The hidden army of unemployed

AS A former ballroom dancer Rebekah Gronowski is used to creating a stir. The flame-haired 59-year-old exudes joie de vivre and her friends speak of her ability to light up a room.

Her bubbly chatter makes her a popular and hard-to-miss visitor when, each month, she pops into her local post office in the sleepy East Lothian village of Gifford to claim benefits for her lack of mobility. In the eyes of the statisticians who compile the government’s unemployment figures, however, she does not exist.

There are almost a quarter of a million Scots like her: people on sickness and disability benefits, many of whom want to work. They are Scotland’s hidden unemployed, the people whom ministers forgot, or rather preferred not to include in official unemployment figures. To do so would make the government’s unemployment record look more than twice as bad.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

A powerful new report leaked to Scotland on Sunday will suggest this week that the true level of joblessness in Scotland is far higher than ministers are prepared to admit because official claimant figures exclude those diverted on to sickness and disability benefits.

Ministers have been happy to highlight the scams of benefit cheats who have held down jobs while claiming sickness payments. But the latest report, a joint effort by researchers at Glasgow and Heriot Watt universities, suggests the biggest cheat may be the government itself.

The report will claim that in Glasgow and Edinburgh alone almost 100,000 people receive sickness and disability benefits. Many of them wish to work but are omitted from the jobless figures.

It will also highlight research from Sheffield University suggesting the true level of unemployment - calculated by adding the claimant count total to the total claiming sickness and disability benefits - in Scotland last year was 361,000, three times higher than the official claimant count of 113,612.

Former industrial heartlands in the west of Scotland have been hardest hit by the hidden phenomenon, following the decline of manufacturing industries, as many manual workers have failed to adapt to the challenges of a high-tech, service economy.

"Our research on labour markets found that Glasgow has the highest proportion of the working age population on sickness and disability benefits of any city authority in Britain," the report, by Glasgow University’s Professor Ivan Turok and other academics, will claim.

The study finds that in Glasgow a staggering 72,000, or 20% of the total working age population, were on sickness and disability benefit in 2002. The city’s true male unemployment rate is said to be 26.6%.

In Edinburgh the number claiming sickness and disability is 24,000, or 8% of the working age population, compared with a true male unemployment figure of 10.6%.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In North Lanarkshire, Clackmannanshire and West Dunbartonshire true unemployment for both men and women is estimated at just under 20%.

In financial terms the hidden unemployed are pushing up the benefits bill because incapacity benefit is worth much more than the Job Seekers Allowance. The total bill for these claims in Scotland could run to half a billion pounds or more every year.

But Prof Turok suggests the human and wider economic costs of being left behind are even more grave.

"Having a job can probably do more for people’s status and social equality than anything else. People tend to be healthier when they feel valued and respected by others, they feel in control in their work and domestic lives, and they enjoy a dense network of social contacts," the report states.

"We know far too little about this sizeable section of the population. Just how demoralised, deskilled and ill have they become as a result of being out of work?" he asks in the latest report.

Turok and colleagues claim welfare advisers and the Department of Social Security "encouraged people to register where they possibly could for sickness benefits since most would be slightly better off" at a time when the general perception was that mass unemployment was here to stay.

Those claiming incapacity benefit, available to those assessed as having health problems which can range from alcoholism to back problems, receive up to 70.95 a week compared to a maximum of 53.95 if they claim Jobseekers Allowance.

In opposition Labour accused the Tory administration of moving people to invalidity benefits to keep the jobless figures down but denies it has continued the practice in government.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Turok insists many with health problems deemed inactive by the benefits system want paid work. Yet "almost the entire national and local infrastructure of active labour market programmes (employment advice, job search support, training, further education and work experience) focuses on people registered unemployed, ignoring this much larger group on other benefits".

The report adds: "These are towns and neighbourhoods within the old Clydeside industrial corridor extending from North Lanarkshire to Inverclyde. The hopes of a generation cannot simply be written off, not least because of the adverse consequences for the region in the longer term as disadvantage and demoralisation are passed from one generation to the next."

The true level of unemployment in Glasgow, estimated at three times the official claimant count, appears to be making the city increasingly segregated between the well to do and little to do.

Patricia MacLaren, who for 17 years has worked in a resource centre for the unemployed in Glasgow’s Ruchill area, said: "So many people have been on benefits for such a long time they have got used to it. They have lost confidence and become deskilled and are put off by the thought of information technology and spreadsheets."

Council leaders admit the economic challenges facing their cities are worse than the official unemployment statistics suggest.

In Glasgow, the council estimates that 100,000 have settled into a life of benefits in a city where around 800m of benefits are paid out every year.

They are reluctant to leave the comfort zone of council tax rebates, housing benefit and an assortment of other benefits for low paid service work which may see their net income rise by 20 a week.

Jim Coleman, the council’s deputy leader, said: "We are trying to tackle this hidden unemployed by matching the thousands of vacancies we have to the army of people without jobs. We have targeted families in three parts of the city, chapping their doors and meeting people in the street to find out what it would take to get them back to work, but we cannot do it all by ourselves."

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In Edinburgh, where the economic boom of recent years has revitalised the Capital, true unemployment was estimated to be 9% last year, more than three times the official claimant count. Donald Anderson, the city council leader, accepted that while there are more people in work in the Capital than ever, in some cases wage levels may be too low to lure workers. "We all know that figures don’t tell the whole story." Heather Ritchie, a former nurse now in her 50s living in Glasgow’s west end, says jobs on offer are often unsuitable and pay too little to lure her off disability and sickness benefits of 420 a month and council tax rebate.

Ritchie, who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis and who says she would like to work, has been advised by the employment services to accept checkout work but says her condition means she cannot sit down for any length of time. "Anyway, all that click, click, clicking would drive me round the bend. It’s a dreadful job," she says.

She wants employers to better accommodate people with disabilities and the employment services to spend more time assessing people’s individual needs.

Others say the government must get tough. Ministers have threatened to withhold benefits for six months if young people refuse to attend New Deal programmes and have acted on thousands of occasions.

But for all its talk of cracking down on the workshy, the government has shown little stomach for dealing with predominantly older unemployed on sickness and disability benefit despite the fact that many could work. Instead, they can be left alone for years before undergoing medical assessments to consider how sick they really are.

"It’s a real problem," admitted one former government adviser. "The government have tackled the young unemployed but ministers are very chary of denying benefits to middle aged people with serious health conditions because it looks cruel."

A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions rejected claims the figures were massaged and confirmed it is to shake up the rules on incapacity benefit to try to lure more back to work, with better financial incentives to work, including a "return to work" credit of 40-a-week for 52 weeks for those finding a job that pays less than 15,000 a year, and access to a discretionary fund of up to 300 to help find work. More individual work-focused interviews are also promised.

After a slump in manufacturing output and economic growth in Scotland, the SNP’s shadow economy minister Andrew Wilson said the government must do better.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"Too many people have gone off the government’s statistics and out of the government’s mind," he said.

Helen Liddell, the Scottish Secretary, insists she is "very pleased" with the latest employment figures for Scotland which showed the claimant count below the 100,000 mark for the first time since 1975.

She added: "This is testament to the success of the policies of the Government and the Scottish Executive."