---

Welfare Reform Bill

Yes, of course. Part 1 provides for the new employment and support allowance, which will replace the current system of incapacity benefit. It places additional requirements on new claimants to be actively engaged in preparing for a return to the labour market in return for new support, by embedding the values and principles of the successful pathways to work pilots into the structure of the new benefit. We know the difference that pathways to work can make. In the first year of the pilots, the number of recorded job entries for people with a health condition or disability had increased by approximately two thirds compared with the same period the previous year. The pilots’ continued success has driven a significant increase in the proportion of people leaving incapacity benefit in the first six months of their claim, compared with that of non-pilot areas. This early success has underpinned our achievements in helping people off incapacity benefit, with new cases down a third since 1997, and with the first falls in the total count, now down 61,000 in the year to November 2005.