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January 25, 2006
Incapacitated by big government
What with the education White Paper threatening to sink the Blair regime and the ID cards being blocked again yesterday in the House of Lords, these are fun times in Westminster, and now we have the embattled PM offering yet another ‘radical reform’, this time of incapacity benefits (IB). IB is intended for people with a disability that prevents them from working, but the Government admits it is now enjoyed by about a million people who are perfectly capable of work. It is one of the deepest dependency traps. IB abuse is hardly a new problem: it has merely become more acute. There has been a significant growth in government spending on IB over the last 20 years. Currently, 2.7 million people of working age claim IB and, since 1997, the social security budget has risen from £130 billion to £160 billion in real terms. The government estimates that its new measures could save anything up to £7 billion a year.
Yesterday, Blair warned the unemployed, single parents and those on incapacity benefit that they could no longer expect ‘a lifetime’ on benefit. He has announced that ‘work is good for you’ in an attempt to get a million people off incapacity benefit over the next decade, as well as a million people aged over 50 and 300,000 lone parents back into work. People who genuinely cannot work will be supported, but those who can return to work should do so. The simple fact is that people are happier and healthier – less prone to depression and long-term illness – if they work, even at mundane or low-paid jobs.
Of course, the purpose of benefits of any kind, apart from for those with permanent debilitating conditions, is to provide a safety net. Often this is a question of the correct level of support. In some cases small expenditures may yield enormous net gains, while in other situations the benefits may be negligible; consideration of this would mean that expenditures would turn not on the plight of being disabled, but on the improvement in their position that these expenditures can bring about. Selective support rewards more generously those who genuinely need it.
There are two related problems with the government’s plans. The reluctance to treat rigorously those guilty of benefit fraud – for fear of being branded a bigot – is worsened by what we may call category creep. When people realise they stand to gain from free handouts they endeavour to make themselves eligible, and this government has been complicit in this process. This applies even to the more serious issue – one rendered almost unassailable by political correctness – of disability rights. For example, while the DRC and the PM’s Strategy Unit make the need for disability laws and handouts sound all the more urgent by claiming there are 11 million people – 20% – in Britain who are disabled, there are in fact only 1 million people who qualify as severely disabled.
What’s more, the government is not sufficiently responsive to individual needs to micro-manage incapacity benefits. And government itself needs to be regulated in order to ensure cost effectiveness; otherwise, the taxpayer spends an unaudited amount of money on the disability industry, the vast armies of salaried officials, the publications, awareness campaigns, costs of bringing lawsuits against businesses, damages paid by those businesses, and, as companies pass on the costs to the customer, higher prices. As the Conservatives’ Philip Hammond suggested yesterday, local voluntary and commercial agencies should be employed in administering IB instead of the state.
Posted by Nick Seddon at January 25, 2006 11:26 AM
Comments
The problem is how do you differentiate between genuine people who claim to have e.g. back problems and those who are telling lies? A DSS doctor said there was almost nothing wrong with me even though I had offered to go for an MRI or CT scan but he was not interested. In his report he lied, he claimed I said things I did not say, he recorded only half of many statements I made in order to put them into the wrong context and said that I had not had an x-ray on my neck when I had told him one had been taken. At home I have a copy of the x-ray that he said did not exist.
I paid to see a specialist who found severe whiplash, sever wear and tear in my neck and spine and osteoathritis in my neck, spine, shoulders and hips as well as a swollen lung, damaged liver and about eight other problems with names I cannot remember. So if this doctor really thought there was nothing wrong with me he was clearly incompetent and should never have become a doctor. The symptoms of whiplash and osteoathritis were clear to any doctor who is worth being called a doctor.
So the question which has to be asked is how many more people will be signed off Incapacity Benefit when they are clearly incapable for work? A more realistic test needs to be devised and followed up if necesary by medical tests.
Posted by: Wayne Morris at January 25, 2006 03:29 PM
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