Work and Pensions Secretary's latest comments in Telegraph and BBC Ouch

Even the right leaning Telegraph publishes this article about the Work and Pensions Secretary being attacked for his latest comments about people with disabilities. Another take on it from the BBC Ouch blog too.

This second BBC article touches on whether the Work and Pensions Secretary had been 'inventing backers' for his sanctions regime, while he himself said someone in the operations department had invented the stories and would face disciplinary action for it. Much as I dislike this current Work and Pensions Secretary, I agree with the theory of the shake-up of the rules on sickness benefit to encourage more people into work being announced. I agree with the comment that the "current system was too binary - with claimants deemed either fit or unfit for work, when it would be better if they could be supported to take up what work they could, even if it was just for a few hours" and more significant than number of hours, with more account of suitable and unsuitable occupations with recognition of Aspergers being capable of much work but for most, not front-line customer facing occupations.

"Focus on people with a bad attitude"

Right there in the House of Commons itself a damning report by the Work and Pensions Committee, on policy beyond the Oakley Review, attacked the current system of sanctions in March and recommended 26 urgent reforms, ways in which the Conservative party were told to "clean up" the system in this article in the Mirror. Really all sactions should be aimed at point 17, those people "with a bad attitude". The article states that employment services professionals believe themselves, assumed to mean both in JobcentrePlus itself and associated training providers (I used to have conversation to that effect with the people where I did the "Flexible Routeway"), that such strict conditionality and sanctions are only necessary with that small minority of claimants outright refusing to work and with "history of poor engagement with employment support". The article rightly higlights the need to protect "more determined jobseekers and the vulnerable", as my own experience of being a determined jobseeker making a lot of applications and simply not being the first choice of employers.

Here's the Parliament Publications PDF link itself, and it is interesting to see just how many of the committee are even from the Conservative party, just a shame they can't see the sense to make one of these the secretary of state.