I’m not a big fan of long-term unemployment, or of those with physical or mental disabilities being classified as generally useless.

So what’s the solution?

I think Scope’s list of barriers to employment provides a starting point for any administration that is serious about utilising people’s capacities.

Plus, an army of counsellors/OHTs, specialists in incapacity, who were fully focussed on working with ESA claimants to determine their strengths and weaknesses, and pulling together individual plans for whatever sort of occupation or employment each claimant could benefit from – WITHOUT the presumption that the withdrawal of benefit would be the best outcome. There are superficial similarities with the Lab-Tory plans, but the difference is in the detail, the qualifications of the assessors, and the intent.

I don’t know whether there are 500,000 workshy fraudsters, but i don’t believe that we have so many people in this country who, through illness, are unable to work. Governments have moved these people from one list to another for their own reasons, this should stop and we should properly identify people who are ill or simply out of work (whether they want to be or not – most don’t).

As for taking 25 quid off them, well if they are not entitled to it what’s the problem here, there are obviously many people out of work who don’t get this extra money, is it fair on them?

The ‘medicals’ that you have to have are done by a American private healthcare company called ATOS and they’ve been doing them for quite some time now. Yes one of the very same American healthcare company’s that have been lobbying against Obamas healthcare reform.

Google ATOS medicals or just ATOS and you’ll be able to read some of the horror stories of what disabled people have to go through, it’s unbelievable the way this company is allowed to treat them. Stories of being ignored by the ‘doctor’ being told to shut up or lose your benefit and not having your questions answered and being threatened and intimidated. You’re not allowed to record the so-called medical or even take notes. I can’t understand how these people can be actual doctors and not just bean counters who have targets to meet. What’s also shocking, and typical is how the mainstream media have totally failed to report all this as there’s a real horrible story going on here that’s been completely ignored by the media, the politicians and even the charities, with their government funding.

These aren’t medicals but, 30 minutes of abuse and bullying by someone who should be ashamed to call themselves a medical professional, such lack of respect, understanding and humanity that runs counter to what being medical professional is about. How this country has allowed itself to get into this I don’t know. By the way, the government and the Tory’s also want to get rid of DLA and AA, why not just reopen the work houses and have done with it.

So I dug around a bit

Bloody hell, man, where have you been: the disgrace of Freud and Purnell, now to be repeated as Freud and Cameron, the scandals around some ‘back-to-work’ contractors with huge block contracts but shoddy, ignorant and bullying services (why is their fraudulent practice not picked up on, let alone punished by the Govt…I wonder), the use of ATOS and not of medics to turn legit claims down, the mental health service user demonisation, etc have all been general knowledge for months and months and months, even discussed at some length on here. Glad you’re concerned, but you’re coming to things a bit late.

Oh and you really should reconsider that last line, as it isn’t a good idea to be glib about MH problems (unless you’re a service user: if you were then you’d have known about all this ages ago), and especially not today seeing that it is World Mental Health day

I claimed IB for 8 yrs. Like most people on IB (I guess) I could have worked some of the time; I could have tacked down a part-time job for maybe 9 months each year, or a full-time job for maybe 3 months. The snag is that modern Britain does not have many opportunities for casual day working, and if you take off as much sick leave as I do, you quickly make yourself unemployable.

The second disincentive to come off IB was the higher long-term rate, which I was going to lose if I came off IB and then had to reclaim.

The third disincentive was the very low rate of Job-Seekers Allowance, and the obstacles to reclaiming IB once you had lost it. That meant that even if I managed to find some temporary work now and then, I’d end up with a combination of low wages alternating with JSA and be worse off, and much more stressed, than being on long-term IB.

In my experience most people on IB want to work. It is a pity that successive governments can’t accept that fact and reform the system to help them, but have to treat them as scroungers and liars.

I spent the whole 8 years trying to get myself back to work. I wasn’t helped by my GP, who made no effort to assist me and clearly felt that the fact I had long-term IB meant problem solved. People with incapacity, physical or mental, need much more constructive help than they are getting now.

Thanks for the info JJ.

Alisdair – I freely admit I’m coming to this late. I’d dispute that it’s general knowledge though. The piece was prompted by the announcements made at the Tory conference (which is why I’ve come round to the issue now).

As to the last line – I’m not an MH service user myself, but am very close to someone who is (who hasn’t yet had a WCA). I know there’s a fine line between legitimate humour and stigmatising. I don’t feel I’ve fallen on the wrong side of that line, but I realise there’s more than one possible POV on that one.

JL – that’s a great summary of some of the obstacles that ESA claimants face, and closely echoes the personal experience of the long-term ESA/IB claimant I know.

Rowena Davis: “The Telegraph’s report of the Tories’ proposals, chillingly, mentions bringing in private firms to carry out the assessments; one can imagine the damage that could result from an army of poorly-trained assessors with punitive targets to meet.”

So it would be all right if ‘poorly-trained assessors with punitive targets to meet’ were payed by the state? Why are privately employed assessors presumed to be useless?

“The depressing bit is that these are, in the main, Labour policies, written by their former welfare advisor, David Freud – a stockbroker, no less”

Indeed, if you have ever worked with a stockbroker, you have to acknowledge their evil. They even have a secret book called The Protocols of the Elders of Stockbroking.

If you are creating a serious post at LC, don’t introduce petty quibbles into your argument. They are just distractions. Focus on your topic (eg Tory welfare proposals) and save the snide comments for when they are justified.

Charlieman – if you’re going to fisk my post, do try to get my name right.

Apologies, Rowan.

Just get on with your unfisking. Is it painful?

Ta. Well, OK then: on your first point, I think one can make a pretty strong case for private operators being less likely to act sympathetically than public operators, simply because the first set is motivated by profit. (This isn’t an absolute assertion, but a general one.)

On the second, while it’s always fun to kick stockbrokers in the figurative nuts, the point is that stockbroking isn’t an obvious route into the cautious and systematic assessment of welfare reform. I think Freud’s contribution makes my case rather well for me actually.

“Why are privately employed assessors presumed to be useless?”

Because they are significantly less accountable?

Pagar @ 1

So what’s the solution?

Not too difficult.

1) Create 4 million jobs here and another 10 million in Europe.
2) Wait six months to let the market to sort itself out.
3) Draft a new law making it illegal to fire a disabled/ill/unfit person or someone with a mental illness.
4) After six months, force an employer to take a person from the disability list.
5) Jail anyone who fails to adapt the workplace to anyone with a long term illeness.
6) After we have full employment, those who have not been picked for work are, by any defination too ill to work.

Lee Griffin:
““Why are privately employed assessors presumed to be useless?”

Because they are significantly less accountable?”

That is a presumption?

Based on my experience as an IB claimant I suggest making it easier for claimants to take temporary employment without making it necessary to make a fresh claim when they stop working.

This would be particularly helpful to the mentally ill. Hardly anyone is depressed or psychotic all of the time, and most mentally ill people are fit to work some of the time, but proving you are unfit to work because of mental illness is daunting and demoralising; so if you are mentally ill you avoid putting yourself in a situation where you have to go through the assessment process repeatedly.

I’m not convinced that adding further employment protection would be productive. Frankly, no employer in her or his right mind would employ me, knowing that they might have to pay me sick-pay for months on end.

Again, JL, your post describes what I’ve seen. I wonder whether the IB/ESA model is just too centred around physical disability? As you say, MH service users can have a very different set of requirements and capacities. Your point about intermittent availability, and the prohibitive stress of risking the loss of IB, rings particularly true.

Jim @15

Nice one.

Someone told me once never to try irony on the blogosphere.

I had to re-read your post three times to be sure!!!!

Nice one.

The present system is quite Kafkaesque for the mentally ill. It is simply bizarre having to prove that you are mad. I only had one assessment in 8 years, which was because on that occasion I’d been too ill to fill the forms in. I was tempted to turn up to the interview wearing a Napoleon hat and declaring that I was planning to invade a small country.

At which point, on the grand old Catch-22 model, they’d have realised that you were sane enough to be seeking to reinstate your IB…

There is a profoundly dispiriting level of public ignorance around this issue (and I realise, as Alisdair pointed out above, that I’m not a model of perfect information myself). I was discussing this issue recently with someone, who said that she knew her ESA-claiming neighbour was a scrounging scoundrel because she had seen him outside trimming his hedge [not a euphemism]. The idea that his incapacity might take another form had simply not occurred to her.

Good grief, that winking emoticon is beyond cheese.

Pagar @ 19

Over the top? Sure, but not that much. If you want these people to work there is going have to have to work for them. At a time when there are two million fit, able bodied people looking for work, not only are we going to have to to find them work, we are going to have to create work for those IB deemed fit to work. No point in trying to get people back to work, if there are no jobs for them to find.

Then you have to gt employers to take them on. You are going to have to force employers to take these people and keep these people too. No pioint in taking someone on then throwing them back onto the dole within a couple of weeks, either.

Please help me to understand. I can’t see how a higher employment rate in Britain and a lower unemployment rate accords with suggestions that we are somehow unduly dependent on welfare benefits.

According the OECD Factbook, the employment rate in 2007, before the financial crisis, for the age group 15-24 was higher in Britain than in France, Germany or Italy:
http://puck.sourceoecd.org/vl=1328852/cl=33/nw=1/rpsv/factbook2009/06/01/02/06-01-02-g1.htm

The employment rate for the age-group 25-54 was higher in Britain than in Germany or Italy – France was marginally better:
http://puck.sourceoecd.org/vl=1328852/cl=33/nw=1/rpsv/factbook2009/06/01/02/06-01-02-g2.htm

Britain’s average unemployment rate for 2005-2007 was lower than in France, Germany or Italy but then, as we know, unemployment rates are affected by the numbers not in employment who are moved on to incapacity benefit, ESA or the equivalents in other countries.
http://puck.sourceoecd.org/vl=1328852/cl=33/nw=1/rpsv/factbook2009/06/02/01/06-02-01-g1.htm

Jims first comments are the best on this topic

Question is how do you get practical answers in front of Govt and how do you get them to listen long enough to understand??

well done jim

Maybe I was a little harsh upthread, and I do note the genuine concern of Rowan, but the Tory proposals are virtually identical to those of Labour, to Labour’s eternal disgrace. Much decent opinion has been expressed here, in the Guardian, and elsewhere. Those of us who work in, or use, mental health services (a very big %age of the population) have known of this direction for years: the whole IAPT programme has been premised on the return-to-work and the over-simplistic-to-the-point-of-being-harmful utterances of Lord layard, and dame carol black (neither hitherto noted for their MH knowledge) have been rightly derided for many months now.

Another problem is that as people are being moved to ESA they can end up in a new “benefit trap”: if you are out of work for much ime during the previous three years, you won’t have enought NI credits to be eligible for ESA on that basis. The ebenfit is then means tested and if your spouse is working, you’re buggered–no ESA, and no Jobseekers either–the NI credits issue again (and in any case Jobseekers is also means tested after 6 months).
Getting the meager and relatively pathetic help on offer for disabled people getting back to work requires being in receipt of disability benefits so the state can send a fat cheque to the likes of Work Directions to put you through their (utterly crap) programmes. Very few ever find permanant employment through these, so it’s a revolving door. One person I know who’s a client at the local Work Directions has sent them a written notice that their “look for a job room” is a serious incident waiting to happen, as every day it’s filled with a mix of seriously mentally ill people who are not receiving appropriate care, and are under severe pressure to get jobs, when no jobs they can do are on offer and no reasonable employer would hire someone who is a poorly medicated psychotic. Several minor incidents have happened and been brushed under the carpet, she felt they needed to be put on notice and I agree.
My partner’s currently in the ESA catch-22 situation–too disabled to work, but unable to receive benefits of any kind because this has been the case for years. It’s not the tiny bit of money we’re after, it’s help for him to get rehabiltative care and get back to work. Programmes like Work Directions promise this but all they offer is “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” advice from unqualified people–his programme’s centrepiece was a class on “positive thinking,” what a joke!

@ expatyank

Programmes like Work Directions promise this but all they offer is “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” advice from unqualified people,/blockquote> Hey don’t get me started…any one mention A4e yet? Not the least controversial of bunches, but somehow the Govt’s preferred provider, even when the available evidence points to state provision of jobs services as being cheaper and more effective than the outsourcing model.
Anyone mentioned the cherry-picking approach..
Better stop, or I’ll be on all morning, but here are places where some of the debate has been aired:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/jun/11/welfare-reform-bill-workfare
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/16/alcohol-government-benefits
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/23/madeleine-bunting-welfare-reform
http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/
http://www.socialist.net/welfare-reform-freud.htm

Now I will be off (Dr Google will cure any information deficiencies…). Keep the issue live please!

That’s interesting Bob, I didn’t know any of that.

Thanks Alisdair. As ever, I suppose there’s a big divide, in terms of knowledge and information, between MH service users (and their intimates) and everyone else. This stuff ought to be common knowledge among the ‘everyone else’, but it isn’t (I’m a fairly standard, well-intentioned bumbling lefty and I didn’t know any of it). What’s IAPT?

expat – that sounds grim.

IAPT = Improving access to Psychological therapies. A headline-grabber by New lab, good as a one-liner, but examine the detail and actually based on dodgy premises and a touch sinister, wanting to make everyone a happy little, uncomplaining, compliant worker. It’s seen services cannibalising themselves to set up the new target-driven initiatives, because the timescale has been absurd, not allowing sufficient time for enough new recruitment or training
I welcome investment in all psychological services. And, yes, in this terrible economic mess more people will need support.
However, and this is a massive ‘however’. The basic philosophy to this scheme is completely incongruent with what psychological support should be about. The aim of mental health provision should be to support people to increased mental well being. Layard wants to provide 8 sessions of CBT to ‘cure’ people’s depression and get them back to work, thus reducing the burden on the benefits system. Manualised CBT, which is the approach being invested in, is an excellent form of therapy for addressing a specific, identifiable problems causing mental distress. Many of the people this scheme is targeted at need much more than a quick fix and have an array of complex problems, that require considerable time and input from professionals with a wider expertise than those to be trained under the IAPT auspices. Also, rushing these services through will result in disorganised services with sub-standard professionals.
One aspect for MH service users is the mechanised approach in some areas: here are your 8 sessions with someone not-very-qualified, so you must be cured at the end. Therefore we’ll take away your disability related benefits, as CBT cures everything, super-quickly too.What’s that? You’re somehow still unwell? Impossible, so we can’t and won’t acknowledge that.

Oh, yes, and there are no jobs to get these newly ‘cured’ people back into.Oh, and turns out the money needed for doing psychological therapies properly hasn’t been ring-fenced and has disappeared.

Right, thanks. I had heard some rumblings about the government being over-reliant on CBT, but not the rest of it. What sort of person is being ‘trained’ to deliver these CBT sessions – people with any psychology training?

Gosh, Rowan, that all depends as the implementation varies widely from locality to locality. As mentioned there is cannibalisation (ie. poaching staff with qualifications from elsewhere eg inpatient settings, thus just shifting the skills shortfall elsewhere), and there is a skill-set split between high-intensity and low-intensity IAPT workers (and variations in the resource allocations to theses areas). High-intensity are meant to have a pretty full skill-set, while lower-intensity (trainee) workers can get training on-the-job.Trouble is the timescale: a more measured approach would have ensured the workforce for all this was ready beforehand.
Oh, and n.b. having an undergrad degree in psychology does not equip one for full clinical work: it is but a stepping-stone, as much post-grad work (eg the doctorate) must be done to be a fully-fledged clinician.

Sure, I get your last point – a good friend of mine is a clinical psychologist and I know she’d have been rotten at her job had she gone straight in as a callow 21-yr-old (much as she’s great at it now).

Please don’t get me wrong, the notion of improving access to psychological therapies (without the capitalisation) is great, but the implementation is woeful in many regards. It’s something service users have called for for years, but as ever this Govt has hijacked it and applied their own agenda. bit like personalisation on which topic I’ve been warning:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/oct/07/market-doesnt-own-choice

“That’s interesting Bob, I didn’t know any of that.”

Those who claim Britain is sinking under a dependency culture seldom check (the embarrassing) comparisons with the other leading economies in western Europe for their employment or unemployment rates – and those countries btw have more generous social security benefits.

But then self-proclaimed leftists in Britain tend to insist the NHS is wonderful because the American system of healthcare is so awful for the 46 million Americans who have no insurance cover. Few check out the healthcare systems of other west European countries:
http://www.healthpowerhouse.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55&Itemid=54

It’s an interesting question as to why smaller west European countries like Denmark and the Netherlands tend to come out relatively well from comparisons.

The problem is of course it’s Labour that brought in the test to get people back to work, plus the New PCA which states if you have no legs but can use a wheelchair your mobile.

All the Tories have done is actually remove one of the tests the PCA, we all know people can work, I can work, but it’s about getting me a job, expecting me to do what others can do is well ridicules. Look at brown people say he should step down if he is blind.

Sadly you all stayed silent when Labour did this, now your all screeching because the Tories are doing the same thing.

And also it’s not about where or what I can do, it’s who the hell wants somebody with no legs and his hands and arms do not work, who ever employs me is going to need to help me a hell of a lot

Jim @ 23

I’m still not sure you are not being disingenuous but, as you insist you are serious, let me fisk your original post. I put myself in the position of an employer.

Create 4 million jobs here and another 10 million in Europe.

How?
How are these jobs to be created?
Presumably in the public sector?
Doing what?
How are they to be paid for?

Draft a new law making it illegal to fire a disabled/ill/unfit person or someone with a mental illness.

So when my mentally ill employee sets fire to my premises or punches my best customer I have to continue to employ them? The cost of funding the unfit person will be transferred from the state to my business. How will my business remain competitive?

After six months, force an employer to take a person from the disability list.

How can you force me. At the point of a gun? You force me to take on another employee I don’t need and the business goes bust putting everyone out of work. How does this help?

Jail anyone who fails to adapt the workplace to anyone with a long term illness.

You are serious?

After we have full employment, those who have not been picked for work are, by any defination too ill to work.

I asked for a solution to the problems relating to employment and disability and you give me this with a straight face.

Come on. You were joking. Right?

In the last quarter, there were 434,000 job vacancies.

There are 2.5 million unemployed and 2.6 million claiming IB.

As it stands now, there’s 5 jobseekers for 1 available job.

If 500,000 are moved from IB to the unemployed ranks, that’s 6 jobseekers for every 1 available job.

No employer is going to opt for an applicant with a history of mental or physical illness (and with large gaps in their employment history), when there’s already an army of fit and healthy unemployed chasing the few jobs out there.

Nu-Labour brought in ATOS Healthcare to assess IB claimants, and as someone above pointed out, they’ve been performing this task disgracefully.

For those who assume IB claimants are subjected to a proper medical examination before being removed from IB: they are not. ATOS clearly point this out to every IB claimant they assess.

The IB claimant is merely subjected to a series of questions designed to establish what tasks the claimant is capable of doing. There may be minor physical inspections, but the assessor does not make any diagnosis. That’s not what they are there for.

The horror stories I’ve heard about this procedure defy belief.

Claimants have been berated by ATOS assessors. Key questions have not been asked. Answers have been (purposely?) misinterpreted. I even heard of one mentally ill – an agoraphobic who had trouble leaving the house – who received extensive advice and sympathy from the assessor about counselling and medication – and then discovered a month later that this assessor had withdrawn his benefit!

Claimants who have been removed from IB are allowed to request the results of the assessment, and for many, it’s a painful discovery that the ATOS assessor has flat-out ignored their testimony. The results frequently bear no relation to the conversation the claimant remembers having.

ATOS refuses to allow claimants to record the interview – unless the claimant pays out of their own pocket for a professional recording set up, involving sound engineers! Comical stuff. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why ATOS don’t want transparency.

This is happening NOW, under Nu-Labour.

ATOS were awarded an extremely lucrative contract by the government, and there are options for extensions to that contract.

Nu-Labour are committed to removing hundreds of thousands from IB. No sane person could possibly conclude that ATOS are impartial when it comes to these assessments. The more people they remove from IB, the more they please the government. The more they please the government, the more chance they have at securing further contracts with the government.

The simple fact is that tens of thousands of IB claimants with genuine mental and physical problems are being wrongly removed from IB.

Rowan is right about a life on benefits. It destroys self-worth. The links between depression and unemployment are well-known. It’s not a life at all.

However, if you’re mentally or physically ill, it’s far preferable to losing 30% of your income and being forced to compete with the fit and healthy in a job market that doesn’t want you.

It truly saddens me that genuinely ill people are going to suffer, and yet very few seem to care. I fear the incessant characterising of IB claimants by the tabloid media as feckless and lazy has resulted in a situation where people are unwilling to scruntinise the actual meat and bones of welfare reforms.

As long as “something is being done about those people,” that’s all that matters.

Pagar @ 39

As the doyens of High school Musical and Tory Party say, “We are all in this together.”

Everyone is going to have to share the pain. We all agree that work will hugely benefit these people and that we need them to work, so why not employ them?

It is funny that when you ask people whether or not those on incapacity benefit who could potentially work, shout work, you get the universal answer, ‘Yes’. However, if you ask should people on incapacity benefit work for you then all of a sudden, it’s err, no, I am not sure etc.

If you are going to coerce these people into work then by the same token we need an element of coercion onto employers, or else who will employ them? You cannot, wit h a straight face, suggest that they can work on one hand and then tell me they are all kinds of barriers to them working when they turn up at an interview.

Do you want them to work or not? A simple YES or NO will suffice.

YES I do.

But distorting the labour market by attemting to coerce employers is not the way to achieve that.

With modern communications etc there many physically disabled people who have real world skills required by many employers. Similarly, there are people suffering from mental health problems who are among the brightest and most innovative people we have.

An extreme example, but I’d employ Stephen Hawking in a heartbeat.

The problem the employer has is differentiating those people who can add value to their enterprise from those who cannot. Compulsion in recruitment will not work.

I accept that that there are people who, because of disability, cannot work or contribute to our society in a meaningful way. Of course they should be looked after by those of us more fortunate. And looked after well.

The issue is around whether we should subsidise the lifestyles of those who feign the inability to work in order to play the system. If you want an example google Mayor of Sephton.

In fact, I also have sympathy for the feckless- because they are leading worthless lives, the only chance they are going to get at this, in the mistaken belief that they are cleverly playing the system.

We must try to educate people to take responsibility for their own lives where they are capable of doing so. Because that is best for everyone.

Pagar @ 42

But distorting the labour market by attempting to coerce employers is not the way to achieve that.
The problem the employer has is differentiating those people who can add value to their enterprise from those who cannot. Compulsion in recruitment will not work.
However, coercion is fair game on the most vulnerable in society? The above pretty well sums up what is entirely wrong with this debate. It is all about punishing the poor, punishing the weak and of course, special effort in punishing those who ‘deserve’ it most, the mentally ill. You seriously think compelling people with a history of mental illness that no employer will touch with a bargepole apply for jobs likely to yield positive results? Unless you provide ‘incentive’ for employers (i.e. force them) to take on these people, there will be simply no way they the majority of them will find work.
With modern communications etc there many physically disabled people who have real world skills required by many employers. Similarly, there are people suffering from mental health problems who are among the brightest and most innovative people we have.
Sure, I agree with you and if we force employers to actively recruit these people into work then we are going to lose out.
An extreme example, but I’d employ Stephen Hawking in a heartbeat.
But not to stack shelves or flip burgers, of course.
The problem the employer has is differentiating those people who can add value to their enterprise from those who cannot.
Hey, lets concentrate on what people CAN do, not what they can’t. Surely once an ‘independent’ service has ruled them fit for work, that should be the end of the matter? Anyone refusing someone with a clean bill of health would be guilty of discrimination and treated accordingly. Or else, what is the point of an examination?
Compulsion in recruitment will not work.
The wins the most ironic sentence of the blogg award.
If you want an example google Mayor of Sephton.
Hang on though, there are already systems in place to weed out fraud. For every fraud case, there are dozens who are treated unfairly and lose out and there are cases where the system works exactly as it should. Those cases are the ones that never get publicised.
Because that is best for everyone.
Except for the employers who have to employ them.

“The issue is around whether we should subsidise the lifestyles of those who feign the inability to work in order to play the system.”

Is that really an issue? I don’t think anybody wants to subsidise con artists.

The issue is that Nu-Labour’s welfare reforms (and near-identical Tory proposals, from what I can tell) do not in practice distinguish between the honest majority on IB and the minority of opportunists who (rightly) create so much resentment from taxypayers.

As I outlined with ATOS, the system is geared towards removing people from IB by hook or by crook. It’s a numbers game whereby human beings are reduced to statistics.

What’s needed is for IB assessments to be a fair, impartial medical process, free from private profiteering.

But it won’t happen. Too expensive. And mainly? The electorate don’t care.

A lot of people who support welfare reform as it stands now will often say “but of course the genuine shouldn’t suffer,” or “only the feckless will be targeted.”

They don’t realise the reality of the system, and they don’t care to.

As long as IB numbers decline, the electorate by and large won’t even consider the tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of genuinely physically and mentally ill people who are going to lose 30% of their income and end up as part of a fiercely competitive labour surplus, where in most cases their health-problems and CV gaps will render them only marginally more attractive to employers than ex-convicts.

“The problem the employer has is differentiating those people who can add value to their enterprise from those who cannot.”

Absolutely.

There are a variety of ways that people on IB could be properly classified and, where possible, guided into employment. Employers could be given incentives to employ IB claimants, for example. But the cost and inconvenience, especially during a recession, makes it easier to simply wield the axe indiscriminately and therefore gain all those “beat the scroungers” plaudits from a ranting media that has no patience to learn of the actual human cost.

Jim @43

Sigh….

No, I would not employ Stephen Hawking to flip burgers and I guarantee if you tried to compel a Macdonalds franchisee to do so no good would come of it.

I don’t think this debate is going anywhere- we’re not even on the same page.

Xander @44

There are a variety of ways that people on IB could be properly classified and, where possible, guided into employment. Employers could be given incentives to employ IB claimants, for example.

Agreed. That’s constructive.

Pagar @ 45

we’re not even on the same page.

Yes, because you are looking at this purely as way of punishing the weak. You are still are unable to explain where these jobs are and why any employer would want to employ people who he sees as unfit to work, when there are two million plus able bodied people looking for work. In fact, you have taken great pains to point out that employers would not touch these people with a bargepole. So, if you do not expect employers to employ them, who do you expect will employ them?

Jim @ 47

Seems to me we’re not on the same page because you are not bothering to read what I am saying.

PagarOf course they should be looked after by those of us more fortunate. And looked after well.

Jim you are looking at this purely as way of punishing the weak.

I agree that in a climate of high unemployment it is going to be disproportionately more difficult (not necessarily impossible) for the mentally and physically disabled to find work. There is no short term solution to this- in the medium term we need to grow our ecnomy. and we need to work with the disabled to give them employable skills.

The suggestion above to incentivise employers to take on disabled workers is a good one.

Your idea to compel employers to take on disabled workers is, frankly, bonkers.

Lets cut to the car chase, we both know this is not about helping the disabled. This is about pandering to the blue rinse brigade and the Daily Mail leader writers. Cameron has already announced how many people will be found to be fit to work. Half a million people are going to be moved from incapacity benefit to unemployment benefit, right reason or none. This is before a single x-ray has been examined, a single doctors report looked at a single GP being consulted.
To be absolutely brutally frank, the Tory party have previous here. They had a similar policy a few years back when they moved severely mentally ill people from asylums into prisons via seaside bed and breakfasts at a cost of millions. We now have a huge prison population and our prisons are busting at the seams with people whose only crime is that they are unable to cope with life.
The fact of the matter is, most of these people are not employable under the current economic climate. These ‘tests’ are not likely to be set by the industries that are likely to employ these people; they are going to be set by the people who are paid to declare these people fit to work. If you really want to assess these people as fit to work, go and ask the major employers in this Country what the minimum standard they expect from potential employees.
Surely to fuck we can recognise the fact that if we want to declare someone as fit to work, it is not unreasonable to measure that person against a set of criteria that a likely employer will use?
If we make that the argument that if you can ‘flip a burger’ you can work, well why not as McDonald’s, burger king etc what their criteria actually is?

we both know this is not about helping the disabled.

I think if you go to my post @1 that is what I asked- how we could help the disabled avoid languishing on benefits.

If you have been debating something else it’s no wonder we haven’t got far…….

Pagar @ 50

I am well aware that you have dressed up your debate as ‘how do we help the disabled’, but everyone knows that is bullshit. Cameron does not give a fuck about the disabled, he cares about not looking weak in front of the piss soaked blue rinsers. Everyone here knows this is about getting a half a million of the numbers, irrespective of the needs of the disabled, and what is more, we are all too aware of the fact that the methods are pretty ruthless too. They are even worse than he labour Party’s sickening attacks too.

I’d like to make a couple more points.

Firstly, re-skilling is of more relevance to the unemployed than the incapacitated, of whom very few will benefit. Most mentally ill people are unattractive as employees because they are unreliable, not because they are unskilled.

Secondly there is the question of whether it is just or desirable to make many of the physically disabled re-train. Take, for example, a carpenter in his late fifties, who is unable to continue to do manual work because he is crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. He could, conceivably, be trained to work in a call-centre, but is it reasonable to demand that he does that? His non-means tested incapacity benefit has been paid for by the National Insurance contributions he has paid for the last 40 years. Also, in reality, he’d be retrained simply to end up on unemployment benefit, since he’d still be unattractive as an employee.

From what I’ve read the bulk of IB claimants seem to fall into two categories: firstly middle-aged women like myself who are suffering from depression, and secondly middle-aged men from the old industrial areas of Britain.

It is an interesting question why so many middle-aged women are too depressed to work, but also certain that they are not going to be helped by retraining, or authority trying to force them into employment.

It is always assumed that the men who worked in defunct manual industries are faking it, ignoring the fact that manual work tends to wear you out quicker, and many manual labourers do not make it to retirement age.