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April 6 - 12 2011

News

The Telegraph

μNews

PAGES 2-13

μWorld News PAGES 14-17

μComment PAGES 18-21

μ Letters

PAGE 20

μObituaries PAGES 22-23

μ Features

PAGES 24-26

μCulture

PAGES 27-30

μExpat Life PAGES 31-32

μBusiness

μClassified

μPuzzles

μSport

PAGES 33-37

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PAGES 40-48

NEWS P8

NEWS P6

G20 death Pc who shoved newspaper vendor could face charges

Kate’s hair: up or down? Anna Tyzack ponders the biggest question of the Royal Wedding

BUSINESS P33

EXPAT LIFE P31

A tearful ‘sayonara’ Expat David Baresh on trying to flee Japan in the wake of the quake

Irish banks must raise €24bn New capital ratios expected to lead to de facto nationalisation

LOTTO 30/03

LOTTO 02/04

16 10 17 21 39 41 12 14 32 44 48 49

Bonus Ball 47

Bonus Ball 25

There were two winners of Saturday’s £4.8m jackpot and two winners of Wednesday’s £2.7m prize

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1028

The Telegraph

By Andrew Porter Political Editor MORE than two million disability benefit claimants who have received handouts for decades face being stripped of payments after ministers found that they have not been questioned about their conditions for years.

Figures published this week showed that the vast majority of people claiming disability benefit, worth up to £120 a week, have been given the handout for life, without any regular checks to see if their condition persists.

Almost three quarters of all those claiming Disability Living Allowance (DLA) – more than two million people – have been entitled to these so-called “indefinite rewards”.

The Department for Work and Pensions was publishing its response to the consultation on DLA this week. It was to include the findings and to set out its intent to make the system for claiming the allowance far more rigorous.

Ministers are said to be shocked by the findings. They include more than 100,000 people who receive the benefit for life for “unspecified back pain”. DLA is awarded to those who cannot walk, or who have difficulty walking or looking after themselves because of a disability. It is paid to 3.2 million people at an annual cost of £12 billion.

Ministers ordered a survey of 5,000 claimants to find out whether the benefit was paid to people who were in need.

It found that 130,000 people first awarded DLA in 1992 have never had it changed or re-examined. In all, 46 per cent of people receiving DLA had been getting it for more than 10 years, and one third of people for more than 14 years.

Ministers are planning to bring in regular checks to ensure that there are far fewer indefinite awards, while new face-to-face assessments will be carried out at the start of a claim.

Currently, more than half of new claims are awarded without benefits staff asking for any additional evidence.

Under the existing rules someone could get as much as £121.25 per week, on top of other benefits they receive. DLA is being replaced by the Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

Ministers say it will remain “a non-means-tested, nontaxable cash benefit claimed by disabled people”. However, disability groups will fiercely

130,000

The number first awarded DLA in 1992 who have never had it changed or re-examined oppose parts of the new regime, and Labour is certain to attack the way the changes are being brought in.

The news came as ministers prepared to send out the first letters to those claiming Incapacity Benefit, asking them to come in to be reassessed.

By the end of April 10,000 letters will be sent every week, with the first assessments happening in June.

The letters are going out following the publication of the final results from the trial assessments in Burnley and Aberdeen — which confirmed that almost a third of IB claimants are fit for work, while a further 38 per cent have the potential to work with the right support.

Chris Grayling, the employment minister, said: “A life on benefits is no longer an option. The changes we are making will ensure that those in need get more support.”

By Laura Donnelly and Melissa Kite DAVID CAMERON is to perform a major climbdown on reforms to the National Health Service in an attempt to head off a growing rebellion.

The Prime Minister is drawing up key changes to the flagship Health and Social Care Bill that will see his reorganisation of the NHS watered down.

Under the terms of the compromise deal, GPs who do not want to take charge of the health service budget for their area will not now be forced to do so.

The Government is also planning amendments to limit the market proposed in health care, with safeguards that will attempt to prevent private firms “cherrypicking” the most profitable services and leaving NHS hospitals at a disadvantage.

It is the latest in a series of climbdowns by Mr Cameron in recent months. He scaled back plans to privatise forests after a campaign in The Sunday Telegraph, and last week announced a more generous than expected replacement for the Education Maintenance Allowance, which he had pledged to scrap altogether. Mr Cameron is so worried about an increasing political and public backlash against the health reforms that last week he held crisis talks with Sir David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS. During a two-hour meeting, Sir David warned him that unless the programme was slowed down, there was a danger that the NHS could lose control of spending — plunging the service into chaos.

Earlier in the week, Tory MPs ambushed the Prime Minister when he appeared before the 1922 Committee of backbenchers at the House of Commons. They demanded Mr Cameron change the Bill or face a humiliating parliamentary rebellion.

Now, ministers are drafting amendments in an attempt to address the concerns of medical groups, including the British Medical Association, and opposition from the Liberal Democrats, who voted against the reforms at their spring conference.

Following Mr Cameron’s decision not to force all GPs to take on responsibility for NHS budgets, the Coalition is discussing: ŠNew clauses limiting the ability of private firms to “cherry-pick” the most lucrative work, by ensuring that payments match the complexity of treatment; ŠAttempts to redefine the role of the system’s regulator, so that value for money replaces promotion of competition as its prime duty; ŠImproved public accountability for the GP consortia, which are intended ultimately to take control of £60 billion each year.

Sources close to the Prime Minister said he wanted to act because it was clear that the reforms were headed for a series of damaging clashes.

“He’s looking for some wriggle room. He wants a way out,” one insider said. Mr Cameron’s intervention has left Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, increasingly isolated in his determination not to bow to critics of the reforms. The Treasury and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, are also understood to have been involved in negotiations to find a compromise.

The original plan had been for all of England’s 150 primary care trusts, which organise and allocate funding for NHS services, to be abolished by 2013 and replaced by GP consortia.

By Emma Rowley PORTUGAL has come under further pressure to take a bail-out as it revealed that the hole in its finances is bigger than expected.

New figures showed the country’s budget deficit stood at the equivalent of 8.6pc of its gross domestic product (GDP) for 2010, missing the government’s 7.3pc target by more than a percentage point.

Lisbon blamed the size of the deficit on a change in the calculation methods at Eurostat, the European statistical agency, which meant the figure had to reflect nationalised bank losses and the state of public transport companies.

Politicians have complained the alterations were “like changing the score after the match is over” and said last week that the deficit would otherwise have been 6.8pc.

However, the revelation carried unpleasant echoes of the admission from Greece at the end of 2009 that its finances were in a worse state than at first believed. That shock ignited the eurozone’s debt crisis as investor fears over nations’ borrowing escalated, while Greece eventually received a €110bn (£97bn) rescue.

Portugal’s 10-year bonds were trading with yields above 8.6pc, as investors demanded sky-high returns to take on the debt.

“It is a question of methodology. Eurostat has made the rules tougher,” said Cristina Casalinho, chief economist at Banco BPI in Portugal. “The negative element is that we are appearing more like Greece than we would like.”

An international bail-out is now seen as a certainty by markets, but when this will happen is unclear, as Portugal’s current caretaker government appears to lack the authority to approve a rescue.

“The government is not in condition to and does not have the powers to request any type of external aid,” said Teixeira dos Santos, the country’s finance minister.

José Sócrates, the prime minister, stepped down last week after parliament rejected his latest austerity measures aimed at reining in public finances. President Anibal Cavaco Silva has called a general election for June 5, warning that the next government faced an “unprecedented economic crisis”.

Meanwhile, Portugal’s debt agency said it had raised €1.6bn in a bond auction last Friday. However, analysts think that the country, which must pay out about €9bn in bond redemptions by June, could effectively be shut out of the capital markets within weeks, forcing a rescue.

Separately, the UK also released new budget figures, which showed borrowing came in at £148.9bn or 10.2pc of GDP for 2010 as a whole, a reduction on the previous year’s 11.3pc figure. The total government debt stood at £1.11trillion, or 76.1pc of GDP, at the end of December.