Incapacity benefit and long term welfare dependency

The Sun has picked up the figures for long term welfare dependency which the DWP produced for Fraser Nelson. The paper reports that

One million jobless Britons have been living off the state for more than 12 years.

Official figures showed a further 1.9million have been on benefits for seven years or more.

This is Fraser's diagram of the numbers.

More papers are now picking up the report in the Financial Times that many new applicants for sickness benefits are being rejected. Thus the Evening Standard:

A new testing regime for sickness benefits is rejecting more than two thirds of applicants.

Data from the first wave of the system has suggested 2.6million claimants are actually fit to work.

The figures, seen by welfare experts but still to be released to the public, also say that in some regions up to 90 per cent of those on long-term ill-health payments should go on unemployment rolls.

Although yet to be confirmed, the results offer the Government a chance to drastically reduce the £12.5billion incapacity benefit bill.

The government's ridiculous benefit fraud figures put incapacity benefit fraud at £10m! - or 0.1% of the total paid out.

Not all the applicants being rejected will be fraudsters. But some of them will be.