It was, I believe, Fraser Nelson, the former editor of this magazine, who more than two years ago brought to Spectator readers’ attention the ballooning cost of disability benefits, and the way in which claims for mental-health disorders were skewing the system.
Since then, the problem Fraser described has been universally recognised and its gravity acknowledged. The present government is worried about the cost and the trend and has commissioned Alan Milburn to report on the situation. Milburn is an impressive former (Labour) health secretary, who can be counted on for thorough research and balanced and intelligent judgment.
His report is due next month. This week’s Budget statement is therefore likely to postpone consideration of these benefits and the swollen numbers of what we now call ‘Neets’ (people not in education, employment or training) until after the report is published. I have, however, read Milburn’s ‘Young People and Work: Interim Report’, which gives a good indication of where his conclusions are tending.
It was (I believe) I who – around the same time that Fraser was conducting his extensive researches – first suggested in the Times that the problem was that these benefits were too generous. Since then I’ve repeatedly argued that we should follow the money. I’ve maintained that the relative generosity of awards – in particular for mental health-related claims to younger claimants – was at the root of the problem.
Though the results of Fraser’s investigations are now common ground, my analysis of what’s pulling young people into welfare dependency – money – is not. It’s true that Fraser, Milburn and Sir Stephen Timms MP (who has conducted his own review) have all touched on the financial attraction of disability living allowances and personal independence payments, but so far as I can see, all commentary on the situation has focused on ‘pathways’ into work, whose provision (it’s suggested) would meet the problem.
My own newspaper, the Times, is engaged in a wider review, and reports a shocking and systemic state failure to revisit and regularly review claimants’ circumstances. I expect the Milburn Report, when we have it, will recommend the provision of new training opportunities, personal mentoring, better employment advice, mental-health therapy, face-to-face interviews and more frequent individual reviews. I might (but Milburn won’t) describe that as calling their bluff. He may also recommend tightening the criteria for the award of disability benefits, especially as regards claims for hard-to-disprove mental-health disorders like stress, anxiety, autism, depression and ADHD.
But all the advance vibes are about helping people into work. It would not therefore surprise me if the likely implementation of Milburn’s recommendations does nothing to cut but instead increases state spending in the short and even medium term.
Shepherding young people towards the jobs market requires shepherds, and one rather dreads the proliferation of shepherding agencies, state-funded programmes, therapists and public-sector job opportunities for officers to mentor, review and offer guidance to the sheep. It assumes the flock find their present paddock disobliging, but need help to escape it. That the paddock they find disobliging is the workplace may be being overlooked.
I watched the sheep at the amazing Longshaw Sheepdog Trials in Derbyshire recently. It fast becomes evident that there are places where the sheep definitely don’t want to go. Neets too. A statistic whose interpretation infuriates me, widely bandied about, comes from Milburn’s interim report: ‘In a survey carried out for this review, 84 per cent of Neet young people said they want to find a job, education or training.’
No doubt they did say that. But from this Milburn makes a huge leap. ‘Overwhelmingly, they want to work,’ he says. No, no, no! Overwhelmingly they say they want work! You would say that, wouldn’t you? Overwhelmingly we’d tell pollsters we’d like rippling muscles and toned physiques. The Milburn response might be to offer us discounted membership of a gym – but would we sign up? The only surprise in this poll is that as many as 16 per cent are honest enough to decline to say they want work.
‘Overwhelmingly, they want work,’ Milburn says. No! Overwhelmingly they say they want work!
It’s not that the 84 per cent are all lying. Many who are fit for work may tell themselves, as well as tell the pollsters, that they do want to work; it’s just that snuggled warmly in bed at 7.30 on a winter morning, with quite a substantial cheque paid regularly into our bank account by the Department for Work and Pensions, the job that would tempt us to throw back the duvet and venture out into the cold would have to pay more and be less humdrum than anything that’s actually on offer out there. The state can smooth the pathway all it likes, but the destination may be less agreeable than the status quo.
The unavoidable conclusion of my ‘follow the money’ prescription is that the state should pay Neets less. Every road to cutting benefits, however, is rocky. You could cut benefits for new claimants, cut benefits for all claimants, disqualify future but not current claimants for many mental-health disorders, disqualify even current claimants, or freeze benefits going forward… but every option creates unintended victims or invidious distinctions. Left to me, I would block my ears, hold my nose and just do it – but the screams of rage and anguish would be deafening, and I am not a minister with backbench colleagues and constituents to worry about.
I may have sounded disparaging about Milburn’s likely recommendations, but I realise he will be all too aware that any Labour chief whip’s hands will be tied by a parliamentary party whose disposition to strike down painful welfare proposals is already notorious. Perhaps all this government dare do is swathe the fist of benefit cuts in velvet: offering help while slowly tightening the noose on those who don’t take it.
This, however, will take years. We shout, the bond markets shout, I shout, for sharp cuts, soon, in the welfare bill. Disability benefits will not prove to be one of them.
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