Myth of the life of Riley

Hidden in the Government's proposals for cutting disability benefits is that old assumption that too many people are milking the system. Peter White debunks the faulty logic of a common prejudice

With the regularity of cuckoos in spring, the search for disabled scroungers milking the system and needing to be "rooted out" appears on the agenda of all new governments.

It doesn't matter that there's no evidence for it. Each time civil servants charged with studying fraud relating to disability in the social security system are asked about it, they say it's tiny: statistically almost insignificant.

So why does this hare start up whenever a new government comes to power?

Part of it, of course, is that the money paid to people in respect of disability is high compared with what was paid in the past. And that's because until the 1970s, even after 30 years of the welfare state, virtually no provision was made for the extra costs incurred due to disability. Funding was a humane response to a blatant injustice, entered into by both major political parties. Mobility Allowance, Attendance Allowance and Disability Living Allowance were all introduced as a considered response to properly costed needs, as were benefits such as invalidity and incapacity benefit. Of course the figures have gone up: they were rising from zero, in a group depending till then on the most basic levels of subsistence.

People forget that you don't get benefits without medical intervention: you don't just go along and say "I feel a bit disabled today" and get handed the money!

Attempts have been made over the years to discredit GPs by alleging they hand out sick-notes like confetti. Some may have done in unemployment hotspots in the 80s and 90s, but it can't explain the persistently high figures that have resisted attempts by both parties to bring them down.

What does explain it are high levels of stress, and disabilities that involve high levels of intermittent pain, in a harsh employment climate. It's not something people readily understand unless they've experienced it, and it's interesting that those who persistently dismiss it - politicians - are those whose main fear of losing their job is triggered by fiddling their expenses.

We should expose them to a cycle of being tested for work fitness, telling them they hadn't qualified for the benefits they'd been promised, and sending them on a series of inappropriate job interviews, only to be constantly rejected! That's the reality for many people these days.