Robert Jenrick’s threat means benefit claimants are being attacked by politicians on all sides, making this possibly the most dangerous time ever to be sick or disabled in the UK.

We already know that Liz Kendall is attacking people with serious mental illnesses, demanding that the make efforts to get jobs, even though the likelihood of any employer wanting to take them is practically zero, and the risks to them and other employees if they do take jobs are high.

Now Conservative leadership contender Robert Jenrick has leapt up to say that if he becomes his party’s leader, it will cut taxes by reducing the benefits bill, and this will be achieved by throwing people off-benefit if they refuse to accept suitable work.

What he fails to acknowledge is that the overwhelming majority of people – who are able to work – really do take jobs as soon as they can get them; the UK is a nation with an excellent work ethic.

The benefits bill has ballooned recently because of the failures of the last Tory government – of which he was a prominent member – to look after the nation’s health.

The number of people claiming sickness and/or disability benefits has rocketed because failures to invest in the NHS and preventative health have made them ill.

And now Jenrick is saying that, having made these people ill, he will remove their benefit safety net and let them fall into poverty and, most likely, depression and death by suicide or due to their conditions.

He absolutely will not do anything to improve the systemic failures that have made them ill, meaning more people will replace them on the benefits bill; instead he’ll take the extra money being spent on them now – and give it to his rich friends in tax cuts.

So his plan is not only socially illiterate but economically illiterate as well.

The problem here is that too many people are ill and therefore economically inactive. The solution is not to try to send them back to work while they are still ill; the solution is to make them healthy.

This requires investment in a health service that is designed to prevent ill-health and restore the health of those who do become injured or sick, rather than one that – due to an invasion of private companies – is designed to profit from illness.

Anybody should be able to see that it is contradictory to claim that we should all be in tip-top condition while supporting the transformation of medical care into an industry that relies on us being ill.

It is easy to claim that the rise in mental illness is because “we are medicalising normal human experiences” – but what does Jenrick expect from a system that is increasingly geared towards finding illness wherever possible and then charging us – either directly or via the government – to treat it?

On the basis of his words, we should be grateful that even if he wins the leadership contest, Jenrick has no chance of gaining power for almost another five years.

But if he does win an election then, we should regret the fact that there is no cure for stupidity.

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