Part of Neil O'Brien's figures are muddled. In 1995, there were three
benefits that someone might receive through incapacity: Incapacity Benefit,
Severe Disablement Allowance (which had replaced Non-Contributory Invalidity
Pension) and Income Support. We have figures for the medical basis of IB
but not for IS. The last Labour Government "helpfully" revised the figures
retrospectively so that IB figures include IS figures from 1997 on. That
produced an illusory leap in the number of claims, from about 1.5 million to
2.5 million, and that revision distorts O'Brien's figures.
I ran the DWP's tabulation tool on three benefits, IB, SDA and ESA, looking
for the proportion of people in the ICD disease category "Mental and
behavioural disorders". The ICD category is not just a category of mental
illness. It includes "mental retardation" and
alcohol and drug abuse.
The figures come out as follows. (The reason for
picking February figures is that they're the only ones for 2012 and the Feb
2010 figures were the first I could get for ESA.)
Date ICD Total % of claims
(Feb) Mental claims
disorder
IB+SDA
2000 858.44 2724.03 31.5%
2005 1084.13 2799.87 38.7%
IB+SDA+ESA
2010 1126.27 2655.96 42.4%
2012 1127.02 2593.86 43.4%
The proportions of claimants with mental disorders have been increasing, but
not quite as the blog has it.
Paul Spicker
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Bivand" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 1:49 PM
Subject: Care in the Community ane mental health benefit claims
Dear all
Neil O'Brien of Policy Exchange has a bog post in the Telegraph on mental
health benefit claims.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/neilobrien1/100186974/the-remarkable-rise-of-mental-illness-in-britain/.
The subtext seems to be that these can't be real.
However, does anyone have any figures on the numbers of people who used to
be in mental hospitals/mental handicap hospitals before Care in the
Community?
It's reasonably obvious that Care in the Community moved people from
(expensive) NHS support to the benefit system, in many cases with support
services paid for through Housing Benefit.
However, what I don't have access to is anything on the numbers (and costs)
involved in that change - which obviously inflated the benefit costs and
numbers.
Of course, the sort of rhetoric going on now went on in the 1830s, where
paupers were deemed to be idle, and put into workhouses, which of course
turned into mental hospitals and old people's accommodation quite naturally
as they were always a major part of the poor.
Paul
---------------------------------------------------------
Paul Bivand
Associate Director of Analysis and Statistics
Direct Line: 020 7840 8335
Inclusion
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