Alison McGovern, the employment minister, was on interview round duty on behalf of the government this morning, talking mostly about the Get Britain Working white paper. Here are the main lines from what she said.

• McGovern said it was good that people are more open about their mental health and she refused to blame people for not working on mental health grounds. Some commentators, and politicians, argue that conditions that were once “normal”, like anxiety, have now been medicalised, and that this partly explains why the number of people off work sick has risen. McGovern did not argue this. She told Times Radio:

I think that it’s a good thing that people are able to be more open about mental health conditions in work, and that we understand more about how people’s mental ill health can affect them in work.

I don’t think having a go at people and blaming them is the right approach.

She also said:

I think it’s definitely the case that we will help work be more sustainable for everybody, if we can take a broad approach to our mental wellbeing.

Asked if she was saying the government wanted to change work, not to change people, she replied:

Exactly. That’s the culture we need to change.

If you look at those international statistics, what you see is that post-pandemic almost all of the countries around the world except us recovered in employment terms. The employment rate did increase, people did go back to work.

That didn’t happen in Britain, something is different, and the level of sickness that we’re experiencing as a country is really high.

Explaining why, she said “really bad” waiting lists in the NHS and “long-term differences in our economy depending on where you live” were among the reasons.

Only one in six of our employers really thinks about using a job centre. That is not OK because it means that the public employment service that’s supposed to be there to support our businesses is failing.

• She confirmed that sanctions would apply to young people who do not take up offers of education, employment or training. But whereas Conservative ministers were normally eager to talk up sanctions, McGovern wasn’t. On the Today programme, she stressed that most young people would want to accept what was offered, and that sanctions already operate in the system. She said:

When good help is offered, it is taken up, that is normally what happens. Of course, people will always think of that small minority […] people who are not interested, they don’t want to do it …

There are rules in the system. Those rules have got to be made to work to make sure that if you take out in the form of social security, you have to do your part of the bargain.

Good morning. Today the government is unveiling what it is calling, in the headline on its overnight press release, the “biggest employment reforms in a generation”. The reforms are intended to tackle the fact that Britain is the only major economy where the employment rate has fallen over the last five years, largely because more people are out of work due to long-term ill health. A white paper called Get Britain Working is being published later, and Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, is due to make a statement in the Commons.

In its overnight briefing, the Department for Work and Pensions has already flagged up numerous initiatives which are in the white paper. Overall, the focus seems to be more carrot than stick. “Our reforms put an end to the culture of blaming and shaming people who for too long haven’t been getting the support they need to get back to work,” Keir Starmer says. But quite a lot of key decisions have been postponed, and at this point it is hard to assess quite how significant, or effective, these meaures will turn out to be. The history of welfare reform is littered with announcements that don’t quite live up to “biggest in a generation” hype.

This is how Starmer sums up what is government is doing.

From the broken NHS, flatlining economy, and the millions of people left unemployed and trapped in an inactivity spiral – this government inherited a country that simply isn’t working. But today we’ve set out a plan to fix this. A plan that tackles the biggest drivers of unemployment and inactivity and gives young people their future back through real, meaningful change instead of empty rhetoric and sticking plaster politics.

We’re overhauling jobcentres to make them fit for the modern age. We’re giving young people the skills and opportunities they need to prepare them for the jobs of the future. We’re fixing the NHS so people get the treatment and mental health support they desperately need to be able to get back to work. We’re working with businesses and employers to better support people with disabilities and health conditions to stay and progress in work, and it doesn’t stop there.

Our reforms put an end to the culture of blaming and shaming people who for too long haven’t been getting the support they need to get back to work. Helping people into decent, well-paid jobs and giving our children and young people the best start in life - that’s our plan to put more money in people’s pockets, unlock growth and make people better off.

The Conservatives say the plans won’t work because the government is ducking tough decisions. This is what Helen Whately, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said overnight.

This latest announcement shows that Labour are not prepared to take the tough but necessary choices to bring down the benefits bill.

There is no attempt to match the £12bn in welfare savings we promised in our manifesto. They have even dodged the difficult decisions on sickness benefits, which are needed to make the welfare system sustainable in the long term.

To get people off benefits you also need jobs for them to go to. But Labour’s disastrous anti-growth budget is already making businesses think twice about taking people on.

Here is Pippa Crerar’s overnight story.

I will be posting a lot more reaction and analysis as the day goes on. But here is a full list of what is coming up today.

9.30am: Keir Starmer chair cabinet.

10.30am: The supreme court begins a two-day hearing on a legal case brought by For Women Scotland who are arguing that trans women should not be regarded female for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act.

11.30am: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

After 12.30pm: Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, is expected to make a Commons statement about the Get Britain Working white paper.

After 1.30pm: MPs debate the tobacco and vapes bill, which would over time ban smoking by gradually raising the age at which people can legally buy cigarettes.

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