Thread: A good day to bury bad news

Daily Mail headline

Eight out of ten claiming benefits ARE fit to work, according to new incapacity tests

Read more: Incapacity benefits: 8 out of 10 claimants ARE fit to work | Mail Online

(A totally misleading report anyway according to the official figures anyway.)

Grayling: Removing the sickness benefit trap - DWP

And the bad news they all want buried?

UK economy shrinks by 0.2% in last three months of 2011

BBC News - UK economy shrinks by 0.2% in last three months of 2011

So the Tory propaganda mouthpiece decides to blame the unemployed,sick and disabled for the economic problems instead of the true cause, the total falure of government's slash and burn economic policies.

I am sorry but I can't agree with you. Whether the true figure is 80% or not, they (either DM or HMG) are trying to demonstrate that Incapacity is being fraudulently claimed. These stories have been doing the rounds for years and years and years with the percentage varying a little (but not significantly), so I suspect that the underlying story is true. I find your views slightly at odds with your recent posts concerning welfare reform. I see HMG's introduction of new tests to determine "how disabled you are" a direct response to this situation. The below sentence from Wiki is truly staggering:

As of May 2011 there were 2.6m people of working age in Britain claiming incapacity benefit, approximately 8.5% of the total adult workforce in the United Kingdom, at an annual cost to the tax payer of £12.5 billion

Maybe if this was cracked down on, then certain other services that you were rightly keen to protect, might not be cut.

something must has been changed !

Originally Posted by angelman

I am sorry but I can't agree with you. Whether the true figure is 80% or not, they (either DM or HMG) are trying to demonstrate that Incapacity is being fraudulently claimed. These stories have been doing the rounds for years and years and years with the percentage varying a little (but not significantly), so I suspect that the underlying story is true. I find your views slightly at odds with your recent posts concerning welfare reform. I see HMG's introduction of new tests to determine "how disabled you are" a direct response to this situation. The below sentence from Wiki is truly staggering:



Maybe if this was cracked down on, then certain other services that you were rightly keen to protect, might not be cut.

If you'd trouble to click on the link to the DWP you would have seen it states

•43 per cent of claimants were entitled to the benefit. Within this –
◦21 per cent of claimants were placed in the Work Related Activity Group; and
◦22 per cent of claimants were placed in the Support Group;

You also need to read this

Factcheck: Two million Incapacity Benefit claimants fit to work? | Full Fact

You also need to realise that not everyone claiming sickness benefit is a long term claimant. Many are on it for short periods of time. I'm all for getting rid of scammers and scroungers. I'm against assuming that every guy in hospital or off work for a few weeks is a benefit scrounging laybout.

There are I believe some 37 million people of working age in the UK. The fact that 7% are off sick at any one time is hardly amazing.