A white-knuckle ride back to work

Hard on the heels of George Osborne’s budget announcement that Disability Living allowance (DLA) is to be subject to a medical assessment, comes further evidence that we would do well to adapt and follow Lord Randolph Churchill’s advice about Gladstone and “beware a young man in a hurry”.

A BBC news story reports the Chancellor’s latest ruse for reducing the benefits bill is to speed up the rate at which assessments are made on people’s ongoing entitlement to Incapacity Benefit (IB) or its replacement Employment Support Allowance (ESA).

This is both wrong-headed and just plain wrong!

It’s wrong even at the level of cliché. There must, during Osborne’s public school education have been some bufferish old master, ready to warn him, “Now now, young Osborne, more haste, less speed”. There were certainly plenty of people ready to offer that advice during my years at blind schools. The faster something is done, the more likely it is that mistakes will be made.

It’s wrong-headed on a number of levels.

First it relies on that old discredited idea that IB has done nothing more than offer a passport to benefits for a load of workshy scrounging good-for-nothings out to milk the state to fund their betting, boozing and fags.

In fact, all of the evidence indicates that it’s the very assessment process which is at fault, not the claimants it's shovelling back to work.

A recently published report by the national advice charity Citizens Advice, www.citizensadvice.org.uk/not_working highlighted major concerns about the extent to which the assessment is a blunt instrument. From across their network of centres they found numerous examples of people who’d been found to be capable of work, taken off benefit and put into a job when in fact they were still severely affected by a whole range of impairments and conditions which prevented them from doing that job capably.

A study in Scotland identified similar causes for concern. Both studies had been triggered by what looked like alarmingly high numbers of people (69 per cent) the assessment had found to be capable of work.

You’d think the CAB and Scottish findings would have had them rigorously overhauling or even abandoning a process which is so clearly broken. But no, they’re going to ask it to go on doing the same, only faster.

It’s like finding that a critical bolt has sheered through on a roller coaster and, instead of shutting it down, loading it with even more passengers and running it 20 per cent faster. Excuse the pun, but Osborne better hope this doesn’t turn out to be his nemesis. It certainly spells greater danger for disabled people.

At the risk of harping on, the Government has chosen to tackle the wrong problem.  Instead of forcing people off benefits and into work they are unable to do, they should be tackling the prejudice by employers which keeps those disabled people who are genuinely capable of and hungry for work, out of employment.

To echo another phrase applied to Mr Gladstone, "we are not amused".