Statements by Sunak and Stride on disability benefits were potentially misleading, says stats regulator

Three statements made by government ministers on disability benefits – including one by Rishi Sunak – have been found to be potentially misleading by the UK statistics regulator.

Of the three misleading statements, one of them was made by the prime minister, while the other two were made by work and pensions secretary Mel Stride.

Just days after the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) delivered its findings, the Conservatives repeated Sunak’s misleading statement – although slightly altering the wording – in its general election manifesto.

The first of the three complaints dealt with by OSR was lodged in March by Disability News Service (DNS) about Sunak’s repeated claims that the number of disabled people being found not fit for work had trebled since 2011.

OSR has also responded to complaints (not made by DNS) about two comments made by Stride in the last few months.

The first of Stride’s comments was that 94 per cent of people who report feeling “down and bluesy” to their doctor are being signed off as not fit to work, and the second was that recipients of personal independence payment (PIP) receive thousands of pounds a month.

OSR told DNS this week that it had concluded that “all three statements had the potential to mislead”.

The Conservative manifesto this week ignored the OSR ruling and used one of the misleading statements to justify its claim that there had been an “unsustainable rise in benefit claims” by working-age disabled people.

It also ignored repeated statements by health experts that a key reason for an increase in claimants was a significant increase in ill-health, and in NHS waiting-lists.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said this week – in response to the party’s manifesto – that “people are sicker than they were, with more complex healthcare needs”.

The Conservative party had not commented on the OSR rulings by 11am today (Thursday).

Those rulings came just a day after the regulator made a similar ruling on misleading Conservative claims about Labour’s tax plans.

The prime minister first used the fitness for work figures in his main Conservative party conference speech last October.

He repeated them in March in an interview with the Sunday Times.

And he repeated them again in a major speech on social security at the Centre for Social Justice in April.

Sunak said in April: “In 2011, 20 per cent of those doing a work capability assessment were deemed unfit to work.

“But the latest figure now stands at 65 per cent. That’s wrong.

“People are not three times sicker than they were a decade ago.”

DNS has repeatedly pointed out that the 2011 figures reflected the particular harshness of the work capability assessment in its early years, before its most serious flaws were exposed.

It took years of research and activism by disabled people and allies to reveal the links between the WCA and hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths of claimants, and to force DWP ministers to ease the harshness of the assessment.

There were also five independent reviews of the WCA commissioned by DWP, which led to multiple improvements to the assessment.

These factors eventually made it less arduous to qualify for the employment and support allowance support group and avoid work-related conditions for those not fit for work, although the assessment process is still deeply-flawed and continues to be linked to serious harm and deaths of claimants.

OSR has now concluded that Sunak’s comparison “does not reflect the complexities of the data or take account of any changes to the benefit system or the criteria for allocating to this group”.

The second complaint related to comments made by Stride in an interview with the Telegraph in March.

In the interview, he said some people were now “convincing themselves they have some kind of serious mental health condition as opposed to the normal anxieties of life”.

Stride added: “If they go to the doctor and say ‘I’m feeling rather down and bluesy’, the doctor will give them on average about seven minutes and then, on 94 per cent of occasions, they will be signed off as not fit to carry out any work whatsoever.”

But OSR said: “The reasons for granting fit notes are varied.

“While there are no statistics specifically on those who report feeling down and bluesy, nor those struggling with poor mental health, the NHS England’s statistics between October 2022 and September 2023 show that 37 per cent of fit notes with a valid diagnosis recorded were issued for closest available category of ‘mental and behavioral disorders’.”

It also pointed out that 74 per cent of fit notes issued between October 2022 and September 2023 “do not have a diagnosis recorded in the data so we can’t tell why they were issued”, while only electronic fit notes are included within the data.

And it added: “There is also no data available on occasions when patients may request a fit note and are not issued with one.”

The third complaint related to Stride claiming in a BBC interview – on the day he launched a new green paper that described plans to reform PIP to ensure it is “targeted at those most in need” – that PIP claimants received “thousands of pounds a month”.

OSR said the maximum a PIP claimant could receive was actually £184.30 a week, or an average of just under £800 a month.

The regulator concluded: “Those who receive PIP do not receive thousands of pounds a month.”

Picture: Mel Stride (left) and Rishi Sunak

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