Welfare Reform Bill

I did not think that any Labour Member would want to go back, but I thought someone on the Opposition Benches might. We are not going back to those days. I come now to the problem of job retention, which one or two hon. Members have mentioned already. Part of any welfare strategy must be to do as much as possible to keep people in work. Two issues need to be considered in that regard, and the first is the possible introduction of a form of wages subsidy scheme. The one used in the 1980s was not entirely successful, but with some fine tuning it has the potential to keep people in work and thus prevent them from entering the benefits system. The second issue has to do with the widespread concern about the efficiency of statutory sick pay. Far too many people with disabilities or mental health problems who are dumped out of work receive statutory sick pay for 28 weeks and then join the benefits system. By that time, it is almost too late for them to do anything about getting another job. We need to look at the employer's responsibility to those people, and consider reforming SSP so that it is not a totally inactive benefit. Much more responsibility should be placed on employers. Around 40 per cent. of all new incapacity benefit claims are made by people who left work with mental health problems. We need to reverse that trend.