Tory health tests to slash sickness benefits

More than 500,000 British people currently judged too sick to work will have their benefits cut by £25 ($55.5) a week under plans for a radical overhaul of the welfare system set out yesterday by the Conservative Party.

All 2.6 million incapacity benefit claimants will be required by an incoming Tory government to take rigorous medical tests to see whether they could hold down a job.

The Conservatives believe one in five will be assessed as well enough to work and will be switched to the jobseekers' allowance. Their weekly income would fall from £89.90, the current basic rate of long-term incapacity benefit, to £64.30, the current rate for JSA claimants aged over 25.

The Tories estimate that cutting the benefits of former incapacity benefit claimants will save £600 million ($1.3 billion) over the three years they believe it will take to carry out the testing programme.

David Cameron, the Tory leader, said yesterday: "Some of those people cannot work and must be helped, for we are a compassionate society and we must look after those people. But many people could work and there are some who, with some tailored help, could work."

The Conservatives were today to announce that the savings from the incapacity benefit bill would be used to pay for the up-front costs of a national work programme that will replace Labour's flagship New Deal initiative.

Under the proposals most people who have been unemployed for more than six months would be required to take training courses.

The Conservatives were to promise to create an extra 100,000 apprenticeships and training places a year to increase skills levels. They would also expand the work experience programme to include 50,000 more young people a year.

The plans were drawn up by Sir David Freud, a former adviser to Gordon Brown's Government who is a Tory frontbench welfare spokesman. He is Sigmund Freud's great-grandson.

Meanwhile, Cameron was on a collision course with the Conservative eurosceptic right after he rejected demands for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty even if it is ratified by the rest of the European Union.

Tory chiefs, who are desperate to prevent Europe overshadowing the start of their conference, had privately appealed to senior eurosceptics not to inflame tensions on the subject.

But Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, made a colourful plea for a national vote both on Lisbon and on Britain's membership of the European Union.

A poll of more than 2000 Tory members by the ConservativeHome.com website found that more than 80 per cent want Cameron to hold a referendum on the treaty even if it had been approved by the time of the election.

The issue gained urgency after the weekend's Irish referendum result brought the ratification of the Lisbon treaty a large step nearer. Only Poland and the Czech Republic are yet to ratify the treaty.

Cameron repeatedly sidestepped challenges yesterday on how a Conservative government would act if all 27 EU members had backed the treaty.

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