South Yorkshire's 'quiet revolution' is getting people back into work
A “quiet revolution has begun” in South Yorkshire to get people back into work, a New Labour grandee has said, as he urged the Government not to shirk reforming the welfare system.
Former Health Secretary Alan Milburn was speaking in Barnsley yesterday, on the first anniversary of the landmark Pathways to Work Commission.
This called for a holistic and integrated approach to getting people back into work, and has been used as a “proof of concept” by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall.
South Yorkshire has become one of nine “inactivity trailblazers” across the country which will get a share of £125m to help bring employment, health and skills support together.
“Barnsley and South Yorkshire are leading the way on this agenda,” Mr Milburn told The Yorkshire Post.
“Economic inactivity was pretty low on the agenda a year ago and today it is top of the agenda.
“South Yorkshire has become an exemplar for how to approach the issue in a holistic way.
“It’s not only influenced the national public policy agenda, but also authorities across the country from Cornwall, to North Yorkshire and Northern Ireland.
“Over the last year a quiet revolution has started here.”
A quarter of working age people in South Yorkshire are classed as economically inactive, which means they are not in employment or training, with the region still feeling the consequences of mass deindustrialisation in the 1980s.
Sheffield alone lost 50,000 steelworking jobs from 1980 to 1983, while other areas saw coal mines closed.
The Pathways to Work Commission found that “most people who had been written off as too sick to be in employment actually wanted the chance to work,” Mr Milburn said.
“Of course there are people who game the system and we should apply tough penalties to them.
“But it would be a mistake to think that the vast majority fall into that category.”
However, while seven in 10 economically inactive people wanted to get back into work, only one in 10 had any regular access to employment support services.
“It’s small scale so far and a bit slower than all of us would have liked,” he admitted, “but the proof of the pudding is that there are 30 people across South Yorkshire who have been helped out of economic inactivity into work, and a further 500 who are in the pipeline.”
“It’s taken time to put in place all of the architecture, but now the business community and employers are on board.”
Mr Milburn, known as a reformer in Sir Tony Blair’s government, urged Sir Keir Starmer not to duck the challenge of reforming the welfare system.
The Prime Minister’s ignominously had to gut his bill in the face of a huge rebellion from Labour backbenchers.
“The Government lost out in Parliament, but it does need to discover a second wind on these issues,” he said.
“I know Liz [Kendall] will not duck this challenge.
“It’s got to learn the lessons of what went wrong, but it’s also got to push forward with reforms to the system because fiscally, economically, socially it’s just not sustainable.”