How much of incapacity benefit is fraud?

Research for the DWP has found the 60% of sickness benefits claimants could go back to work.

The annual bill for paying incapacity claimants, including housing and council tax benefits, has reached an estimated £16 billion a year.

The total number of incapacity claimants is around 2.5m - a ludicrous 7% of the working age population - compared with just 720,000 in 1979.

More than half those have been on benefits for more than five years. In February 2001, 998,000 had been claiming for half a decade - or 41%. But that has now risen to 1.5m, around 60% of the total.

The number citing a mental condition, such as stress or depression, has risen to 40% of the total, compared with less than a quarter in 1997. This is even easier to feign than a bad back.

From 2010, all long-term claimants will have to attend 'work capability assessments' to see if they can get a job. Those who are severely disabled will receive a higher rate of benefit and will have no obligation to look for work.

Official government policy assumes that people on incapacity benefit need to be counselled and supported and encouraged and helped to find a job.

But if 7% of the working age population are on incapacity benefit, either the bar has been set far too low, or we have lots of people swinging the lead.

How much of that incapacity benefit fraudulent? £16bn is a lot of money.

The DWP pretends to think that a piffling £10m of incapacity benefit is fraudulent. Could 20% of incapacity claimants be fraudulent? Given these huge numbers, it's far from impossible. But let's assume it's half of that, just 10%. With the other associated benefits, that would be annual fraud of £1.6bn - double the government's claim that the overall total of benefit fraud is £800m. A figure which was implausibly low anyway.

The government wants to conceal the level of benefit fraud.