He Ain't Heavy, He's My (Potential) Voter...

Guy Parckar (the public policy manager for Leonard Cheshire Disability) has a CiF article complaining about the increased stringency of the Work Capability Assessment:

The Work Capability Assessment (WCA), which came into operation nearly a year and half ago, is the test that is meant to determine whether people are eligible to receive the new employment and support allowance, which offers support for disabled people and people with long-term conditions to get in to work. But as more figures become available showing just how tough this new test is, and as more claimants report bad experiences, have we reached the point where we need to ask whether the test itself is actually fit for work?

Typical of NuLab to make a system worse for the ones who genuinely need the help, while failing to tackle the ones playing the system...

It is not too late to widen the current review of the WCA so that it really examines what needs to happen to make sure that the benefits system meets the needs of disabled people. An assessment that just gets tighter and tighter, restricting support for more and more people, will simply not be fit for purpose.

And who'd argue with that?

Yet meanwhile, the ‘Mail’ is reporting that things aren’t apparently stringent enough…

Obese benefit claimants who are officially too fat to work have cost the taxpayer £80million under Labour.

That's a disability now?

The number of people claiming incapacity benefit because they are obese has doubled since 1997 as ministers moved people off the dole queue and on to sickness benefit.

It seems word gets round the workshy community - double up on those burgers, and you'll be untouchable!

This is, of course, flatly denied by the government:

Minister for Disabled People Jonathan Shaw said the Government had made its sickness benefit tests more rigorous to weed out the workshy from genuine claimants.

'Being obese does not qualify anyone for a handout. Incapacity benefit is paid where people are too ill to work and some people have a mix of different health conditions,' he said.

In other words, they become obese only because they have other medical conditions. Yes. All of them.

Hmm, pull the other one...

But it seems once again iDave's party are falling all over themselves to be inclusive:

The Tories have stopped short of saying that the obese should not be able to claim incapacity benefit for fear of being portrayed as 'fatist'.

How about being portrayed as 'conservative'? It'd make a nice change, wouldn't it? I mean, can the Tories criticise anyone?

However David Cameron has criticised stationer WHSmith over its cut-price confectionary deals.

Oh. Sorry I asked...