I’ve said it before in this column, I’m about to say it again and I’m sure it won’t be the last time: the lunatics seem to have taken over the running of the asylum again back in the UK. Virtually every day some new piece of madness is uncovered by the media.

 

On the day I am writing this it emerges that incapacity benefit tests find that 80 per cent of people tested were found to be fit for work. The Department for Work and Pensions decided that 57 per cent of claimants were no longer eligible for the hand-outs. A further 21 per cent could carry out some sort of work with the right support. Only one fifth of claimants – 22 per cent – were unable to do any form of employment.

 

What is even more extraordinary is that the numbers claiming either the incapacity benefit or the employment support allowance are at their lowest level since 1996 following the introduction of the tests. There are still 2.6 million people claiming the benefits, nearly a million of whom have been on them for more than a decade. What must the figures have been before these tests were introduced?

 

At least some sense is being introduced into the situation. About 1.5million people claiming incapacity benefit are being reassessed for its replacement – the employment support allowance – to see if they are able to carry out work. Claimants who pass the first stage of assessment are then placed into three groups: Those who need permanent support, those who might be able to work after a few months and those fit to work. If placed in the last category they are told to resubmit a benefits application but only for jobseekers allowance.

 

An extraordinary aspect of this ongoing row over the government’s £26,000 benefits cap is that on one side there are five bishops who want it raised and on the other the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey who insists the sheer scale of Britain’s public debt – which hit £1 trillion that week - is the ‘greatest moral scandal’ facing the country and warns the welfare system is rewarding fecklessness and irresponsibility.

 

He said opponents of the proposed limit on benefits encouraged the culture of welfare dependency which led to ‘poverty of aspiration’, adding that “If we can’t get the deficit under control and begin paying back this debt we will be mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren.” Those that support the cap of £26,000 (and some believe that is too high) point out that to receive that out of earned income you would have to be paid £35,000 gross and, as Lord Carey point out, some families are able to claim a total of £50,000 a year in welfare benefits.

 

As I said at the beginning, the lunatics are back in charge of the asylum.

 

DEREK HARVEY