Squeezing many pegs into few holes?

21-11-07

The Government seems belatedly trying to get to grips with the problem of large numbers of potential workers who are idle because of one sort of disability or another. Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has promised a new disability test aimed at getting more people back to work. The new Work Capability Assessment will be on demonstrating what claimants can achieve, rather than what they cannot. If they can sit at a desk and move their hands, then.. computing?

2,000 people currently are on incapacity benefit because they are obese, costing the Treasury £4.4 million. Laura Clout reported this finding fin the Dail Telegraph rom a Freedom of Information request. She also indicated 50,00 unwilling to work because of stress, 15,600 because of malaise and fatigue and 380 because of haemorrhoids. In addition 50 who collected £100,000 were suffering from acne! Alcoholics, numbering 50,000, received £85million and 48,000 drug addicts received £45million.

This situation may have arisen partly to massage the unemployment figures to keep them lower. Friendly doctors probably colluded because of an unwillingness to upset their patients. Claimants without skills can probably achieve more from benefit than from working, and would be willing collaborators.

All in all these Incapacity Benefit claimants, numbering about 2.7. million, receive about £7.5 billion annually, or about 3 pence in the pound on standard rate income tax. This figure has been high for a few years. When all disability and injury benefits are included, the figure rises to £26 billion a year.

The admirable Frank Field, M.P. is very aware of the situation. He writes, “It is a racket which governments have allowed to exist for far too long. I do not blame people for working the system. It is the job of politicians to stop them doing it. The big change over the last decade has been into illnesses which largely defy a clear medical classification: depression, dizziness and such. It is a move from the tangible to the intangible.”

The Government seems to accept that there are about one million people claiming this benefit who would be capable of work, or at least this was the reduced number of claimants the Government in 2005 hoped to achieve.

The Government is currently employing private sector contractors to help claimants find work. The overspending in the recent past, which included indulgence towards the large sum on Incapacity Benefit, has now ended. The name of the game now is to save money, even if it means denying troops in one way or another, or cutting the staff at Revenue and Customs by nearly a third very quickly.

We could perhaps offer faint congratulation – “Welcome to the real world”, but it is very late, and with the economy moving towards “turbulence” it is very late in the day. The former benefit claimants will be competing for jobs when there is increased unemployment, not a good prospect!