Scotland needs both its governments to step up to fix a broken welfare system, so it supports those who can work to do so, while always protecting those who can’t and never will be able to work.
The Tories allowed the standard allowance of Universal Credit to fall to a 40 year low, creating a incentive for people to prove they were incapable of work rather than seek the security of work.
Next year, for the first time ever, the standard allowance will increase and be worth around £364 extra a year.
We will abolish the work capability assessment, introduce a “right to try” so people can apply and start work without fear of being reassessed and establish unemployment insurance protecting people with a higher rate of benefit if they fall out of work to help them quickly get back on track.
We will also introduce an additional premium for new claimants with the most severe, life-long health conditions, who have no prospect of improvement and will never be able to work.
And thanks to the landmark Employment Rights Bill passed by Labour last week, when people get a job it will be better paid, more secure and with stronger rights.
But we need to see the Scottish Government step up too.
Scotland’s economic inactivity rate is higher than the UK’s. It’s not progressive to see hundreds of thousands of our fellow Scots moving on to welfare with no pathway back into work.
133,200 Scots want a job but aren’t looking.
Many of them aren’t looking because they are trapped on an NHS waiting list.
Almost 300,000 Scots are out of work and not looking for work because they are either temporary or long-term sick – meanwhile over 700,000 Scots are on an NHS waiting list for treatment
Employability services have faced tens of millions of pounds of cuts in recent years while around 84,000 young Scots are not in work, education or training. It’s our moral imperative to sort this.
The number of college places in Scotland is at its lowest in a decade and 1,351 pupils, enough to fill an entire large Scottish secondary school, left school last year without a single qualification to their name.
Helping these people into decent, well paid and secure work should be the number one aim of any progressive government.
Labour has reset the relationship between Scotland’s two governments.
We must now work together to help more people into work, while always supporting those who cannot.
Ian Murray is Secretary of State for Scotland
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