Iain Duncan Smith has told the Daily Mail that he is to launch a new policy document in the next few weeks to end the ‘perverse incentive’ given to employment and support allowance claimants not to work.{jcomments on}
Under the alleged proposals, ESA claimants in the work-related activity group will be found work for around ten hours a week, or whatever they can manage, with the possibility of having their ESA cut if they refuse.
According to the Mail, IDS is keen to target claimants with mental health conditions. He told the paper that at present ESA is too ‘binary’.
“It is a system that decides that you are either capable of work or you are not.
“Two absolutes equating to one perverse incentive – a person has to be incapable of all work or available for all work.
“In the world beyond ESA, things are rarely that simplistic. Someone may be able to do some work for some hours, days or weeks, but not what they were doing previously.”
There was no mention of the fact that ESA claimants can already undertake permitted work for a limited number of hours whilst claiming ESA. Nor was there any explanation of how the growing prejudice against sick and disabled claimants fostered by the DWP and successive governments is to be overcome in order to persuade employers to offer claimants work.
