- The Guardian,
- Tuesday October 2 2007
The shadow work and pensions secretary, Chris Grayling, said he believed at present that it was too easy for a claimant to reject a job offer made by the employment service by claiming the offer was not suitable to their skills. Mr Cameron admitted: "The proposal is tough. It works in other countries and I think it's fair."
The idea has been taken from the report on social justice prepared by Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader.
Mr Cameron said yesterday: "Iain Duncan Smith went into great detail on this in his report and one of the key things - and again it's a tough choice - is to say the state has failed to get people off incapacity benefit. Look at Australia, look at America. In parts of this country where voluntary bodies, charities and private companies are actually running welfare systems they are far more successful at getting people into work."
The Conservatives are convinced the Treasury is ideologically opposed to the radical proposals set out in the report commissioned by the government from the businessman David Freud, which proposed that the private and voluntary sector be handed large regional contracts to find work for the jobless.
Mr Grayling called Gordon Brown a liar for claiming he had solved youth unemployment. He said: "There are now more 16- to 24-year-olds unemployed in Britain than there were 10 years ago."
The report by Iain Duncan Smith argued that the employment service was reluctant to apply the sanctions regime properly.
It pointed to a Department for Work and Pensions research paper that noted the majority of clients who spent long periods of time on government programmes were unlikely to move into work, and of the people who do find work, 40% reclaim jobseeker's allowance within a year. "Not only are the government's programmes less effective than a number of private and third sector providers, they are also more expensive," Mr Grayling said.
