Don’t just work from home, look for work from home! Labour’s Liz Kendall unveils plan to give unemployed ‘a Jobcentre in your pocket’ using AI and smartphones to cure sicknote Britain [Video]

09:15 EST 26 Nov 2024, updated 13:40 EST 26 Nov 2024

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 people …