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March 15th 2008

Britain: penalising benefit claimants will not create jobs

The UK government has announced that 2.5 million sick and disabled people must undergo more rigorous 'work capability' tests, through which they risk losing their state benefits. But in the UK labour market, able bodied and fully fit workers get jobs ahead of those who are disabled and not fully fit.

New rules announced in the British Government's Budget on March 13th 2008 will mean that a total of 2,517,988 people on incapacity benefit in the UK, amounting to 6.7% of the population of working age, must attend work capability assessments. The percentage of the population of working age in the UK on incapacity benefit who will face this new test ranges from 16.9% in Merthyr Tydfil, a former coal mining area, to 1.9% in Wokingham. 

The numbers facing the test in each of 229 areas in UK, expressed as a percentage of the working age population, based on a new analysis by the GMB trade union from official data, are on the GMB website.  The top and bottom ten areas with the highest and lowest percentages are set out below:

	Top Ten by Percentage	working age population	Incapacity benefit claimants of working age	% of Working age population
1	Merthyr Tydfil	33,800	5,710	16.9
2	Blaenau Gwent	41,800	6,660	15.9
3	Strabane	24,000	3,521	14.7
4	Neath Port Talbot	82,400	11,930	14.5
5	Rhondda, Cynon, Taff	143,400	20,670	14.4
6	Derry	67,900	9,720	14.3
7	Caerphilly	104,500	14,490	13.9
8	Glasgow City	386,200	52,310	13.5
9	Belfast	167,000	22,420	13.4
10	Knowsley	93,300	11,630	12.5

Bottom Ten by Percentage

220	Kingston-upon-Thames	105,400	3,270	3.1
221	Oxfordshire	403,500	12,410	3.1
222	Richmond-upon-Thames	117,700	3,520	3.0
223	Bracknell Forest	73,400	2,140	2.9
224	Surrey	668,600	19,080	2.9
225	Buckinghamshire	298,800	8,490	2.8
226	West Berkshire	93,100	2,610	2.8
227	Windsor and Maidenhead	85,900	2,230	2.6
228	Rutland	22,800	530	2.3
229	Wokingham	98,500	1,850	1.9

The districts with high percentages of people on incapacity benefit are mainly the working class areas where, prior to de-industrialisation, employment was provided by major industries including mining, shipbuilding and steelmaking. They are now poor areas with high levels of unemployment.

The districts with very low numbers of people claiming incapacity benefit, on the other hand, are among those which are currently the most prosperous in the UK. The website of Wokingham Borough Council, for example, states as follows:

The Wokingham Borough is a prosperous area with a thriving economy, very low unemployment and a concentration of multi-national companies, in and around its boundaries...  The area is economically buoyant with growth sectors of the economy well represented eg. information technology and communications. 

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Britain's finance minister) has announced that the requirement for new incapacity benefit claimants to undergo a tough new eligibility test is to be extended to existing claimants from 2010. Speaking about the new test in the budget debate in the House of Commons on Thursday 13th March James Purnell, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said:

"For those who play by the rules we will provide extra support so they can realize their ambitions. For people who don't play by the rules there will be clear consequences to their behaviour."

GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny commented:

 "The Government policy that those on incapacity benefit must attend work capability assessments is based on the false notion that the high levels of claimants in some areas is due to the fact that these people to not want work. There is a failure to see this for the labour market issue that it really is. This new GMB study demonstrates yet again that in the areas where there are lots of jobs there are less people on incapacity benefit and vica versa in the areas where there are few jobs. The unpalatable truth is that the problem lies with the lack demand from employers for these workers.

"The Government needs to face up to the fact that in today’s labour market, able bodied and fully fit workers get jobs ahead of those who are disabled and those not fully fit. The government should desist from threatening to penalize those affected by this as Mr. Purnell threatened to do in Parliament. It is going to waste a lot of money bringing in private firms to find non existent jobs for these workers while closing the job centres."

Paul Kenny also remarked on the closure of many of the Remploy factories, which provide jobs for severely disabled people who would otherwise find it very difficult or even impossible to gain employment:

"GMB and the disabled Remploy workers fought to stop the Government sacking 2,500 disabled Remploy workers as they close 30 factories in 2 weeks time because most of the sacked Remploy workers will never work again."