Reports James Kirkup in The Daily Telegraph today,

“Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, yesterday published plans to change the way people qualify for benefits on the grounds of being medically unable to work.  The Work Capability Assessment will be introduced in October 2008. It will assess what work new claimants are fit to do, replacing current tests that focus on what a claimant cannot do.  The Department of Work and Pensions said the new test would make it harder to qualify for incapacity benefit in the future.  Around 40,000 people apply each year for IB, which can be worth as much as £78 per week, and around half are expected the fail the new test when it is introduced…but the [Department of Work and Pensions] also admitted that the new test will only apply to new claimants, and will not affect the 2.7 million people currently claiming incapacity benefit.”

Oh dear, yet another example of Government mispresentation and misinformation.  When challenged by Chris Grayling, the Conservative Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Mr Hain retorted that,

“the scale of the IB roll was a legacy of the last Conservative government [which] preferred to put people on incapacity benefit where they were off the unemployment total instead of trying to find them a job because there weren't any jobs then.”

Lest anyone overlooks the fact, the last Conservative Government expired almost eleven years ago. Thus if the “last Conservative Government preferred to put people on incapacity benefit…” then successive Labour administrations did nothing to reverse the situation but in fact added hundreds of thousands more people to that particular benefits bill.  Those of a cynical disposition might conclude that Labour was more than very happy to retain the status quo for the same reason imputed to the Conservatives.  The more awkward point for Labour to explain is why the number of such claimants increased significantly during their watch.

This Government has been caught out being less than frank or not saying what it really meant on too many occasions now.  Even past instances when its word was accepted, are being revisited and different conclusions drawn.  The public no longer accepts uncritically what it is told by Labour.  The public’s irritation at being fed with endless misinformation is turning gradually to anger.  Fortuitously for the Opposition, most senior Labour politicians don’t seem to be able to change habits of a political lifetime.