HR Industry News

UK's youth "too sick to work"

— 3 January 2008 —

Half a million young Britons are claiming incapacity benefits according to data published today by the Financial Times.

The startling figure, obtained from the Department for Work and Pensions, shows that 504,000 people below the age of 35 claim incapacity benefits or severe disablement allowance, while 443,000 claim jobseeker’s allowance.

Despite continued government efforts to move people off welfare and into work, the figures highlight a new generation of workers moving into benefits, principally for “mental and behavioural disorders”. The figure of 504,000 includes 300,000 who are claiming for such disorders.

Paul Bivand from think-tank Inclusion, told the Financial Times that “There is a second generation of people coming onto incapacity benefits for mental reasons. This may well be related to ingrained hopelessness in particular areas.”

Ceridian’s Paul Avis, however, sounded a warning: “What is concerning here is that people with mental health problems are effectively being written off at a very early age as a combination of being unemployed for a period. Incapacity Benefit with mental health as the cause will create a raft of stereotypes for employers.”

“One should never forget that mental health can be treated, so to admit such young people onto the Incapacity Benefit implies that not all options have been explored, or that it is an expedient way of getting them onto benefits. With many unemployed people being put onto Incapacity Benefit in previous periods, mostly recessionary, and due to the concerns over increasing unemployment figures, it would be a regressive step to go back to the dark days where political massaging of figures is driving benefit strategy as this can have a devastating effect on individual lives as well as the public purse.”

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