THE Labour government recently revealed its long awaited plan for how to move more people into jobs.

Dubbed “Get Britain Working”, it was meant to be a radical new blueprint aimed at getting the UK’s employment rate up to 80 per cent.

Unfortunately it fell far short of what will be needed to have even a slim chance of meeting that target.

First, some context. Since 2010 we have seen nearly four million more people in work.

Our overall rate of economic inactivity - that is, people neither in work nor looking for work - is also lower now than in 2010.

But the worrying trend, especially since the pandemic, has been rising numbers of people falling out of the workforce due to health problems or disability.

Many of those people end up on benefits for years. It’s a huge waste of human potential, it’s expensive for the taxpayer, and it’s a drag on our economy.

And often it would actually be better for people’s mental and physical health if they were in work. This is the key challenge in today’s labour market.

When I was Work and Pensions Secretary, I announced a Back to Work Plan and a set of fundamental reforms to the welfare system in order to tackle this trend.

A lot of what the government said last week was very familiar to me. They have announced a new scheme to place 100,000 inactive people in jobs - exactly the same scheme that was announced and funded by the Conservatives last year.

The new government have simply rebranded it and have actually delayed the rollout in the process.

In fact there was barely any new funding or new ideas in Labour’s plans. This was meant to be Labour’s big moment on welfare, but the Back to Work Plan I announced last year was literally more than ten times bigger - a £2.5 billion package of measures, compared to the £240 million for a small number of pilot schemes which Labour have announced.

The Prime Minister tried to criticise those Conservative plans, accusing us of “meaningless rhetoric to grab headlines”.

But while we took action, Labour seem to be quietly taking forward a lot of those old plans, and not doing much in the way of new ideas of their own.

However, one crucial piece of the puzzle is being ignored completely by the new government. That is reform to the benefits system itself.

Last year I announced changes which would see over 400,000 fewer people on long-term benefits and save billions from the welfare bill.

Labour are now refusing to confirm whether they will take forward those vital reforms.

Instead they have said they will think about it and launch a consultation next spring. More dither and delay.

In the meantime, people are ending up on long-term benefits when they could be working.

It all begs the question, what were Labour doing before they came into government? Clearly they were not doing much thinking about what they actually wanted to do.