The image that many people have of the average DSS office can be pretty grim. They think of barriers in front of you, a bureaucratic system, grubby offices.

Now imagine what it is like for a disabled person or a lone mother struggling through that system trying to get back to work. Too often in the past, people have felt like being treated, not as individuals with potential,

but as statistics being processed. I want all that to change.

If we are going to reform our welfare system, we have to make it about offering opportunities to succeed not reinforcing a sense of failure. This week, we took the next big steps in welfare reform - radically altering the way we deal with benefits.

We are creating a brand new service that is focussed on work with personal advisors for every claimant, tailoring support to individual need.

Benefits, housing, work - all dealt with under one roof. Job vacancies on the Internet accessed at the touch of a button.

The agency will help build on the success of the New Deal. More than 200,000 young people have jobs as a result of the New Deal.

Long term youth unemployment has been halved and according to an independent evaluation the New Deal, has actually paid for itself because we 're getting people off benefit. They 're in work.

They 're paying taxes to the revenue and therefore we 're all better off. I believe this new agency, which we 've called ONE because it offers a one stop service,

will be able to help those who are finding it hardest to return to work, and that includes those who can not read and write properly. One of the most worrying statistics from our research is that four out of ten people on the New Deal could not even read the instructions on a medicine bottle.