David Cameron outlines plans to raise up to £600m over the next three years, at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.

At the Conservative Party conference in Manchester over the weekend, David Cameron outlined plans to raise capital, by slashing incapacity benefit – to the outrage of many.

Mr Cameron set out a number of measures which he hopes will tackle the rising unemployment, with particular emphasis on the increasing number of young adults who are struggling to find work.

A back-to-work programme is fundamental to the opposition party’s plans and they anticipate that 2.6 million people will be able to return to work more quickly than under a Labour government.

People currently claiming incapacity benefits are central to the plans. Individuals will be asked to attend a new medical assessment, which, if an individual is deemed fit to work, will result in a cut of £25 to benefits. On the basis of current government research, up to 500,000 could be affected by the changes.

The estimated savings from the plans is more than £600 million over the first three years, up to a whopping £1 billion over a five-year parliament.

For the younger generation the Conservative’s said 100,000 more apprenticeships and training places would be available should they win next year’s general election, together with 50,000 additional training places at Further Education (FE) colleges each year, and expansion of the government’s Young Apprenticeship (YA) scheme, from the current 10,000 to 30,000.

Mr Cameron said: “Labour are now the party of unemployment, I want the new Conservative Party to be the party of jobs and opportunity and at the heart of it is a big, bold and radical scheme to get millions of people back to work.”

Employment Minister, Jim Knight, however, slammed the idea: “The only way the Tories can make £600m savings quickly is by rapidly cutting payments for people who cannot possibly work.

“Having lumped people off unemployment on to sickness benefit in the previous recessions, now the Tories want to rush to shift them back in unemployment just so they can cut their benefits. This is unfair on the genuinely sick who should not suffer a £25 a week cut in benefit.”

The Conservatives had come under fire recently for being slow to unveil how they would manage the UK’s budget.