As the long summer recess draws to a close and the corridors of power at Holyrood and Westminster bustle with activity and chatter once more, it is a safe bet that the hot topics will concern personalities rather than policies.

Whilst Gordon Brown's future is important, and the leadership contest for the Labour Party at Holyrood does matter, there needs to be a parallel analysis and sustained critique of the Westminster Government's recent proposals for far-reaching reform of the disability benefits system. These changes will affect the lives of millions of disability welfare claimants and if implemented in their current form could lead to the unjust sanctioning of those the Government judges to be disabled and yet able to work.

Last month, as part of the drive to reduce worklessness and "dependency", the Government announced that it will replace Incapacity Benefit with a new Employment and Support Allowance from October this year. Following a new Work Capability Assessment, those claimants who are judged capable of some form of work will be expected to participate in "work-related activity" or see their benefits cut. The Government promises that this increased conditionality will be married to more support for disabled people seeking to enter, and remain in, the workplace.

At first glance such reforms may seem unobjectionable. Surely, the Government's ambition to get one million more disabled people into the workplace is laudable. At a superficial level, such reforms might appear to tally with the disabled people's movement's long-standing calls for inclusion and equality of opportunity.

Unfortunately, the reality is rather less rosy. Whilst many disabled people do indeed want to work, the idea that conditionality and sanctions are the correct tools to achieve this is based on a false and potentially corrosive analysis of the very real problems that disabled people face.

The Government's analysis incorrectly and rather mischievously places the focus on disabled people themselves and their employability, rather than looking to the wider features of the disabling society in which we all live. Thus, from the Government's lop-sided perspective, action and change is required to assist disabled people into work while leaving the fundamental structures of society unchanged.

Recent participative research which I carried out with disabled people themselves confirmed that many do indeed want to participate in paid work, but their attitude to the Government's reforms was at best cynical and at worst incredulous. What of the experience of inaccessible workplaces, discriminatory and prejudicial attitudes and exclusive stereotypes of the "normal worker", they asked.

Sanctioning disabled people for failing to participate in work-related activity while these barriers endure seems more than a little perverse. As Dave, one of the participants, put it, "there are so many disabled people who want to work but aren't able to because of people's attitudes".

The disabled people I talked to would welcome reform, but it needs to focus on the physical, societal and attitudinal structures which prevent disabled people from participating as equals in the workplace rather than the Government's misguided focus ona the employability of disabled people. For instance, there is a mass of evidence, some of it commissioned by the Government, that prospective employers discriminate against disabled candidates despite the disability discrimination laws. There is no parallel research to suggest that sanctions and compulsion are what is required to increase the participation of disabled people in the formal workplace.

What is more, the Government's proposals neglect the many other forms of contributions which disabled people can and do make. Many of the disabled people I spoke to were volunteers, participated in forums as service users and/or cared for others. Labour's ongoing emphasis on paid work as the marker of the adult citizen in Britain today by default belittles those who may not work in the traditional sense but are often active in wider civil society.

As part of the welfare reform package, James Purnell, the secretary of state for work and pensions, recently announced a review into the impact of sanctions on welfare claimants' behaviour. This academic review will be undertaken by a behavioural economist, Paul Gregg, and its focus will be placed squarely on the effectiveness of sanctions in delivering the desired behavioural change of getting people off benefits and into work.

We should await the outcome of this review with interest, especially as it may well demonstrate that the impact of sanctions is to demoralise, infantilise and depress rather than to motivate and deliver positive change. However, those interested in social justice should call for a further review to look at the financial effects of sanctions on welfare claimants already living perilously close to the poverty line. Additionally, further analysis could consider the effect of the Government's sick-note culture and benefit cheats rhetoric on the life chances of those struggling to survive on welfare.

The Government needs to listen more and moralise less, and a good starting place would be a genuine discussion with the real experts on disability: disabled people themselves.

It is fitting that the final word be from one of the participants in my research, Mike, who asked that the Government demonstrate "a much better understanding of what disability actually means to individuals before making policy decisions which ... affect millions of disabled people".

Ruth Patrick recently completed research into disabled people and welfare reform at Leeds University. She has written on inheritance tax reform and housing choice for the Fabian Society and Institute for Public Policy Research. Names of research participants have been changed to protect confidentiality.