Purnell's lack of fitness

When James Purnell joined the list of high-profile rats deserting Gordon’s foundering ship, it struck Peter White that he was also leaving the Department of Work and Pensions, and the noble task of welfare reform

Whoever holds the welfare reform brief, the rhetoric remains pretty much the same, particularly in terms of “getting disabled people off benefits, and into work”.

It goes something like this: “The numbers of people on incapacity benefit are all the fault of those wicked Tories, who shoved people on to what was then called invalidity benefit in the ‘80s, but we know that those nice disabled people really want to work, if they’re only given the chance.

“Although, as it happens, there are a lot of scroungers out there, and quite a lot of them seem to be disabled, or saying they are. Oh, and by the way, if you won’t look for work, we’ll take your benefits away”.

Let’s try to shed a little light on these assumptions, shall we? The numbers of people on incapacity benefit did go up sharply in the ‘90s, largely due to the compassion and common sense of many GPs in places like the North-East and South Wales, where many people were coming to the end of back-breaking lives in mining and other forms of heavy industry, with only the dole to look forward to. Most of them have by now reached and passed retirement age.

So why haven’t the numbers on incapacity benefit (still up around 2.6 million, where they’ve been for well over a decade) gone down? Well, for various reasons, but perhaps most noticeably, because of the increasingly stressful nature of the working environment.

Somewhere near 40 per cent of those now claiming work-related benefits have conditions like stress, depression, and other mental illness.

It’s almost certainly true that if asked in a survey, “do you want to work?”, most disabled people would say yes. The little phrase which is missing from this calculation is “at any price”.

Most of the Work and Pensions ministers have been pleasant and humane, but as they looked at the situation, they realised the complete mismatch between rhetoric and reality; and then they left.

The only difference for James Purnell, was the added little problem of unemployment figures rising above three million. Could he simply just have thought: “This is a no-brainer; I’m never going to find those jobs for all those poor disabled people who want to work; I’m getting out of here.”