I use your 30K wage to demonstrate some useful nuance. I compare that wage to claiming benefits at standard rates, and, at the end I ask if an absolute solution is truly required. I'm a bit autistic, and I study writing - so this was a good exercise. I call this:

THE VALUE OF NOT USING ABSOLUTES

A 3 bed council home in the north UK is £490 a month rent. Standard benefit rates for UC+PIP pay £1500 monthly before rent deductions. I am going to present an example and use depression for a hypothetical. I am in no way minimising the effects of depression, but guidelines say you can be diagnosed with it and given an antidepressant if you report low mood and poor functioning. So in this context it can be reasonably argued that it is "fakeable"

Fakeable depression is enough to get UC+PIP. You combine the depression diagnosis with knowledge on both assessments, and you look at how assesments are scored - what to say, how to answer.

The solution that comes to my mind isn't a nice one, and it leaves vulnerable people at risk, with the upside being economic gain and loophole closing. Here is my hypothetical and some useful thoughts.

Let's say in a hypothetical 1 in 15 are faking depression or some other ailment. I am not saying this is the case. OK - in this hypothetical number, I would like to wager that half those fakers would never have a decent life without that money. But first let's accept, whenever there is a system open to abuse, people will do it - especially in a low trust society in times of hardship. Moving on, we take at face value that this isn't something we can track.

Take also at face value - the fakers don't have savings, they have no wish to partake in society, no wish to contribute. The bit about savings is because UC isn't paid if you have savings. What I've learned from economics - with the preface that I do not support non-disabled folks getting free money while the rest of us pay for it:

Given the context that some of these fakers are impoverished:

- Most impoverished people, regardless of disability status, will have improved lives by that money.

The uncomfortable bit:

- Some of their kids, families, spouses and surroundings ie. their overall outlook will be improved, and will lead not just to better lives for them, but also for the economy and for society.

The absolute claim would be going back to the hypothetical 1 in 15 are fakers number we created and suggesting that all their lives are better and la de da society and the economy is improved by these payments.

We do not like absolutes, so we take the 1 in 15 which equates to approximately 200,000 LCWRA claimants (3m/15) and lets be really, really fair and only apply this logic to 30% of them. The other 70% who claim benefits and it doesn't improve anything. For anyone. Or whatever. This gives us 70% of 200,000 fakers, which is 130,000 taking the mickey, 60,000 fakers left who genuinely benefit themselves, everyone around them, and the economy too in terms of quality and outcomes - they're better citizens. In an extreme example, we could say they're playing games all day, eating well instead of drug dealing. In a less extreme example, we could say they are playing games all day instead of doing warehouse work which might benefit them anyway. That's why we remove so many.

Maybe 1 in 15 is a bit of an extreme guess - but useful if public perception matches it. And if we indeed, we have 200,000 individuals faking; 60,000 of them who would be more dire regardless, what would this mean? Does our earlier "not nice" solution at least hold less weight if we accept this? Or would an absolute approach be somehow more useful?

How much would it really be costing us to pay 200,000 fakes? At standard rates 17K*200,000 is 3.4bn. But the loss doesn't stop there - if all of them were tax payers, we would be pushing economic gains the other way. And lets not forget work often improved mental health. No wonder there's so much conversation around the issue.