Iain Duncan Smith is Jesus Christ. For anyone who missed the Second Coming, it happened at around mid-morning on Thursday when it became apparent that the secretary of state for work and pensions has started to cure the disabled and chronically sick.
I mean, he hasn’t actually cured anyone yet. But I assume it’s only a matter of time, because thousands of severely ill and disabled people have had their benefits cut since the DWP deemed that they would “recover” from their degenerative conditions in order to go to work. Recover, that is, from a condition that by its very definition is bound to get worse.
It has emerged that more than a third of people with disabilities such as Parkinson’s and MS are being denied the full version of employment support allowance and pushed into “work-related activity” – the group expected to be well enough to work, that gets less money, and is routinely sanctioned.
Forget the surgeon who enabled a paralysed man to walk again, IDS is the real disability hero of the week. He hasn’t even had medical training, but you don’t see that stopping him. If the DWP decides someone with Parkinson’s will get better in order to find a job, why would medical science disagree? And if they say they are in pain or their limbs are trembling, cutting their benefits should incentivise them to deal with it.
Let’s not be shy about the scale of this. Almost 8,000 people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, muscular atrophy, Parkinson’s disease, cystic fibrosis and rheumatoid arthritis have been put on this lesser “will be able to work soon” benefit, according to an investigation by the conditions’ respective charities. Of these, 5,000 people were put into the category despite assessors actually writing the phrase “unlikely [to be fit for work] in the longer term” on their reports.
It is unclear exactly how IDS is achieving this modern-day miracle. In my mind, I imagine I’d have to rub his scalp for an hour until a ball of light-filled energy shivered through his shiny head to each strand of my genetic makeup. But these are just details. Nonsensical, borderline disturbing details that I just made up. Which, funnily enough, is exactly how disability benefit policy seems to be constructed under this government.
This level of incompetence means that seven out of 10 new claimants with a progressive condition have been reassessed two or more times on the same claim. Because it’s good to check that a person’s cystic fibrosis didn’t scrub off in the last month after a few really nice baths. Health experts claim that repeatedly harassing people who are too ill to get out of bed and threatening to remove the money they need to eat is causing stress and anxiety.
Is no one grateful for attention, any more? IDS hates ingratitude. As he told Channel 4 news this week when Krishnan Guru-Murthy suggested disabled people felt “hard done by” under this government’s policies: “We probably spend more on disabled and sick people in Britain … than almost any other country in the developed world.” He doesn’t let the fact that this is a lie stop him. He inserts the word “probably” and then says whatever fits with his policies.
I believe IDS is “probably” incompetent and is reducing thousands of people, scared, in pain, and humiliated, to poverty. This latest farce is emblematic of a government-wide culture of dehumanising, dangerous benefit cuts that have rotted every part of the social-security system and are causing people to die.
For this government, work for disabled people doesn’t simply mean paying them less. It means forcing them into the job in the first place. The terrifying thing is that this isn’t a joke. Iain Duncan Smith has been given the power to play with people’s lives.
