---

Welfare Reform and Incapacity Benefit

No. The hon. Gentleman does not want to be reminded of the facts, but he will be reminded that far from reducing the figure by the million that the Government sought as their target, the number of people claiming incapacity benefit has gone from 2.62 million to 2.74 million—120,000 more claimants than when the Government came into office. The situation is even more alarming than that. The biggest increase in that overall total is in the number of people who have been claiming IB for stress or depression, subjects that by their nature are far more difficult to prove or disprove and where general practitioners have the greatest difficulty in establishing the reliability of the claim. The figure was 592,000 in 1997, but it is now more than 1 million, a 39 per cent. increase. That is the mark of the Government’s failure.