Iain Duncan Smith is planning a shake-up of the rules on sickness benefit to encourage more people into work.

The work and pensions secretary says that the current system is too "binary" - with claimants deemed either fit or unfit for work. Instead, claimants should be made to take up any work they can, even if it is just a few hours, he said. Labour says cutting benefits for people who are not able to work is punishing the disabled for government failures. Mr Duncan Smith insisted that the "most vulnerable people in our society" will be protected under his latest reforms. And despite the "scaremongering" of critics, he said, the UK spends more on the sick and disabled than the average of the other nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Mr Duncan Smith has also made his first public comments about revelations his department had used made-up stories from fictional sickness benefit claimants to demonstrate the positive impact of benefit sanctions.....Read more here