Official figures just released show that over 80,000 on long-term sickness benefit are either too fat or too dependent on drugs or alcohol to work.
The figures, published by Employment Minister Chris Grayling, are the medical assessments of more than two million people who claim long-term sickness benefit and show that over 42,000 are dependent on alcohol while 37,000 are drug-reliant. Almost 2,000 are classed as too obese to hold down a job. The figures also show that thousands have been on incapacity benefit for more than 10 years.
Ministers believe that many, currently claiming long-term sickness benefit, are no longer ill and should be returned to work. In October the coalition government fast-tracked a test for all existing claimants to have a medical assessment and pilot studies have just been completed in Burnley and Aberdeen which have shown that more than a third of those assessed were deemed to be fit to work.
The Employment Minister said the benefits system has “trapped thousands of people in a cycle of addiction and welfare dependency with no prospect of getting back to work”, but his Labour counterpart, Liam Byrne, said the previous government started the testing and said that the real problem now was the current government cutting “too far and too fast”, adding to unemployment and pushing the benefits bill up further.
