Over the past decade, the new deals and employment zones have led to a major transformation in employment support for long-term jobseekers, helping more than 2 million people to move into work. Our active labour market policies have helped to reduce the number of lone parents on income support by more than 290,000 since 1997, and the number on incapacity benefits by 160,000 from its peak in 2003. Our benefit reforms and the success of our employment programmes mean that the numbers of people on benefit are not escalating as they did in the last recession.