Many male manual workers made redundant from heavy industries in the 1980s and 1990s now spend the rest of their lives on incapacity benefits.

Since 1997, the acute stress imposed on workers in the workplace, means that figures for long-term illness and depression have soared. Recent figures show that 1.2 million of the 2.7 million people on incapacity benefits are unable to work due to mental health problems. The rising number of claimants who suffer from mental disorders is a reflection of a service-dominated economy. For example, research shows that ten per cent of workers in call centres are clinically depressed. Call centres are just modern versions of the dark satanic mills of old.

In 2006 New Labour had a target of reducing the number of people on incapacity benefits by one million by 2016. To achieve this goal would involve the government in a statistical sleight of hand.

There are currently 850,000 claimants of incapacity benefits aged over 55. Therefore within ten years these people would either be dead or retired. All it would need to reduce the number of incapacity benefits claimants by one million would be for the Department of Work and Pensions to get 150,000 current claimants off benefit, together with reducing the flow of new claimants.

However, a major spanner in the works has come from the number of young people, aged 16 - 35; who have moved onto incapacity benefits over the last five years. There are now 500,000 young people, aged 16 - 35, and now claiming incapacity benefits. This is higher than those claiming Job Seekers' Allowance. A second generation of people is now coming onto incapacity benefits due to mental illness. This is a reflection of the despair and hopelessness amongst a section of youth.

There is evidence to show that if someone is on incapacity benefits for two years, they are more likely to die or retire than go back to work. To counter this, the government has introduced Pathways to Work pilots, which have been very successful in helping many thousands of people come off incapacity benefits and into work. Pathways to Work will soon be rolled out across the whole of Britain.

However, because the government has run out of money, it has taken on David Freud, a city investment banker, as an adviser to the Department of Work and Pensions. David Freud wants to pay private companies up to £62,000 in getting the average person on incapacity benefits into the world of work.

All capitalist politicians now talk about the era of full employment. However, in true Orwellian language full employment is the name given to mass unemployment. While there are 2.7 million on incapacity benefits who would like to find work, we cannot talk about full employment. The capitalist politicians want to talk about the era of full employment, whilst at the same time using mass unemployment as a means of driving down wages. To paraphrase Marx: the level of wages is not determined by the 100 workers in a workplace, but by the ten unemployed workers standing outside the factory gate.

One way to drive down wages is through the employment of the 1.3 million migrant workers, mainly from Poland and other Eastern European countries, who have come to Britain since April 2004. This has had a side-effect of displacing mainly young male British-born workers onto Job Seekers' Allowance and then onto incapacity benefits.

Another way is by bringing the one million of the 2.7 million people on incapacity benefits, who say they would like to work, into work or into a pool of surplus labour. It is only right that all people with physical disabilities or mental health problems have the chance to work, if they want to.

The labour movement should therefore have policies to enable this to happen and counter any extreme exploitation by employers.  

• Participation of claimants of Incapacity Benefits on Pathways to Work to be entirely voluntary, with no benefit sanctions on people who refuse to take part.
• Pathways to Work to be under the supervision and control of the PCS trade union and local trades councils.
• Participation of Incapacity Benefit claimants on Pathways to Work work experience placements to be at trade union rates of pay.
• The national minimum wage to be raised to £8 an hour, as a step towards two-thirds the average wage, to eliminate the benefits/work poverty trap.