Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Chris Grayling, will today be making a speech to the CPS in which he will be further outlining the Conservative Party’s policy agenda on welfare reform. Please find the extracts below, which focus on benefit claimants aged between 18-21.

Grayling: We will end street-corner benefit culture amongst young people.

"One group in particular will be the focus of our plans – those under the age of 21.

"In Britain today, where jobs a plenty have been created, there is no excuse whatsoever for a young, able-bodied person to be outside the labour force.

"But we all know that on a typical working day, you can see young people hanging around in town centres in almost every part of this country.

"I talked to one such young man in a centre in Manchester a few weeks ago. He had been in trouble as a teenager, but as he approached his twenties, had now decided that he probably wanted a job. But he didn’t know how to get one, wasn’t hyper-motivated to do so, and no one was taking him by the scruff of the neck in steering him in the right direction.

"So he was hanging around on benefits.

"This has to stop.

"So we plan to introduce much tougher rules for young people under the age of twenty-one claiming Job Seekers’ Allowance. For this group, the welfare to work process will start much earlier. There will be employment ‘boot camps’ and community work programmes for those who don’t find a job. Staying at home doing nothing will be a thing of the past.

"Under a Conservative Government, unemployed young people who don’t find a job within three months will be referred automatically to a specialist employment provider, where they will be expected to take part in an intensive programme of work-related activity.

"If they spend twelve months out of work, they will then be moved onto a full-time community work programme lasting a further year.

"This approach is designed to recognise that whilst young people may not always get the job they want immediately, they are better off in a job and looking to move on, than languishing outside the work place.

"If they drop out of work again there will be even tougher limits on the amount of time they can spend at home on benefits. Indeed, many will be referred straight back onto a structured return to work programme or a community work programme. Doing nothing will not be an option.

"So they simply won’t have a chance to become detached from the work place and from preparation for work.

"This approach marks a radical difference from that of the Government. Under their plans, young people will wait a year before they are included in any kind of substantial return to work programme. And then, if they get a job and lose it again, they will wait up to another six months before going back on to the programme.

"Then of course, there are those who play the system and sign off benefits just before the deadline for joining the New Deal – and then move straight back to the start of the process by signing on again for a short time later.

"I want that to stop. Under our proposals, there will be no room for that kind of manoeuvre. In that situation, the clock will simply be frozen. It won’t be reset to zero again.

"With this approach, for those who are struggling, there will be real help. For those who are not, there will be no opt-outs. And we will end the street-corner benefit culture among young people which this Government has left to fester for the past eleven years."

Migrant workers

"London is one of the most vibrant and thriving cities in the world. The last ten years have seen economic growth and prosperity spread through all areas of our capital city. And the regeneration and job creation will continue with the 2012 Olympics in East London. It’s been a decade where there really should have been a job for everyone.

"Yet, in the same ten years there have remained serious pockets of unemployment and welfare dependency in those same areas where there have been thousands of new jobs created. In five London boroughs, one working age person in every five is on benefits. Child poverty remains unchanged in London.

"For the people that have not shared in the growth of the last fifteen years, poverty and deprivation remain endemic. I’ve met some of those people, trapped in a cycle of worklessness. They are often personable and likeable. But they are also a mile away from the job market – lacking experience, self-confidence, the basic know-how about how to get and hold down a job.

"But they have the potential to get there.

"In the past ten years, far too little has been done to help them break out of a cycle of underachievement. It’s not that the work hasn’t been there.

"Thousands of people have moved into all areas of London from overseas to find jobs. That is part of what makes this city so successful.

"But it also demonstrates how badly this government has let down those excluded from the labour market.

"Why on earth are we paying out vast amounts of money to keep people out of work, when jobs are there and being filled by people from overseas?

"Why has the Government stood idly by while such an absurd situation develops?

"I have a straightforward view on this.

"Gordon Brown has used migrant labour as the easy policy option.

"Migrant workers have helped boost economic growth and his reputation as Chancellor at a time when the economic picture would have been somewhat less rosy without the financial impact of people moving into Britain from overseas.

"It’s still happening. The small print in this year’s Budget showed that his Government’s financial projections still depend on an assumption that more people will move into the UK from overseas to work.

"I think Gordon Brown has used the influx of migrant workers as a way of ducking the issue of welfare reform, and as a result, has left millions of people stranded in poverty who could and should have been helped back to work over the last decade.

"After all his rhetoric on poverty, he has failed to deliver the sea change he has promised. And immigration has provided him with a safety net for the economic impact of that failure."

Prisoners and English language

"Our proposals will also target specialised support at those with specific barriers to work in our society.

We will make it mandatory for everyone leaving a custodial or community sentence, who doesn’t have a job to go to, to join a structured return-to-work programme on the day of their release.

Re-offending is one of the big challenges we face in our criminal justice system. Getting offenders back into work quickly is one important part of dealing with the challenge.

We will also target support at those who are struggling in the job market because of a lack of language skills. The contracting structure we establish for the back to work providers will reflect the need for basic language training as an essential part of getting those people into work.

So we expect to see the back to work centres offering English language coaching to particular groups of job seekers either in their own right or in partnership with local colleges.

The Government’s own research has shown that the employment rate for some ethnic minorities is far below the national average, citing language barriers as one of the factors. It’s time serious steps were taken to address that problem."