6 Quotes by John Philpott

It is a simplification of the system but the detail is still unclear. The only certainty is that in the short term it will produce more work for employment lawyers.

Overcoming employer resistance to hiring long-term IB claimants may require greater use of direct financial incentives to employers, such as the offer of recruitment subsidies or low cost work trials for claimants.

Such low expectations may or may not be unfair. But either way, they pose a problem for the government.

The government will have to ensure that its welfare-to-work measures do as much as possible to engage employers and encourage them to recruit people.

This may be the only realistic approach, and is anyway a major improvement on the current system, but it will nonetheless disappoint those who might be expecting an immediate improvement in the job prospects of most existing claimants.

At a time of economic uncertainty and weaker recruitment, persuading employers to hire more people from the benefit roll could prove an uphill task.