Editorial: Sickness stats cast shadow on dole drop

News that the unemployment level is at a 16-year low has been the cause of much back-slapping around the Beehive. For a Government under pressure, it was a source of much solace. The statistic points not only to the job-creating capacity of a resilient economy but successful endeavours by Work and Income to get people off the dole. Both the Government's economic stewardship and the department are bathing in an extremely favourable light.

Too favourable, in fact. When it is apparent that people no longer appear in the unemployment statistics only because they have transferred to sickness or invalid benefits, that light must be dimmed. Worse still, some doctors believe that very switch is being encouraged by Work and Income.

Those on the unemployment benefit would not have to be asked twice. The benefits pay the same and, most significantly, sickness beneficiaries are not work-tested. Once they are deemed unfit for work and able to claim that benefit, no questions are asked of them. There are, according to doctors, also incentives for Work and Income to pursue this practice. Beneficiaries who are simply not interested in working, no matter how able-bodied, are removed from its books. Staff no longer have to waste time trying to find jobs for them.

Such a strategy is denied by Work and Income. It says an overall growth in sickness beneficiary numbers is a long-term trend that New Zealand shares with most other OECD nations. In part, the increase can obviously be attributed to an ageing population. But the statistics do little to dilute the doctors' claims. In the latest March year, there has been a 7 per cent increase in the number of people on a sickness or invalid benefit, while, boosted by the strong economy, the number on the dole dropped 25 per cent.

The financial implications are particularly sobering. The 2004 Budget forecast that spending on the sickness benefit would increase this financial year from $470 million to almost $514 million, while the comparable growth in the invalid benefit would be from $977 million to $1.04 billion. By contrast, spending on the unemployment benefit is expected to decline from almost $1.09 billion to $939 million. In effect, most of the saving on the dole that might have been anticipated at this time of economic strength is being swallowed up by greater spending on sickness and invalid benefits.

Work and Income is adamant that the increased number of people on those two benefits is not related to falling unemployment. Yet many doctors seem in no doubt that the unemployed are being encouraged by the department to switch to the sickness benefit. Why else, it might be asked, would medical centres be witnessing a significant increase in the number of patients seeking medical assessments to claim that benefit? Or, if nothing out of the ordinary is anticipated, why has Work and Income sent GPs a form briefing them on assessing a person's state of health? This task should not be difficult, especially in terms of the work-shy, who expect to go on the sickness benefit for no worse than the likes of mild depression.

Work and Income says its form was produced in consultation with doctors and the Medical Association. Maybe so. But that organisation is among those who now voice concern about the practice of benefit transfer becoming commonplace. Many of its members also clearly feel they are under mounting pressure to pass able-bodied beneficiaries unfit for work.

At the very least, this casts a shadow over the recent unemployment statistics. But if the doctors' allegations are correct, it suggests subterfuge and a dereliction of departmental responsibility. Should it be established that a deliberate policy is being orchestrated, resignations must follow. Trickery of such nature would demand nothing less.