Don’t simply make money working from home, search for make money working from home! Labour’s Liz Kendall unveils plan to provide unemployed ‘a Jobcentre in your pocket’ utilizing AI and smartphones to treatment sicknote Britain

Unemployed Brits will be offered a ‘Jobcentre in your pocket’ so they don’t have to troop to a gloomy dole office to seek work, a senior Labour minister said today. 

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said visiting the employment offices too often felt like ‘you’re back in the 80s or 90s’ and the service needed dragging into the modern world as she unveiled government plans to cure sicknote Britain.

Ministers are setting out wide-ranging reforms designed to tackle economic inactivity and deliver the Government’s promise to bring more than two million people back into work. 

While unemployment stands at almost 1.5 million, economic inactivity has also soared to more than nine million, with 2.8 million people out of work due to long-term sickness – a major driver of the rise in joblessness since the pandemic. 

Introducing the Get Britain Working White Paper, Ms Kendall told the Commons that just one-in-six firms had used Jobcentres to hire staff. 

‘For too many people, walking into a Jobcentre feels like you’re back in the 80s or 90s,’ she said.

‘So we will trial a radically improved digital offer using the latest technologies and AI to provide up-to-date information on jobs, skills and other support, and to free up work coach time, and testing video and phone support too.

‘Because in the 2020s, you shouldn’t only have to go into the Jobcentre every week or fortnight when you can have a Jobcentre in your pocket.’ 

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said visiting the employment offices too often felt like ‘you’re back in the 80s or 90s’ as she unveiled government plans to get sicknote Britain back to work.

Introducing the Get Britain Working White Paper, Ms Kendall told the Commons: ‘In the 2020s, you shouldn’t only have to go into the Jobcentre every week or fortnight when you can have a Jobcentre in your pocket.’

It came after Labour was accused of putting off urgently needed reforms to cure sicknote Britain.

The white paper published today is solely focused on employment support, including the revamp of Jobcentres as well as extra NHS appointments in unemployment hotspots.

A shake-up of the benefits system and a crackdown on welfare spending will not take place for many more months with proposals not even published until next year.

Downing St today suggested reforms to fit for work tests will be made separately to the Government’s push to get people back to work so they are not rushed.

Asked about commitments by ministers to reform the work capability assessment, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘It is important that we get those reforms right, this is clearly a really complex area, it is a challenge that is going to affect millions of people, so we are not rushing through the details of these reforms and it is important we work closely with charities and leading organisations, disabled people, people with health conditions, to ensure that we get those reforms right as we develop our plans ahead of the spring.’