Thanks to legislation introduced by Labour, the Tories and LibDems are now able to move almost a million people off disability benefits and onto much lower paying unemployment benefits, if any. Under the guise of getting people back into work, this is an another cynical move to cut spending as the jobs just aren’t there:
Half of those found fit for work are expected to move onto Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA); 30% will move onto another benefit; 20% will stop claiming altogether. In total, this Government is planning to move nearly one million people into the labour market over the next five years. The number of job vacancies in the first quarter of 2011 was just below 500,000 while nearly 2.5 million people were unemployed (including 1.45 million claiming JSA). When Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith claims there are enough jobs for everybody, he is wrong by a factor of five. On top of this, the number of people thrown off ESA is set to push the JSA claimant count past two million and total unemployment past three million.
It reminds me all very much of what happened here in the Netherlands when our disability benefits system was deemed too expensive, after years of having it used by employers to cheaply dump unwanted employees. But that was in the somewhat more benign economic climate of the nineties. I’m not sure it actually saved the state any money in the long run, but it sure transferred a lot of money from people on benefits to all kind of dodgy “re-integration bureaus” helping them “get back into working habits”. But it wasn’t all bad: at least some lucky duckies found gainful employment as “eggroll corner folders”!