The attack by the UK Government on disability benefits has only just started to receive mainstream coverage in the wake of the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith. Until recently the Government found that it could reduce disability benefits by presenting its planned cuts as 'reforms' which would bring benefits, that included increasing employment levels and better health.
The Government's strategy for promoting its reforms seemed to rely heavily on a combination of prejudice and wishful thinking. On the one hand it implied that many of those not working were 'skivers' - people who could work - but who chose not to. On the other hand the Government relied on research which seemed to support the biopsychosocial model of disability - a model which could be taken to imply that illness or disability was at least partially the result of the attitudes held by sick or disabled people themselves. Although the language of the biopsychosocial model is clinical, there is a severe danger that, in the wrong hands, it can be used to support ugly prejudices.
The evidence used to support the biopsychosocial model is often weak, or misleadingly presented; however in 2006 the DWP funded a group of academics to begin the PACE trial which the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine describes as:
"This large-scale trial is the first in the world to test and compare the effectiveness of four of the main treatments currently available for people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)."
