How many people who work for themselves take time off through ill health? It’s not a question self-employed people need to ask since they are too busy working.

Certainly all the self-employed people I have represented over the years, such as electricians and shop owners, were always the ones keenest to get legal proceedings over with as quickly as possible and get back to the hard grind – since if they didn’t work then, quite simply they didn’t get paid.

Unfortunately, alongside this noble workaholic culture is the startling fact that Greater Manchester seems to have made a name for itself as the sick note capital of the country.

A staggering one in ten working age adults is off work and claiming sickness benefits. Health chiefs estimate that sickness costs Greater Manchester £1.4bn a year in benefits and ‘lost’ tax.

What startles and saddens me about this remarkable statistic is that Manchester is an amazingly vibrant, cosmopolitan city. Certainly that’s one of the reasons that drew me here from my native Nottingham to pursue a career in law nearly 30 years ago. (That, and having a Mancunian mum !)

Yet even the manifest opportunities of this energetic and pulsating city aren’t enough to prevent the creation of a work-idle generation who have an expectation to be provided for by the state. And who are prepared to feign illness in order to spend their lives sitting on the sofa with a can of beer watching the Jeremy Kyle show.

And what’s worse is that they are ably assisted by some doctors, who scatter sick notes like confetti and in the process overlook professional obligation and overload our already disastrously over-stretched public purse.

One wonders if this was how the ‘poorly’ MP Margaret Moran managed to excuse herself from her parliamentary duties when 30 minutes earlier she was secretly filmed by Channel 4 in the rudest of health when facing the delicious prospect of using her impeccable connections to net several thousand pounds.

However, news this week that everyone claiming sickness benefits in Greater Manchester will be put through tests to prove they are not ‘fit for work’ is a pitifully small sticking plaster to cover a much bigger wound.

This flawed scheme, which will see 130, 000 people being sent to their GPs for ‘fitness tests’ – including climbing stairs and picking up objects – is inevitably vulnerable to abuse.

Would-be claimants are hardly likely to require Oscar-winning performances to hoodwink the clinician (as anyone who as ever pleaded man flu could testify). What’s likely to happen is the genuinely sick will suffer. So what’s the answer ?

We need to abandon this nursery game medicine. What we need is a panel of appointed experts whose principal role is to assess the health of a would-be claimant with a battery of exhaustive tests. It may cost more in the short term, but will separate the truly needy from those who are trying it on simply because they can. Those who are found to be making a false claim should face the full weight of the law, and pay their debt back to society with unpaid community work.

I’d even go so far as to insist they wear uniform that identifies their role.

It might sound draconian and lacking in compassion. But it has to be remembered that these people do a huge disservice to the genuine cases and cost the hard working British tax payer billions of pounds a year. The real sickness in society are those who aren’t really sick at all.

Huntley should have died, but we still owe him

Ian Huntley is an evil monster who deserved to receive the death penalty. Every time I see a picture of the two little girls he viciously murdered, I see no more eloquent an argument for supporting this.

However, since murder is punishable with a life sentence we, as a civilized society, owe a duty of care to these lifers.

It seems extraordinary that Huntley has been the victim of so many heinous attacks – including the latest throat slashing incident – and it suggests that the authorities are willfully turning a blind eye with the specific intention of allowing those equally vile inmates to exact their own retribution.

That’s why it’s only correct that Huntley should be compensated because he has been the victim and hasn’t been protected by the authorities. Who has assumed responsibility for this utter incompetence and grave dereliction of duty ? I suspect nobody because no one in such circumstances is readily accountable. And until they are Huntley will keep getting attacked and the tax payer will keep on footing the bill.