THE FRAUD OF INCAPACITY IS ALSO A POLITICAL FRAUD

There is talk today of targeting disability benefits in the battle to reduce our £150-70 billion deficit. Such talk will undoubtedly attract criticism from the Left within all parties as well as the usual croaking from special-interest groups.

The first of these benefits to be targeted will be Incapacity Benefit (once known as Invalidity Benefit). It is about time something was done to reduce the numbers in receipt of this politically exploited benefit.

According to figures printed in today's Financial Times, the cost to the taxpayer of servicing the Incapacity budget is now £12.5 billion a year; and the numbers receiving it have trebled since the 1970s when the claimant count was 700,000. How could such a benefit have attracted such an increase in claimant numbers when the economy has grown, and we have had near full employment; while modern medicine has long since abandoned the poultice? How come the claimant figures have trebled to nearly 2.1 million? What kind of health calamity befell our population in the decades following the 1970s to justify such an increase in numbers?

The truth is, is that our politicians already know that this benefit has been abused by an estimated one million of its claimants, but little has been done (or has wanted to be done) by our politicians to redress this massive fraud upon the hard working people who pay their taxes in the belief that they will be spent wisely by whatever government is in power.

I wrote above that this was a 'politically exploited' benefit. What I meant by this was that politicians of all parties are as culpable as those who falsely succeeded in claiming it. This has been because all of the claimants were automatically removed from the unemployment statistics once they 'qualified' for the benefit: and, politically speaking, we all know what matters most to all of our governments - the unemployment statistics.

It all started back in the 1980s with the Thatcher government and has been continued with by every government since, until, hopefully, now.

What I speak of was a deliberate policy of reducing the employment count by transferring claimants from one benefit to another. By so doing the unemployment figures dropped steadily. So there was no outbreak of all forms of medical infirmity among the the UK's population between the 1970s and today; only the political wiles of our representatives.

If, as I believe they should, cheats and fraudsters should be taken off this benefit, then the politicians should at least acknowledge their own part in the overall fraud committed against the tax payer regarding the implementation of the earlier Invalidity Benefit, as well as the modern Incapacity Benefit.