Disabled people aren’t ‘gaming the system’ – here are the facts that Tom Clougherty should have considered before parroting a lot of nonsense on a so-called ‘news’ channel.

Clougherty, executive director of the right-wing Institute of Economic Affairs think tank, probably thought he was being awfully clever when he said this:

But Mo Stewart, research lead for the Preventable Harm Project that shows how the benefit system has been used by successive UK governments to attack people with long-term illnesses and disabilities, put him in his place in an email response.

She wrote: “This is what happens when social policy reforms are adopted by successive UK administrations using a fiscal priority whilst disregarding the impact on health and wellbeing.

“The adoption of neoliberal politics has impacted on the health, wellbeing and survival of many of those in greatest need in the UK, with successive social policy reforms generated to discredit the welfare state and the people who need to use it.

“The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was initially created to help and support those in greatest need, but DWP Ministers now terrorise disability benefit claimants by adopting policy-based evidence to justify their many false claims.

“Various right-leaning ‘think-tanks’ tend to do the same. It’s all very well promoting the ’mission’ that problems should be dealt with ‘without interference from politicians and the state’ but the State has a duty of care to those in greatest need, and all moral code was abandoned with the adoption of neoliberal politics where the chronically ill and disabled community in greatest need are viewed as a financial burden on the State. This has created a very predictable public health crisis.

“As a consequence, there have been thousands of deaths linked to the disability benefit assessment, which was influenced by corporate America and totally disregards all clinical need.

“The DWP’s letters to disability benefit claimants are relentless and hostile, demanding endless assessments often for conditions that can’t improve, and the most recent DWP figures demonstrate that disability benefit fraud is zero, whilst the number of suicides linked to DWP intimidation of those in greatest need is disregarded.

“It’s a great pity that leading think-tanks tend to overlook the ongoing government-induced preventable harm when obsessed with government rhetoric of removing claimants from disability benefit and forcing them back to work, regardless of human consequences which are often fatal.

“Reporting facts rather than hostile rhetoric would make a very welcome change, and it should be remembered, Mr Clougherty, that most people claiming disability benefit are not ‘gaming the system’  and ‘the system’ treats everyone with suspicion and disregards the public health crisis this hostility has created.”

She concluded, stingingly: “Prior to your next TV interview, perhaps instead of standard DWP rhetoric attacking claimants you could become much better informed?”

It would be nice if Keir Starmer could be bothered to do the same.