HAVING frequently pledged radical reform of the welfare system, but still not having demonstrably achieved much, the government is today accused of wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers' money in its bid to tighten up on benefits payments to sick and disabled claimants.

Contentious though it may be to make this group of people a target for economy, it has long been ripe for investigation since the boom in incapacity payments is not matched by increases in sickness levels nationally -- the suspicion being that, assisted also by sympathy among GPs, this sector of the benefits system has swelled over the years with quasi-official consent through increasing numbers people being put 'on the sick' rather than on the more politically-sensitive unemployment register.

But if there are droves of people who could work claiming incapacity benefits, it would follow that the system needs more medical eligibility checks on claimants and more thorough ones. Yet, today, it is claimed that the opposite is occurring because of a failure to carry out proper medical examinations, resulting in huge sums being wrongly paid out in sickness and disability allowances.

MPs on the Commons Social Security Committee say that contracting out the medicals to a private firm, the Sema Group, which had no previous experience of medical operations, has raised suspicions that profits are being put before standards -- as the upshot is that fewer actual tests are being carried out while more claimants are having their cases conducted 'on paper.'

The Committee claims that the way the £300-million contract was drawn up gives Sema an in-built incentive to do this. And coupled with this are complaints over the way doctors working for the firm have treated claimants.

The response to this, surely, if the result of this farmed-out tightening-up is that profit-led motives are leading to waste and inefficiency, is to promptly rewrite this contract and then ensure in future that it is awarded to an organisation which can manifestly show that it will increase both the number of medical examinations and their thoroughness.

And meantime perhaps ministers would explain what functional incapacity they were suffering from when they allowed such a huge and important government contract to be so flawed.