Wrong thinking on disability fraud

The law of unintended consequences states that an intervention in a complex system always creates unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes. Nowhere is this more true than when politicians get down and dirty in the benefits system.

To recap, the government intends to cut a number of benefits to disabled people and to put disabled people through various measures intended to clarify whether they are fit for work. If they are deemed fit, to work they must go. Cue a predictable outcry from groups representing disabled people, saying that the measures will drive many disabled people into poverty and make life for families with disabled children worse, as councils chip away at local services that have supported them in the past.

This does not mean that the motives of welfare and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith are bad. I believe that he is convinced both that the welfare system is broke, and that he is the man to fix it. As he put it during his conference speech: “This government and this party don’t regard caring for the needy as a burden. It is a proud duty to provide financial security to the most vulnerable members of our society and this will not change.”

But he, and many others in the Conservative party, seem to be convinced that many people drawing benefits for disabled people (in particular incapacity benefit) are fraudsters. In a recent interview he argued that nearly a quarter of those on incapacity benefits (IB) should be able to work almost immediately—with the clear implication, of course, that a goodly number are those pantomime villains, “benefit cheats” and “scroungers.”



Yet the evidence that many on IB are scroungers is pretty dubious. A department for work and pensions study in 2006 suggested that less than 1 per cent of those on IB were fraudulent claimants. Indeed, the same study showed that far more waste in the system comes from internal fraud by those administering the system, plus human error.

The effect of “cracking down” on “benefit cheats,” as newspapers interpret such initiatives, affects all disabled people, not the few cheats in the system (whether they are disabled or not). So, as soon as the treasury invited comments on its website this July, asking for ways to reduce benefits payments, the prejudices towards disabled people came spilling out in filthy vitriol—some even harking back to Nazi Germany for ways to deal with these “burdens” on society.

One fine upstanding member of the public suggested that disabled people on benefits should be sterilised. Another that they should be used in the frontline of the Iraq war. Others railed against disabled parking spaces, and the temerity of disabled people to want to drive cars. Imagine the outcry if such comments had been made against an ethnic minority group. It took the treasury several days to remove these comments, and, to my knowledge, the chancellor has never apologised to disabled people for this misuse of the website, nor made a public statement distancing himself from such appalling hate language.

So whatever cuts to benefits George Osborne and Iain Duncan-Smith want to make, they should think of the unintended consequences of their actions. Disabled people being verbally abused because they have free parking spaces (ironically, of course, so that they can go out to work, as so many are attacked on public transport that having a car is the only safe way of getting around). Or disabled people being reported as fraudsters, falsely, to the benefits hotline, by disgruntled neighbours, and enduring months of misery till they are cleared. As Anne Novis, a disability rights activist says: “Our lives are already less valued and all the government’s plans will promote more hostility towards us.”

In times of economic downturn, hate crime research tells us, certain groups are scapegoated and blamed—think of the lynching of black people in the American south as cotton prices hit rock bottom in the late 19th century. I would hate to think that disabled people are being scapegoated in the same way during our own economic downturn, but it’s sometimes hard to see it any other way. A clear message from government, making it clear that disabled people are equal citizens, with full human rights and deserving of dignity and respect, would help redress the balance. I’m sure David Cameron, Iain Duncan-Smith and George Osborne would like to set the record straight—before the law of unintended consequences ends in a disabled person, or many, being targeted as a “fraudster.”

Katharine Quarmby is an associate editor at Prospect. Her book, Scapegoat, on disability targeted violence, will be published next spring by Portobello Press