Claims for disability benefit have more than doubled in some parts of the country as people scramble to 'get ahead' of a tough new regime coming into force today.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said the surge was an illustration of the need to reform a 'ridiculous' system which has seen the numbers claiming spiral to 3.2 million, at a cost to taxpayers of £13.2 billion – about the same as the entire budget of the Department for Transport.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, he accused Labour of writing an '£80 billion suicide note' by opposing all of the Government's attempts to rein in the bloated welfare budget.
And he took a swipe at a Left-wing establishment railing against benefit reform 'as if it was Armageddon', condemning both Church leaders and the BBC for 'screaming and shouting' about 'common sense' proposals.
Mr Duncan Smith's provocative intervention comes amid a deepening welfare battle between the Conservatives and Labour, which has rejected all of the Government's attempts to rein in the vast benefits budget.
The Opposition reacted with outrage last week after David Cameron and George Osborne said the case of child killer Mick Philpott, whose benefit income pushed him into the top two per cent of earners, raised questions about whether the state should any longer subsidise such lifestyles.
The latest in a series of radical changes to the welfare system come into effect today – with most benefits being uprated by just one per cent, below inflation, and disability living allowance (DLA) being replaced with a new personal independence payment (PIP).
Official figures suggest that 71 per cent of those being paid DLA get the benefit 'without systematic checks' and that there has been a sharp increase in parts of Britain, notably the North East and the North West, in the run-up to reform.
In the North East, there was an increase of 2,600 in claims over the last year, up from 1,700 the year before, and 4,100 in the North West, more than double the 1,800 the previous year.
'Seventy per cent of people on it have lifetime awards which means no-one sees you ever again. It doesn't matter if you get better or your condition worsens - it's quite ridiculous,' Mr Duncan Smith said.
'There are websites dedicated to telling you how to avoid the pitfalls of making a claim for DLA. We have seen a bit of a rise in the run-up to PIP - in some parts of the North West a doubling in claims. And you know why? They know PIP has a health check. They want to get in early, get ahead of it.
'It's a case of “get your claim in early”.'
Furious: George Osborne last night spoke of his 'anger' over the broken benefits system left behind by Labour
Charities have voiced a chorus of protest at the plans to slash the disability benefit bill. A poll by campaign group Disability Alliance found that nine per cent of claimants said losing DLA 'may make life not worth living'.
This morning, Scope chief executive Richard Hawkes described the new assessment system as 'deeply flawed'.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: 'The DLA is a lifeline for disabled people and the Government are taking it away from 600,000 people.'
He added: 'We agree with the principle that there should be an assessment but surely the assessment should be about determining who are the right people to get support and what support do they need?
'This assessment will not achieve that at all. This assessment is deeply flawed for two reasons. First of all the assessment itself has been designed to achieve a budget target of the reductions that the Government talked about in the Comprehensive Spending Review.
'They said there was going to be a 20 per cent reduction. They have then developed an assessment that will deliver that and they have then assessed how many people will lose it accordingly.
'The assessment itself looks at an individual's condition - the health or the medical condition of an individual. It doesn't look at what the fuller picture is and what the additional costs might be of being a disabled person.
'For example you could have two wheelchair users with a very similar condition. One might live in a city with access to travel routes, one might live in the countryside without that the additional cost of being disabled is very differ depending on your overall life situation.'
But without reform, ministers say one in every 17 people would be claiming DLA by 2018 – more than three times the number who received it when it was created in 1992.
The vast majority of claimants get the benefit 'for life', often having filled in an initial claim form about their capability themselves, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.
But ministers insist around a third of people with a disability typically have a change in a condition in a year – some for the worse, but many for the better.
Mr Duncan Smith said rigorous new health checks for claimants were a 'common sense thing to do'.
'If you've got a disability payment made shouldn't you make sure taxpayers' money is not spent on people who do not need it?' he said.
WE INHERITED A BROKEN SYSTEM, SAYS OSBORNE
George Osborne last night spoke of his ‘anger’ over the broken benefits system left behind by Labour.
The Chancellor accused critics of the Government’s welfare reforms – including the Church – of being ‘lazy’, by refusing to offer alternative ways of reining in the vast benefits bill.
His comments came as David Cameron warned that the benefits system had ‘lost its way’.
Mr Osborne told Radio Five’s Pienaar’s Politics show: ‘I have to make a lot of very difficult decisions about public spending, and I have to make very tough decisions about Government programmes, about the salaries we pay people in the public sector.
‘What I find both angry and frustrating is that too much money is spent in the wrong way in our welfare system, and if we weren’t spending the money in that way we’d actually be able to make easier choices in other government programmes where we’d actually like to invest more money.’
Writing in The Sun, Mr Cameron said ministers were determined to reform a system that was trapping hundreds of thousands of people on welfare and allowing others to view handouts as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
'Everybody will get regular checks but it's not about harming them. If you listened to the Left you'd think it was all nasty and vicious - it's not. Taxpayers pay out £50 billion in sickness and disabilty benefits - we're ahead of pretty much every other major country in the G20.
'So this is not exactly what you would call harsh - this is quite reasonable to get it back under control and stop the unnecessary growth levels and make sure people who really seriously need it get better payments and people who don't will get less.'
Mr Duncan Smith said it was obvious that significant reform was needed, given that between 1997 and 2010 spending on welfare increased by some 60 per cent in real terms - equivalent to an extra £2,900 cost per household.
Last year some £200 billion was spent on the overall welfare budget - more than a quarter of all Government spending. Since the recession, those in work have seen their earnings increase only half as quickly as out of work benefits, at a rate of around ten per cent compared to 20 per cent for those on welfare.
The Government has responded by capping increases for benefits to one per cent a year for the next three years. Mr Duncan Smith said that would still mean every low income household reliant on out-of-work benefits will see cash increases in benefits and tax credits in every year of this Parliament.
Many other countries suffering from the economic downturn are cutting their benefits significantly, he pointed out. Ireland has cut unemployment benefits by four per cent a year for two years since 2010, Portugal has recently cut unemployment benefits by six per cent and Spain has cut payments to people unemployed for longer than six months by ten per cent.
The Work and Pensions Secretary rounded on Labour's opposition to welfare reform – likening it to the party's disastrous 1983 election manifesto, which was branded the longest suicide not in history.
'The honest truth is the Labour Party has turned more Left-wing than I can recall at any stage,' he said.
'They opposed about £80 billion worth of cuts. £80 billion is a long suicide note. Their view is we have got to borrow more, spend more, tax more. They opposed the Chancellor's Budget, which was good on corporation tax, fantastically good for small business.
'This is all negative stuff. If Tony Blair was trying to teach them one thing, it was to live in the real world, be honest with people, or they won't believe in you. They are now trying to say there's a fairy godmother that's going to come round the corner, wave a magic wand and we're going to be able to spend, spend, spend again.
'If you were dealing with the situation the country's in as a family that had run up huge borrowing, would you retrench, or just spend more and work on the principle that at some point in the future you hope you'll be earning more, so go for it?
'It's all about running away from the reality. The question they can't answer is which of these things are they going to reverse? At every given opportunity they oppose it. It's shameful. They are just trying to whip up anger.'
'Everybody will get regular checks but it's not about harming them. If you listened to the Left you'd think it was all nasty and vicious'
Iain Duncan Smith
Religious leaders who have accused the Government of attacking the poor, he insisted, had been 'wrong from day one'.
'If the welfare system was the right system then why are so many people parked out of work? One in five households have no one in work, two million kids live in workless households, a benefits bill that increase by 60 per cent,' he said.
Of the BBC's coverage of welfare changes, which has been criticised by Tory MPs, Mr Duncan Smith complained: 'The word reform very rarely passes their lips. But the word cuts is always in their broadcasts.'
Mr Duncan Smith also confirmed the Government is considering introducing a 'temperature test' to prevent benefits such as winter fuel allowance being paid to ex-pats living on the Costa del Sol.
He also said he wanted to end the 'bonkers' payment of child benefit to immigrants even if they families have remained in their home countries.
'Within the EU they say if you work in a particular country, and there is a system of support for children that is higher than in their home country, the net difference has to be paid back to their family,' he said.
'There is a counter argument that says that's being done where it's a contributory benefit. Child benefit was never a contributory benefit so we are looking at this with the Chancellor.
'If your child is living back in a low-cost area I frankly think it is bonkers for us to have to pay this extra money. Someone's already over here, sending money back so why do we have to pay the child benefit?'
Replacements for disability living allowance are not intended to save money but ensure the pot is better spent, a senior minister said today.
Disabled People Minister Esther McVey said the Government would be spending broadly the same amount on boosting the income of disabled people at the end of this Parliament, about £13.8 billion.
But she said the reforms would slow the expansion in the benefit to new claimants and make sure it goes to those who need it most.
Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, she said: 'There are no targets... (the changes) were really to reflect today's understanding of disability, to take into account cognitive, learning, sensory, fluctuating, conditions that had not really happened in 1992 which was very much about physical conditions.
'It was about ensuring it did not continue at the growth it was going... it was about the fact that by 2018 we couldn't have one in 17 people in the public on the benefit. It was about stopping this growth that had gone up.
'But it was about spending the £13 billion every year on those people who need it most.'
Disability living allowance is being replaced with the Personal Independence Payment from today, with the changes being phased in over several years.'
