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Tories outline benefit overhaul

The Tories will promise to force hundreds of thousands off sickness benefits as the party battles to focus attention on its plans for government and away from a fresh row over Europe.

A £25-a-week state help cut for up to half a million claimants expected to be proved by tests to be fit for work is planned to help pay for plans to use more private firms to get people into jobs.

The party set out plans to test every one of the 2.6 million people claiming incapacity benefit to see whether they really are too ill to work.

Switching them to Jobseeker’s Allowance would, the party has calculated, pay the costs of a welfare shake-up which will see more private firms paid for getting people back into jobs.

Party leader David Cameron said the “tough and difficult” choice to subject all claimants to tests, even those who were clearly not able to work, was needed to stem the rising tide of recession-fuelled unemployment.

“Labour are now the party of unemployment; I want the new Conservative Party to be the party of jobs and opportunity and at the heart of it is a big, bold and radical scheme to get millions of people back to work.

“It is the big centrepiece of our conference because we recognise that the jobs crisis is one of the most serious things we face as a country,” Mr Cameron said.

“Some of those people cannot work and must be helped for we are a compassionate society and we must look after those people. But many people could work and there are some who, with some tailored help, could work,” he said.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .