“Official figures had previously shown that two million long-term sick-pay claimants were well enough to work as were almost eight in every 10 of those applying for incapacity benefit” Daily Express, 10 January 2010
Newspapers certainly do like to speculate about the proportion of people claiming Incapacity Benefit (IB) that may actually be well enough to work after all. Interspersed with anecdotes about people such as the X-Factor's Wagner, we get statistics such as those quoted above.
But the claim that two million of the people on incapacity benefit are actually well enough to work, is about as credible as a break-dancer being eligible for such payments.
Analysis
The misunderstanding of the figures comes from working back from the statistic that eight in every ten applicants for incapacity benefit is fit to work – a statistic that is a little more accurate, but does not fit the way it has been employed by the Express.
Statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published in the autumn showed that 79 per cent of all applicants for Employment Support Allowance (the benefit which replaced Incapacity Benefit in 2008) did not end up receiving support through the system.
The Express confirmed to Full Fact that they worked from the statistic that nearly eight in 10 ESA applicants were fit enough to work. Applying it this proportion to the 2.5 million on incapacity benefits, the paper concluded this would mean two million people fit to work.
There are a number of problems with working out the figure in this way. Firstly the only figures that exist are those for ESA applications, and at present there are approximately 500,000 ESA recipients compared to over two million on IB.
Because of this, there is simply no data to back up the contention that official figures show two million people on IB are fit to work. DWP is currently in the process of reassessing IB recipients and moving them onto ESA, but so far this has only been based on two pilots in Burnley and Aberdeen.
As assessments are ongoing, there will be no figures until the the nation-wide assessments are complete, as Neil Coyle, Policy Director at the Disability Alliance explained: "There is no evidence to suggest two million Incapacity Benefit claimants are fully fit for work.
“The Government will not even be testing two million IB recipients and ESA is an entirely different benefit to IB with much tougher access which is penalising many disabled people. It is not possible to say how many IB recipients won’t receive ESA but the Government expects less than one in eight of the current IB caseload to be put on Jobseeker’s Allowance.
“The only way we will know for definite how many people will be found fit for work is after the assessments have been undertaken."
Not only do no official figures exists, but the projections from the Department of Work and Pensions themselves are much lower.
Back in October, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith estimated that as IB recipients are re-assessed and moved onto ESA, 23 per cent would be found fit to work immediately.
With just over two million IB claimants and almost quarter forecast to be fit to work, several papers ran with the forecast that 500,000 claimants could return to work, including the Daily Express.
Actually, given that DWP have said that they will only reassess 1.5 million of the claimants, 23 per cent of this number would see approximately 345,000 people forecast to be ready to work – far, far, lower than the two million figure given in the Express.
Finally there is a problem with taking decisions made about the status of new applicants as the guide to the status of actual claimants.
While the DWP research does show that 22 per cent of ESA applicants ended up receiving the benefit, this doesn't necessarily mean the people who did not receive the benefit were never in a situation where they were not entitled to the benefit.
The most recent figures show that 36 per cent of those who applied for ESA withdrew their claims before the assessment was completed. A report for the DWP on the system found that “improved health is a significant reason for people leaving ESA prior to receiving their WCA decision.”
That the 79 per cent figure fit to work figure includes people who did not have assessments because their health improved means using this number to reach an assessment of how many people who did go through with claims were fit to work would therefore be skewed.
It is also worth keeping in mind that these figures do no cover decisions that have been appealed by applicants. DWP statistics suggest that 33 per cent of those deemed fit to work appealed the decision, and of these cases 60 per cent saw the original decision confirmed.
Conclusion
Clearly there is little grounding for the claim that two million recipients of incapacity benefit are fit to work.
Not only are there no official figures showing this, as the article suggested, but the extrapolation by which the Express has arrived at its figures is unsound.
The problem with such claims is that by claiming this as an official statistic it will create the impression among readers that a much higher proportion of IB claimants are fit to work than is actually the case, fostering negative perceptions of those who claim the benefit.
Not only this but once the figure is committed to paper it is then liable to be picked up and repeated with no regard to its accuracy. Since the Express used this claim it has also been rehashed in the Daily Mail.
Given this we will be seeking a correction of the reports in both publications, along with any others that have used it.