Mel Stride, the new secretary of state for work and pensions, has said that a ‘prime focus’ of the DWP will be to support an alleged 2.5 million people who are long-term sick but want work back into the workplace. He also defended the record level of UC sanctions.
Stride was asked by Labour’s Ben Bradshaw “What estimate has he made of the number of people who would like to work but currently cannot do so, because they are among the hundreds of thousands waiting on record-long NHS waiting lists?”
Stride responded “We know that there is a long tail of people who would otherwise like to work but who are long-term sick—some 2.5 million in total—and, to go back to my earlier answer, it will be a prime focus for our Department, working with the Health Department, to see how we can assist and support them back into the workplace.”
It is not clear how Stride has come up with a total of 2.5 million people who are long-term sick but also want to work. This figure sounds like the total number of long-term sick claimants, the majority of whom do not want to work because their condition makes that impossible. So either Stride is mistaken or he genuinely believes that every long-term sick person could be moved into work.
Stride seems to be focusing solely on the needs of the economy, claiming that “we have 9 million people who are economically inactive, and we desperately need to get as many as we can into the workforce”. This ignores the fact that many sick and disabled claimants are either unable to work or unable to work without a level of support that is simply not available to them.
In response to a question on the rising level of UC sanctions and the fact that twice as many claimants are now being sanctioned as before the pandemic, making things harder for people already struggling with the cost of living crisis, Stride would only say:
“People are sanctioned only if they fail to attend appointments without good reason, and fail to meet the requirements that they have agreed to meet. Conditionality is an important part of a fair and effective welfare system. It is right that there should be a system to encourage claimants to take reasonable steps to prepare for and move into work. I reiterate that claimants with severe mental health or wellbeing conditions are not subject to work-related requirements or sanctions.”
Stride also ignored a request to publish a DWP report on the effectiveness of sanctions, which his predecessor also insisted on keeping secret.
So there may have been a change of faces at the top of the DWP, but it seems there has been no change in the levels of harshness and secrecy.
You can read the full exchanges on the Hansard website.
