I’m not sure I understand this correctly but …

if somebody was trying it on, but decided to give up in the face of tougher eligibility tests, they would either go get a job or claim they’d gotten better. But, as this letter points out, perfectly honest claimants will also drop their claims if they get better (or get a job, although that rather implies they also got better)

when the introduction of tougher eligibility tests is accompanied by the introduction of a 3 month waiting period before application (in which time, as you say, some sick people will recover) and we observe a certain number of people dropping their claims, I don’t think we can possibly know what proportion were trying it on but gave up, and what proportion were honest claims dropped for good reason.

afaics, it’s wrong to imply the whole lot were scroungers scared off by tougher rules, and it’s wrong to imply that the whole lot were honest claimants who just got better – the truth is probably somewhere in between.

[It is well known that disability claims rise in recessions, which suggests that some claimants would have considered themselves fit to work if the job market was stronger]

It’s all part of the Hitlerian plan to make “honest hardworking families up and down the country” hate “shirkers”.

Despite the fact that the government has been criticised over and over again for this, and figures showing that hate crime against disabled people has risen dramatically, they continue to make sick people sound like criminals.

They are turning the country into a place where sick people, or unemployed people (many unemployed because of government policy) are frightened to admit that they are on benefits. They have created an underclass.

I expect the old will be the next group for suffer. Unproductive and costing the country money, they will be expected to volunteer in their retirement to qualify for their benefits, never mind that they have paid all their lives for them.

There are policies that are cruel, and uncaring, foolish and badly thought out, and then there is the evil that this government is responsible for.

A little while later, The DWP’s themselves issued figures showing a huge proportion (94%) of claims were dropped because the person got better or went back to work. They dropped their claims because they were honest, not because they were dishonest!!

Might it not be a bit tricky to distinguish between honest people ‘getting better’ before facing a new, tougher assessment, and dishonest people deciding that they weren’t actually sick enough to pass the new, tougher assessment?

@2 As it happens some civil servant technocrats have already been floating the idea that pensioners ought to be working while claiming the state pension.
Incidentally it was civil service technocrats who came up with the ‘pasty tax’ and others, which after many years of trying to get them on the books, came to pass in Osborne’s infamous budget.

well said – the right wings current campaign to vilify those on benefits is the politics of hate and division, nothing more.
In the following article, we’ve tried to establish, in as objective a way we can, who are the real enemies of the people. Feel free to add to the list or take issue with those we criticise.

http://www.allthatsleft.co.uk/2013/04/who-are-the-true-enemies-of-the-people/

Tory doctrine on benefits summed up: better that ten legitimate claimants (whether disabled or not) are denied, sanctioned or otherwise cast into destitution rather than allow the possibility of one fraudulent claim going through.

@Luis Enrique “It is well known that disability claims rise in recessions, which suggests that some claimants would have considered themselves fit to work if the job market was stronger”

It could also suggest that the mental toll of sending out job applications and receiving no replies and being rejected following interviews and the additional financial stress could exacerbate illnesses or cause depression in some people.

It’s far from clear why supposed abusers of the system would drop their application anyway. It’s *not* *a* *crime* to apply for ESA, even if the DWP then decides you are fit for work. Why would a fraudster with a half-decent (albeit bogus) case be afraid of assessment?

@ 7: The mental toll of being made redundant after mopnths, maybe years of worrying about it, and knowing that at maybe 55, you have absolutely no chance of getting a job again could send some people into deep depression.

@8: Exactly, if your aim is to defraud, you simply know that you have to try a lot harder. Presumably you are fit; do some investigation and come up with a better story. As they don’t bother to contact your doctor or specialists you can make it up.

It could be too, that, having heard how onerous (and unfair) the interview is (because it is not a medical examination; the interviewer can be a nurse or paramedic) really sick people just cannot face the stress of going through it for nothing.

We all know that people have killed themselves rather than face it.

Why would Tories care? All the more money for them.

So, I take it we are in agreement that all of the 828,300 people who dropped their claims were genuine and none of them were put off by the new tougher assessments because they thought they’d fail?

If not please suggest a % rather than merely say all are to counter accusations that none are.

1@

I think a more likely explanation for why claims go up during recessions is to do with the behaviour of governments, not claimants. Governments look for savings and will cut back services that disabled people will rely on. Disabled people in residential settings are not usually eligible for invalidity pensions, but when they are moved out into the community and the residence closed as part of austerity measures, they are then eligible for the benefits and will need them. This goes for supported employment too; it gets closed down and disabled people who were previously not claiming now must.

Hence when the number of claims goes up, it stays up when growth returns because the provision that was there before doesn’t.

@10

If you are at all interested in the topic and not trying to be defensive about some of the popular prejudices being circulated about benefit claimants, Sue does provide a link in the article. The DWP checked- the sample had 94% of people stopping their claim because they had got better. They could have easily got away with using the entire period, but they didn’t.

Mason Dixon Autistic re Comment 12,

Thanks for your message.
I’m not trying to be a wise-guy just incredulous that any sample can produce a 94% answer in any direction – sounds like the election results supporting a ‘Dear Leader’. It leaves only 6% for every reason other than Lazarus-like recovery…….. say, death / bereavement / illness on the day / snow etc etc.

Kojak, it’s not an ‘either/or’. A number of things can explain why a claim stops and the existence of short-term claims is not new. When someone is ill or injured for long enough that their Statutory Sick Pay runs out, the only income they can get is from making an ESA claim. So they need slightly longer than the SSP period for recovery and end up finishing in the period between initial claim and assessment.

The period is supposed to be no more than 13 weeks, but there are people who been in the Assessment Phase for months and even years. Since it began, half of all ESA claimants have been in this phase and it’s one of the unreported dirty little secrets of ESA. It has barely shrunk and resolving it would mean spending money which the government doesn’t want to do. So we have people waiting for assessment for ridiculously long periods of time and in that time some get better. Being sneaky lying bastards, ministers keep referring to these figures as being for Incapacity Benefit, which only has long-term claimants now since new claims stopped in 2008. The impression people are left with is that these are IB-ESA migration cases who are cheating and don’t want to be found out.

The percentage of IB-ESA migration claims being dropped before assessment(and this is over an even longer period than usual) is 4%, which is consistent with the off-flows for long-term claimants anyway as people reach retirement age or die.

Did Pearson mention her lefty parents, she usually does and then her conversion to the right.
She is such a one trick pony.
She was intolerable as a lefty on the review show, god she must be a nightmare now as a Tory.
A little like you Kojak