Make No Allowance

Yet more farming out of claims for sickness-related benefits? They cannot be serious? Alas, they are, because, fundamentally, they are not. It is as if David Cameron had won an overall majority and, as he had publicly stated was his intention, restored James Purnell to the position of Work and Pensions Secretary, though without any loss of the Labour Whip, since it was assumed that David Miliband would be Leader of the Labour Party and therefore attending Cabinet while paid to lead the "Opposition". It is as if that Miliband were Prime Minister. Or Tony Blair still were, but unrestrained by Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband.

But the General Medical Council is already investigating, and in a couple of cases has already disciplined, several of the doctors employed by Atos, the private company engaged to assess claims for sickness and disability benefits while paid by the number of claims that it rejects and by the number of existing claimants that it forces off the books. All things considered, it is no surprise that it rejects a large number of claims while forcing a large number of existing claimants off the books. As for people who withdraw their claims, they do so because the process has made them too ill to carry on.

It is hard to get Incapacity Benefit or whatever it is now called (it was, by the way, invented by Margaret Thatcher as part of her gigantic expansion of benefit dependency), and it is almost impossible to get something like Disability Living Allowance. The question is not why so many people are making "fraudulent" claims, but why so many people really are that ill. What has changed in Britain since the 1970s?