Quarter of those claiming sickness benefits have a criminal record

ALMOST one in four people claiming sickness benefit have criminal records, an official analysis showed yesterday.

Background checks on those receiving state handouts because they are too ill to work revealed that nearly a quarter have been convicted or cautioned for criminal offences in the past ten years.

The findings from a Government research project show a high proportion of claimants who claim they are unfit for work appear to be fit enough to commit crime.

Ministers described the findings of the first investigation into the connection between state handouts and crime as ‘truly alarming’.

The study found that 1 per cent of the 1,565,000 claiming incapacity benefit – the payment brought in during the Eighties for those too ill to work – had committed at least one offence over the past ten years, while 4 per cent were jailed.

But in a blow to ministers’ hopes of reducing the number of claimants who abuse welfare handouts, researchers found that employment and support allowance (ESA) – the supposedly more rigorous replacement for incapacity benefit – was being paid to an even higher proportion of people who had committed crimes.

ESA was introduced in 008 and is running in parallel with incapacity benefit, which is being phased out.

Even though ESA includes a fitness-forwork test to weed out unconvincing claims, 8 per cent of its 538,000 claimants had offended and 8 per cent had been imprisoned. The combined figures for the two benefits mean 3 per cent of all sickness claimants have offended.

Researcher Patricia Morgan said: ‘A lot of people who have opted for incapacity benefit do seem to have committed criminal offences. There are people who claim incapacity benefit because they are alcoholics or use drugs. They shouldn’t be allowed to, but they do.

‘They do not need to work and often they steal to maintain their drinking or addiction. Generally people who work do not commit crime. But for some people incapacity benefit is a subsidy to give them time to go out and thieve.’

Employment minister Chris Grayling said: ‘This paints a truly alarming picture of the challenge we face.’