This is very interesting.  It's hard to know what's going on with people
supposedly getting healthier and claimants going up.  But I think the more
important thing is to make work more accessible.  Even if you get rid of false
claimants, other people with genuine disabilities are left forced to stay on
benefits because they can't access employment.  And the way the system is at
the moment people have to either being earning loads or forced to stay on
benefit:  I'm a student and wou.ld like to get a job (which will be hard
enough anywaay) over the summer, but can't get anything paid because I'lll get
my benefit taken away.  I think this is wrong.

Catherine

Kelly Pierce wrote:

> The Economist
>
> LEADERS:
>   22 May 99
>
> Down with disablement: If people are healthier, why are the
> numbers           claiming welfare benefits on grounds of
> disability rising so fast?.
>
> PEOPLE in the rich world are eating better, smoking less, exercising more
> and receiving better medical care than they did 30 or 40 years ago. But
> are all these healthy activities not just boring but positively unhealthy?
> So it would seem: more and more people are also living on welfare benefits
> intended for the disabled. The numbers in some countries are so dire that
> it is a wonder they can hobble along at all. In the Netherlands, for
> instance, 13% of the working-age population claims to be disabled . In
> Britain, almost half the people of working age who claim a welfare benefit
> are receiving money for being disabled or sick; one man in four aged
> between 60 and 65 is claiming incapacity benefit. In Norway, more than 57%
> of people aged between 55 and 64 are registered as disabled. Can the
> figures be reconciled? Or is disablement simply the rich world's biggest
> welfare scam? Incontrovertibly, the health of the old has been improving.
> Being old has never been much fun-the joke used to be that, if you woke up
> in the morning and nothing ached, you were probably dead. But life
> expectancy for people aged 65 has continued to rise, and so have the
> number of years that older folk can expect to live for without suffering
> severe or even moderate disability. Most people can expect a couple of
> unpleasant years of incapacity at the end of their lives, but that period
> now typically arrives when they reach their mid-to-late 70s or even their
> 80s, rather than their 60s. Moreover, American research suggests that the
> decline in disability among older people has accelerated: it was faster in
> the first half of the 1990s than in the 1980s. So why the near-universal
> rise in the number of people of working age who claim to be disabled? The
> truth is that most claimants are merely suffering the pains of being past
> the prime of life and unwanted by employers. Plenty of rich countries have
> long used disability benefits as a way to shovel out of sight the most
> intractable group of the unemployed: people-mainly men-in their 50s and
> early 60s. Indeed, some governments have encouraged older workers to claim
> to be disabled by obliging doctors to consider the state of the job market
> when deciding whether a patient should be registered as disabled. Germany,
> Italy and Finland all make access to disablement benefits easier when
> unemployment is high. Disabled or dissembled Using disability benefits to
> "solve" labour market problems is unwise and unkind. It inflates the cost
> of supporting older unemployed people, and deflects governments from
> searching for better solutions for their plight. But tightening the rules
> is politically fraught, as Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, has
> found: he has faced a furious parliamentary revolt over a plan to make
> disability benefits harder to claim . Even when governments try to tighten
> the rules, people may find ingenious ways around them, if the incentive is
> great enough. In Britain, a rise in the number of supposedly disabled
> claimants seems to have coincided with tighter policing of access to
> unemployment benefit. In the Netherlands, arguably the world leader in
> phoney disablement, a tougher government line on physical disability has
> encouraged more folk to claim mental disability. Proving that somebody
> does not suffer from disabling stress is even harder than proving that
> their backache is too bad for them to work. One option is to tighten the
> rules on what counts as disability, and to administer them vigorously.
> Another is to change the balance of incentives. In many countries,
> benefits reward those who retire early, especially if their incomes are
> already low. It would be better to ensure that those who continue to work
> in late middle age also continue to clock up extra pension entitlement. A
> third possibility is to alter expectations. Of course, some disabled folk
> cannot work and will never work. But, for many, a job would bring
> self-respect. If governments assumed that even the disabled should
> sometimes work for their welfare, the truly disabled might be the most
> grateful of all.
>
> BRITAIN:
>   22 May 99
>   Wheelchairs in Whitehall: The battle over
> welfare: Spending on benefits           for the sick and disabled
> has quadrupled in 20 years. But radically           reforming the
> system may prove beyond the Blair government.
>
> UNDER Tony Blair, backbench Labour MPs have become notorious for their
> docile loyalty. Ever ready with a sycophantic question for the prime
> minister, nervously checking their pagers for fresh instructions from the
> leadership, New Labour MPs seem incapable of rebellion. Except on welfare.
> On May 20th, as The Economist went to press, the government was facing its
> biggest ever backbench rebellion. As many as 60 Labour MPs were expected
> to vote against government proposals to reform disability benefits. The
> only time the government has faced a similar revolt was early in its
> term-when 47 backbenchers opposed proposals to cut benefits for single
> mothers. New Labour MPs may be able to swallow cuts in income tax but
> slicing welfare benefits is apparently a bridge too far. It is, of course,
> a fine thing to have principles. It is just a shame that, in this case,
> they seem to be so misplaced. Virtually everyone agrees that genuinely
> disabled people deserve taxpayers' help. But the growth in the numbers of
> people registered as sick or disabled defies belief in a society which is
> generally getting wealthier and healthier. Some 2.9m people of working
> age-8% of the potential work-force-now get benefits for sickness and
> disability. Spending on sick and disabled people has quadrupled in 20
> years to around Pounds 25 billion (Dollars 40 billion) a year. Over the
> past four years, as the unemployment rolls have shrunk, the number of
> people claiming some sort of disability benefit has continued to rise (see
> chart). More than 40% of working-age benefit recipients claim for illness
> or disability. Plenty of people smell a rat. But the politics of reform
> are hyper-sensitive. Under the Conservatives, it became so easy to qualify
> for Invalidity Benefit that there were cases of javelin- throwers and
> mountain-walkers claiming. But Tory attempts to reform this benefit were
> portrayed as heartless. Staff at Richmond House, the social- security
> department's headquarters, had to thread their way to work through a
> picket-line of protesting wheelchair users. Ministers were forced to water
> down the test for Incapacity Benefit, which replaced Invalidity Benefit.
> Reforms of other disability benefits were placed on hold. And even a major
> extension of disabled people's rights in the Disability Discrimination Act
> failed to shake the Tories' reputation as hard-hearted scrooges ..TX.- The
> Labour government started with an advantage and a handicap. On the plus
> side, Labour had earned the goodwill of many disability groups by
> championing their cause in opposition to the Tories. But in doing so,
> Labour had also raised expectations. Tony Blair had repeatedly stressed
> his wish to cut the Pounds 100 billion social-security budget in order to
> pay for health and education. But he had not prepared disability groups to
> think that the axe would fall on them ..TX.- So in office, Labour has been
> forced gradually to dilute its plans. When rumours of reform first
> surfaced in the autumn of 1997, the Disability Benefits Consortium, a
> group of charities, protested directly to the prime minister. This did not
> prevent ministers continuing to mull over significant changes in benefit
> rates and entitlement conditions through the following spring. But fear of
> revolts led to much more limited changes in the consultation paper on
> disability reform published last October. Instead of trying directly to
> confine disability benefits to the genuinely disabled, the government is
> now trying a more oblique approach. The old slogan about cutting the bills
> of social and economic failure has been replaced by a new one: "work for
> those who can, security for those who cannot." Hugh Bayley, a
> social-security minister, estimates that over 1m people on disability
> benefits would like to work. So the government plans to advise disabled
> people who want to work, is encouraging employers to take them on, and is
> piloting changes to the benefit rules to help disabled people take jobs
> ..TX.- Much of this is laudable. But it is all carrot, no stick.
> "Disabled" people will in future be interviewed about work, but will be
> under no obligation to do any even if they are capable of it. And the
> government tacitly admits that some undeserving claimants will continue to
> receive benefits. Incapacity Benefit, for example, is meant to be paid
> only to people incapable of work. But the government is proposing to allow
> claimants to keep Pounds 15 a week of earnings on top of their benefit,
> acknowledging that many claimants are capable of some work. This contrasts
> with the increasingly tough line the government is taking with unemployed
> people not on disability benefits. On May 19th, David Blunkett, the
> employment secretary, announced that young unemployed people who
> persistently refuse jobs will in future lose benefits for six months. No
> such sanction will apply to people claiming disability benefits ..TX.- But
> if the government's reforms are so timid, why have Labour backbenchers
> kicked up such a fuss? In part, because some think that a Labour
> government should be aiming to spend more, not less, on disabled people.
> Two particular measures have drawn their fire. The government wants to
> restrict Incapacity Benefit to people who have paid national-insurance
> contributions-a payroll tax-in the two years before making their claim.
> And it plans to taper off Incapacity Benefit payments to people with
> early-retirement pensions of over Pounds 50 a week. Backbenchers claim
> these two measures will mean Pounds 750m less for the disabled. Nonsense,
> retorts the government. The changes will not apply to existing claimants,
> and the savings, particularly in the early years, will be small. Indeed,
> claims Mr Bayley, taking account of new disability spending on younger or
> poorer disabled people, there will be no net reduction in spending on
> disability for the foreseeable future. In fact, the specific cuts look
> like a pretext for the revolt rather than its cause. Ian Bruce, the
> co-chair of the Disability Benefits Consortium, says that the government
> could have avoided the revolt by offering token concessions two or three
> weeks ago. But the disability lobby is annoyed at being under valued and
> misrepresented by the government. After the government's general welfare
> strategy was published, it set up a Disability Benefits Forum to give
> disability charities the chance to put their case to government ministers.
> But Mr Bruce claims that the government in some cases refused even to
> consider evidence put to it by forum members, and that the responses of
> over 300 disability groups to a government consultation paper were
> ignored. Worse, Mr Bruce says that government ministers used the existence
> of the forum to argue, wrongly, that disability charities supported their
> proposed reforms. In frustration, on May 11th, a group of disability
> charities walked out of the forum. This week's parliamentary revolt was a
> chance for the disability lobby to display its formidable political power,
> and to bludgeon the government into treating it with more respect. Expect
> more wheelchairs in Whitehall.
>
> The Economist
> Copyright (C) The Economist Newspaper Ltd, 1981-1997
>
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