Labour leader says there should be more support to help people back into jobs, vowing to do ‘everything we can to tackle worklessness’

People who have been on long-term sickness leave and claiming benefits will need get back into the workplace “where they can”, Keir Starmer has said.

The prime minister said he wants more schemes across the country that support people back into work from long-term sickness because he believes in the “basic proposition that you should look for work”.

Starmer was speaking on the final day of Labour conference, after telling members there would be “light at the end of this tunnel” but adding they must first join a “shared struggle” through tough short-term pressures.

He also told Labour activists during his speech: “If we want to maintain support for the welfare state, then we will legislate to stop benefit fraud, do everything we can to tackle worklessness.”

Asked by the BBC’s Today programme if he agreed with the proposition that virtually no one should claim benefits without trying to get back to work, Starmer said: “I think the basic proposition that you should look for work is right.

“Obviously there will be hard cases, but the way I would do it is to say: yes, that’s the basic proposition, but we also want to support [people] that so that more people can get into work.”

He had earlier said: “I’ve gone out and looked at schemes where businesses are supporting people back into work from long-term sickness.

“Because quite often I think what lies behind this is a fear for someone who’s been on long-term sickness, that: can they get back into the workplace? Are they going to be able to cope? Is it all going to go hopelessly wrong?

“Yes they need to be back in the workplace where they can, but I do think that if we can put the right support in place, which I’ve seen pilots of, they work pretty well, and we want to see more of those across the country.”

About 3 million people in the UK are not working because of long-term sickness.

In the same interview, the prime minister suggested he had accepted he equivalent of £20,000 in donations for accommodation because his son needed somewhere to revise for his GCSEs while his family home was surrounded with journalists during the election campaign.

While Starmer said the transition to Downing Street had been “really difficult” for his two children, who had grown up in north London, he did however defend his decision to take gifts from Labour peer Lord Alli amid criticism of the arrangement.

The prime minister said he was “not going to apologise for not doing anything wrong” and the freebies did not “cost the taxpayer a penny”.

He told the BBC: “My boy, 16, was in the middle of his GCSEs. I made him a promise, a promise that he would be able to get to his school, do his exams, without being disturbed.

“We have lots of journalists outside our house where we live and I’m not complaining about that, that’s fine.

“But if you’re a 16-year-old trying to do your GCSEs and it’s your one chance in life – I promised him we would move somewhere, get out of the house and go somewhere where he could be peacefully studying.

“Somebody then offered me accommodation where we could do that. I took that up and it was the right thing to do.”

Asked whether he would like to apologise for the row, he told LBC: “I’m not going to apologise for not doing anything wrong.”

It comes after Starmer said ministers would no longer take donations for clothing now they were in government, but he left the door open to receiving more access to events, such as the £4,000 worth of tickets to a Taylor Swift concert he accepted from the Premier League.