genuinely go back to work, as one million over ten years was "vague", the PMOS said it was not vague. That was a target, and the savings on that were substantial in terms of being able to use that money to help people in better ways. It was an ambitious target, but it was an achievable one, and because we had done the pilots for the Pathways Into Work, again, we had seen what works. What worked, therefore, was helping people back into work, and savings were made on that.
Asked out of the 2.7 million people, how many could go back into work, the PMOS replied that the target was one million, and the survey figure of those who said they wanted to get back into work was 90%.
Asked why that figure was not the target, the PMOS said because people had to recognise that historically, there was a problem of helping those who had been on benefit for a long time. What we believed was that the one million was a realistic figure in the next ten years. We remained ambitious beyond that time, but we should see what happened first.
Asked if there would be an interim target, so people could see by the time of the next election, whether any progress had been made, the PMOS replied that first of all, the fall in the number of applications already was real. Secondly, if people looked at how the New Deal had helped 1.5 million people into work, and virtually eradicated long term youth unemployment, that was also real. If people looked at what the creation of JobCentre Plus had done, that had delivered an extra 2.3 million people into work since 1997. The PMOS said there were real achievements already. Equally, people would be able to look at the incapacity benefit figure or the "Employment and Support allowance" figure, and see what had happened to it month on month, year on year.
Asked why had the name been changed, the PMOS said that what the title change was supposed to do was underline that this was about supporting people getting back to work. We recognised that there were some people who genuinely needed this kind of support, and the Green Paper would deal with that. What it was essentially about, however, was empowering people to get back to work.
Rendition
Asked if the Prime Minister had any view on the Council for Europe’s report about rendition, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had no view of it. The PMOS said that there seemed to be no new facts, therefore, we had no new view.
Education White Paper
Asked if the intervention of Gordon Brown meant that it was less of a "high wire act" for the Prime Minister on the Education White Paper, the PMOS said that of course, the Prime Minister welcomed the remarks from the Chancellor. Equally, however, he recognised that there were still others who had different views, and therefore, we would have to keep trying to convince those people. The Prime Minister had set out the reasons yesterday why he believed that we needed to apply the lessons of what had worked in schools in recent years. If people looked at the letter today from Andrew Adonis in "The Guardian", where he said there had been a 73% improvement in the percentage of pupils getting five good GCSE results in the fourteen Academy schools, it underlined what had worked, as some of those schools had been set up in some of the most deprived areas in the country.
delicious
digg
facebook
