Michael Meacher MP

As the first pilot schemes for getting claimants off Incapacity Benefit and into work have judged that 70% were fit for work, the real attitudes of the Tories towards unemployment is becoming painfully clear.   Their Work First model of active labour market policy is defined by increasingly punitive approaches to conditionality and compulsion, the tightening of access to working-age benefits, and contracted-out services that prioritise fitting the workless into any job available.   All this in the context of rising unemploment and the lack of decent quality job opportunities throughout the depressed regions.   But the real scam is only now coming to light in the Government’s announcement of who it has awarded contracts to for forcing people back into work, any work, even while the Glovernment is itself contracting the economy and shrinking the jobs base. (more…)