How did it happen so suddenly? How did we go from being a society where most people had jobs, to one where one in ten working-age adults is claiming incapacity or disability benefits?
How is it nearly 3,000 people a day are signed off as too sick to work – from 2,000 under the Tories? And that the number of claimants is expected to go from 3.3 million to 4.1 million by the end of this Parliament?
The depressing answer, as so often, is lockdown. The mothballing of our economy in 2020 brought many into contact with the benefits system for the first time. Workers who had never claimed handouts came to realise how straightforward it was.
I remember, as restrictions lifted, talking to the then Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey about the spike in claims based on mental health, already visible in 2021. Had lockdown pushed up levels of anxiety and depression, or were people gaming the system?
A bit of both, she replied. The solution either way was the same: steady work. Genuine sufferers would benefit from the social contact, routine and sense of being needed; those who could work should.
Then she said something depressing that explains both the present rise in claims and the powerlessness of ministers within the post-Blair administrative state.
‘The trouble is,’ she told me, ‘the officials whose job it used to be to check up on the claimants are all working from home.’
Which brings us to the crux of the problem. Phone interviews rather than face-to-face ones were introduced as a temporary measure in March 2020. More than five years on, they are now normal, accounting for 70 per cent of benefit assessments. In consequence, approvals have rocketed.
It turns out a face-to-face interview was a deterrent. The commentator Fraser Nelson has shown many would-be claimants back out at the last minute rather than face an assessor. A telephone interview, by contrast, is easier to game – especially given the online resources explaining what to say to qualify.
How is it nearly 3,000 people a day are signed off as too sick to work? And that the number of claimants is expected to go from 3.3 million to 4.1 million by the end of this Parliament? The depressing answer, as so often, is lockdown, writes Daniel Hannan
According to the Department for Work and Pensions, which is led by Liz Kendall (pictured), Britain spends £55billion a year on disability and incapacity benefits. That will rise to £70billion by the end of this Parliament
Assessors are paid £80 bonuses to get through applicants quickly. Deeming someone too sick to work is the quickest way, as it means interviews can end early. These decisions are seldom checked.
Why is Labour not rushing to reform the system? After all, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall could make every interview in-person from today if she wanted. Heaven knows, it needs the money.
Britain spends £55 billion a year on disability and incapacity benefits; according to the Department for Work and Pensions, that will rise to £70 billion by the end of this Parliament.
Benefits cuts are perhaps the only spending reduction that polls well. Most voters are of the view that a lot of skiving is going on. The ease with which able-bodied people are given money for conditions such as ADHD (50,000 claimants at the last count) does no favours to those with serious physical disabilities.
The gloomy explanation lies in electoral calculations. People whose incomes come from the state are likelier to vote Labour. Hence the party’s readiness to increase both the numbers and salaries of public-sector workers, and its reluctance to move people off benefits.
According to a recent study by the Disability Poverty Campaign Group, there are nearly 200 constituencies where the sitting Labour MP’s majority is smaller than the number of people claiming Personal Independence Payments (PIP).
Apart from the waste of human capital, and the misery inflicted on claimants, it explains why reform is now politically impossible.
Whatever their faults, Conservative MPs understood people paying into the system were more likely to vote for them than people taking from it.
By capping benefits and at the same time removing the low-paid from income tax, they encouraged hundreds of thousands of people back to work. Now, the incentives have been switched.
If Labour cannot even slightly slow the rise in the benefits bill, it is giving up on any pretence of bringing spending back under control. After only a year in office, it is down to a core vote strategy: hang on to as many supporters as it can by giving them money that it is having to borrow.
My guess is the money will run out before the next election, and we will face a painful financial crisis. All because we insist on gearing our economy around paying benefits. What a country we have become.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere is president of the Institute for Free Trade
