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The source data does not support his (and by proxy, your) points. The bulk of the growth in claimant count came from Feb 17 to Mar 20 - it nearly doubled over that period, when conditionality of benefits was in full swing. It simply does not follow that conditionality reduces claimant count. In any case, conditionality was reinstated in July 20, and unless you or Fraser can precisely define how conditionality was "not properly restored", I'm going to take the government's word on it. Per his tweet, https://twitter.com/FraserNelson/status/1530206631195201536/..., we can see in his computation of those on out-of-work benefits he includes pension credit (what demographic receives this, I wonder?), and 1.7M people on INCAP - the various disability allowances, the majority of whose claimants will, due to the closure of the old schemes to new claimants, be on the modern ESA benefit where eligiblity is assessed by an independent healthcare professional. For example, as my mother withered away in her final months, bedbound with oesophogal cancer, she became eligible for ESA, and contrary to one of your other comments to another poster about the 5 million, she most assuredly was dying. Note also that UC is in turn becoming a replacement for ESA. He did not avail himself of the facility on Stat-Xplore to breakdown those aggregated UC figures into the "out-of-work" and "no work requirement" figures - they are 2,103,346 "out of work" and 1,399,843 "no work requirement" - no work requirement being defined in https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dwp-statistical-s... as "those who are not expected to work at present, such as those for whom Health or caring responsibility prevents claimant from working or preparing for work" Thus, the 5 million figure is inflated by a mere 3.1 million people who are either retired or who have been assessed as having some inability to work. I would suggest critically examining the source stats instead of uncritically accepting the interpretation of right-wing journalists with an agenda, though I fear you share said agenda... |