"Ending unconditional entitlement"

Chris Grayling is a Conservative MP in the UK. Here is his plan for their incapacity benefit ( which has proportionately more recipients than our sickness and invalid benefits);

120,000 more people claim incapacity benefit than 10 years ago and 52 per cent more under-24s are claiming than in 1997. Half a million people under 35 are now claiming the benefit. More than half of the people now claiming incapacity benefit have been receiving it for more than five years.

The majority of people signed on to this benefit by filling in a form and sending in a note from their doctor. Most claimants are then simply left to their own devices. We will change that. We will contact every single one of those 2.6 million people as quickly as possible. We will carry out face-to-face interviews with all of them, to assess what they can do, and how we can help them back into work. It's a big task, and it won't be done overnight, but it has to be done, and as rapidly as possible.

Our initial aim will be to offer most people a place on a structured programme of support to find them a job. We know that as many as a million people claiming incapacity benefit say that they hope to get back into the workplace. We will offer them the help they need to achieve that.

Those who don't want to accept that offer will be expected to undergo a full medical check to confirm what they can and can't do now, and what they might, with the right support, be able to do in the future. It will be done by someone independent, so the relationship with a family doctor doesn't affect the outcome.

Those found to be perfectly capable of working will lose their entitlement to incapacity benefit immediately. Many have been abusing the system. They will be transferred into the normal process for Jobseekers and will be expected to start looking for work straight away. Based on the experience of other countries, we expect at least 200,000 people to be affected.

Those who have the potential to get back into work - even if it's a different kind of job - but still have mental or physical hurdles to overcome will be required to join a return-to-work programme. Only those whose incapacity makes it impossible or unrealistic for them to work will be able to continue to claim the benefit without conditions.

For Britain such an approach marks a revolution in our welfare state. It marks an end to a situation where the receipt of incapacity benefit is an unconditional entitlement. In the future it will carry with it the responsibility to do everything that you can to get back into work and help lift yourself out of the poverty trap that incapacity benefit represents for so many people. It's already happening in places like New York. It's something we should aspire to in Britain.

A country where a young man and his family regard it as an achievement to get onto the "sick" is one that desperately needs reform. A country that brings in millions of workers but can't help people out of the trap that incapacity benefit has become, is one that desperately needs change.


Ending unconditional entitlement is the most important phrase here. The principle of discretionary granting must replace universality with some sort of appeals authority backing up the system. That's a start but I think that the Tories may have to change laws first. Ultimately incapacity benefits should be part of health funding and, as such, covered by insurance and even operated by competing private sector companies to prevent abuse.

Only a small group would have no means to contribute. Treat them separately. I have said it before. We (and the Uk and Australia) have our entire social security system designed around the worst case scenario with everyone lumped in together. Hence it is out of control.

Until the individual is responsible for insuring himself for adverse outcomes (with a commensurate tax cut) the distortionary and corrupting incentives will continue to make systems more damaging than useful.