Sick note.

The apparent inference to be drawn from the Government's plans on incapacity benefit is that the majority of claimants are spongers - able to work if they chose to. Before we retired, both my wife and I had (different) jobs which each brought us into daily contact with those on benefit, and it was interesting that when we compared notes we found we had come to the same conclusion. This was that about a third of claimants were genuine cases - exactly the sort of people the system was designed for - about a third were "apathetic", meaning that there was no reason why they couldn't come off benefit, but for whatever reason they just couldn't be bothered to make the effort, and about a third were quite deliberately "on the fiddle". I would imagine things are still much the same, but the problem is identifying just who falls into which group, because they need very different approaches.