Here are some links on the question of the high numbers of beneficiaries of Incapacity Benefit in the UK:

OECD says ET was right about UK unemployment

The Beatty-Fothergill report referred to in the above diary.

An article written for Bloomberg by Warren Mosler, including: Unemployment has been redefined rather than reduced.

This comment from Detlef adds another study to Beatty & Fothergill : Inactivity, Sickness and Unemployment in Great Britain: Early Analysis at the Level of Local Authorities

The facts have been publicly recognized. See:

House of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions

BBC piece on a government decision to act.

From the BBC article, there is a near-admission by an official spokesman:

"That core issue is of people in deprived areas being on incapacity benefit an trapped in a vicious circle where they find it difficult to get off incapacity benefit," said the spokesman.

He also pointed out that 90% of claimants want to get back into work. (my bold)

The point (from the angle of comparing economies) is that, in France, most of these people would be classified "unemployed" and thus swell the unemployment rate. It might be argued that the UK has always presented this characteristic and the comparison with France is still valid, but that is not so: the number on Incapacity Benefit in the UK tripled between 1997 and 2002 to attain 2.5 mn. In other words, New Labour's back-to-work drive forced many long-term unemployed out of the unemployment stats and into "inactivity".

Of course, economists and pundits continue to compare official unemployment rates to prove the UK model superior.