What madness and general snowflakery is this? According to new figures from the Department for Work and Pensions, a quarter of all Britons now believe they are disabled. Almost 17million people claim to be suffering a mental or physical impairment that ‘causes substantial difficulty’ in their day-to-day life – up 4.9 million over the course of the past decade.

Many of these alleged disabilities are mental. A staggering 48 per cent of working-age people say they suffer from mental health problems, and the number claiming benefits has risen by two million since the pandemic, up from 3.8 million to 5.8 million.

Last year, as revealed by The Mail on Sunday, almost £300 million went on disability payouts for ADHD – claims for which have shot up from just £700,000 per year in 2013 – a rise of more than 41,000 per cent.

These are doled out as PIP – Personal Independence Payments – which range from £72 a week to £108, depending on eligibility. Key word, that: eligibility. A medical diagnosis is not always necessary to qualify, and recipients are not means tested, meaning they are free to earn other income – and claim additional benefits. That is why the Chancellor Rachel Reeves is, rightly, raising the bar on who can qualify. 

She may be wrong in a lot of respects, but on this I can’t fault her. As a Conservative voter, I’m frankly embarrassed that my party didn’t tackle this sooner. I’m the last person to buy this Government’s constant blame-shifting onto their predecessors – but on this, the Tories are bang to rights.

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves is, rightly, raising the bar on who can qualify for disability benefits. She may be wrong in a lot of respects, but on this I can’t fault her

Setting aside the party politics, how can it possibly be that a quarter of the population is disabled to the point they can’t function without welfare? It’s just manifestly not true. If it were, we’d be talking about a serious health crisis.

But that’s not what this is. It’s just state-sanctioned poor-little-me-ism, and it says a lot about the pathetic moral fibre of today’s society. To my mind, disability is a serious thing. It’s not a bad back or sore knees, or depression or having trouble concentrating. I have all of the above, and I don’t consider any of those things ‘disabilities’. Minor disadvantages, maybe. Certainly I would never let any of those things stop me, let alone use them as an excuse to take taxpayer money.

And yet that is exactly what’s happening. People with perfectly manageable problems are gaming the system to cast themselves as ‘disabled’ so they can, in essence, sit around all day doing bog all at the taxpayer’s expense. There is even a booming trade in so-called ‘disability influencers’ on social media – also revealed by this paper – who coach people on how to beat ‘trick questions’ on PIP application forms, helping score as many points as possible to receive the maximum allowance.

As a friend of mine, who has a child with Down’s syndrome, puts it: ‘The moment you tick “do you have suicidal thoughts?” on an online questionnaire, you go straight to the top of the list. Meanwhile, people who genuinely need the help are forced to fill in repeat forms year after year where they get asked inane questions like, “Any change to your child’s condition?”’

She adds, somewhat wryly: ‘If there’s a cure for Down’s syndrome, it’s passed me by.’

This is clearly a massive gravy train. More to the point, it’s insulting – and detrimental – to people who are genuinely disabled: people with severe learning difficulties, the visually impaired, the deaf, those with complex physical impairments. More for everyone else means less for them, and they deserve to have their needs properly met.

The irony is that people who have genuine disabilities are for the most part the opposite of weak and lazy. Just look at Paralympians such as cyclist Sarah Storey

The idea that someone who suffers from ADHD (which is not a condition I dispute) should be treated on a par with, for example, my cousin, who suffered a tragic accident at the age of two and who has serious, irreversible brain damage, is just absurd. ADHD causes problems with concentration and focus – with the proper medication, it is easily managed. Irreversible brain damage, by contrast, is not something that can be treated with a daily pill.

The irony is that people who have genuine disabilities are for the most part the opposite of weak and lazy. Just look at Paralympians such as Tanni Grey-Thompson, David Roberts and Sarah Storey. Many work twice as hard as non-disabled people – they don’t want pity, they want to live their lives with dignity and purpose.

Those who play the system, by contrast, love nothing more than to tell the world how hard done by they are. They cast themselves as victims, blame all their problems on their ‘disability’, pursuing a policy of entitlement that anyone with a shred of self-respect would be too ashamed to contemplate.

Like Matt Lucas’s astutely observed character Andy in Little Britain, they have no shame and even less self-respect.

They are a joke that has worn very thin, and I’m glad that some will have the smile wiped from their greedy little faces.

Unsurprisingly, top state sixth forms are seeing a scramble for places from private school pupils fleeing the Government’s spiteful scrapping of the VAT exemption. Some are reporting a doubling in applications, a demand they can’t possibly meet. At what point is Bridget Phillipson going to reveal her brilliant plan? 

TV’s rare flower

As a White Lotus fan, I somehow imagined the Jennifer Coolidge-shaped hole in series three would be filled by Parker Posy as the spoilt Texan wife. But I was wrong; that quirky crown goes to Aimee Lou Wood, left, as Chelsea, the goofy English girlfriend of tortured soul Rick (Walton Goggins).

Not only is she the standout star, she is also that rarest of flowers: a young actress who appears (to the naked eye at least) to have had no ‘work’ done whatsoever. Admittedly she’s a baby (31) – but still, it’s unusual (and welcome) to see someone on screen who looks like a real person rather than an Instagram filter. I particularly love her teeth, which are distinctly chipmunky – and yet only add to her kooky charm. 

As for Goggins, his bald patch is a refreshingly honest touch. Is this a new wave of ‘cinema verite’?

Not only is she the standout star of the third season of White Lotus, Aimee Lou Wood is also that rarest of flowers: a young actress who appears to have had no ‘work’ done whatsoever

How is it that the American national security adviser, Mike Waltz, can get away with divulging classified information about US military operations in Yemen without so much as a slap on the wrist – whereas a radio producer and his wife from

Hertfordshire who got a bit shirty on a school WhatsApp group find themselves being arrested by six policemen and held for 11 hours?

Harry gets a dose of karma 

And the word of the week is… misogynoir, aka the accusation levelled – presumably at Prince Harry – by Dr Sophie Chandauka, the lawyer at the centre of a bitter row that has engulfed Harry’s charity Sentebale. But hang on – isn’t that what Harry’s been accusing the Royal Family of in relation to Meghan?

Just goes to show: karma will always get you…

A convicted paedophile from Pakistan has been granted permission to remain in the UK because he’s an alcoholic. A human ‘remains’ – sorry, ‘rights’ – lawyer successfully argued that his drinking would place him at risk of ‘degrading treatment’, as alcohol is illegal in Pakistan. 

Assuming this man is in jail in the UK, I can’t see how this is an issue. Unless I’m mistaken, alcohol is prohibited in prison – meaning that in a week or two he should have dried out enough to stick him straight on a plane with no immediate risk to his safety.

Seeing double? 

Here’s a question for the BBC Question Time audience: Were Gary Stevenson, left, the controversial economist who made a name for himself on the show last week, and pop star Will Young, right, separated at birth?

Were Gary Stevenson, left, the controversial economist, and pop star Will Young, right, separated at birth?