Feel the benefit?

Amidst all the furore over the Revenue and Customs fiasco, and the England team's abject failure, one story from the start of the week has been almost forgotten - the changes to the Incapacity Benefit system.

The story didn't surprise me, and neither did the reaction I heard on Radio 5Live. Sadly, there still seem to be a lot of people who don't understand what disability, or more pertinently incapacity, actually means.

My girlfriend, as I have mentioned before, is epileptic, and most of the time you wouldn't know there is anything wrong with her. However, she just would not be able to work full-time - the cocktail of meds that she has to take means that she is permanently exhausted, and needs to sleep about 12 hours most nights - if she doesn't sleep properly, it dramatically increases the chances of her having a seizure (not nice).

I heard the contributors to the 5Live phone-in, and was amazed:

• "There is a guy at my work who is in a wheelchair, and he comes in everyday to work" - so he is physically disabled, that doesn't mean he is not fit for work.

• About a woman who phoned in, who works only a few hours per week for her husband's company due to a degenerative condition that causes her pain and chronic fatigue, and claims Incapacity Benefit to make up for the wages she cannot earn: "If she can work, why doesn't she do proper paid work and stop claiming off the state?"

The only call that I could relate to was from an epileptic; he explained how his situation is similar to my girlfriend's. He would love to work full-time, but if he has a seizure he obviously takes time to come around afterwards, and they are difficult to predict.

The trouble is that an employer is not going to take a chance on someone who may not be able to work regular hours due to their illness or disability - I can empathise with employers on this. So unless employers take a chance on people, there will continue to be a number of people who are unable to work full-time, and will continue to rely on the state for financial support.

Of course there are chancers who fiddle the system - but why should people who are genuinely suffering have to miss out because of the actions of them?


As it happens, my girlfriend does not get Incapacity Benefit. This is because she doesn't have enough National Insurance credits. They said that she would be eligible to claim if it wasn't for this, so she doesn't get any money, only her NI credits paid.

So why doesn't she have enough NI credits? This is because in periods when she has not been working before (she has never been able to work full-time, but has done some part-time jobs), she did not claim Incapacity Benefit or Jobseekers' Allowance - therefore, she was not accruing NI credits during this time. Effectively, she did not have enough NI credits to claim benefits, because she did not claim benefits at times when she was eligible! How's about that then?