Is there any cruelty the right-wing papers won't endorse?
Is there any cruelty the right-wing press won’t endorse?
Today they cheer on work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith as he promises to close the ‘disability employment gap’ – a nice IngSoc term for ‘make sick people work, they’re only faking or being lazy anyway’.
His plans to ‘reform’ (read: destroy) the Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and tests for sickness benefits could be dangerous. As the Times reports today, the charity Mind said four out of five Jobseekers’ Allowance claimants with mental health problems found Duncan Smith’s back-to-work schemes ‘made their mental health worse or much worse’.
On Thursday IDS will finally reveal how many people have died after having their disability benefits cut or stopped.
Despite all this, most of the Tory rags think his latest wheeze is a grand idea.
The Daily Mail is pleased the government is tackling our ‘sicknote culture’, while the Telegraph was so excited it forgot to quote, or even acknowledge, any possible opposition from charities and campaigners. Not even the Mail or the Sun did that.
Speaking of the Sun, the country’s favourite paper complains that ‘only 90,000 people have come off sickness benefit’, and says of IDS:
“Work and pensions secretary Mr Duncan Smith is a man the Left love to hate. But that says far more about them than it does about him.
As today’s changes show, he is dealing with the dependency culture created by Labour that has trapped so many people on benefits.”
It will come as news to people who cannot work because of illness, and who rely on state support to live, that they are ‘trapped on benefits’, or that they should hate the Labour party for making them ‘dependent’.
The argument IDS makes – parroted by the press – is that the options ‘fit’ and ‘unfit for work’ are too narrow, and that some people can work a bit, or do some kind of work.
No doubt attempts to remedy this will be administered with his trademark care and transparency.
But perhaps only 90,000 out of over 2 million have been kicked off sickness benefit because many people really are sick and need those benefits.
This seems too much for Iain Duncan Smith to process. To him, they aren’t working and they should be.
If there are other points of view, he’s unlikely to find them in newspapers so abject they won’t even scrutinise his policies.
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
DONATE to support MediaWatch here.
Read more:
Amazon factory conditions? Shut up or robots get your job, says Times writer
Daily Mail accuses France of ‘sabotage’ for giving beds to Calais migrants
Sign up for our weekly email by clicking here.
55 Responses to “Tory press cheers Iain Duncan Smith’s plans to force mentally ill people to work”
AlanGiles
The BBC do some dreadful cheap programmes such as “Saints & Scroungers” with that ghastly little mockney Dominic Littlewood. It is as if The Sun “newspaper” has become TV, which gives credence to some of the more lunatic Express/Sun/Mail stories
AlanGiles
And he is an unmitigated liar, both in his personal life and his job – fake leaflets last week, lies on his CV. Why this man ever became a minister is a wonder
gaia
Yes and out of all those claiming incapacity benefit or the likes, 90’000 were found to be able to.
Well IDS already achieved that so what relevance is your point exactly, are you referring to those that work and took time out recently ?
Maybe your suggesting IDS messed up on assessments, that the remaining figure, maybe your suggesting these claimants are cleverer than government and you, that the doctors are in on it perhaps ?
Im all for freedom of expression but a generic non focused comment like yours really helps no one.
gaia
Then please explain Amanda why employers are picking those already in a job or less than 6 months unemployed, even migrant workers over those long term unemployed and disabled ?
If theres plenty of work why arent employers asking less of applicants in terms of experience and qualifications, why after 5 years are there still unemployed people be they fit or disabled languishing.
IDS had everyone’s English and Maths tested, there communication skills tested, CV and cover letters courses, work programme, placements,etc for all claimants.
Its also standard practice before letting a claimant sign on weekly/fortnightly that there applications for work are scrutinized and verified so its not like there not applying for work when on ESA/jobseekers allowance.
Please tell us all how despite DWP/IDS’s intervention that the jobless total went up the last to quarters, surely if there was all these jobs, it wouldn’t happen right.
What your missing Amanda is whats termed job security. Working people don’t have the security they use to, the markets to fragile for employers to want to hire people for very long periods which should be evident to you by how the labour force market is moving with regards to people irrespective of whether there working or not.
gaia
Clearly your a sun reader as two wrongs dont make a right or should i say your contradiction in terms.