BBC goes along with govt spoiling tactic on disabled people


8:25 pm - July 26th 2011

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contribution by Steve Griffiths

Every month the Dept for Work and Pensions put out statistics purporting to show that few benefit claimants are ‘unfit to work’, with a juicy quote from a minister saying how terrible this is.

Today, the timing is immaculate: the BBC give it a higher billing than the report scathing about the Work Capability Assessment.

‘Only 7% of people claiming sickness benefits were unable to do any sort of work’, the BBC claim that ‘new figures have shown’. This is a monthly press release.

It also uses a statistical sleight of hand to misrepresent the proportion found fit for work. It is usually taken up by the tabloids, who then go through their usual routine of vilification.

The DWP press release regularly insinuates that the 36% of claimants who ‘dropped out of the application process’ were among those found ‘fit for work’, when that proportion of claimants have ceased their claims early for many years.

The press release also claims that a further 25% put into the ESA Work Related Activity Group have been found ‘fit for work’. But the legislation states clearly that people qualify for ESA because it is ‘unreasonable to expect them to work’ because of their ‘physical or mental condition’.

So that takes us to 38% found unable to work, which is a bit different from the 7% repeated uncritically by the BBC. Throughout the development of the ‘Unfit Test’, as the Citizens Advice Bureau called the first prototype in 1996, around 40% of disallowed claimants have appealed successfully.

This adds up to 500,000 sick and disabled people wriongly disallowed at the very least – and that’s the ‘tip of the iceberg’ according to the Chair of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, when you think of all the people who are too ill to appeal, too despairing, or who lack the advice and support they need.

What is extraordinary is the scale of the denial that many of the people with long-term conditions the NHS spends billions caring for are the very people whose needs are denied by the DWP and their all-too-competent private contractors. You can read about the invisible health dimension of welfare marketisation in this pamphlet on my website.

This month, it’s Pensions Minister Steve Webb commending the dodgy statistics. Here he is in 2009, and I couldn’t have put it better myself:

In my view, (the Work Capability Assessment) is currently having a very damaging effect on people receiving employment and support allowance, many of whom are being shunted on to jobseeker’s allowance when they are not fit for work.

How very true.

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Reader comments


1. sally

The Brownshirt Broadcasting Corporation moves even more to the right.

2. Socrates

I’m glad there’s people like you to tell our story. I’m largely too distressed to function.

3. Tim Hardy

If you wish to make a complaint about the BBC news website the url is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_3990000/newsid_3993900/3993909.stm

4. RickB

Also see http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/default.stm

5. Charles Wheeler

The report is meaningless without context. Nowhere does it mention what Atos constitutes as being ‘able to work’. If being able to type an email, for instance, constitutes being ‘able to work’, then many more people will ‘pass’ the fitness to work test than if the criteria were: having a reasonable expectation of being employed in a certain range of occupations on at least a part-time basis without the need for assistance.

So it’s perfectly possible to disqualify 95% of claimants simply by moving the goalposts – which is what is happening here. As a result, many thousands of severely disabled people will find themselves unable to claim benefit, but functionally unemployable. Even those who are assessed as unable to work will only be eligible for benefit for 12 months if they have a working partner – so Steve Webb’s claim that: “”Those who cannot work will always receive our unconditional support …” is simply untrue.

Most able-bodied people seem to be either unaware or unconcerned – but this is an issue not just for disabled people. It should be a concern for anyone who may at some point in the future suffer from chronic illness or disability, or have a family member in that position. There is no ‘them’ and ‘us’ – it’s a matter of luck.

The objective, of course is to replace the social insurance of the tax/benefits system, with private insurance – which is OK as long as you have no pre-existing conditions or genetic predispositions, can read the small print, can employ a lawyer to fight your case (without legal aid), don’t invalidate your insurance, can afford the premiums as you age, and so on.

6. Socrates

I’d happily swap my benefits, social care and council house for a brain that works properly.

Satire anyone?

But on second sight it’s not really satire at all, is it?

7. aeron

Unless you email your opinion directly to the bbc you’re pissing in the wind. The loudest idiot gets more attention than a silent genius. We have shown how to win with the notw. I find it astonishing that nobody is following this example. @cretinate

8. anyleftiwonder

Just cruel.

9. Sue Marsh

Lovin your work here Mr Griffiths 😉

10. ad

Isn’t it terrible that a government propaganda organ should be funded by a poll tax on almost every household in the country?

11. Alexander

The Government IS the enemy of the people.

12. Scooby

The people are their own worst enemy.

13. Pete Lee

I was astonished at this report, especially when charities have recently criticised govt tactics on this

14. Jayne Linney

Do something go to

http://blacktrianglecampaign.org/2011/07/27/uk-disabled-community-welfare-benefit-cuts-petition-sign

and have your say positively

15. Graham

I’m not remotely surprised. 20 or so years ago the BBC used to do quality investigative journalism that wasn’t afraid to offend power, and frequently did. Today it is a cowed, spineless shadow of its former self, far too busy toadying to the establishment.

But perhaps more importantly it reveals just what a bunch of despicable lying bastards this government are when they quite deliberately distort statistics to villify the disabled.

16. chris

Whilst the Rich condems are obviously out to save themsellves from paying more tax by these cuts, those of us on the left need to engage with some dificult questions;

What is the difference between a mental health problem and a “bad attitude”?

Why should people who may be able to do a more limited range of work because of a health problem get “free money” when people who are notionally “fit” do not qualify because they are just less talented?

I know people who are genuinely unable to work, I also know people who are unwilling to work at a job that is “beneath their dignity” (like the one I do) and who have “managed” ilnesses to qualify for extra benefit. The State must be able to differentiate.

Low wages whilst in work are the main causes of “benefit cheating” of course. But the debate has to be wider ranging than just “defending rights” it must stretch to “demanding contribution”.

To each according to need, FROM EACH ACCORDING TO ABILITY.

17. Robert

Only one answer to this problem, Concentration holiday camps, walk through the front gates with a nice large sign saying “holidays set you free”.

Then you see large buildings with a large chimney if you can stay away from these, but sadly the shower block is right next door.

Being disabled myself, waiting for the phone call and the Forms and the medical, it would seem if your three weeks dead you’d be found fit to work.

The WCA which Purnell, Miliband, and Freud ,work so hard at making we are told with the input of the disabled , I cannot find any disabled people who had any input, hold on was that the phone call I had from Liebour, oh shit I was the one they asked.

I will be having my National insurance number tattooed onto my arm next week, well may as well get ready for the camps.

18. Robert

All sick and disabled are cheats because we get more money, are you mad

19. Leon Wolfson

They’re still listing short-term claimants (who only /need/ it for a short period, I mean) as “dropped out”, right? Have there been any surveys on that at all that anyone knows of?

20. Robert

The Tories did one and it stated that 200,000 people a year return to work without anyone forcing them, from having things like Cancer or heart attacks or an illness which either gets better or improves enough for the people to go back to work.

Funny really because in 1998 Blair stated he had got 200,000 back to work by his welfare reforms.

I cannot find the report….

21. Leon Wolfson

Yes, that’s rather the problem – I can find a few references, but no papers or studies.

I am definitely seeing a PhD for someone there! (I’m in the wrong field, sadly)

22. Schmidt

Yesterday was a new low for the BBC, I thought John Humphrys’ sessions with Grayling were bad enough but regurgitating such a pathetically obvious attempt at spin was disgraceful. They couldn’t even be bothered to point out Steve Webb’s rank hypocrisy. If the BBC wishes to be the government’s propaganda outlet the least it can do is remove its hand from my pocket

23. Schmidt

Oh, and what did the Labour party have to say about it? Miliband’s recently acquired balls seem to have dropped off

24. Chaise Guevara

I’m inclined to believe this report is due to churnalism rather than a ploy by the BBC to spread the Tory agenda. But either way it’s crap and the Beeb should apologise.

25. Luis enrique

Here Prof Greg explains the numbers:

http://cmpo.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/disability-benefit-claims/#entry

26. Jim

I do not think this signifies a lurch to the Right by the BBC, but rather the fact that they have been forced to dumb down so much to appease the idiots in the Tory ranks.

You are not dealing with people whose knowledge or willingness to learn anything about a subject is limited. You cannot explain complex issues to a fuckwit, that is not the fault of the BBC, that is the fault of the fuckwit.

27. Socrates

FullFact.org ‘s take on the statistics.

66% not fit for work.

28. Jim

Graham @ 15

That is down to sheer laziness on our part, Graham. We have never made the slightest attempt to defend the BBC from the attacks from the Right. Every time they shout ‘bias’ instead of taking the shouter to task, we have joined in with our own shout of ‘bias’ as well. Instead of allowing this drip, drip, drip effect of claiming everything the BBC reports as ‘anti Tory’ we should have been putting the Tories on the spot to justify their outragous behaviour.

It really makes my blood boil to see the Left allow the Tories to shape the agenda to undermine the BBC. Talk about an own goal, when the BBC were holding Labour (and the Left) to task, instead of grumbling, and trying to hide, they should have accepted it with good grace.

No the BBC are toothless and unable to present good honest reports the Left start looking around with blank expressions on their faces.


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