Welfare Reform
The following is an extract from the oral statement on welfare reform given by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) on 11 October 2010.
We are at a critical point, with 5 million people on out-of-work benefits, 2 million working-age people claiming incapacity benefit, of whom 900,000—just under 1 million—have been claiming for an entire decade, and a system that has left Britain with the highest rate of jobless households in Europe.
[Official Report, 11 October 2010, Vol. 516, c. 34.]
Letter of correction from Mr Duncan Smith:
An error has been identified in the first sentence of the fifth paragraph of the oral statement of 11 October.
The correct sentence should have been:
We are at a critical point, with 5 million people on out-of-work benefits, 2 million working-age people claiming incapacity benefit, of whom 900,000—just under 1 million—have been claiming for an entire decade, and a system that has left Britain with one of the highest rates of jobless households in Europe's major economies.