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Government incapacity benefit changes
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The tests, which are aimed at saving billions of pounds, will see those able to work put into jobs or placed on jobseekers’ allowance – slicing a third of their payments. The measures come just a week after Chancellor George Osborne revealed that child benefit is to be scrapped for higher rate taxpayers from 2013. Both moves are part of the Government’s spending cuts, designed to deal with Britain’s record deficit of £155 billion and the Chancellor has pledged to wipe out the deficit within five years. Over the last 10 years, incapacity benefit has cost the taxpayer £135 billion and is paid to just over 2 million people. Mr Duncan Smith wrote in The Times: “Whilst taxpayers rightly bemoan the wasted money which they worked so hard to earn, the human tragedy is the lost potential of so many people who have been dumped to languish at the bottom end of society.” In the Government’s emergency budget in June, it was revealed that the benefits system would be in line for a radical overhaul. The massive overhaul is aimed at helping people get back to work but, at the same time, end the situation where some risk losing out financially if they take a job. As hundreds of incapacity benefits are reassessed under the government's plan to reform the welfare system, Channel 4 News hears from a claimant worried that changes may affect his health.
Hundreds of incapacity benefit claimants are to be reassessed for their fitness to work under a pilot scheme being launched today in Lancashire and north east Scotland. Those deemed fit to work, using a points-based system, will lose their incapacity benefit and be moved to the jobseeker's allowance. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) says more than 2.5 million claim the benefit costing £12.5bn a year. Thirty-eight year old claimant Steven Dickinson, from Burnley, Lancashire, where the pilot is being launched, has told Channel 4 News that people should not be rushed back to work without their individual case being properly assessed. "Some days I can be high as a kite, other days I can’t even get out of bed," he told Channel 4 News. Steven is a former carpenter who was diagnosed with bi-polar manic depression four years ago following a long battle with mental illness. He used to make snooker cues but says his illness made him a perfectionist and he would work long hours and eventually suffer bouts of depression. He receives around £210 per week disability as well as child credits and housing benefit.
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