Yesterday, David Cameron took up the issue of people on incapacity benefits, claiming that “We are finding a large number of people who are on incapacity benefit because of drink problems, alcohol problems or problems with weight and diet” (see footage here).
There’s only one problem with the claim.
He said “a large number”. Yet the Department for Work and Pension’s own figures show that it’s less than one in twenty of people who are on incapacity benefit for those reasons (3.9%).
So if 3.9% is “a large number”, what does that make the 96.1%? A huge, enormous, gigantic, big, hefty, great, considerable, substantial, massive, vast, colossal, titanic and immense number. And then some.
Yet the story wasn’t about the good news that so few people fall into this category. Or about how tackling this issue wouldn’t be nearly enough on its own. No, that less then one in twenty was the story, repackage as large.
Dog whistle politics at least involves a certain shame-facedness about making comments that will result in a blizzard of hostile reactions. But this was just up-front misrepresentation. It was just brazen in taking the highly exceptional and the extremely unusual and presenting them as if they were the common and the ordinary.
That’s not being Prime Ministerial. That’s not showing leadership. That’s now showing compassion. It’s not even showing an understanding of what the very evidence you’re quoting actually says.
Instead it’s all about inventing scares, exaggerating fears and appealing to the very worst in the media and the public. And Liberal Democrats should be taking a leaf out of Vince Cable’s book on immigration and speaking up.
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36 Comments
Absolutely agree. This was breathtakingly awful stuff from Cameron.
Can’t argue with this at all. It was a vile thing for Cameron to say, and I only hope he said it because he’s ignorant, not because he means it.
*applause*
Perhaps the nearest thing to an angry post I have ever read from you, Mark. “HE HAS MESSED WITH A STAT! KILL!” 😉
I wondered whether saying a ‘large number’ not ‘large proportion’ gave him some wriggle room, but I don’t think so. If I said ‘there’s a large number of violent men approaching’ it would not mean a large proportion of men are violent, but if I said ‘we found a large number of men are violent’ I think it does.
I’m not surprised – he seems to be getting more and more extreme but I’m grateful in a way. He’s reminded many, myself included, why we are NEVER going to be anything other than Liberals.
Only 619 people were murdered in England and Wales last year, a tiny 0.001% of the whole population. According to Mark Pack 619 is therefore a small number and murder is a negligible problem.
Cameron said large NUMBER, not proportion. You’re blinded by your self-righteous belief that you’re more moral than the Tories and that any instinct that leads them to disagree with you must be evil.
It’s a shame – if Cameron wanted to be Prime Ministerial about it, he could have pointed out that this shows a failure on the part of the last Government to help people deal with addictions and get back into work. He could have pointed out the Coalition’s increased funding for mental health services in the NHS, and how spending this money to improve people’s lives will also save the taxpayer money in benefits payments.
But I guess us Lib Dems can make these points – especially since improving mental health provision and care has been Lib Dem policy for years.
There is also a problem with the way the data has been looked at here. A significant number of Incapacity Benefit claimants have problems like these along with other problems, for instance as a consequence of chronic illness. It is not uncommon for people with chronic pain to end up addicted to prescription painkillers – or to alcohol – as a mans of coping; and many people with serious autoimmune diseases develop related dietary problems. Cameron (and the still worse piece in yesterday’s Daily Mail) treat these problems as if, in every case, they exist in isolation.
This isn’t the only problem with the government’s approach to Incapacity Benefit. To use my own case as an illustration, I am seriously ill and disabled; I work, but my earnings are limited by these factors. My partner is too ill to work and receives Incapacity Benefit. Under the proposed changes to the system he would lose that benefit after one year simply because I work. We would lose a quarter of our income. If I wanted to put food on the table, I would have no choice but to give up work. I would, in effect, lose my right to work.
This is clearly the opposite of making work pay. I have spoken about it with a Conservative candidate, who assured me it must be an ‘anomaly’. I trust the LibDems are doing their utmost to root out such anomalies and make sure the benefit changes really help people instead of simply being used to scapegoat them.
On another note, Cameron was quite wrong to say that some people have languished unexamined on Incapacity Benefit for over a decade. Under existing rules all claimants are retested every three years.
Surely you are not shocked by this?
Ask the disabled who feel attacked for not working (when most who can do so and most who don’t require the correct support to do so).
Ask the “scroungers” working in our inner London schools and hospitals who have such high housing benefit to provide essential services.
Go back a few years and ask those miners families who were accused of scare mongering about the destruction of their communities.
There are disabled people who could work and don’t want to, but they are a tiny proportion. There are scroungers claiming housing benefit that is inflated and not justified, but they are a tiny proportion. There were miners who pursued their legitimate issues with the Thatcher government through immoral or unlawful means, but they were a tiny minority.
This is the Tory MO. Get the great British Daily Mail reading mafia behind you with untruths, half-truths and if necessary downright lies.
The coalition was (and is) the right thing to do, but it needs to be a temporary marriage of convenience and seen to be so, if not the public will start to associate Lib Dems with this type of attitude. There needs to be public and vociferous disagreement and challenges when comments or actions such as these are voiced or taken. Unless Clegg himself is willing to do so then the chances of Lib Dems gaining anything but electoral meltdown from this coalition are next to zero…
I agree with Dave.
No, not with ‘Call me Dave’ but with Dave Page.
How many of the people that Cameron has insulted are suffering from depression, or depressive episodes or addictive behaviour or other mental health issues that have a foundation in medical science but still get ignored.
All the new funding in the world for mental health services will make not one jot of difference if the people who can show leadership and change attitudes just pander to the political extremes rather than addressing serious issues that can, with the right treatment, be controlled?
It’s a rubbish way of putting things isn’t it? How many employers are knowingly going to take on an alcoholic, a drug addict or someone extremely obese? These *ARE* serious medical problems and they do make people unfit for work. Cameron should have spoken about targeting finances at intensive therapies to cure or limit these illnesses, in order that as many of these people can be returned to the labour market at the earliest point. Instead typical tabloid nonsense about “abusing the system”. No doubt there is abuse, tackle it whenever and whenever it occurs, but please don’t cast people with mental or physical disorders as national sin eaters. Typical – you would think there was an election on.
@Dave Page
I think you need to be careful before going down this route and look at the provisions put in place for addictions and disabilities by the last Government. Also I would check the facts on the ground with Mental Health Services as one of our local PCT’s have withdrawn in surgery therapy despite its proven successes.
Alcohol and substance abuse are hugely complex, but most of the population have in the past, or will in the future enjoy a social drink. For some this can lead to addiction. A surprising number have tried illicit drugs and the same is true.
I was a teenager in the 80’s and there was little if any decent support or education available. Certainly not early or wide spread enough to help. My son is 19 and has grown during the Labour years to have a good knowledge of both alcohol and drugs with excellent education programmes available. This doesn’t make Labour saints but does point to improvements.
As to disability support, access to work is a hugely beneficial programme that aids employers to accommodate disabled people. Also take a good look at the Equality Act which will again help stop discrimination in the workplace.
Cameron raises obesity and yet was amongst those calling Labour Nannying when they tried to make school food more healthy (look at the school foods trust, although their future is not certain as I understand it). Most health professionals will tell you that obesity can take hold at a very early age if a healthy diet is not encouraged.
Labour had many faults in this area (and on other posts I have slated them for the benefits medicals) and maybe should have done more. But actually they did quite a large amount of good and it would be more honest to highlight the good and look at where improvements can be made rather than pretend they did nothing.
I’m surprised he didn’t go for people on incapacity benefit for depression. That is a big proportion. Some bluster about pulling your socks up would go down great with the Daily Mail.
But this illustrates a longstanding problem for the LD’s. Which large circulation newspapers support them? None. Conservative or Labour dog whistling works because someone wants to print it – and few people have the time or inclination to look behind the headlines. How do the LD’s intend to get The Sun (say) on their side?
politics aside, if we’re talking only about how people express numbers, i think you’re being every bit as rubbish as cameron.
there are a large number of people on incapacity benefit – is it 2 million from memory? – so a twentieth of that, 100,000 people, is still a large number.
you can express that number as a percentage of the total number of people on IB, which you have done, and that gives you a small figure to write in a blog post, to belittle the problem, but that figure still lacks context and misleads, it just misleads readers in the direction you prefer.
i’m sorry not to join in the chorus of agreement but i dont think there’s any excuse for silliness with figures on any side of an argument. write out the actual numbers of people on IB with alcohol/drug/etc problems, and the number on IB in total for context, and we can decide for ourselves if we think it’s important, surely?
@Dave Page “It’s a shame – if Cameron wanted to be Prime Ministerial about it, he could have pointed out that this shows a failure on the part of the last Government to help people deal with addictions and get back into work. He could have pointed out the Coalition’s increased funding for mental health services in the NHS, and how spending this money to improve people’s lives will also save the taxpayer money in benefits payments.”
I actually heard another Tory minister making very simlar points to those on the radio about the issue.
@Edward T
You misunderstand. Mark’s point is surely not that using the phrase “large number” is inaccurate (and therefore that the number is in actual fact “small”) but that calling it a “large number” is totally meaningless. Large and small are of course relative to context and people’s opinions; their use in political discourse is almost always spurious and dubious, and ultimately meaningless. Cameron’s use of “large” here is so divorced from any context that could possibly justify it (which would not be the case if the applicable figures were 99% of all benefit claimants rather than 3%, in which case it might be considered justified; as it stands there is nothing to justify it, except possibly the fact that when you’re talking about percentages of the population the underlying number always looks “large” because the population is 60 million) that it is dubiousness of the highest order. What else would you expect from Cameron?
At least, that’s how I read this post.
Ben: I think the relevant context here is that the sorts of reasons for being on incapacity benefit that Cameron talked about get far more attention in speeches from himself and colleagues than do the other reasons which actually account for far more people. How often has Cameron talked about the need to address back pain for example? Far less often, yet it’s the cause of twice as many people being on incapacity benefits as the categories Cameron talked about. (The full figures are in the spreadsheet linked to in the post.)
to my mind, cameron’s “i pay my taxes to support people who are incapacitated through no fault of their own” line was odious.
and i’m sure there’s a huge political backstory on this which is more important to you.
but as a way of expressing the numbers, your article was simply misleading, for the reasons i explained.
@ben goldacre
“to my mind, cameron’s “i pay my taxes to support people who are incapacitated through no fault of their own” line was odious. ”
Couldn’t agree more. What about end stage lung cancer sufferers who smoked earlier in their lives, the heart disease sufferer who didn’t do enough exercise, the back pain sufferer who didn’t pay attention during manual handling training…
Where does it end ?
It’s kinda obvious why and how the Cameron has said this, he knows that soon there will be a big kick back once the reality and effect of these reforms to disability welfare becomes widely known, this is nothing but a pre-emptive strike designed to stiffen the resolve of the average daily mail reader, after all painting a ‘large’ number of claimants as nothing but ‘overeating, self indulgent, histrionic, alcoholics’ will be lapped up by most Tories, it’s just a shame that the Party seems to be going along with this ‘denigrate and attack’ tactic.
Well said Mark!
Stereotyping; creating a distinction between the deserving and the undeserving; stigmatizing and scapegoating a small proportion of our disadvantaged brothers and sisters; all with the intention of saving the necks of Tory councillors. Yes, we’ve been here with the Tories many times. How long are the Liberal Democrats going to remain in a coalition with these heartless millionaires? Get out now and salvage some integrity and dignity!
bengoldacre is right in this reporting of numbers and the inaccuracies caused. I also, however, agree with the sentiment of the article as it is clear from a political point of view what he meant and underlines the disgraceful attitude of the Tories to those who need support in order to live
over 80,000 people is a large number. Imagine the savings that could be better used if a 3.9% saving was made in Incapacity benefit. I don’t see the problem here. It is scandalous that the state allows people to waste their lives on benefits, rather than investing in them for their own better futures. The greater impact on health and social services also need to be considered.
I think Cameron is right on this one.
Sorry Mark but I have to join the minority – <4% may be a small percentage but it can still be a very large number.
I don't think your later explanation that "I think the relevant context here is that the sorts of reasons …." really cuts much ice either, your post wasn't about that, it was a moan that the PM (in your view) effectively "lied" to get a soundbite when he didn't (going by the wording you attributed to him – I never heard the speach).
Also, something big politicos tend to forget is that Joe Public tend to be wary of stats, after all they can usually be manipulated to mean anything – how many people congratulating you actually had the faintest idea how many human beings that 3.9 represented? Not many I would imaging.
While 4% can still be a large number (4% of 25m is 1m which is a large number) however what it can’t be is a large number of benefit claimants as that language implies you are talking about a percentage.
In the 2001 general election The BNP averaged 3.9% of the vote where they fielded candidates and in the 2005 election their average share of the vote in seats they contested was 4.3%,.
Can I now say that a large number of British voters during these elections where racist? would that now be a fair statement? and does that now make the BNP relevant?
My comment above was not primarily about the numbers. 80k is indoubtedly a lot of people. But it is small relative to other reasons for people claiming IB. What was more objectionable was the failure of understanding and compassion. The simplistic attempt to stigmatize people with often complex problems as self-indulgent spongers who just lack a bit of self-control was the objectionable part. It would be objectionable if we were talking about half as many people, or twice as many.
@Alex. We all hear things through our own filters, and what you heard in that speech is certainly not what I heard. I heard Cameron say that it is morally unacceptable to not help people and to leave them ‘written off’ on IB when they could find self-worth through employment, and that it is economically unacceptable to accept the status quo. And I wholeheartedly agree (as someone whose father has been on IB for a number of years and is only 62).
@nige
Posted 22nd April 2011 at 4:43 pm
“Can I now say that a large number of British voters during these elections where racist?”
Can you show that they voted on purely rascist matters as I would assume that the BNP also have policies that don’t deal with race matters? But if you can, then I’m sure you could – after all 4% of the electorate is a large number of people.
Actually the 3.9 per cent is quite a large number – the Benefit payments to this group are a not insignificant sum. And the answer to Mark’s question is, yes, the other figure is indeed a giant number.
More relevant. I think, to dissing this attack is that for whatever original reasons, a fair chunk of those people who are alcoholic etc are irredeemable so and incredibly ill. They include a significant number of ex-servicemen with PTSD.
Eighty thousand is a large number. It’s wrong to treat Cameron’s nasty remarks as purely some kind of statistical mistake. His statistics are in fact OK. What’s wrong is in the nature of his comment, not anything to do with numbers.
What is Cameron actually going to do about it? Is he going to spend a lot of new money to help people get over alcoholism or obesity? No. Is he going to let all these people starve? Broadly no. So what is he going to do? Win a few populist votes with his populist words, and then go on quietly paying benefits when there is no real alternative.
@David Allen Posted 22nd April 2011 at 6:22 pm
“…nasty remarks …” & “What’s wrong is in the nature of his comment, not anything to do with numbers.”
“Chris Grayling said private and voluntary organisations had agreed to invest £580m in treating addicts and preparing them for employment, adding that all of the conditions were treatable if people received the right support.” (from Beeb)
Is 580m nothing? It may not be Gov. money, but there again charities who deal with these issues on a daily basis are probably going to get better results that a DWP official.
“…But is it OK to leave these people on incapacity benefit, year after year, not examining their circumstances, not seeing if we can help them?” (from Beeb)
Do you think it is OK to leave them without help? (if you say no – then you agree with Cameron)
“”It traps people in long-term poverty and it is not good enough.” (from Beeb)
Do you think it is OK to leave them in long term povery? (if you say no – then you agree with Cameron)
If you’ve said no to any of those questions, then you must agree with his “.. nasty little comments …”, if you said yes, well I’ll be interested to see the LDP literature at the next GE – “LDP pledge to keep invalids on the scrap heap”
@chris_h
There’s nothing wrong with trying to get people off benefits and into employment if they really are capable of working and if there actually are jobs for them and those jobs are jobs that they can do. But what is really wrong is the orchestration of antagonism towards some of the poorest and most vulnerable in society. Something that this two faced coalition has become most adept at doing since it took office. If the coalition really cared about these people Cameron would see the priority as helping them not scapegoating them.
David Cameron is also blatently undermining Nick Clegg on interns
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13173505
I thought the media criticism of Clegg’s easy way up was slightly unfair, he wasn’t denying it and recognised it as problematic, but it seems Cameron is utterly contemptuous of Nick anyway and firmly believes that priviledge should be preserved.
Still, what do you expect if sign up for government iwth the tories…
Agree with “g”. Contemptible rubbish from Cameron. That Labour didn’t get firmly behind Clegg on this subject was very disappointing.