So, what did Dave say, and what did he mean by it?

On Monday 27th May the Independent published an article under the heading How benefits crackdown ‘humiliates’ Britain's disabled Army war veterans. The article opens:

Degrading back-to-work welfare assessments that are stripping former soldiers of their benefits have been denounced by leading veterans’ charities. Thousands of ex-servicemen are being pushed to the breadline after being judged fit for work by the government-appointed company Atos. Severely wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, who were once entitled to incapacity benefits, are being told they no longer qualify under new assessments carried out by Atos on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Today the Daily Mail has also published a similar article:

Anger as record number of maimed troops are denied disability benefit in Government's controversial assessments

A record number of wounded war veterans have been denied disability benefits in the past year after undergoing tests carried out by the Government’s controversial assessment company. Hundreds of injured ex-soldiers are being declared fit for work by Atos Healthcare in spite of physical and mental injuries they suffered in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Last night, the Royal British Legion (RBL) announced a 72 per cent annual rise in former soldiers having their applications to receive Employment Support Allowance (ESA) turned down.

One Daily Mail reader reacted to the story thus:

"Both IDS & Cameron publicly stated last year, that any service personnel injured on active service would be exempt from the ATOS procedure and that both their benefits and any War pensions would remain unaffected.... How do you know when a Politician is lying?......Their lips move!
- JoeBlogs, Bournemouth, 02/6/2013 10:52"

And actually when the Indie piece appeared it had brought to mind a memory of David Cameron making some form of pledge concerning the benefits treatment of injured ex-servicemen. And sure enough I was able to retrieve Severely injured troops exempted from extra disability tests under new benefits from The Guardian on 18th July 2012.

Severely injured soldiers are to be exempted from tough new disability test as David Cameron moves to ensure that controversial welfare reforms do not apply to the military.

Downing St has persuaded the Ministry of Defence to ensure only the results of existing military tests – covering the most badly wounded troops – will be needed for assessments for the new disability benefits.

Seriously injured troops will also be given a guaranteed disability payment worth around £131 a week under the reforms.

But in fact despite the G using the phrase “new disability benefits” that Guardian piece was all about a pledge from Cameron that injured ex servicemen and women would not be subjected to the “new test” related to the introduction of the Personal Independence Payment – the successor to Disability Living Allowance, and NOT a pledge to exempt them from the Work Capability Assessment.

The WCA was devised when the Labour Party decided to phase out Incapacity Benefit and replace it with Employment Support Allowance by having a test designed to ascertain whether Incapacity Benefit recipients should be switched to receiving either full unconditional Employment Support Allowance, because they were judged as expected to remain “unfit to work” or a lesser conditional level of Employment Support Allowance payable to those who although adjudged not presently fit to work when tested were expected to become fit to work or with Job Seekers Allowance in the cases of those given the WCA and adjudged immediately fit to work.

The PIP test – the process which Cameron had actually declared would not apply to ex – servicemen - does seek to ascertain how someone’s disability or injury limits their ability to live “normally” and provides additional support towards mobility etc. People both in and out of work are eligible.

Bodies representing ex-servicemen obviously believe those injured or disabled on active service should be exempt from all "degrading" welfare conditionality tests– those relating to the extent of their disability and also those relating to their “fitness for work”. It will be interesting to see whether a “public campaign” along those lines develops, and what the reaction of Number 10 and the DWP to it is.

And what the logic and arguments for “agreeing with” or “disagreeing with” the campaign to exempt former service personnel from conditionality tests which are "degrading" are, depending on which way Number 10 and the DWP decide to go.

Not "hopes" John - it knows it will!

John Harris has a piece up at the G - We have to talk about why some people agree with benefit cuts - which contains the following line .. " and next week the DWP will begin the transition from disability living allowance to the personal independence payment. The government hopes to save £2bn, largely by denying up to 500,000 people the new benefit."  Well John is obviously far too busy to consult recent copies of the Daily Mail or back copies of the Independent this weekend, because if he had therein he would find that Esther McVey - graduate in Law, holder of an MSc in Corporate Governance, businesswoman, former TV presenter and currently Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Work and Pensions with special responsibility for the Disabled - has repeatedly made it clear that at least 300,000 current holders (or more - another Mail piece refers to her introducing "new checks to stop 500,000 people claiming up to £120 a week in Disability Living Allowance") of DLA will lose it or see the amount they receive substantially reduced under the transition from DLA to PIP.  Or as the Mail decided to headline it "I will go after bogus disabled... some of them DO get better! Ex-TV host who is our new Work Minister on the UK's THREE MILLION claiming disability benefit" wherein

McVey’s title of Minister for the Disabled gives the impression her job is solely to make life easier for them. But Esther the bubbly blonde ex-GMTV presenter is about to become Esther the Axewoman.

because, says Esther

The number of people who get DLA has tripled to three million in 20 years and McVey says if it carries on rising at the same rate, one in 17 of the population will receive it within five years.
She says many who get DLA and are officially classed ‘disabled’ are no such thing: ‘Only three per cent of people are born with a disability, the rest acquire it through accident or illness, but people come out of it. Thanks to medical advances, bodies heal.’

In the Indie article from December 2012 - Esther - in a no doubt inadvertent  departure as a relatively new Minister from the official DWP line that "we don't do targets" explains what is going to happen when Atos start testing current DLA recipients to see how many of them will qualify for its replacement PIP ...

More than 300,000 disabled people will have their benefits cut when Disability Living Allowance is replace by a new benefit, Esther McVey, the minister for disabled people, announced today – but the change has been delayed for two years.
An initial 560,000 claimants will be reassessed by October 2015, and 330,000 of these are expected to either lose their benefit altogether or see their payments reduced, Ms McVey told the House of Commons today.

The apparent use of "a target figure" did not go completely unnoticed at the time ..

Mark Lever, Chief Executive of The National Autistic Society, expressed concern that Ms McVey had set out numbers of people expected to lose their benefits, arguing that it suggested the assessments might not be conducted fairly.
“It is concerning that in making her statement to Parliament, Disabilities Minister Esther McVey set out very clearly the numbers of people who she believed will qualify for the new benefit.

Indeed.  But as stressed repeatedly by the DWP they do not and did not have targets for the numbers of people that would fail to qualify for ESA when having a Work Capability Assessment as part of the switch away from Incapacity Benefit - even if the figure of 1 million appeared to have been bandied about from time to time, and nor do they have a target for the number of people who currently receive DLA but will fail to qualify for PIP when they are "mobility re-assessed" even if the present and previous Minister for the Disabled, or even the Secretary of State had mentioned specific figures, such as half a million on the floor of the House of Commons and to members of the press.