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Iain Duncan Smith: Half a million on incapacity benefit can start work right away
Nicholas Cecil, Deputy Political Editor11 Oct 2010
Nearly one in four people receiving incapacity benefit could start work immediately, Iain Duncan Smith claimed today.
He said that about 500,000 living on sickness benefit could go straight into a job with many more able to take up work with a little help.
Today, people receiving incapacity benefit in Burnley and Aberdeen will start undergoing medical check-ups to see if they can work.
The assessment programme will be rolled out across the country next year.
“There are around two million people receiving incapacity benefits, parked out of sight of any support system and at a cost of almost £135 billion over the past decade,” said the Work and Pensions Secretary.
“We estimate we will find around 23 per cent of people fit for work immediately, with more needing just a bit of extra support to get to a position where they can look for a job.”
About 10,000 people a week are due to undergo the tests which will assess basic skills. Those judged to be able to work will be moved on to jobseeker's allowance, cutting their benefit by £25 a week in many cases.
Disability groups say the checks are not designed to properly assess people with mental health problems and that those moved off incapacity benefit could struggle to find a job in the current economic turmoil.
Employment minister Chris Grayling said the test could be changed if it was not giving an accurate picture of individuals' conditions.
“If we need to make modifications to get this right then we will do it,” he told BBC radio. “I want this to work. This is not about forcing people who should not be in work into work. It is about doing the right thing by those people who can get back into work.”
He said that the Government's new Work Programme would give individuals tailor-made help to find a job.
He denied that Mr Duncan Smith's 23 per cent figure was a “target” to get incapacity claimants back into work.
Chancellor George Osborne is seeking at least £15 billion of savings from the £195 billion welfare budget by 2014/15.
Moving hundreds of thousands of people off incapacity benefit to jobseeker's allowance or to the employment and support allowance, which has replaced incapacity benefit, is expected to save several billion.
A new report by the Centre for Policy Studies found that a greater proportion of people in Britain live in workless households than in any other EU state.
It concluded that 11.5 per cent of adults in the UK were in a jobless household last year compared to 10.8 for Spain, 10.5 France, 10.4 Italy, 9.2 Germany and six per cent in Holland.
Reader views (49)
I for one am totally happy that the government are taking a no nonsense approach to getting people of incapacity benefits, I know someone who has hid behind the fact that he suffers anxiety, which he does not, as he blagged the medical by saying he cant function and feels trapped, when in fact he was working from home selling on ebay making loads of money on top of the benefits he already recieves.
- Mike, Birmingham, 09/11/2010 12:15
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Puting increased pressure on people with mental health issues is going to raise the number suicides in the coutry. This is not a threat. It is a fact.
IDS might see this as a crude way to save money but many of us have been trying hard for years to climb out of the mental ill-health hell-hole.
Leave us alone. PLEASE
- A, Hants, 06/11/2010 18:54
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What jobs do propose these people undertake. Incapacity benefit has to authorized by medical professionals .Who will be undertaking this review what is the new criteria. Yes there is abuse of the system but I would like to see Iain live on £85 per week let alone the £54 job seeker allowance. I fear that this con/lib coalation will lead to more poverty and a more fragmented society with the rich getting richer and most vunerable in society becoming scrape goats for a recession caused by the richiest in society (BANKERS).
- Caroline, UK, 12/10/2010 14:27
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Claims for Incapacity Benefit have to be authorised by the claiments GP. So will the government be undertaking a review of GPs and it some have been more lax in granting this benefit withdraw their right to be a GP?
That is the real question that Ian Duncan Smith (failed party leader) need to answer?
- Melvyn Windebank, Canvey Island, Essex, 12/10/2010 12:37
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Maria, you sound like James Purnell, and he quit before finishing the "job"...
be realistic.. a sick person picking strawberries...
how about you go and open an association of disabled or terminally ill strawberry pickers... lol
and your patronising tone, so Tory, you are really repulsing lady..., even if not a tory, btw...
- Nabil H, London, UK, 12/10/2010 10:14
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Ian duncan Smith you will not get my vote while you make the mentally Ill take a benefit cut. Even to attend an interview unless it was with someone trained in mental health, could be devastating. We pay the head of the BBC approx £800000 a year, the deputy head £475000 a year, and now he is to receive £500, 000 severance pay. Do you honestly think we can take your proposals seriously.
- Alan,, England. Fed up with most politicians, 12/10/2010 10:09
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Roy - 'Single parents? Only caused by bereavement. Most children have two parents - let them both contribute.'
Brilliant and so true! unfortunately many seem to go by the 'pop them out first, think about how to feed them later' mantra...
Reduce benefits and the jobs will follow, as someone already said most of these people are unfortunately unskilled - McDonalds still providing apprenticeships and all the coffee shops are constantly hiring, but no wonder its foreign students taking the jobs... stop making excuses people, bins need collecting, streets need sweeping, apples/strawberries etc need picking, I could go on and on!
- Maria, London, 12/10/2010 09:57
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... and Andrew, may I ask, why are you in Tel Aviv, why aren't you here helping the coalition with their Big Society scheme...
or are you a talker and not a doer like most...
and before you use that worn out card, I have Jewish ancestry on the side of a grandmother...
- Nabil H, London, UK, 12/10/2010 09:01
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Good man IDS. Now all you need to do is boot out of the country all of those who shouldnt be there, legally or not, and then start getting the British back to work. Britain has a terrible habit of looking after the worlds ne'erdowells at the expense of its own people. This must stop. The whole country would function much better economically and socially if British people were employed to do jobs, menial or not, in their own country.
- Andrew, Tel Aviv, Israel, 12/10/2010 08:38
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.../cnt
Now let me add that in the case of mental patients, being labelled one adds to the stigma, makes it even harder to find jobs, and here I presume you expect that a mental patient has the capacity to look for a job...
Not only that, but there are the interests of the pharmaceutical industries, and the inadequate and appalling level of care in the psychiatric
and social services made even worse by the cuts...
Example, a month or so ago, all outpatients mental patients have been discharged to their GPs from their specialist consultants, result: GPs cannot handle it as they do not want the responsibility, and lack the specialism, patients are deprived from follow-ups, and God they do need it, I am a witness to that!
As a mental patient you are also given drugs that protect society from you, and their effects is they make you unable.
- Nabil H, London, UK, 12/10/2010 02:31
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What IDS is using for his statistics is misleading, and disingenuous...
His lack of experience maybe of people who are long term sick and chronically ill leads him to accept without questioning the findings of contracted agencies who had in their bonus interests in the previous government to deny benefits to as many claimants as possible...
So let IDS have some integrity and be honest with himself and the public, and find out how much money was wasted on the research at Cardiff University, on UnumProvident, and on ATOS Origin to get such denial benefits claims smokescreens, their implementations, and the public costs to the tax payer of their rate of failures, where appeals led to them losing their cases against claimants (in a similar vein, in the US, UnumProvident was made to repay in damages those costs)...
Now if Mr David Freud and IDS think that the sick claimants targeted can get jobs, let them provide and sponsor for the jobs, as sick claimants are special need, or they are not anymore, and sickness/disabilities have become disease that need to be eradicated too?
particularly jobs where long term chronically and mentally sick patients can operate and function with dignity, without fear of bullying, where their symptoms are taken into account, i.e. amongst others no expectation for productivity, or efficiency or even effectiveness or attendance?...
Can they handle it?
Now let me add that in the case of mental patients, being labelled one adds to the stigma...
- Nabil H, London, UK, 12/10/2010 02:29
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Part 2 - .../
Go and function pumped with psychotropic drugs, and you might know what I mean...
Now I do not know where Ian Duncan Smith plucked up this figure that "Half a million on incapacity benefit can start work right away", but if it is from Cardiff University and the discredited US company UnumProvident research, I will take it with a pinch of salt...
Even social academic research is statistical in essence, and people are far from being statistics, and sick patients refuse to be treated as such, this is why even in cases of terminal illness, a patient is still given a chance and administered the drugs that if not save his life, might prolong it...
I am authentically dismayed and very revulsed by the immoral trend and attitudes shown by this government who are betraying their own tenets of what they wanted to call caring conservatism, who deploy people like David Freud and IDS with little experience in sickness management to deliver a welfare denial policy based on rules by anecdotes, as opposed of proper governance...
In fact what they are saying here is simply Half a million on incapacity benefit can have their benefits cut to the level of JSA straight away."
There is no duty of care involved, no responsibility in the carrying of a governance duty, just a blunt, disgraceful cost cutting exercise on a very vulnerable group.
As for people on Incapacity Benefits, many need DLA too, but because of illness pressure will not apply, and so they do need all their pennies.
- Nabil H, London, UK, 12/10/2010 01:55
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' ..her legacy must be the dismantling of UK industry. We make nothing here anymore.'
People are often surprised to be told that the UK is still the world's 5th (it may be 6th now) manufacturing nation. The fact is that industrial production creates a tithe of the jobs it provided thirty years ago: robotics and computerised production have brought about a second industrial revolution in the post-war period. This, and dirt-cheap shipping, have completely changed the economic game.
It does remain vital, inward-looking though it may sound, to make sure that our workforce is as home-grown as possible. If British people are less employable than migrant labour, we need to know why, and rectify the situation.
- mdj, london uk, 11/10/2010 22:18
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As an older - if not wiser - person I remember well the Thatcher years. She did a lot of good things but her legacy must be the dismantling of UK industry. We make nothing here anymore and we can't exist as an economy on "financial services". Look at Birmingham and Sheffield they are almost like theme parks. BTW I have been a conservative voter all my adult life.
- JB, London, 11/10/2010 21:38
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- Anglo, Sussex, UK
"those who do not work shall not eat"
Yeah, and then there was the terrible famine that killed millions in the 20s and 30s.
Duncan Smith is wrong about the jobs being available but he's right about the mess Labour made with IB.
Too many people put on benefits that they didn't really qualify for so Blair could distort the unemployment figures. It was also unfair to the genuine claimants.
This is why they implemented the 'Pathways to Work' scheme in 2007/8 at huge cost to try and get IB claimants back to work, setting a target of about 25% to come off it. But this was a complete failure and they never got anywhere near those estimates.
- John Castleton, Archway, 11/10/2010 21:07
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I am not sure what planet these idiot Politicians are living on?Firstly there are no jobs available because of all the immigrants over here from all the corners of the world,add to that all the jobs transferred abroad,these so called "disabled" have no skills to offer,most likely a large percentage are mentally ill,even if you put them on job seeker's allowance,at most the bill will be reduced by one third,this will cost more in money terms when you pay all the medical staff involved.Add to all this the hundred of thousands that will lose their jobs in the public sector and the medical cost (medication for depression etc)the end result even more serious deficit,these Politicians are really mad and cunning or maybe the other way of looking at the problem is that the British public is mad or very stupid.The truth is that there will be a lot of suffering among the most vulnerable and weak .
- Ben Fernandes, Harrow uk, 11/10/2010 18:44
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Dear IDS, here is a starter for 10. The guy supping a can of super at 08.45 while carrying a pair of crutches who then loses the can and hops on the crutches 20 yards from the DSS probably doesn't need IB. Just a good boot up the backside!
- jimbob, Kensington, 11/10/2010 18:36
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1/2 million jobs "my butt"!!
Any jobs that are out there are oversubscribed and often filled before the advertisments go out.
- Steve, London UK, 11/10/2010 18:24
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The estimate is based on the percentage of those who were examined and taken off IB under the previous government. It is hardly news.
"with a little help" means just that - they need help if they are to do a normal job, which is why they are on IB.
- John, Ware, UK, 11/10/2010 18:18
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The lie is given to IDS's statement because he is pre-judging the outcome. How can he say 500,000 can go into work immediately before the supposed tests are even carried out? No doubt they will be using the same company - Atos Health - whose incompetence has already been highlighted on a BBC programme. Secondly - as others point out - it's all very well to say X thousands can start work immediately - but what work? The government is about to take more spending out of the economy, which means fewer jobs. This is all about scapegoating an easy target and saving £25 per week per head by moving them to JSA - eveen that only amounts to a saving of £12.5 million per week if 500,000 are moved from IB to JSA or £625 million per year - it will not solve the national debt. No, we now know where the real benefits problem lies i.e. the child benefits doled out to 2 million higher earners who don't need it.
- wildejamey, London, 11/10/2010 17:54
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Well I was well and truly amazed whilst working as a Police Custody Sergeant, the amount of people arrested in the early hours for Drink related fracas, were actually on incapacity benefit. One drunken violent individual was depressed and had a bad back..
- Bryan, Hendon, 11/10/2010 17:41
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Start work right away??? What work? We cannot afford the fares to go turnip harvesting in the countryside. Friends made redundant are searching for any job. I think things are going to get nasty. Hope the suicide rates are going to be closely monitored as some have depression and it might just push them over the edge.
- Fiona, London, 11/10/2010 17:33
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"Bowreport, I agree 100%, David should scrap the minimum wage, and the welfare state, when a mans belly is empty he will work 15 hours a day for £5.
- An Emloyer, London"
.. or, having nothing to lose, that man will shoot you dead for what you carry in your pockets. This is what happens in third world countries.
If you feel your employees cost too much, move your business to India or to China.
- John Smith, Londonistan, EUSSR, 11/10/2010 17:30
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"Bob I agree, Im just one of the 30,000 ex Connaught worker's put on benefits by the Con/Libs, instead of paying taxes into the economy, but it's my own fault, I voted Tory last May, NEVER again.
- Terry, London, 11/10/2010 16:00"
Terry, perhaps you should have worked a bit harder at school instead of larking about and not worrying about the future?
- ST, London, 11/10/2010 17:25
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Complain as much as you like but the benefits system has been fattened by labour not the conlibs. Its about time we got real and rationalized it all. You can't keep spending what you don't have and there are too many people claiming benefits who should'nt.
Labour were full of unreasonable promises they could'nt keep, what's happening now is firmly their fault.
- Russell, Home Counties, 11/10/2010 17:09
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The Welfare State has long ceased to be there for those in need. It is now a British institution where the shirker is kept by the worker; the socially irresponsible by the responsible; the non contributor by the worker paying taxes and for those who look for a quiet number - there is the good old public sector.
Single parents? Only caused by bereavement. Most children have two parents - let them both contribute.
I am afraid this reform by IDS will not go far enough.
- Roy G, Solihull, England., 11/10/2010 16:43
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An Emloyer, dont be stupid £5 per 15 hours worked, I was offered a job in East Anglia only this morning, cabbage cutting, £1.30p an hour, who the hell is going to work 15 hours for a fiver?
- Tony Sharp, Ipswich, 11/10/2010 16:29
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Bob the builder and Terry - remind us why the current government is responsible for Connaught's demise?!
I'm pretty sure that was down to poor management and some seriously creative accounting that lead to the dismissal of the CEO, finance director and chums?
- Mark, London, 11/10/2010 16:25
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Might I suggest Bowreport,and The Employer start a chain of soup kitchens nationwide, and get those earning 25 pound a week or less, to pay £2 a day for a bowl of soup, just think of the PROFIT to be made.
- Cynthia, Chelsea, 11/10/2010 16:23
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Bearing in mind that we usually follow the USA - check out what happens in the land of the free if you don't fancy working.
Truly blood-curdling. I kid you not.
- Ted, Orkney, 11/10/2010 16:20
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Nobody has yet stated the obvious, Benifit payments are not to high, it's the wages that are too bloody low, what about chasing the 100 billion or so in un paid taxes/
- Dave, London, 11/10/2010 16:18
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Bowreport, I agree 100%, David should scrap the minimum wage, and the welfare state, when a mans belly is empty he will work 15 hours a day for £5.
- An Emloyer, London, 11/10/2010 16:13
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We also need a policy to achieve full employment. We need to be able to create jobs that are not in the public sector. This requires a lightening of the burden of red tape for businesses. Companies need to be able to hire and fire without state interference and without the state requiring them to run social services on their behalf.
- bowreport, East End, London, 11/10/2010 16:07
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Anglo, reckon ah agree with you on that one , here's another,..'Ifin yah cain't feed 'em...don't breed 'em'..
- yohodi, bournemouth, 11/10/2010 16:06
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Bob I agree, Im just one of the 30,000 ex Connaught worker's put on benefits by the Con/Libs, instead of paying taxes into the economy, but it's my own fault, I voted Tory last May, NEVER again.
- Terry, London, 11/10/2010 16:00
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Oh good, I will apply to Connaughts for a job then, hang on a minute, was it not this clowns Governments policy of scrapping the School,Hospitals and all the rest of the building and renovation programme,owned by us, 30,000 jobs gone at Connaught, and thousands more in other building firms, and their supply industry, and Bullindon Berty tells us that it will be the PRIVATE Sector that will lead the recovery, "ALL IN THIS TOGETHER" eh, I don't think so.
- Bob the Builder, London, 11/10/2010 15:51
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Careful as you go , you could have Trevor Philips and his loony mob interfering.they all have agendas aimed in this direction.
- Davey_buoy, Chertsey, 11/10/2010 15:08
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>>Asw ex-pat, HK
I'm not blaming them, simply pointing out the stupidity of allowing or encouraging people to come from abroad to work here when there are plenty of people would could do the same job.
For example, Gambian Nurses may help fill a staffing shortage in the NHS but they remove those nurses from hospitals in Gambia that are even more desperate for them than we are.
- Adam, Harrow, UK, 11/10/2010 15:07
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People writing here are not looking at the facts.
The statement is that there are 500,000 who could work and not be on Incapacity Benefit.
Thats £30 less for those claimainrs per week.
They would come off a benefit that does not require them to look for work Incapacity Benefit and be on a benefiit Job Seekers Allowance instead which requires them to look for work.
Whether there is a job to take up is a very different matter.
The issue is those who can work should look for work.
Illegal immigrants estimated at over a million in the UK are working unlawfully.
If they are not taking jobs british people could do then you need a reality check.
If illegals are being paid less and cash in hand then its clear that they affect the jobs available.
So the issues are clear.
Taking people of Incapacity Benefit who can work will save a lot of money.
Now we need immigration sorted out with as much vigour as benefits are.
However we have Gamu from X Factor mania trying to save her from being sent home after the facts are she is here unlawfully and her mother fiddled £12,000 benefits.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for here given the facts of the case.
- PATRICK'S OPINION LAMBETH, LONDON, 11/10/2010 14:47
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What jobs? Maybe if the big companies started to employ real people for real jobs instead of using those annoying automated telephone services or overseas call centres. Their profits continue to grow and yet the service they provide is on the cheap. For example - depending where you live, some banks are only open 8 hours a week! They could offer a lot of people some work if they stopped being so greedy and offered their customers a decent service with real people.
- Joy, Bodmin, Cornwall, 11/10/2010 14:46
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Anglo- Or the "hears hears" & cheers from people who agree!
- Celery, London, 11/10/2010 14:43
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The migrants are the only ones willing to do the jobs because our people who allegedly qualify for various benefits get given more money for sitting on their butts than they can earn by honest means.
Would anyone give up £300 a week for doing nothing, -for £200 a week for doing backbreaking field work?
The whole system is badly thought out, -and badly implemented.
- Huggy, Cumbernauld Scotland, 11/10/2010 14:07
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If Poles can take these jobs so can many of those claiming incapacity benefit.
In the Soviet Union they did have one have one good slogan in the 1920's
"those who do not work shall not eat"
Now I await the whines at my inhumamnity.
- Anglo, Sussex, UK, 11/10/2010 13:43
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They are about to put 600,000 people employed in the public sector out of work and yet still think there are enough jobs to employ 500,000 immediately. They will simply stop paying sickness benefit and continue paying similar sums under a benefit with a new name as all governments since Thatcher's have done.
- W6, London, 11/10/2010 13:36
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But if benefits weren't so easy to access, migrants wouldn't be the only ones willing to do low paid jobs. If you had no choice in the matter, you'd stack shelves or work a till.
- Kevin T, Beckenham, Kent, 11/10/2010 13:35
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Adam, Harrow, UK,
And blaming economic migrants is your answer !
I knew someone who claimed incapacity benefits and worked cash in hand. Lived in luxury with more then two cars and plenty of holidays. I could just about manage my mortgage and worked long hard hours. Where's the fairness in that. The genuine should get help, but there is vast amount of claimants just playing the game. So why are you griping, but then again sounds as though you are not taxed to the hilt or taxed at all to supplement them.
- Asw ex-pat, HK, 11/10/2010 13:31
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500,000 jobs are up for grabs!!...shouldn’t this be the news spinning headline? Reality tells us it’s not, so please stop saying they can all go straight into Jobs!! Nothing so simple, but moving a group of people from one statistics to another is.
- Jamie, London, England, 11/10/2010 13:30
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Where are these half a million jobs then? and can they start right away? really?
- Brian, Wiltshire, 11/10/2010 13:22
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>>Half a million on incapacity benefit can start work right away
Doing what exactly? There are no jobs. Any low paid job with unsociable hours get snapped up economic migrants as they are only ones willing to do the job.
- Adam, Harrow, UK, 11/10/2010 13:15
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