Govt promotes new sick benefit stats
By politics.co.uk staff
The government is promoting new figures apparently showing that nearly 900,000 Brits have spent over a decade “on the sick”.
Employment minister Chris Grayling said 889,000 people have spent all of the last ten years on sickness benefit, at an average cost of £4.2 billion.
The figure comes from a new analysis of the latest official statistics and contributes to the government’s determined agenda in getting people off welfare and into work.
“The sheer amount of people who have been left behind without any help or support to get back into work is outrageous,” Mr Grayling said.
“Thousands of people who have simply been cast aside by a welfare system that does nothing but put them in a queue for benefits and then forgets about them.
“Well those days are over. We will no longer accept a system which writes people off at a drop of the hat and expects the taxpayer to foot the bill.”
Iain Duncan Smith, work and pensions secretary, is due to publish plans to radically simplify the benefits system and cut down on benefits ‘scroungers’.
