Targetting the vulnerable

Thousands of sick and disabled people have been pressured to find work because of changes to the benefits system, a report has found.

Citizens Advice Scotland spokesman Matt Lancashire said:
"It was clear from the outset that the system was deeply flawed, and administrative problems have plagued its application throughout. As a result, many thousands of seriously sick and disabled people in Scotland have been put under pressure to find work or lose their benefit. Every CAB in Scotland has reported such cases to us, including clients who are suffering from conditions like Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, terminal cancer, bi-polar disorder, heart failure, strokes, severe depression and agoraphobia.The people we are talking about are not scroungers or benefit cheats, they are people who have suffered the tragic bad luck of becoming genuinely too ill to work."
He said, the Employment and Support Allowances do not accept "basic medical evidence", such as reports from GPs. He added:
"Our conclusion is that it has been found to be seriously flawed and is heaping unnecessary misery on thousands of the most vulnerable people in Scotland.We are calling for a full, independent and urgent review of the way this benefit operates."

More evidence that the Welfare State is failing and that fighting the rear-guard action to preserve and protect those limited ameliorations to the working class has become the foremost priority for reformers.
The welfare state of the future is likely to be only a shadow of what it was. The message of governments everywhere in this economic slump is that the proportion of national income commandeered by the state must be reduced if profits are to be restored to adequate levels. The hope of those on the Left to pay for services out of sustained economic growth is a forlorn one. Despite this, welfare systems will not be totally dismantled. Their main aim, after all, is to provide some support for workers who are ill or unemployed so that they might return to the labour market at a later date (They also help mitigate against social unrest). But notwithstanding that, we can expect to see many more cutbacks in welfare payments and services on a scale that would have been considered impossible, indeed, politically unacceptable, years ago.