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You and Yours听- Transcript 大象传媒 Radio 4 |
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TX: 08.02.05 - Incapacity Benefit and Call You and Yours on Incapacity Benefit PRESENTERS: JOHN WAITE AND PETER WHITE |
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Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 大象传媒 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY PART ONE WHITE And on Call You and Yours today there are 2.7 million people claiming incapacity benefits in the UK, that's 7.4% of the working age population. Costing over 拢7 billion a year the benefit is one of the most controversial budgets in the welfare system and the same amount of money could buy you 224,000 teachers or a 154,000 police officers. The government has already had a couple of attempts at reforming it but backtracked slightly when they faced a rebellion from their backbenchers a few years ago. Their latest attempt came last week with the announcement that the benefit was to be split into two. Now those who are judged to be less sick or disabled will face a financial cut in benefit if they're felt to be making insufficient efforts to get back to work, while those who are seen to be more ill or disabled will see their money go up. The government has described the changes as the most radical reform to benefits in 20 years, while its critics still say that it's an underhand way of cutting the size of the welfare budget. WAITE Well we've had a big response from you on the subject. Mark has e-mailed to say that before he became ill he had no idea of the assault course, he calls it, he'd have to go through to claim financial help. In his opinion the changes to incapacity benefit are to make it deliberately hard to qualify, to deter fraudulent claims. But at the same time genuine people can be unfairly dismissed with the likely consequences, he says, of their health deteriorating. Jenny Clarke, on the other hand, says she lives next door to a couple receiving incapacity benefit, yet they're both fit enough to dig and maintain their garden with ponds and paving or hitching up a new caravan. They're unpopular, says Jenny, because everyone knows they're just playing the system. Michael Keating, who's been on incapacity benefit, for a year says he wants to work but when any potential employers see his medical records they fear he might have an attack and so they're reluctant to give him a job. And yesterday on the programme we heard from Julie from Cumbria who raised concerns about the qualifications of those making the judgements over her ability to work. WHITE Well joining us from Westminster is Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Alan Johnson. Secretary of State, picking up on that point of Julie's - the scheme depends on accurate judgements about who is and who isn't fit for work, that question was how qualified are those actually making those judgement in this quite subtle area? JOHNSON Well we've already got the personal capability assessment, which is the system that makes those kind of judgements, is conducted by medical people. They're highly trained, appointed specially by the Secretary of State. And the OECD has said that this is one of the most stringent gateways in the world. So I don't think that's the problem. WHITE Well it's stringent but is it fair? Around half of those who appeal against refusal have their cases upheld, which suggests a culture of say no first. JOHNSON Well there is some evidence that often when an appeal is successful it's because of evidence that came to hand after the original decision. And to get it into context, last year around 20% of disallowances appealed, so 80% didn't. Of those between 45-50% are successful - that actually means around 9 out of 10 disallowance decisions are actually upheld. WHITE But as I say this is subtle. I mean there is a sense in which people perhaps feel that people don't understand that you can actually be very severely disabled and work well, you could be an academic who's a quadriplegic, you could be someone in a building trade who's damaged their back who actually finds it very difficult to get back into their own profession. JOHNSON Oh absolutely, I agree with you completely. Look, the problem here is that in the past people on IB were written off, to be passive recipients of benefits for the rest of their lives. And that's a terrible waste of human potential. And what we're seeking to do is not to make any cuts, actually it's going to cost money, but it's to say look if we want to get to an 80% employment rate in this country, we've already reduced the numbers coming on to IB by a third, now we have to tackle the fact that there are 2.7 million people there, most of whom want to work, they just need some help to get them into work. And that's what this is all about. And it is saying - you're quite right - the paraplegic who could do some work described to me by a paraplegic is being told, on the current system, just go away and lie in a ditch and after a while lying in a ditch becomes comfortable. No one offered them a helping hand, this is all about helping hands. WHITE But isn't the problem that the places where there are these clusters of incapacity benefit claiming, which some listeners I think will draw attention to, aren't they the very places where the jobs aren't - aren't you setting up some people to fail by trying to get people work in places - I mean you have achieved good employment figures but there are still pockets of areas with heavy - where we've heavy industrial industries failing where the jobs just don't exist. JOHNSON Well I agree with you in one sense, in those places, in the '80s undoubtedly, as the shipyards closed and the coal mines closed and the steel mills stopped working people were encouraged to go and be IB recipients rather than mess up the unemployment figures, actually it didn't work both ways. That was then and this is now. What we've found now through our very exciting Pathways to Work project, which is operating in South Wales and on Strathclyde and big areas - the former industrial areas you mentioned, that it's not the absence of jobs that's the problem, in fact we've got a success rate of getting people back into jobs that's twice the level of other parts of the country and now we're extending this to a third of the country, all of them heavy former industrial areas, we have 600 vacancies out there, as well as the lowest unemployment for 30 years and the highest employment record of any G8 country, there's 600,000 vacancies. If we can't tackle this issue now and help people to get back into work, tailored to what they can do and the hours that they can work, then there'll never be a better time. WHITE Secretary of State, Alan Johnson, thank you very much indeed. So now we'd like to hear your thoughts and experiences. Are you on incapacity benefit, do you feel under pressure to work yet don't necessarily feel you can cope? Perhaps you would, as Alan Johnson was saying there, like to go back to work but can't find an employer flexible enough to accommodate the unpredictability of your condition. Or is reform of the system long overdue? Do you see abuses of the system? Perhaps you know whole families, like the Millers in EastEnders, who are all on incapacity benefit or is that just a myth? Are we stuck in a culture where claiming benefits is for some people part of the norm. You can call us on 08700 100 444, calls cost around 8 pence per minute. Or you can e-mail us via our website at bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours. 听 PART TWO TX: 08.02.05 - Call You and Yours - Incapacity Benefit PRESENTERS: PETER WHITE AND JOHN WAITE WHITE The reform of incapacity benefit, announced last week, seeks to make a clearer distinction between those who can and can't work. Those who can't will end up with a little more money, those who can will be pegged on a lower benefit rate if they don't cooperate with interviews designed to find them a job. Is this approach the right response to a benefit which costs the taxpayer over 拢7 billion a year? Are some people playing the system at the expense of the credibility of genuine claimants? Or are subtle decisions about who is and isn't fit for work being placed in the hands of doctors and civil servants who see their main task as to save the government money? Well we would like to hear from you, we've already heard from Secretary of State Alan Johnson. If you're an employer, if you're on incapacity benefit or indeed if you just have a view about it do call us on 08700 100 444. Joining me throughout our phone in is Lorna Reith, who's chief executive of the Disability Alliance, which is an organisation which researches financial issues affecting disabled people. Let's go first though to our callers. Alan Lindfield is calling from Heathfield. Alan, good afternoon. LINDFIELD Good afternoon. WHITE What's your view about this? LINDFIELD Well I've been disabled for over 20 years now and I've been trying to work but because of my disability I would be extremely unreliable at work because I end up with - you know the pain sort of goes through the roof and I have huge amounts of problems. But I do know a lot of people who are disabled that would love to be able to work, that could work but do have problems like myself where they end up in trouble. WHITE So what do you feel about this approach, which says that you should - that people should attend regular interviews to assess your fitness for work, on a fairly regular basis? LINDFIELD Well you know it's fine in theory but the problem is that employers have got to understand that they've got to be extremely flexible because when you have a disability, disability's do fluctuate, you can be fine for quite a while and do x amount of hours and then your disability may change very slightly and those hours - you just can't do them anymore or you've got a major problem and you can't work for several weeks. WHITE And so how practical is it for example to do a job that involves a smaller number of hours which might aggravate your disability less? LINDFIELD Well with me I'm a volunteer because I discovered that it's the only way that I can do - actually work. Because being a volunteer the people that employ me, if you like, have to be very, very flexible because they know that I can work when I can do things, if I can't do something they've got to accept that I can't do it. But it's the only way that I can do it is by being a volunteer. WHITE Alan thank you very much for your call. We're also joined by Dr Steven Duckworth of an organisation called Disability Matters, which among other things, runs courses to help people back into work. Steven Duckworth you heard that point really about employers, what's your own experience of this? DUCKWORTH Yeah I think that perhaps a trick's been missed with employers because I think that there are other systems in other countries, such as New Zealand, where employers are actually encouraged to invest more in the retention and rehabilitation of disabled people. And I think that although the government's talked about it in this statement there's no actual compulsion there. WHITE Do you think there should be compulsion? DUCKWORTH Yes I think so, I think we heard when the Disability Discrimination Act was introduced a lot of talk about - before it was introduced - about trying to persuade, encourage and make employers change their attitudes towards disabled people and we all know that you can't change somebody's attitude but you can legislate for behaviour. So I would like to see a piece of legislation which more or less ties employers into some sense of responsibility of dealing with individuals or valuing the contribution that individuals with fluctuating conditions can make, those employees they have who are absent from work due to sickness related reasons. WHITE Wouldn't that actually make people - employers - even less willing to take on disabled people because they would say we would be bound by this legislation so let's not get into it in the first place? DUCKWORTH No I think my point is for people that they currently employ, as opposed to bringing disabled people back off the benefit, so it's preventing people going on to the benefit in the first place. WHITE Right - go on ... sorry. DUCKWORTH I mean we know from our own experience that employers have a tendency to get rid of people if they have recent onset impairment, we also know that people with that illness or those disabled people who are offered money to leave the business will do so willingly because as such the DDA won't kick on. So the only way to resolve that is through forcing, in some way, the employers to do something about it. WHITE So you're saying the best time to keep people off of incapacity benefit is before they were ever on it, in other words, to maintain some responsibility for them while they're going through the business of recognising the extent of their disability and maybe having some rehabilitation? DUCKWORTH Yes, I mean that's essentially it, although I wouldn't want to cast the rest aside and say that there's no point investing in them either. WHITE Stephen, I wonder if you'd just stay on the line a moment because I want to bring in a related call. Amanda Whittaker is calling us. Amanda good afternoon. WHITTAKER Good afternoon. I run a small business and I have a friend who's wheelchair bound and on incapacity benefit to whom I can offer occasional work, as and when she can do it, by our own agreement. The problem that I have and she has really is declaring this work, in that the system makes it impossible for her to be honest - she's allowed to earn up to 拢30 a week - by my payments to her for the one off jobs that she does is 拢80, so that would immediately take her over the benefit quotient. We've tried looking at therapeutic earnings, but again the level of that is too low. And she risks not only losing the incapacity benefit but all the other benefits that come alongside it - housing benefit, council tax, benefits and all of those things - and it's just not viable for her to declare it. WHITE Because your point is that the work you can offer is only occasional work, it's not week on week or anything like that? WHITTAKER It's not week on week at all, and they only look at work as a regular job. She couldn't do a regular job and we're able, between ourselves, to work out when she can work, when I can offer it and when she can take it. And that suits us fine. But neither of us are happy with the way that - I have to pay her cash. WHITE I want to go to Lorna on this because she'll throw light on it but if I can just go back to Steven Duckworth - that sounds like an example of an employer who wants to help but feels they're being stymied by the system. DUCKWORTH Yes, I mean in this case there's absolutely nothing wrong with the employer, it's delightful to hear what's being said, but there is a problem with the system. And I think a way of coping with it would be to introduce a different system, whereby if an individual can work shorter hours or on a part time basis they could have a deduction of 拢1 of benefits for every 拢2 that they earned. So because of the 拢2 you earn you're going to have some national insurance and tax deductions from that, they'd always be incentivised to go into work. WHITE Thank you very much Steven Duckworth. Lorna Reith, this is a problem that's been around for a while, the government, as I understand it, have tried to address it, it sounds as if they still haven't solved it. REITH They haven't solved it fully. I think partly because government have approached the issue on the basis that you allow people to do a little bit of work as a stepping stone back to work. So they've introduced something called permitted work, where you can be on incapacity benefit and earn a certain amount, and they proposed - very recently they've proposed to extend that for a year, that you would be able to do that. Now the difficulty for Amanda's friend is that it's not a stepping stone back to work for her, this is what she is able to do. And unfortunately we don't have a system that allows people to do the sort of maximum that they are able to do and allow them to be rewarded for that. It is something that we've pressed government for. At the moment if you can do 16 hours or more a week you can get into the tax credit system, so that you can get your wages topped up. But if you can only do 8 or 10 hours a week there's really no support out there at all. WHITE And there's nothing in the new changes which addresses this? REITH Nothing that I've seen no. WHITE Right okay. Amanda, thank you very much for your call. Evelyn Stewart is calling next, good afternoon. STEWART Ah good afternoon Peter. Yes I'm calling to say that I'm completely against this proposed legislation to incapacity benefit because I believe that at this particular moment, with an election coming up, it's more or less a cynical targeting of the disabled in order for the government to sound tough. And that by making references to people playing by the rules and references to the large amounts of people on incapacity benefit, it's making an insinuation that there's widespread fraud etc., but one of the reasons why there's so many people on incapacity benefit, it's due to large numbers of women entering the labour market. But it's not - it's not talking about the cuts that have already been made to invalidity benefit previously and that before people were entitled to work related supplements, which have been cut. WHITE Would you accept that as with almost any benefit there is some fraud? STEWART Well in the case of incapacity benefit I believe there is a tiny amount - I think it's 0.5% of fraud, which is absolutely tiny. But I think that this is a cost cutting exercise that will create a lot of suffering because it's going to divide people into league tables of illness, there are going to be the deserving sick and the undeserving sick and it will force large amounts of people onto lower levels of benefit indefinitely and create a lot of poverty. WHITE Okay, thank you very much indeed for your comments. I want to take a call from a doctor in the Manchester area who is - prefers to remain anonymous. Good afternoon. DOCTOR Hello. WHITE Yes what was the point you wanted to make? DOCTOR It's a simple point really. Patients coming into A&E, into clinics, with medical problems, say, for example, back pain, which is the reason for which they are receiving an incapacity benefit, quite often come in, are examined by us and as professionals we feel that there is nothing really that wrong with them, that they could - and that they could be working. And it's - the point I wanted to make was that this is a really frequent occurrence, and is something I see daily. WHITE There are tests of course for people, which are conducted by doctors. Wouldn't doctors who actually conducted fairly - what are supposed to be fairly rigorous tests - would they not pick up this fact? DOCTOR Possibly but I can only tell you what I see on a daily basis. A lot of these people are fit and well and in my professional opinion able to work. WHITE Okay, thank you very much indeed. I want to go to Jennifer, who's calling from Preston, good afternoon. RORRISON Hello Peter. WHITE What was the point you wanted to make? RORRISON Well the point I was wanting to make was that people who do suffer particularly from mental illness can if forced back into the workplace, without the right support, end up suffering greatly. In my case I was sent back to work in 1977 and I took that on board myself and nobody would employ me, so I set up my own business, only to suffer a relapse of the mental breakdown and to lose my house and to end up as an elderly person without the opportunity to restore my life and work and rebuild the capital that I had behind me for my old age. WHITE And are you saying that you felt under pressure to work, I mean would it have been your preference or were you - or was it your feeling that you weren't able to work? RORRISON I think it's been said that most people in this situation want to work and you do want to work because it's a way of keeping yourself occupied as well as anything else - as meeting other people and being a normal part of the community. So you want to take on board the fact that you can work, the difficulty is if you then suffer a repetition of the illness - I could insure myself for broken legs etc., but I couldn't insure myself for another breakdown. WHITE Jennifer thank you very much indeed. We're getting a lot of e-mails, we had a lot beforehand and they're still coming in. John has them. WAITE Duncan and Lesley Cox, Peter, from the Warwickshire network for ME wrote: Most of us would agree that anyone who can work should work, however, there's genuine concern amongst many patient groups, such as ours, that in the government's attempt to balance the books by getting a million people off incapacity benefit many people with long term health problems will be subjected to an entirely inappropriate work focused means test. Susan Evans in Wales retired from work five years ago at age 46, she says: I'd like to return to work and I can contribute another 15 years at least I'm sure, especially if I could work flexibly between home and the workplace. I've tried a number of retraining courses but there's no support for higher level retraining, such as a degree or postgraduate course, a qualification that would allow you to earn enough part time or become self employed. Barbara Black wrote: Like all the brilliant ideas of our great governors it all sounds great on paper but try and find an employer who'll take you on, dealing with the incapacity that you have, most of them are almost running to the door when they hear the word disability. I have a daughter who's trying to get weekend or part time jobs and she gets the distinct impression the moment she's hears mention - she mentions her disability their eyes glaze over. And finally William says: I paid my national insurance whilst I was able to work believing that the nature of an insurance meant that it was there to help if the unexpected happened. Well this has happened to me and I'm sure countless others who are not playing the system and who now require genuine financial help. WHITE Thank you John. Lorna, there's an anecdotal incompatibility isn't there between those e-mails - all of which came from people who said they were on incapacity benefit and wanted to work - and the A&E doctor who said what many other people say - and we'll probably get more calls about it - which is there are a lot of people swinging the lead. How do you square the circle? REITH I'm a bit puzzled by the A&E doctor because I don't know that an A&E doctor's job is to ask people what benefit they're on when they come into a hospital. WHITE No but is she saying that what she observed as a trained doctor, it's probably not her job but you know, that's her view as based on seeing people every night coming into an accident and emergency area. REITH Well I mean my experience with people with back pain is that one of the biggest problems they face is that it's not visible and the pain and the discomfit that they suffer is something that other people don't understand. I think what's quite interesting is that the government's Pathways to Work programme, which they launched about a year ago and which is proving very successful, has within it pain management programmes and that includes taking on people with back pain. And rather than saying to people well you don't really have back pain at all, actually acknowledging that for that person that they do have back pain and giving them a way to deal with it, does seem to be much more effective in assisting people back to work. WHITE Okay, thank you very much indeed. Let's go to Keith O'Neill who's calling from Chesterfield. Keith. O'NEILL Hi. I've got many concerns about the Secretary of State's proposals. First of all, Pathways currently exist in the area I work in, the Job Centre Plus has already - has already gone live with the Pathways pilot. I work as a welfare rights advisor, one of my colleagues was with me the other day, we tried to get somebody an appointment who was on incapacity benefit to see the incapacity benefit claimant advisor and we were told there was a six weeks waiting list and she could see her in six weeks time. I'm worried that cuts in staff - and that's what we're really talking about here I fear - is that the whole project is about cutting staff from a system which is straining at the seams now. The social security staff are having a hard job coping with the work they've got now. WHITE So you fear that even if the - if the thrust - if the idea behind this is to get people back to work there won't be the staff to actually do it because I think - I mean they have said that these Job Plus centres will - will increase, there will ... O'NEILL But where are they going to get the staff from when they're cutting staff from all government departments? WHITE Okay, that's a job I'd have to put to Alan Johnson and he's not here now but thanks very much for making the point. Keith Jones is calling from Ebbw Vale. Keith good afternoon. JONES Yes hello Peter. It may well be that they're trying to get people back to work but my experience shows me that the system is in fact weighted against you going back to work. WHITE In what way? JONES Well two things really. First of all, the generosity of the payments are such that you just can't afford to go back to work and secondly the attitude of the people at Job Centre Plus and other such organisations is shall we say less than helpful. WHITE Can I - just to take up the point about the generosity - as I understand it, as they stand at the moment, the incapacity benefit is 拢74 a week, now that's - most people who are on a wage wouldn't regard that as overly generous. JONES No but that's only one benefit you get you see Peter, there are a whole range of benefits that you get alongside that as I think one of your other callers said a little while ago, things like income support, council tax benefit, housing benefit and so on. I worked it out once that in order to make it worth my while working I would have to find a job paying at least 拢12,000 a year. WHITE Are you on incapacity benefit yourself? JONES Yes and these other ones. I've been trying to get back to work for several years, I'm just getting no help, in fact I'm being encouraged not to. WHITE I mean you're in South Wales, in Ebbw Vale, which is an area of - is one of those so called clusters of incapacity benefit, are there jobs there that you could get? JONES Yes, there are jobs there it's just that I have - well the employers aren't all that interested and the people who are supposed to be helping you just don't seem to want to bother to do the work. WHITE Lorna Reith, I want to go into that because it's very interesting to get the angle from Keith that he couldn't - he reckons he couldn't afford to go back to work, he's talked about the lack of jobs but he's also talked about the relative - what he sees as the generosity of the benefits if you take them all together. REITH Well I think he - it would be useful for him to get what we call a better off calculation done because there have been changes in the benefit system over the last couple of years and of course you can get housing benefit and council tax benefit when you're working, if your wages are low. There's also now working tax credit, which you can get whether or not you've got dependent children and that's relatively new. Now that would make quite a big difference. WHITE If you're lazy it's got to be quite a big difference hasn't it, if you're saying I'm actually - I may not be even financially better off but if I don't want to work is there enough there to make the difference between me getting up in the morning? REITH Well I suppose most of the people I come across do actually want to work but obviously if people are worried about the financial consequences of doing that, that would be quite a big barrier for them. WHITE Let me go to another caller because - related to this in a way. Margaret Turay, Margaret good afternoon. TURAY Good afternoon. I am - I agree with the doctor and the last caller. I think there are a lot of people out there who could actually go to work and I know of quite a few who could work. But because of the system and the generosity of what they get they're quite happy to stay at home. I hear of other people who go to work and they do so hard and they're taxed so hard that at the end of the day they're better off sitting home. What I want ... WHITE Yeah sorry go on. TURAY What I want to know is how often are these people checked and assessed for the disability payments that they get? WHITE Okay, well Lorna can probably - I mean that's part of this idea isn't it, part of Alan Johnson's idea. Lorna how often are people reassessed? REITH Well there're probably more than one disability benefit, the lady's talking about but for incapacity benefit people go through the personal capability assessment, which is the sort of medical test that people are talking about. Depending on their condition they will be retested at regular intervals. Now somebody, for example, who's got a mental health problem may well be retested every six months, every nine months. Somebody who's got a condition that is unlikely to change may only get tested every couple of years. So there isn't a one size fits all but it is certainly the case that most people get regularly retested. WHITE Let me go to Anna MacLellan in North Wales. Anna, good afternoon. MACLELLAN Hi, hello. WHITE What was the point you wanted to make? MACLELLAN Well listening to the speaker immediately - just gone, the means test I went through last year was just horrendous, I found it quite harrowing and well I'm off - I'm on benefits because of anxiety and the journey I had to make to get this means test - the interrogation and the finding of the place all on my own and getting back home by bus, the whole thing was just totally traumatic for me. And it set me back really quite drastically and I wrote about it and the CAB woman took the letter and took it down and it was read in Parliament. WHITE So you found it a distressing experience. I want to go to Steven Evans in Exeter, Steven good afternoon. EVANS Good afternoon, hi. WHITE Yeah what was the point you wanted to make? EVANS Well I think everyone's concentrating on - quite rightly - on problems we've got with different types of people on benefit. I was manager of a homeless charity for two and a half years in Exeter and there's quite a large proportion of people who find themselves homeless are in receipt of a number of benefits, one of them the incapacity. And that may well be - I think someone's mentioned mental health issues or possibly even substance misuse, which of course is drugs or alcohol. And it's - in my opinion - it's money wasted because that is a huge outlay for the government to make when actually that money could be better spent on providing other services. WHITE But what would you do instead because if people are in trouble, even if it's self-induced, there's no point in just leaving them is there? EVANS Oh no, no I wouldn't advocate that at all but what I think is that money could be spent on more support services and actually supporting the current services, who are hugely underfunded, in doing it that way, rather than giving intensely vulnerable people fairly, for them, sizeable sums of money on a regular basis. And they're hugely vulnerable to having it taken off them by others in similar situations etc. WHITE Steven Evans thank you very much for the call, which is the last one. Lorna Reith thank you very much indeed. And thank you to all of you who called, we fitted in as many as we could. Back to the You and Yours homepage The 大象传媒 is not responsible for external websites |
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