Jobcentres will “broker” work for the over-50s under Labour plans to tackle 2.5million people who are long-term sick.
Welfare chief Jonathan Ashworth announced he would give “genuine, quality, tailored support” joined up with the NHS to help people who want to return to a job.
And he branded the explosion in out-of-work people with health problems - up 500,000 since 2019 - a “growing burden” on the economy and individual people.
All over-50s who’ve recently left work, but not retired, would get targeted back-to-work support and guidance under the plan announced today.
Sick or disabled people of all ages will also be spared gruelling reassessments for their benefits if they take a job, and it doesn’t work out within a year.
In a speech at the CPS think tank co-founded by Tory Iain Duncan Smith, Mr Ashworth pledged to “de-risk the journey into work” if Labour get into government.
But he added benefit sanctions would remain for some who refuse to engage with the system.
He said Labour would “fundamentally reform” Universal Credit, after Keir Starmer U-turned and ditched his 2020 leadership promise to “scrap” it.
And he vowed to replace the “bewildering spaghetti junction” of back-to-work schemes with devolved system that gives more control to local groups.
GPs, housing associations and community groups will be able to direct people to support as £20bn on existing schemes is spent better, he said.
Labour will also set new targets to speed up Access to Work grants for disabled people, after the Mirror revealed waiting times had almost doubled in a year.
The Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary said his childhood in poverty, joining his dad in a “grey dole office” where men had “haunted looks”, had shown him “unemployment is never a price worth paying”.
Focusing on the over-50s, he said: “For people who cannot work, we guarantee security.
“For people who do want to work, we’ll stand by them throughout any steps they’re able to take as they journey into employment.
“We’ll be there to support people if things don’t work out.”
The number of working-age adults who are ‘economically inactive’ due to long-term sickness has risen from 2million in spring 2019 to 2.5million in summer 2022.
More than half (1.3million people) are aged 50 to 64 - a rise of 183,000 since 2019.
Mr Ashworth stressed over-50s who have taken early retirement, draw down pensions or have caring responsibilities would not be forced back to work.
But he said hundreds of thousands “want to return” and “obviously if they are on Universal Credit, the conditionality regime” - benefit sanctions - “will apply”.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour promised to “suspend the Tories’ pernicious sanctions regime”.
However, Mr Ashworth said: “There will be rights and responsibilities running through social security, and that is important.
“It should run through social security all the time, and it will do under a Labour government.”
