UK to introduce new rules to push long-term unemployed into the workforce

Tough new rules to push the long-term unemployed into the workforce would take effect in the UK from today.

Under the new rules, the unemployed would only receive their benefits if they either showed up at a job centre every day or committed to six months of voluntary work.

Those who failed to comply with the rules, which also offered the third option of signing up to a training scheme, could expect their job seeker's allowance docked for four weeks for the first offence, and 13 weeks for the second.

The system, till now, required people to only attend a job centre once a fortnight.  The move is therefore expected see long queues of people lining up to sign on every day.

The stringent measures announced today by the Work and Pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, under the heading Help to Work, reflected the view that there was work for the unemployed, if they could be prodded by a combination of encouragement and sanctions, to wean themselves off welfare.

According to the government, there were 600,000 job vacancies at any given time and the latest rules applied to the 200,000 or so toughest cases – the one in 30 claimants who had not held a job for three years or more.

The Help to Work scheme is targeting 200,000 people who had been unemployed, or unable to hold down a job, for three years.

Under the scheme, the long-term unemployed would have to report daily to local job centres to discuss how to get back to work.

If they were found to have not enough work experience they would be allocated volunteering roles with charities and other providers.

Typically this would involve scrubbing war memorials, helping to clean up historic monuments and working in local cafés run by volunteers.

Other work would include helping out at community and city farms, cleaning and restoring river and canal banks and even sorting through second-hand clothes in charity warehouses.

If they failed to cooperate they would risk losing work-related benefits, such as the £72-a-week job seekers' allowance.

According to government sources, the placements which would last for up to six months each were focused on the voluntary sector to avoid taking jobs from other people, The Telegraph newspaper reported.

The newspaper reported prime minister David Cameron, as saying the measures were part of a government attempt to get a job for everyone who could work.

He said a key part of the government's long-term economic plan was to move to full employment, making sure that everyone who could work was in work.