By Bill Wallace
Recently a Scottish national broadsheet carried the headline "60,000 Scots cheats to lose sickness benefits" on its front page. That's an incredible statement.
As cheating on benefits is a criminal act, fraud, that newspaper accused each and every one of those 60,000 people of being criminals. Unfortunately that newspaper is not alone in promoting that point of view. If one were to read the press anyone
on benefit is most likely a cheat.
I have yet to see an author of one of these pieces actually set any context for what people on benefits are dealing with at the moment.
Firstly both Labour and the coalition seek to take people off Incapacity benefit. This is irrespective of the physical condition of the claimant or their needs, the goal is to reduce costs by taking away people's benefit. The figure never mentioned by these authors is that the DWP's figures for fraud is 0.4%, which must mean, by the
recent article's figures, that the number of IB claimants in Scotland is 15,000,000!
Even if you allow for a slightly higher incidence of IB claims in Scotland rather than the rest of the UK, unless the author claims some special insight into fraud that the DWP is unaware of, then the only legitimate headline would be "60,000 Scots to lose
sickness benefits".
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A significant event in the decision to demonise the recipients of incapacity benefit was a conference held on 6-8 November, 2001, in Oxford. Attendees included Malcolm Wicks, under-secretary of state for work, and his chief medical officer at the DWP, as well as Simon Wessley, the controversial contributor to the NICE guidelines for treatment in the NHS in England. Also there was John LoCascio, of the healthcare insurance firm UnumProvident and who had worked for Peter Lilley previously in "claims management". The conference's title was "Malingering and Illness Deception". The discussions there led to the New Labour policies on benefit, basically moving to a US system, where private consultants are paid for every person taken off the register, and claimants would be reclassified as fit to work as a matter of course. Both Labour and the coalition have hired David Freud, a merchant banker, as an advisor. His original report for the Labour Government suggested that each claimant should be assessed in terms of the savings when they are moved into work. Freud foresaw a chance for private corporations to make significant profits, in his own words "the fiscal prize is considerable". The people doing the assessments work for a company called Atos. The sessions are pointedly called assessments, and not medicals, and the people conducting them are called "medical practitioners", to de-emphasise the fact that many are not doctors. They follow a computerised script presented by a system called "LIMA" which is not available for the claimant to examine. The Atos decisions have lead to a greater number of appeals which is threatening to overload the tribunals process. In his report on the benefits assessment process, published last year, the chairman, Professor Harrington, noted that Atos absolved themselves of responsibilty for the decisions by saying that was the DWP's domain, while the DWP decision makers felt they did not have the medical knowledge to disagree with the Atos reports. He stated the procedures and the assessment were flawed, the decisions poor and the nature of the assessment inadequately communicated. H added that assessors were ignoring the information submitted by claimants. In an example quoted in the report, the practitioner denied the existence of the illness he claimant suffered from, a curious statement when the illness in question was recognised by the World Health Organisation. People on benefits feel that they are easy targets for abuse by the press and government. When a writer makes a sweeping statement of any kind, never mind one that stigmatises 60,000 of their fellow citizens as "cheats" which, remember, is an accusation of a act of criminal fraud, then they owe it to those they are condemning to prove that they are in command of the facts. To do otherwise looks lazy at best, dishonest at worst. Bill Wallace is married and lives in Glasgow and, as you can see from this article, doesn't mind people benefiting from his opinions, whether they want to or notWe need your support. Please donate to The Caledonian Mercury
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