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| TX: 20.01.06 - Incapacity Benefit - Employment for claimants PRESENTER: PETER WHITE |
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| Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WHITE Now this week we've been reporting on the government's plans to reform incapacity benefit which costs us all somewhere in the region of £7 billion a year. On Monday the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, John Hutton, signalled a tougher approach than some people expected with a clear message that those who refused to cooperate with programmes to get people back to work would risk losing part of their benefit. But unemployment figures published this week showed joblessness rising, for the 11th successive month, and indeed job vacancies are falling. So do the jobs exist? In a moment we'll be discussing some of the options which face John Hutton but first we return to Barrow-in-Furness, which since the decline in its shipyard has one of the highest levels of incapacity benefit in the country. So what kind of jobs are being offered to people who say they want to work? ACTUALITY Right I'm just filling this up Dave, I'm putting more Maris Piper out okay mate? Nice one. And after you've done that could you do the reds for us as well please. Yeah will do, no problem. Cheers. JOHNSON My name's Phil Johnson. I actually am now working at Asda's part time. I came back to Barrow after many, many years, had to look after my mother through illness and she sadly died. I was on incapacity benefit for about two years but at 57 I was unsure whether I'd actually find employment again, I'm now slowly getting myself back on my feet. I still have problems, I still have depressions and anxieties. Part time works out better for all concerned really. It's just given me more confidence. I feel better about things or not as bad. THATCHER I'm Liz Thatcher, I'm 31. I was on incapacity benefit a few years ago. I have chronic fatigue syndrome and arthritis like symptoms. The advisors at the Job Centre actually did suggest with all the restrictions I had going on to incapacity benefit but I'd found it to be a stigma before and I didn't really want to go back to that again. And I thought people would think again about whether or not they wanted somebody who had that sort of history and whether it would lead to periods of absences. I went on the Forward to Work course, which was very useful for me, it showed me that I had a lot of skills that I didn't realise I had. It renewed my determination and motivation because I was getting depressed because it had been so long and I was starting to think that maybe no job was going to come along. EDWARDS My name's John Edwards. Born and bred in Barrow-in-Furness, formerly at the shipyard for a brief period and struggled to find long term employment ever since really. Initially I wanted to be a domestic plumber but there was no domestic plumbing courses here. The closest was Carlisle, didn't have any means to get to and from Carlisle so I had to diversify. WHITE Can you give me an idea sort of how many jobs you went for and how many knock backs you got? EDWARDS Maybe 30 in total because I mean when you're part of the Job Centre you have a plan where you have to apply for jobs. And you're not necessarily pressured but you're heavily encouraged to apply for jobs. Now if they want me off their books I'm trying to apply for jobs that I think I'm capable of doing but of course until you - the proofs in the pudding, it would come to where you get the position and it's only after you actually try the work you find out you're not capable of doing it from a health point of view. Standing on a production line, even with a stool, for two weeks, after two weeks I was no good. Right now I'm working for a company called Matwork. My job now is to help people back into work that have been in my position. So who better to explain to somebody that you can work on incapacity benefit through the new scheme. BIGGS My name's Colin Biggs and I'm a volunteer welfare benefits advisor for disability benefits. I contracted MS, I mean I'm permanently in a wheelchair, so I couldn't go up and go on a scheme say painting and decorating or bricklaying. So the only jobs really available in Barrow is the part time shop assistant, working in the supermarkets really, there's no industry anymore, they've practically made so many thousands redundant from the shipyard so there's only sort of part time-ish jobs available and really you can't live on that alone at all. WHITE And things like call centres and that sort of thing - have you got those in Barrow? BIGGS Well we have - yeah we've just opened a call centre or they've just opened a call centre in Barrow. I suppose yes someone in a wheelchair could probably sit in front of a [indistinct word] all day. But it's the physical capability of the person their self. For me I'd probably fall asleep at the desk. WHITE Colin Biggs. Well listening to those experiences was Professor Steve Fothergill of Sheffield Hallam University. He's written extensively on Barrow and its economy. FOTHERGILL The Fundamental problem is that in some areas of the country there's massive imbalance between the potential workforce and actually the number of jobs that are actually out there and Barrow is a classic example of this. And what's actually happened as a result of that huge loss of jobs is competition - the people with health problems and disabilities have been one of the major groups that have been marginalised and you see this pattern all across the country in the old industrial areas, which is where the incapacity benefit problem is concentrated, this is not a problem of prosperous Southern England. WHITE In a place like Barrow what kind of jobs are actually available? FOTHERGILL Not a lot actually is the honest answer, there will be service sector jobs such as those in supermarkets. But what's really needed are the big injections of new employers to replace those employers that have disappeared. For example, if a large outpost of a government department could be moved there that would bring sufficient numbers of jobs to actually begin to rebalance the whole labour market. The evidence from around the country shows very clearly that where the economy is strong enough large numbers of people don't sit on incapacity benefit, they work. WHITE Can you give us comparisons of the situation say in a place like Barrow and the situation you might find in the South of England? FOTHERGILL The figures show that in Barrow it's about 1 [inaudible words] in all adults of working age, that's all men between the ages of 16 and 64 and women between 16 and [gap in transmission]. If you go down some parts of Southern England, in Surrey and Berkshire, it's 1 in 50 of the working age population who are on IB and Barrow is by no means the worst example. In certain parts of South Wales or indeed in County Durham it's 1 in 5 of all adults are out of the labour market on IB. And these are the very areas where the underlying economic base collapsed in the 1980s and the early 1990s and though we've gone some way in bringing economic recovery there's such a huge distance still to go and until we create those jobs I really can't see where we're going to place all these incapacity benefit claimants. WHITE We'll hear more from Professor Fothergill in a moment but I'm joined in the studio by Nick Goulding, who's chief executive of the Forum for Private Business, which represents 25,000 small and medium sized companies. Nick Goulding, are the jobs out there, I mean the latest unemployment figures suggest that they're not? GOULDING That's certainly true as far as the unemployment figures are concerned but there are jobs for people with a positive attitude to work. Small firms, privately owned businesses, are not employment agencies, they're there to run businesses to make money and they need employees who are going to contribute to that. If we look at what's happened to the labour market I actually feel that over the last five years there's been a big squeeze out effect with all the public sector jobs and there have been virtually no growth in private sector jobs over the last five years, the drop off recently is as public sector jobs have dropped. And my final point on that is that if you look at the way in which the gesture politics of things like the minimum wage, the tide of red tape which is burdening down businesses, particularly in places like Barrow, it means the marginal cost of taking on people who are at risk because they're marginally valuable to the employer is crucifying, so that the employers can't so readily take the risk of taking them on. WHITE I was going to say just to go back to a medium sized and small employer, like the ones you represent, if they've got several applications for one job aren't they likely - are they really likely to choose the claimant who's been on incapacity benefit? GOULDING Well I don't think that they're going to differentiate on that particular thing, they're going to look at the attitude to work and the skills of the individual. Now that may be a factor but the overriding one is, is this person coming to work with a positive mental attitude and that's the overriding - and people on incapacity benefit may well come with a positive mental attitude, particularly if supported by the system and that's the crucial point. WHITE Nick Goulding, we'll hear from you more later, as we will from a couple more of our guests. But Steve Fothergill has come up with his own Green Paper for reform of incapacity benefit. But firstly I asked him what he thought was good and what was bad about the current system. FOTHERGILL Let's take what's bad about it first. Unfortunately it writes off lots of people who would like to work and with support and in the right circumstances could indeed work. I mean the very name itself sends the signals you cannot do anything, you're incapable of work. What's good about it is that it actually provides security and a stable income, albeit not a very generous one, for many people who've been completely marginalised in the labour market and who are going to have difficulty in getting back in. WHITE So on that point of what's bad about it, that surely is something the government takes on board, that's one of the things they do want to change? FOTHERGILL At one level I think the government is absolutely right in trying to encourage at least some incapacity benefit claimants to begin the process of looking for work but this policy has got to be applied with huge sensitivity, both to personal circumstances and to location. WHITE Now you've produced your own ideas about what you would like to do with incapacity benefit, in essence what are they? FOTHERGILL There are five proposals. Firstly there needs to be comprehensive benefit protection for those returning to work, so there's no financial disincentive to go back to work, if you like. Secondly, we don't think there should be an extension to the scope of means testing. Thirdly, a genuinely high quality roll out of the pathways to work initiative is needed to support IB claimants back into work. Fourthly, there should be a time limit on the requirement to prepare for work. And fifth and finally, we don't think there should be compulsion for those approaching pension age, that is no compulsion to actually engage in the preparation to work. WHITE Just to talk about this issue of non-compulsion. I mean surely what the government is saying is we shouldn't write anybody off, which is what you've said yourself, so it is right to say that some people you simply accept, even if they're over 50, that they're not going to work again? FOTHERGILL No I think people should have the facility to access physical rehabilitation, training courses, etc., but I think it's terribly harsh of this government to turn around, let's say, to a 58 year old ex-manual worker with declining health and say to them come on you've got to get off your bum and start looking for work again. I think that is not treating them with dignity and respect, especially after perhaps 40 years of arduous working life. WHITE What about the cost effectiveness of working with people over 50? FOTHERGILL I certainly think that the offer should be made available there to people over 50 or over 55 but introducing compulsion for those individuals, especially if they resent that compulsion, really doesn't stack up to a sensible use of public money. I mean better to direct the resources at perhaps younger workers who would have a much longer working life ahead of them. WHITE Now what about this issue of a time limit on how long you have to prepare yourself for work? FOTHERGILL Some individuals will not actually find work. Fair enough you don't give up on any individual, you should encourage them to look for work. But if you're getting nowhere after two, three, four years there comes a point in time where this just becomes relentless pressure on individuals, individuals who after all do have health problems and disabilities. There should be a time limit in this - we won't lean on you anymore. WHITE Professor Steve Fothergill. Well Dr Steven Duckworth of Disability Matters joins me from Southampton. Steven, your organisation works to get more people into jobs and prepare them for those jobs. The other day I know you were at a meeting with the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, so what's your thinking about this idea that compulsion isn't appropriate, especially for over 50s, because that seems to be the government's idea too? DUCKWORTH Well I think there needs to be some degree of flexibility in that but we need to realise that if you're actually actively out there job seeking it's a full time to get a job in the first place. And that you cannot expect to move in to the job that you would want, you might need to move into a job that creates a stepping stone for you then to move on to a job that you'd prefer having. WHITE So does that mean you do think there does need to be a level of compulsion for some people? DUCKWORTH Yes I do, I feel quite strongly that there should be. The reason for that is because the people who are on incapacity benefits develop a set of beliefs and thinking, they also have a reduced effectiveness in their job seeking and job search activities. I think it was Henry Ford that once said that if you think you can do something or if you think you can't do something you're probably right, it just depends what you think. And the conditionality will actually enable people to start thinking differently. WHITE From that meeting that I mentioned what do you think we're likely to see? DUCKWORTH Well there wasn't any indication of what's going to be published on Tuesday but certainly I feel that conditionality is going to be a strong part of it. All the people sat around the room which represented a range of large disability organisations like Radar, Mind and the DLC and others were all in favour of conditionality. WHITE Okay. Also with me is Joanne Hindle of Unum, which - Unum Provident - which has for many years provided insurance cover for disability and serious illness, do you agree compulsion is necessary? HINDLE I think the key issue for me is compulsion to what because just saying compulsion doesn't really take us very much further forward. WHITE Well compulsion to try at least, because there is a belief there are a lot of people who are sitting on incapacity benefit, maybe not fraudulent, but not trying that hard to get back to work or just depressed and demoralised. HINDLE Indeed and I think taking someone who's depressed and demoralised and saying you are now being compelled to try to get a job isn't going to help them or society or the system. It comes back to the chap from the first interview who was saying I wanted to become a plumber, there were no courses locally and I couldn't get to where the course was being held. So what needs to happen, whether we think this is or isn't society's role, the fact is what that chap needed was to be given enough support to physically be able to get to where the course was and we would now have a useful member of society - a plumber, which particularly in the South East we all know how desperately we need them. So he was there, he was ready and that's the key point, most people going on to incapacity benefit want to go back to work, exactly as he said, what stopped him was the whole system that just wasn't there to support what he needed to be able to do. WHITE Both flexibility and help means people and that means money, so that - these are quite expensive solutions. HINDLE They aren't in total expensive solutions they are actually very cheap solutions. The cost of keeping somebody on incapacity benefit for seven or eight years, which is the average, is huge, compared with that the cost of getting that chap over to a course to retrain as a plumber was marginally absolutely minimal. WHITE Nick. GOULDING Yeah I just wanted to butt in to support that point really because it's also very bad for employers - if they get a string of people coming for interviews who really don't want to be there they waste their time and that gives them a negative experience, particularly if they then start someone who's got a negative attitude towards work because they didn't want to be there and that's the very best way of putting them off employing the next person off disability benefits. So if you want to stop employers employing people off disability benefit send a lot of them from there that don't want to do it and give a bad experience. WHITE Steve Duckworth what about employers? This morning John Hutton said business has a key role in helping us achieve an aspiration of getting one million people off incapacity benefit. Does there need to be more compulsion for employers? DUCKWORTH Yes I firmly believe that there does. I think that the problem stems from employers using the onset of an illness or an accident to exit people from their organisations. It's true in large organisations and small organisations. So I would like to see some further primary legislation in a few years time perhaps that requires employers to actually invest in the retention and rehabilitation of people who develop illnesses or accidents. WHITE And what about the idea of quotas, which is an idea that people - was tried in this country, didn't work very well, it still happens on the continent doesn't it, is that something that is worth trying? DUCKWORTH No because it doesn't work on the continent either. GOULDING Can I just respond to that because that's a typically public sector big business centric view of how to deal with things. In a small firm it's radically different. If you get - if you've got two employees you take another one, that's 33% of your workforce. If 33% of your workforce are compelled on you who have a negative attitude and are badly approaching work that's crippling for your business. If you're HSBC or some public department you can absorb a few extra people and frankly you've got enough inefficiencies in your working that it doesn't make an awful lot of difference to you. But if you're a small firm that is a way of destroying the business and quotas and compulsion on employers, small employers, is entirely unacceptable. WHITE Joanne Hindle. HINDLE Yes. I also think that the issue of the difference between large and small actually isn't that great, I think most firms nowadays are desperately trying to be efficient and don't need people who are time wasters. Nothing to do with whether or not they're ill, we all of us need employees who are committed and want to be there whatever their state of physical ability. However, I think we have an already pretty strict framework in the Disability Discrimination Act, the DDA, and I certainly wouldn't agree with Steven that we need more legislation, certainly not for the next few years. Let's get that up and working, it's only been fully in force for a matter of months and really see if that can't be used to enforce out and out breaches. WHITE Can I just ask Steven Duckworth very quickly? Do we actually need to do anything, if we're spending a lot of money getting people into jobs that don't exist won't that actually cost more than the 7 billion we're spending at the moment? DUCKWORTH Well you can't actually get people into jobs that don't exist if the jobs don't exist. So we - Steven Fothergill spoke earlier on about the north/south divide and the difference in incapacity benefit populations, which is a fair point. But in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, which many would consider to be a prosperous area, there's still over 50,000 people on incapacity benefit. WHITE Okay I'm going to stop you all there. Thank you to all my guests - Steve Duckworth, Joanne Hindle, Nick Goulding. We should know the answers to many of these questions early next week when the Green Paper is expected to appear. Thank you. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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