09/01/2012 Inside Out South

Hello and welcome to a brand new series of Inside Out. Here's what's

coming up tonight. Boozy Britain. Are our teenagers drinking

themselves to an early death? really scary and tragically, every

year, we sometimes fail to keep somebody alive. Radio 1's Scott

Mills has his last tipple, and turns all teetotal on us. Cheers!

Just the one? Just the one! And is the government crackdown on

disability benefits ONLY hitting the fraudsters? I mean there are

some people, yeah, that's mucking around. But a lot of people aren't

and we're the ones that seem to be suffering. Or do the new medical

assessments let down the needy? are so worried about what's

happening to people. They become destitute in many cases. I'm John

Cuthill and this is Inside Out First tonight, if you've been

battling the January sales, chances are, you'll need a stiff drink. But

that's together with the 500 other pints each adult has on average

throughout the year. And it's doing our livers no good at all. But we

can all give up, can't we? That's the challenge we set Radio One's

Scott Mills. BBC Radio One. Ten minutes from BBC Radio 1Xtra live

in London. As I come off air, the team wants to know why I've gone

all Peter Andre, with cameras following my every move. I am doing

a film, for the BBC. I am today giving up alcohol for a month.

what are you going to do? Are you just going to go out and? Drink.

And then not drink for a month. Over Christmas? And New Year?

Don't look at the film crew as if to say don't come round on

Christmas day because you'll have a little sherry. Could you not come

round on Christmas day? Yeah, do spirits count, or what? Well, I'm

not allowed to drink. Tonight's my last one. Are you coming out for a

bevvy? Hi, guys. Mohitos. Oh, my, gosh! Help yourself. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I know how this looks but I want you all to know

that we don't go out and drink cocktails every night. Yes! Wooh!

Now, I don't know what that is. I've done my share of drinking, but

don't drink half as much as I used to. Current government guidelines

say blokes shouldn't go over three to four units a day, women two to

three. But they're looking to tighten those to rein in the

estimated ten million of us who regulary go well over these amounts.

This is my mate, Chris, who is on my show on Radio One. We were just

talking earlier. He's actually got experience of one of his mates, how

old is he? 24. 24, and what's happened to him? He's just, his

stomach's pretty screwed up from booze. It's kind of wierd because

he's quite a close mate of mine and it's just a bit wierd because I

don't think he drinks much more than I do. Right. Last week he was

in hospital all week and this has been going on for six months now.

He's got to do tablets everyday. But the worst thing is, we all go

out, to be honest, get quite drunk. He can't really do that as much as

he used to be able to. So he feels left out. Yeah, it is a massive

social thing. It's rubbish, it's rubbish. So I wanted to see for

myself just how drink is affecting young people. At the age of 21,

Matt Maden from Bournemouth woke up from an alcohol induced coma. Years

of excessive drinking had finally caught up with him. I started

dabbling I suppose, experimenting with drink from a very early age.

From about 10/12 onwards. I would maybe have the odd glass of wine at

Christmas and that would be about it. Then my life sort of changed.

From the age of 15 my life revolved around social events. For example,

at a party I could drink, say, eight cans of lager and get drunk

on one occasion and then a year down the line it would take maybe

double that. Little did I know that alcohol in the end would actually

turn on me and that in effect it would start to control me. It went

from one point where I actually could control it and it gave me

confidence. But towards the end, it started to control me. Every month

Matt has to go to Kings College Hospital in London, for check ups.

His liver is shot to pieces and his only hope is a new one. When you

come and see me it's already too late because you've already really

damaged your liver. The problem is, if you had heart disease, for

example. Every time you get a little bit of damage from the

furred up blood vessels in your heart, you feel pain. You feel

shortness of breath, you know something's wrong. The trouble with

your liver is it keeps grinding away doing all this stuff and then

suddenly stops. Then you get very jaundiced, you get very sick, you

get fluid. But by that stage, you've knocked out 98% of your

liver. Kings has the biggest liver transplant centre in Europe.

Unfortunately, business is booming. With more and more patients in

their twenties. It's actually really upsetting coming here and

seeing what people look like. I actually couldn't look left and

right then, it was too horrific. But he was saying this is just the

tip of the iceberg and we probably are facing an epidemic and there's

just not enough organs. You're 24 now? Yeah. How much do you reckon

you drink a week? You know how much I drink a week, that's it. But I

don't think I'll be drinking the amount I drink now in 15 years time.

I think it's something that will eventually wear out and I'll be

fine. But experts say that any period of excessive drinking can

cause health problems. I tried giving up, remember? And that

didn't really. Didn't work. He'll come in and be, "Oh, I'm giving up

booze." Then the next day he'll have gone out and had a pint. Do

you drink every day? I don't drink every day but I tend to say I'm

going to give up booze when I am hungover and that's probably not

the best time to decide to give up booze. Never drinking again. It's

because people are drinking more heavily and in more eratic patterns.

And clearly drinking more alcohol. And it's a very complex argument.

It's about availability, pricing, all those other things. There's no

question that culturally, as a country, we don't treat alcohol

with respect. And we don't use it in a sensible way. I'd never call

it an epidemic because an epidemic is something that happens to you.

Getting drunk is something you do to yourself. You didn't catch it

from anybody. You made a decision to go out and get very drunk.

it's so widespread with young people. It is. So, why are we

drinking to excess? Whether we're young or older, there is a cultural

problem we've got to get over. I think with young people a lot of it

is due to low self esteem, low confidence. We have an odd

relationship with alcohol. We define a good night out by getting

drunk. Pretty much every young person in my view, from what I see,

is out there every weekend to get smashed. So you're a Radio One DJ

and you know better than me. How do we persuade young people that not

drinking is as cool as drinking? Meanwhile, my last night of

drinking is going well. I've had two cocktails in about 15 minutes.

Which is quite good going. I'm not sure what to drink next. They don't

do cocktails in here, surprisingly! In our local, it's time to fess up

to what we really drink. Big night out? Probably... This is really

hard to say. If any of my mates are watching I feel like I need to

round up a little bit, isn't that sad? I'd probably have four or five

pints. And although these regulars say they rarely drink at home, they

do meet here about four times a week. Probably a couple of pints a

night. Five, six of these a night. I try to drink about 15 pints on a

Thursday night but only get through about five. Do you know what,

thought? I don't think it's so bad if you're not drinking every night.

But that's probably wrong. Yeah, that is wrong. There's a bit of

fluid there. As Matt knows only too well. So what I can hear is really

you're not getting a lot of air into the base of your lungs. And

that's because you've still got fluid here. You've had to have it

drained once from this side and you couldn't breathe properly. There's

still some there even though the shunt is actually doing a lot of

the work. That's just a sign of the fact your liver's still damaged.

And with his liver barely working, other crucial organs are struggling

his stomach, heart and lungs. He's had a little plastic tube, a shunt,

put into his liver. To release the pressure from all the veins in his

stomach. They pop and he bleeds. He has bled three or four times. They

are life threatening bleeds. You can literally bleed to death in 30

minutes. He's had that three or four times already. I'm in my 30's

and don't consider myself a big drinker these days. But now seems

like the right time and place to get my liver checked. So, what josh

is doing, Scott, is he's putting the probe between your ribs. That's

where your liver is, inside. Then fire off pulses and see how bendy

your liver is. So, do I want a bendy liver? You want a bendy liver.

And what kind of period of time would you have to be drinking

heavily for, for that to happen? Well, we used to be told it takes

10/20 years. We are now seeing patients who are in their twenties

with hard knobbly livers. Cirrosis. Life threatening complications.

Some of those people have only been drinking seriously for four, five,

six years. It may be that we are beginning to see that you can screw

up your liver quite quickly if you go for it. In the end this and

other tests show I do have a springy liver, which begs the

question, is it worth me giving up drinking at all? If you were to

give up drinking for an amount of time, even weeks, could your liver

improve? Even with really bad damage, you can improve by stopping

drinking. By stopping poisoning your liver. In someone like you,

who I assume is fit and healthy, we might not be able to pick up any

differences, but without any doubt, your liver will be grateful. Even

though Matt has not had a drink in four and a half years, his future

is still really incertain. The grim fact is for Matt, when I meet him

and say we've listed him for transplantation, we quote a one in

five chance that you'll never get to having a transplant. There's a

one in five chance you'll die on the waiting list. Bleeding

complications. The coma that comes out of liver disease. Serious

infections are a real problem in patients with this, your immune

system doesn't work properly. And of course, this fluid. The

shortness of breath and fluid accumulating in the belly, those

are horrible things and really life threatening. We're one week into my

no drinking experiment. It's easy at the moment because there have

been no Christmas parties. I've stayed in all week. However, as the

weeks go by I know that I've got things planned where I could easily

crack and have a drink. So, let's see what happens. It's now been

three weeks since I had a drink. I've lost weight, I'm sleeping

better. But generally I'm doing all right. It's OK. But that's not

what's happening on the street. It's Christmas week and everybody's

going for it. Pubs and clubs, obviously they're still busy, but

the supermarkets in the High Street are doing a roaring trade in cheap

booze so young people tank up before hitting the town. As well as

the long term damage to our health, there's also the cost to the NHS to

consider. 2.7 billion a year in mopping up the casualties of a

night out. And they reckon 50 billion per year to the economy. In

Guildford's A&E yound drinkers make up a large number of the

emergencies. There was an intoxicated female, 15-year-old. I

assume these people get alcohol from, from parents, from friends,

or older friends. I think that's the problem with parents these days.

They're both out working, nobody's bringing up the kids. So, alcohol

brings them up, doesn't it? What's your name? I'm Mark, one of the A&E

doctors. Don't want to talk to me, huh? The very busiest times, it's

probably the case that the majority of people coming in have had

Domestic violence. There are mental health problems as possible

consequences of alcohol. So a dangerous drug from our point of

view. Getting patched-up, a 20-year-old

student. It is going to hurt a bit. I fell over getting into a taxi and

cut my leg. I've never been in A&E before. The funny thing is I have

been more drunk than this. It was unfortunate today that I fell over.

I saw some data a short while ago which suggested an adult could get

through their weekly recommended level of alcohol for �4 or �5.

And a teenager could drink so much that their life is at risk, for

just �7. We met this guy called Matt who his

26 and he is on the waiting-list for a liver transplant. Surely

these policies are just tinkering around the edges? The thought that

a 26-year-old can drink so much, that is a huge amount of alcohol,

to be on liver transplant waiting list is an incredible tragedy. It

is a tragedy to me as a parent that someone of 26 thinks so little

about themselves that they can drink that much. There's also a

thing there about culture changing and personal responsibility so we

will be publishing a plan on what we're going to do about alcohol in

the next few months. It is a licensing and a justice issue. It

is a health issue. It is an education issue. It is something we

have to tackle all together but we also need people like yourself. You

have reach into an audience that I need to talk to. How do I persuade

young people that when they go out on a Friday night, I don't want to

stop people having fun, but they have to take responsibility for

keeping safe. So we've spoken to the government.

What would you do about it? I think we've got to look at the minimum

price per unit of alcohol. Because those cheap drinks are designed for

people to get drunk on. Not for normal drinkers. And if we brought

in a minimum price for alcohol we know that that would reduce the

level of harmful drinking in the country.

I'm at my Christmas do with my mates and it is hard, there's no

drinking. I'm on water. Cheers. It has been a drink free December

for me which has been an interesting experiment. I've been

able to give up so I'm one of the lucky ones, I guess. But it is New

year's Eve, I'm about to go out so I'm going to have a cheeky half.

Cheers. The people we are talking to are young people drinking huge

amounts of alcohol and that is a complex thing but I think part of

it is ease of access to alcohol. Part of it is how cheap it is. Part

of it is the culture that we create where it is good to go out and get

hammered. And there's something wrong with telling young people or

making young people feel that the only way they can have fun is to go

out and get totally blitzed. I did not grow up like that. I like

alcohol in moderation but it is not something where I choose to get

blitzed. Meanwhile Matt lives day-to-day

with his phone constantly by his side hoping to get the call from

his transplant team which could save his life.

I know I can't change the past. It is what I do today and for the

future, you know. I try and be a bit more selfless as opposed to

being selfish. I reckon they are more millions of

people who are part of the way through the journey that Matt has

described. How many kids do you know who drink socially and then

use it for confidence? That's really common. All he has done is

kept going up that pathway and I think there are millions of people

like that. Details of the BBC help line on

alcohol coming up at the end of the show.

Next, it was designed to weed out benefit cheats, but it is causing

real problems for some of those people who desperately need it.

The test to see if you're fit enough to work is causing real

concerns for some welfare charities. There are all sorts of cases that

have hit the headlines. This is Clare Jones, tandem skydiver and

disability benefit cheat. This is Paul Appleby, unable to

walk without two sticks and largely confined to a wheelchair.

This man was filmed on the golf course after claiming he could

barely walk a few yards. And only some caught on camera.

This footage of a Manchester dance contest was captured by fraud

investigators. Mr Reid told benefits officials he could barely

walk due to crippling arthritis. The government crackdown is part of

the huge drive to get people off sickness benefits and back to work.

Ending the something for nothing culture. Promised made, promise

delivered. But while cheats are being

prosecuted, some major charities are raising concerns that many

claimants are being declared fit for work when they have genuine

disabilities. We fully appreciate that the

benefits bill is a huge one for the country and that the issue has to

be addressed. We have seen quite a lot in the media recently about

people having yachts, but that is not our experience. We are seeing

people would real health problems and disabilities and their benefits

being stopped. The problems came to light when a

new benefit called the employment support allowance was introduced to

replace the old incapacity benefit. In order to get it, the majority of

people have to have an independent medical assessment and score at

least 15 points to qualify. This is all about taking some of

the 1.6 million people we're going to be reassessing and helping them

make something more of their lives. We are faced with a binary choice -

either we leave people on benefits for the rest of the lives or we try

to help them back into work. It may be different what they did before,

maybe somebody with a back problem who can no longer do a manual job

could do something else. Tony Hind, a plumber from Gosport,

did not need to be reassessed as he never claimed sickness benefits

before. But when he developed severe back problems he decided to

go on benefits to tide him over until the got better.

I couldn't bend and I was literally climbing up the stairs on all fours.

I could not lift toilets, basins, baths. Boilers, radiators. Couldn't

do it. So in the end in January I went to the doctor and I had the

physio, scans, which all proved I had three prolapsed discs.

Unable to continue working, Tony applied for employment support

allowance. That meant going for an independent medical. He was not

impressed with the things he was asked.

A lot of questions about nothing, really. How were you able to take

your dog for a walk! I told them the park was four minutes from me.

Just because you have a bad back, it doesn't mean you can't walk. It

was painful when I was walking, I was limping. People used to ask me

how I was, they could see I was in a lot of pain. Tony answered his

medical questions as best he could but failed to get enough points to

qualify. He's not alone. Portsmouth CAB says in the last year around 20

people a month have asked for their help saying that their assessments

were wrong. What the clients are reporting back to us is that the

way the assessment is administered is very much a sort of yes or no

answer. And actually it is not as simple as that. If you think of

someone who has had a stroke and the left side of their body is

affected and they are asked questions about mobility. The

answer for the right hand side of the body would be very different to

the left-hand side of the body. And how do you express that in a simple

format in a reply to questions on a form?

When Pauline Bennett from Portsmouth retired from work for

medical reasons and she hoped that the benefits system would help her

out. I have night blindness, tunnel

vision, so I cannot see anything from the top and bottom. My

eyesight won't be getting any better, it will get worse. I had to

retire from the Post Office because it was getting too dangerous for me.

I was tripping over chairs and boxes. Being run over by metal

cages. I had to go to ATOS to do my medical, to see how I was. And they

classed me as permanently unfit for work. With just a small pension,

Pauline needed benefits to get by. But for her assessment to get

employment support allowance it was ATOS Healthcare had carried it out.

The very same company who declared her unfit for work at the Post

Office. And guess what? This time they said she was fit for work.

I could not believe it, to be honest. They gave me 9 points and I

could not understand it. It was almost as if I had got better

without realising it! Without the required 15 points,

Pauline did not qualify for the full �90 a week benefit. But she

was not giving up. So I appealed. They then refused the appeal again

and I had to go to a tribunal. And finally they agreed that I deserve

the 15 points and that I could not see well enough to go to work. But

it has taken since April for it to be sorted out. So why was Pauline

declared unfit the first time but not the second? Well ATOS

Healthcare told us they had different types of medical

assessments with different objectives and criteria. The

occupational health assessment is there to test someone's capability

for a specific job or role. But the ESA assessment has been developed

by the government to see if someone is capable of work in general. But

of course it was Pauline's ESA assessment that was wrong. That was

the one that was overturned at appeal. So are these independent

medicals fit for purpose? Well, Tony also appealed to a

tribunal and like Pauline, his assessment was overturned. Six

months after his ESA medical, he finally got the full 15 points.

It proved what I was saying all along. I think they're trying to

get people off benefits, off these sickness benefits, but it is people

maybe that need to come off and people who are genuine. They should

not treat everyone the same. There are people who do go through what I

went through and for them to turn around and disbelieve you and

disbelieve your doctor, it is totally out of order.

The government says it has listened to the critics and has recently

brought in changes to improve the medical assessments.

None of the decisions that have been taken since we introduced

these changes in the summer have yet come to appeal. So all the

examples that you and others have come across where something appears

to have gone wrong in the process, that is all a part of changes we

introduced last summer. And I'm confident that when we see the

impact of those changes, working their way through the system, that

we will see we have made a big improvement in the quality of

decision-making. Despite these assurances, the CAB say even now

they are taking on new cases of people who are falling foul of the

assessments. People like Andrew Pay, an

epileptic who has spent most of his life out of work because he says

employers will not take him on because of his fits. He's also

asthmatic and suffers from depression and has anxiety attacks.

And his assessment score? No points at all. None at all, I

cannot believe it. None at all. what went on in the test? What did

they ask? If I could raise a hand above my head, if I could make a

cup of tea. If I could walk 100 metres and things like that. And of

course I can. Of course I can. I was trying to explain to her, I

said it is not physical, it's mental. It is in my head. I can't

show it. They wanted me to have a seizure in front of them before

they would accept it. And I can't do that. Is it quite upsetting?

Very upsetting, very emotional. It is. It gets to me. And in terms of

your day-to-day living, how much difference does it make? Big, I

can't treat my daughter to an ice cream or anything like that. I

can't afford it. Sorry. While Andrew waits for an appeal,

the CAB say it is people like him with long-term health conditions

who are suffering the most from the benefits clampdown.

Some of the changes we have put in place are specifically designed to

provide extra protection to people with mental health challenges. They

must be the most difficult cases to deal with appropriately. We have to

really understand the nature of that person's situation and make

sure we get it right. We introduced changes that have led to an

increase in the number of people with mental health conditions who

are now receiving long-term unconditional support. So this is

all about trying to do all we can to make sure we get the decisions

right for people. So the government says things are

getting better. And that the improvements are working their way

through the system. But with the appeals process costing between �50

and �80 million, all that has come at a high price in terms of time,

in terms of money, and stress. Basically, I have been unfit for

work. I have retired. I've been assessed as fit for work and now

I've been told again that I'm not fit for work. All it has done, it

has given me stress and panic and worry. And it has cost money and

time. I'm sure they could have spent that on someone else. Do you

feel let down? Very. Upset, very. Because all these years, and then

they decide, oh, you are well. It is wrong. That is just about it for

now but don't forget, if you've got any comments to make, you can email

me. I'll see you next week. For details of organisations that

can offer advice and support on alcohol, go online to