Well we knew that it was coming and we knew that it would be nasty, but it certainly didn't make Tuesday's Budget any more palatable. Truth has been turned on its head and the economy is being adjusted to deal with a fiction. That fiction is that swingeing cuts, the like of which we haven't seen in a generation, are necessary if the country isn't going to be thrust into chaos and bankruptcy; but they aren't necessary and the economy wouldn't have collapsed into entropic disaster without them. The truth is that the massive public-sector cuts and the vindictive attack on the benefits structure that Chancellor George Osborne has inflicted on us is a sop to the pressure from international bankers and speculators, to the grey men of the IMF, the European Union and the City. It's a capitulation to those who have said that, unless the government inflicts massive pain on the population, they will attack the currency and the country's credit rating with all the considerable weapons in their armoury, bringing about a crisis which would make the Greek disaster pale into insignificance. The poor are once again targeted disproportionately by this pack of coalition wolves, this collection of Tory class warriors and Lib-Dem turncoats.
There's £11 billion to be slashed from the benefits bill.That's a mind-boggling sum to rip off from those least able to defend themselves. And it's being done in the most dishonest way possible, by linking benefits to the CPI measure of inflation rather than RPI at a time when the RPI measure has gone up by 5.1 per cent in the past year , while the CPI has risen by 3.4 per cent. This will hurt households reliant on benefits significantly because of the way that spending in poorer households operates. And it will hurt even more when the 2.5 per cent VAT rise comes into effect on January 4, taking it to 20 per cent. Spending by government departments will, we are told, be cut by 25 per cent over the next four years - put like that, it doesn't seem to be that significant. But when you realise that government departments deal with everything in your life from schooling to health and safety at work, the impact becomes a little clearer. Public-sector wages frozen for two years will certainly not please civil and public servants. But this real-terms pay cut will hit the manufacturing and retail sectors as well, with the dramatic cut in the amount of spending power in the economy that it represents. And freezing child benefit for three years sounds like picking on families rather than saving the nation's credibility.
But perhaps abusing families is what it takes to win brownie points with the City? If we're all taking the hit equally, why is corporation tax going to be cut by 1 per cent every year for the next four? Doesn't sound all that equal to me at least. What this says is that we can forget about any recovery. The Tories and their Lib-Dem toadies are going for broke. They are front-loading a huge attack on working people early in their term of office and attempting to use phoney claims of a financial crisis to justify redrawing the economic map of Britain. Every service that is crippled will be accompanied with a transfer to the private sector justified by the specious claim of "attracting private capital," when what will happen in reality is that what will be attracted are profiteers and speculators. The leeches will have a field day and the profits will flow freely - as freely as the lifeblood of an economy that is being hijacked by those who see public service as an opportunity to milk the public purse and benefit recipients as mere parasites and scroungers, not people in need of help and support from their society. It's an attack of huge proportions and unlimited malevolence and we are going to have to tell this government that we are having none of it. It's an assault that will have to be resisted by every parliamentary and extra-parliamentary resource that we can summon. And it's a fight that must be won.
Showing posts with label benefits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label benefits. Show all posts
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Friday, 26 March 2010
Charity begins at home for the elite
It is hard to remember a time when politicians did not complain about all these layabouts on benefits scrounging off the state. It was shocking when new Labour's first home secretary Jack Straw denounced single mums, the disabled and the homeless, but he didn't invent mean-spirited attacks on the poorest in society. He simply gave those attacks a new, more vindictive twist. Ever since we've had a welfare state we've had members of the elite complaining about the cushy lives that are generously granted to the sick, the unemployed or the old. The workhouses were introduced at a time when the rich were complaining loudly that if they were to prevent children from starving, the least that society could do was lock them up and make them earn their keep. Workhouses were not known as the New Bastilles for nothing. The current economic climate might have given ministers an added incentive to cut the benefit bill, but they need to be careful not to believe their own rhetoric. With a slurry of unnamed ministers sending out quotes on the end of universal pension provision and reducing housing benefits, they have managed the neat trick of looking vile and incompetent at the same.
They need to remember that welfare provision has never been simply about generosity to the unfortunate. Just like the sewage system and other public works, the dole was introduced because the well-to-do cannot live in their own little bubble no matter how hard they try; they could catch cholera or TB just like everyone else if diseases were allowed to spread. Bins are collected for free not because there is any general principle about the right to have your rubbish removed, but because if someone on a street couldn't or wouldn't pay then the public health hazard that this would create would be everyone's problem. Over time, the rich decided that having their throats cut by the destitute was less appealing than ensuring the poor did not get too desperate. The safety net was also a shield to prevent murder, robbery and anarchy. The trick has always been to pay out enough to prevent rioting while making the process of claiming benefits unpleasant enough to prevent having to pay decent wages or make workplaces good places to be. With rising unemployment, there's no point in the government wasting resources trying to bully claimants who have no job to go to. But it is possible to ensure that the whole process is soul-destroying, leaving the recipients of benefits feeling like atomised outsiders. The government has learned lessons from the '30s, just as we should.
The unemployed used to have to sign on every day as a method to ensure they were instantly available for whatever dangerous, ill-paid work might be going that day.
The downside was that by collecting all the out-of-work people in an area in the same place day after day, organising a movement of the unemployed became a good deal easier. The National Unemployed Workers Movement (NUWM) became a real force for change last century not simply because it protested against genuine social injustice but because the state assisted it by drawing its potential audience into one place and forcing them to stay there day after day with nothing to do but talk about their problems.
These days claimants sign on every two weeks and they are often corralled as quickly as possible through open-plan offices under the watchful gaze of security guards. The need for a new NUWM is still there, but this time the government has chosen not to do socialists any favours when it comes to reaching our audience. The benefit cheats hotline also plays a part in the process. It was a clever sleight of hand by the government which has never paid for itself. The few people who do ring up to grass on someone are actually reporting totally legitimate recipients of benefits - or people who don't receive benefits anyway. It remains in place not because it's an effective way to prevent benefit fraud - it isn't - but because it helps to embed in people's minds guilt by association.
Somehow, because some people defraud the system, everyone who claims benefits without being totally miserable is somehow slurred as dishonest. The insipid message is that claiming benefits is itself an immoral act similar to fraud. During the Thatcher years, not a day went by when the unemployed were not harangued, scorned or despised from the Cabinet pulpit, but welfare spending always rose. But if she hated the dole so much, why did Thatcher keep paying it? Not from the goodness of her heart - that would have required possessing one. The truth is that the bullying and the payouts are two sides of the same coin. It's cheaper to pay housing benefit than it is to imprison the destitute and you don't get any awkward rebellions either. However, you still need to make sure that it sounds like you are doing the poor a favour rather than keeping the lid on Pandora's box. The moment the poor realise why the powerful are handing over money, what appears to be charity could well be seen as something very similar to demanding money with menaces. And who knows what society's poorest might demand next if they started getting ideas.
They need to remember that welfare provision has never been simply about generosity to the unfortunate. Just like the sewage system and other public works, the dole was introduced because the well-to-do cannot live in their own little bubble no matter how hard they try; they could catch cholera or TB just like everyone else if diseases were allowed to spread. Bins are collected for free not because there is any general principle about the right to have your rubbish removed, but because if someone on a street couldn't or wouldn't pay then the public health hazard that this would create would be everyone's problem. Over time, the rich decided that having their throats cut by the destitute was less appealing than ensuring the poor did not get too desperate. The safety net was also a shield to prevent murder, robbery and anarchy. The trick has always been to pay out enough to prevent rioting while making the process of claiming benefits unpleasant enough to prevent having to pay decent wages or make workplaces good places to be. With rising unemployment, there's no point in the government wasting resources trying to bully claimants who have no job to go to. But it is possible to ensure that the whole process is soul-destroying, leaving the recipients of benefits feeling like atomised outsiders. The government has learned lessons from the '30s, just as we should.
The unemployed used to have to sign on every day as a method to ensure they were instantly available for whatever dangerous, ill-paid work might be going that day.
The downside was that by collecting all the out-of-work people in an area in the same place day after day, organising a movement of the unemployed became a good deal easier. The National Unemployed Workers Movement (NUWM) became a real force for change last century not simply because it protested against genuine social injustice but because the state assisted it by drawing its potential audience into one place and forcing them to stay there day after day with nothing to do but talk about their problems.
These days claimants sign on every two weeks and they are often corralled as quickly as possible through open-plan offices under the watchful gaze of security guards. The need for a new NUWM is still there, but this time the government has chosen not to do socialists any favours when it comes to reaching our audience. The benefit cheats hotline also plays a part in the process. It was a clever sleight of hand by the government which has never paid for itself. The few people who do ring up to grass on someone are actually reporting totally legitimate recipients of benefits - or people who don't receive benefits anyway. It remains in place not because it's an effective way to prevent benefit fraud - it isn't - but because it helps to embed in people's minds guilt by association.
Somehow, because some people defraud the system, everyone who claims benefits without being totally miserable is somehow slurred as dishonest. The insipid message is that claiming benefits is itself an immoral act similar to fraud. During the Thatcher years, not a day went by when the unemployed were not harangued, scorned or despised from the Cabinet pulpit, but welfare spending always rose. But if she hated the dole so much, why did Thatcher keep paying it? Not from the goodness of her heart - that would have required possessing one. The truth is that the bullying and the payouts are two sides of the same coin. It's cheaper to pay housing benefit than it is to imprison the destitute and you don't get any awkward rebellions either. However, you still need to make sure that it sounds like you are doing the poor a favour rather than keeping the lid on Pandora's box. The moment the poor realise why the powerful are handing over money, what appears to be charity could well be seen as something very similar to demanding money with menaces. And who knows what society's poorest might demand next if they started getting ideas.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Rage against unemployment
The latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showed a fall in unemployment from September to November 2009 of 7,000, to 2.46 million. For young people, the drop was more dramatic, down 16,000. The number claiming unemployment benefits also decreased, by 15,200, to 1.61 million. But this does not tell the whole story, as the number of people in full-time employment fell by 113,000 while part-timers increased by 99,000 to reach a record high of 7.71 million. There were 1.03 million employees and self-employed people working part-time because they could not find a full-time job. This is the highest figure since records for this series began," said the report. Also, the number of inactive people of working age increased by 79,000 over the quarter to reach a record high of 8.05 million. Some people choose not to work, but others give up the search for work because of the futility. For example, only one in four 18-24 year olds who stop claiming the dole, stop because they have got a job. But giving up the search for work decreases the unemployment figures, which the government can then selectively trumpet in the run-up to the general election. Also, the statistics are based on a random sample rather than every individual. Therefore, there is room for error; the ONS estimates that its figure on the number of unemployed people could be as much as 82,000 out. So a 7,000 drop for one three-month period does not signify a decisive change. And while there are less than half a million job vacancies for two and a half million jobseekers (plus one million part time workers), that will not change.
The New Year has begun with a stark reminder of the human cost of the bosses' economic crisis: young people are likely to suffer 'permanent psychological scars' as a result of unemployment, according to the newly released Prince's Trust YouGov Youth Index. The report shows that being unemployed affects young people's health, friendships and family life. This is hardly surprising. Unemployment for under-25 year olds means living on Jobseeker's Allowance of just £50.95 per week. On this poverty income young people cannot afford to go for a night out, buy a CD or DVD, let alone think of a holiday. Even something as simple as using the bus becomes a difficult financial decision. It is no wonder that personal relationships suffer and that unemployed youth are 'significantly less happy' than those in work when forced to live in these circumstances.When you factor in the reduced housing benefits that under-25s are entitled to, the reality is that young people are forced into dependence on friends and family. With so many families struggling to get by anyway, it is no wonder that 25% of the young people questioned said that their unemployment had led to arguments with parents and friends.
The overall impact of this according to Professor David Blanchflower is "an unhappy and debilitated generation of young people who...become decreasingly likely to find work in the future".Young people are being asked to put their lives on hold until the bosses' profits are restored and recruitment picks up again. Unemployment is a cruel punishment inflicted on the young for the failure of the free-market system. The fat cats have messed up people's lives by wrecking the economy and making working-class and young people pay for it. The situation facing young people will only get worse as the politicians line up to take the axe to the public sector, doubtless scaling back the already meagre help to the unemployed. Measures to tackle what many experts have called a 'national emergency' have so far been inadequate in every respect. Young people need permanent jobs that are socially useful and pay a living wage. New Labour undertook the biggest intervention in the economy in history when they bailed out the banks. Why can't the government intervene to help the next generation? Why can't it bail out young people? Capitalist politicians will claim the cost is 'too high'. This report shows the cost of doing nothing is far greater.
The New Year has begun with a stark reminder of the human cost of the bosses' economic crisis: young people are likely to suffer 'permanent psychological scars' as a result of unemployment, according to the newly released Prince's Trust YouGov Youth Index. The report shows that being unemployed affects young people's health, friendships and family life. This is hardly surprising. Unemployment for under-25 year olds means living on Jobseeker's Allowance of just £50.95 per week. On this poverty income young people cannot afford to go for a night out, buy a CD or DVD, let alone think of a holiday. Even something as simple as using the bus becomes a difficult financial decision. It is no wonder that personal relationships suffer and that unemployed youth are 'significantly less happy' than those in work when forced to live in these circumstances.When you factor in the reduced housing benefits that under-25s are entitled to, the reality is that young people are forced into dependence on friends and family. With so many families struggling to get by anyway, it is no wonder that 25% of the young people questioned said that their unemployment had led to arguments with parents and friends.
The overall impact of this according to Professor David Blanchflower is "an unhappy and debilitated generation of young people who...become decreasingly likely to find work in the future".Young people are being asked to put their lives on hold until the bosses' profits are restored and recruitment picks up again. Unemployment is a cruel punishment inflicted on the young for the failure of the free-market system. The fat cats have messed up people's lives by wrecking the economy and making working-class and young people pay for it. The situation facing young people will only get worse as the politicians line up to take the axe to the public sector, doubtless scaling back the already meagre help to the unemployed. Measures to tackle what many experts have called a 'national emergency' have so far been inadequate in every respect. Young people need permanent jobs that are socially useful and pay a living wage. New Labour undertook the biggest intervention in the economy in history when they bailed out the banks. Why can't the government intervene to help the next generation? Why can't it bail out young people? Capitalist politicians will claim the cost is 'too high'. This report shows the cost of doing nothing is far greater.
Friday, 5 February 2010
Disability benefit failures are a travesty
The pro-big business parties, New Labour, Tories and LibDems, vied with each other at their party conferences with zealous plans to make the working class pay for the economic and financial crisis. Each party boasts about the size of cuts to public sector services and jobs it will inflict after the next general election. Sick, disabled and unemployed people could only watch in horror. The Tories led the way. Cameron said his party would force all sick and disabled people currently on Incapacity Benefit (IB) to undergo strict medical assessment, aiming to push an estimated 500,000 people off IB and onto Jobseekers Allowance. This would result in a benefits cut of about £25 a week, from an already miserly £89.90 a week to £64.30 a week. This vicious measure has nothing to do with encouraging people back to work. It has everything to do with making the sick and disabled pay for the economic crisis. Cameron says the £600 million saved will fund an expanded, accelerated welfare to work programme to get the long-term unemployed, particularly young people, into work.
The Tory plan involves assessing 2.6 million IB recipients over a three-year period. This would mean processing 3,000 assessments every day. No way will this allow benefit recipients to be assessed fairly, nor will New Labour's current plans of 10,000 assessments a week. New Labour ministers criticise the proposals but, from October 2008, Gordon Brown's government has replaced IB with Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for all new claimants. The Personal Capability Assessment of Incapacity Benefit was replaced with a much tougher ESA Work Capability Assessment. Now thousands of people who previously would have qualified for IB are required to seek work. Since October 2008 over two-thirds of ESA claimants have been forced onto Jobseekers Allowance. Jobcentre Examining Medical Officers award no points to claimants who clearly have severe physical and/or mental health problems. The whole system, from initial claim to appeals, is weighted against claimants. More than three-quarters of appeal hearings went against them. The Disability Alliance says the new Work Capability Assessment is too rigid, even requiring people about to have operations and some terminally ill people to be assessed, with the assessment itself unable to reflect disabled people's lives and needs. Disabled people are judged as ready for work when they cannot really work or need specialist help to find suitable employment.
And how easy will it be for the thousands of disabled people forced into the jobs market to find work? Once placed on Jobseekers Allowance they find there is no tailored help at a time of increasing unemployment. They struggle to find work in a more competitive jobs market where, says the Disability Alliance, employer discrimination against the disabled remains high. An estimated 40% of IB claimants have one or more mental health problems, but a recent survey showed that 80% of employers would not take on people with mental health problems. Cameron claims his proposals confirm the Tories as a compassionate party! No less 'compassionate' is New Labour. Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper complained that Cameron's proposals just rehash government plans. She boasted that the government is already implementing tougher tests for everyone on IB, stronger requirements on the jobless to find work and is using private companies. The money that the Tories squeeze out of these vulnerable people will be used to massively expand, in effect, workfare, their 'work for your benefits' system for the long-term unemployed, particularly aimed at those under 25. Unemployed people will be forced to work 30 hours a week for Jobseekers Allowance of just £64.30 a week for those aged 25 and over, and a disgraceful £50.95 a week for those under 25!
The Tories also plan to reduce from a year to six months the period the unemployed can claim Jobseekers Allowance before being forced onto training or into jobs. But New Labour pipped the Tories at the post by announcing their own 'work for your benefits' programme, pilot mandatory work trials and so-called work experience placements for jobseekers out of work for over six months. The Child Poverty Action Group correctly argues that if the government can find temporary work for an unemployed person they should pay them a proper wage. Whoever wins the next general election, these proposals are a thin end of a wedge, the thick end of which could be moves to cap unemployment benefits to a maximum period of six months for everyone, as is already the case in many other countries. Cameron's plans will involve greater use of private companies to deliver their proposals. New Labour has already heavily used private companies to deliver its Flexible New Deal 'back to work' programme. In a scheme intended to involve both private companies and the voluntary sector, fewer than 40% of contracts went to the voluntary sector, despite a DWP fraud investigation into the activities of at least three private 'welfare to work' contractors.
Clearly, whichever party wins the next general election, the sick, disabled and unemployed will feel the brunt of the attacks. Millions of workers, either as employees or users of the public sector, will have no choice but to fight back. The trade unions need to launch a mass campaign, to include unemployed and disabled workers, to defend our public services and the welfare state, a vital part of which is decent benefits for those workers who, for whatever reason, are unable to work. Cuts, outsourcing and privatisation mean vulnerable adults and children are 'falling through the net'. Social care staff are struggling to cope with high caseloads, increasing red tape and worsening pay, terms and conditions at work. Home care, day services, residential homes, social work, child protection, and services for people with special educational needs, mental health services, support for disabled people, people with learning difficulties and older people. All our services are under attack from New Labour in government and the Tories and Lib Dems in our local councils. And more of the same is promised.
In some councils, the tendering process has been refined to little more than an 'e-bay style auction' - rival companies sit at their laptops underbidding each other until the 'race to the bottom' is complete. The contracts for looking after our mums and dads, nannies and granddads, are awarded to the lowest bidder - in one case just over £7 per hour. The only way the companies can make profits at this level is to cut wages and to fiddle the books - claiming for time spent with clients which doesn't happen. Older people are dying through the pursuit of profit. The contracts for looking after our mums and dads, nannies and granddads, are awarded to the lowest bidder - in one case just over £7 per hour. The only way the companies can make profits at this level is to cut wages and to fiddle the books - claiming for time spent with clients which doesn't happen. Older people are dying through the pursuit of profit. The government says that more elderly people want to stay living at home with support, as opposed to going into residential care. The same philosophy drives policies for disabled people and people with learning difficulties. "Independence, freedom and choice" the politicians shout. "Close the residential homes, close the day centres, give everyone freedom and independence".
Socialists believe strongly that all vulnerable members of society should be treated with respect and dignity. They have the same right to a good quality of life as anyone else, including the right to stay at home, live independently, go to work and so on. The truth is, under the present system, these words are a con trick, a smokescreen behind which the politicians can cut back spending on social care, leaving people neglected, alone and abused. Whilst 'old-fashioned' and 'institutional' services such as 9-5 segregated day centres and foreboding residential homes should make way for more mainstream, community-based and inclusive 21st century services, very little resources are being provided for any replacement services. Although care workers in some local authorities have fought for and won improvements to pay and conditions, closures are being used as a way to cut costs and get rid of staff. More and more people are now expected to pay for services themselves - provided mainly by private, profit-making companies and voluntary (charity-based) groups. Councils are providing fewer and fewer services under this con trick of 'promoting independence'.
Work and Pensions (DWP) minister Peter Hain has announced new medical 'tests' from next October for people with disabilities to make it harder to qualify for incapacity benefit. 2.7 million people currently claim £7.4 billion a year in incapacity benefit. Many of them are people chucked out of work when the Tories destroyed industrial jobs but whose redundancy pay has gone. Some have severe work-related illnesses such as emphysema, many are suffering from depression. People with psychiatric illnesses make up 40% of those on incapacity benefit. Katrine Williams, who is DWP Wales Secretary of the PCS union, speaking in a personal capacity, told the socialist: "The targets include getting one million people off sickness and disability benefits. "Most of the onus of the welfare reforms continues to be on the individual claiming benefit and their 'responsibilities' rather than the government taking action to tackle the discrimination that people with disabilities face from employers. This government's welfare reforms coincide with savage job cuts and privatisation of essential services like New Deal for Disabled People and Pathways to Work in the DWP. This has a massive impact on the services we provide to the public. The DWP as an employer is far from satisfactory. In one year alone over 1,000 staff were sacked for being sick.
Many currently face the threat of compulsory redundancy are single parents, have a disability or have caring responsibilities and live in areas where it is difficult to find work. A GMB union survey a few years back showed "a direct link between high employment rates and low benefit claimant rates, and vice versa. Where there are jobs, there are low claim rates. The task for the government in seeking to reduce the number of claimants is to promote the creation of more jobs." Instead, they attack their own workforce and bring in new attacks on sick, disabled and vulnerable people. These cuts need to be fought, and the whole "strongest will survive" elitist mantra scrapped. I've seen people who are homeless. A few friends of mine are on very low benefits, and struggle to afford both bills and food. Incapacity Benefit does not even cover basic needs. Electricity, gas, water, and other bills are much more than this, leaving little left over for food or anything else. Millions live on bank overdrafts and other people face the same problem. Some of them cannot even afford to turn the heating on in winter. There is no doubt that Britain's welfare benefits system is complex, unwieldy and hard to understand for those who claim it and those who administer it. But Labour's current Welfare Reform Bill, that would replace Incapacity Benefit and Income Support for people who are sick with the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), is far worse.
You have to look behind the spin to see what this will really mean for physically and mentally ill and disabled people. Incapacity Benefit and Retirement Pension are the only two benefits that are based on National Insurance contributions in the way envisaged at the Welfare State's creation in 1948. The government is seeking to increase the age when people can claim retirement pension from 65 to 68. Incapacity Benefit recipients have been increasingly subjected to a 'work-focused' regime of interviews over recent years. This bill enshrines this approach in legislation. Replacing Incapacity Benefit with ESA will erode the provision of contributory benefit by limiting the amount of the contribution-based part of the benefit to a low rate. The 'support' or 'work-related activity' components will be added after the person has been assessed as having 'limited capability' for work or work-related activity. This seriously erodes sick people's rights. It is a further clawing back of concessions won by the working class after the second world war. ESA shifts the benefit's ethos away from compensating someone for not being able to do their own job or any work towards making them work.
The bill doesn't accept medical certificates provided by a GP as evidence of 'limited capability of work-related activity'. People will have a 'health-related assessment' by a 'health care professional' to determine what work or work-related activity they can do. Certain people with severe physical or mental health conditions will receive the 'support component'. Everyone else will be subjected to a regime of work-focused interviews, work-related activities and regular reassessments. Failure to comply or cooperate or to participate in a prescribed way will lead to reductions in benefit. This will particularly disadvantage those with mental health conditions who may not be able to cope with complying with prescriptions about the sort of information they supply and how they supply it. The bill clearly lays out the privatisation of the work to administer the benefit's work-focused elements. This will take away core areas of work from civil servants and hand it over to companies who - the government admits - don't have the expertise and don't want to help people, they just want to make a profit; this is no way for the government to support vulnerable sick people.
The number of people on IB is higher in areas where coal mining and heavy industries have closed, because of diseases caused by hazardous work and the devastating effects on mental health of the closure of these industries and the fragmentation of communities. It is these people that New Labour want to get off benefit. The bill's aim is to remove a million of the 2.6 million on Incapacity Benefit. Another aim is an 80% employment rate. Even senior civil servants say that work-focused regimes wouldn't be needed if decently paid jobs with good conditions were available. Instead people will be coerced into low-paid work with poor conditions. In order to reduce the unemployment figures, the Tories also decided that 16 hours work or more was full time. 80% employment based on part-time hours means that the reality for lots of workers is that they have to have several part-time jobs to survive. The Welfare Reform Bill's explanatory notes complain about the 'perverse incentive' to stay on benefit because the benefit rate goes up the longer you're on it. The real 'perverse incentive' offered by New Labour is to private companies whose low pay is subsidised by tax credits paid to workers from the public purse.
In other countries, there have been widespread demonstrations against attempts to dismantle state benefits. In Britain we continue to suffer the death of the post-war welfare state by a thousand cuts, started by Thatcher and followed by Blair. All three main parties have this neo-liberal agenda. Workers need a new party to represent their interests and to protect and rebuild welfare in Britain. Once again workers are paying for the crisis in the capitalist system. Wrapped in words like 'reform', 'modernisation' and 'opportunity', this is an attack on the most vulnerable in our society. In an ideal world, the physically and mentally ill would have the dignity of a living income as well as access to decently paid jobs with good conditions if they were able and wished to work. The Department for Work and Pensions have poorly thought-out plans to get one million people off Incapacity Benefit. The government are trying to divide disabled people into the worthy and unworthy poor. They talk about work for those who can and help for those who can't. The reality is that New Labour plans to bully disabled people off benefits into low-paid, slave labour jobs, which are both exploitative and unsuitable. This isn't only an attack on disabled people but on the wages and conditions of all organised workers - disabled people who refuse such slave-labour employment will have their benefits cut.
The problem isn't in our attitude towards working, it lies in employers' reluctance to offer us jobs. If New Labour were really serious about 'helping disabled people into work' it would do more to tackle the widespread discrimination against us amongst most big employers. Where are these jobs going to come from? Will the government put money into the Access To Work Scheme (set up to provide equipment, etc to disabled people in employment) so as to ensure that any necessary adjustments are made to workplaces? If the government won't find the resources needed, the scheme won't work! Why are they on Incapacity Benefit in the first place? Why did many of us lose our jobs when we became disabled people? Why do employers prefer to train someone new, rather than enable someone who knows the job to carry on working? Why is the media now full of Incapacity Benefit fraud stories? These are the new scapegoats. First it was unmarried mums, next came asylum seekers/refugees. Now add disabled people to that list. Why does New Labour assume it is full-time, long-term work that is wanted, are capable of doing and is available? Many disabled people have fluctuating conditions. Some have regular medical appointments. Some of us need adjustments in the workplace and/or support from work colleagues. If we work, our work patterns need to take these issues into account.
The government's own survey showed last year that only 0.3% of the Incapacity Benefit paid in the UK is fraudulently claimed. You wouldn't think there would be much room for cuts in those figures. But New Labour plans massive cuts in the Incapacity Benefit payment system. It's not easy to get Incapacity Benefit. Last year 2.7 million people applied for it, but only just under 1.5 million received it. A recent TUC study shows that the vast majority of those receiving Incapacity Benefit are either too ill to work or people whose health problems make employers pass them over as job candidates. Incapacity Benefit is paid at three rates, starting at just £55.90, rising at the six-month point and then rising to £74.15 after a claimant has been on the benefit for a year. With additional allowances, the average payment is £84.51 a week. New Labour intend to put all claimants back on £55.90 a week. An extra payment would go to those who could prove they were actively seeking work. A fixed 20% of the most severely incapacitated claimants would receive a top-up, so their total benefit would be higher than the current rate.
Cuts in Incapacity Benefit would cause severe hardship. As a proportion of average earnings, incapacity benefit is already extremely low. The rate for a single person fell from 17.4% of average earnings in April 1995 to 15.2% in April 2003. Nor is Incapacity Benefit a growing problem for government. The number of those receiving Incapacity Benefit has fallen by almost 400,000 since 1995. No one wants to be on Incapacity Benefit. The vast majority of those on the benefit worked for years and once out of work, a significant number suffer from depression. That makes it even harder to get work - where there is any. So do long NHS waiting lists. Unsurprisingly, the areas that have seen the most dramatic loss of jobs over the past 20 years are those with the highest level of Incapacity Benefit - areas of South Wales, Glasgow, Yorkshire, Durham and Liverpool. According to a Merthyr Tydfil council report from 2004, "approximately 30% of the population have a long-term limiting illness". Those actually receiving Incapacity Benefit number 10,000 out of a population of 56,000, which amounts to 22.8% of those of working age. This earned Merthyr the title of "sickness capital of Britain". But Merthyr's figures are matched by 22.1% in Blaenau Gwent and 23% in Easington in County Durham. And of course, where underemployment is high, those with health problems have even less chance of getting a job. New Labour claim that they want to remove "disincentives" to people getting jobs, but they themselves admit that Incapacity Benefit fraud is almost non-existent. In fact, they are simply further impoverishing some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.
Ex-mining and ex-shipbuilding areas are among those with the highest take-up rate for IB. That shows that the conditions that these workers toiled in have made them ill. And many workers in those industries wrecked by previous governments were put off sick rather than adding them to the unemployment figures. Blunkett’s idea of ‘coaxing’ is to cut the income of those who don’t find work. But where is the government going to put these workers eager to "try out" employment, as New Labour coyly puts it? After such disasters as Rover and Marconi there is increasingly only low-paid unskilled work available. New Labour’s majority in Parliament has been cut tremendously and we could see more rebellions from MPs, particularly those from areas with high numbers of IB claimants. A massive campaign of opposition could convince these MPs to join in the fight against this legislation. The government treats Incapacity Benefit claimants as ‘lazy’ and ‘scroungers’. Yet all New Labour’s policies are designed to aid the real scroungers in our capitalist society - the super-rich. Britain’s wealthiest 1,000 people have just got richer and richer over the last 25 years under both Tory and New Labour governments. They are now 'worth' a record £250 billion, up by nearly a quarter on last year, according to the latest Sunday Times rich list. That’s 152% wealthier than when Blair came to power in 1997!
These scroungers gain from pro-rich government policies yet they avoid paying tax on their ‘earnings’. Around the world they avoid taxes totalling a cool $860 billion a year. The rich make this $860 billion out of the $11.5 trillion they stack away. They use ‘offshore’ companies, washing their cash through a host of tax havens, anything rather than contribute towards the societies where their businesses operate. The super-rich are robbing the poor in ‘their own’ countries and in the ex-colonial world. But rich business people, their accountants and tax experts, who bay for punitive action against IB claimants, all say there’s nothing anyone can do about this. When their wealth is threatened the rich often threaten to carry out a ‘strike of capital’, in other words they say they will stop investing. There is ‘something we can do about it’. If these rich individuals try to stop investment, their companies should be taken into public ownership with compensation paid only to those in need. And, if they can’t do a useful job, we could always put them on Incapacity Benefit!
True to form, most of New Labour’s plans are designed to make life better for rich profit-seekers and worse for the rest of us. His big business agenda talks of ‘reforming’ the NHS and the welfare state but he means more private-sector involvement and more cutbacks. One of their most draconian bills aims to curb what ministers call ‘spiralling’ incapacity-benefit (IB) costs. David Blunkett says he wants to "coax" up to a million sick and disabled people off IB and into work. But IB is for people who can’t work through illness or disability. And apart from that very vulnerable group who were incapacitated early in life, most IB receivers have made national insurance contributions all their lives. The Disabled People's Movement agrees meaningful jobs are a key to disabled people escaping out of poverty. But we say NO to being forced off benefits into low-paid work. NO to coercion and punitive cutting of benefits. NO to care charges. NO to their hands in our pockets. They say YES to a flexible and realistic approach to all the issues of work and benefits. YES to disabled people's freedom to choose work. And YES to ending discrimination against disabled people!
The Tory plan involves assessing 2.6 million IB recipients over a three-year period. This would mean processing 3,000 assessments every day. No way will this allow benefit recipients to be assessed fairly, nor will New Labour's current plans of 10,000 assessments a week. New Labour ministers criticise the proposals but, from October 2008, Gordon Brown's government has replaced IB with Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for all new claimants. The Personal Capability Assessment of Incapacity Benefit was replaced with a much tougher ESA Work Capability Assessment. Now thousands of people who previously would have qualified for IB are required to seek work. Since October 2008 over two-thirds of ESA claimants have been forced onto Jobseekers Allowance. Jobcentre Examining Medical Officers award no points to claimants who clearly have severe physical and/or mental health problems. The whole system, from initial claim to appeals, is weighted against claimants. More than three-quarters of appeal hearings went against them. The Disability Alliance says the new Work Capability Assessment is too rigid, even requiring people about to have operations and some terminally ill people to be assessed, with the assessment itself unable to reflect disabled people's lives and needs. Disabled people are judged as ready for work when they cannot really work or need specialist help to find suitable employment.
And how easy will it be for the thousands of disabled people forced into the jobs market to find work? Once placed on Jobseekers Allowance they find there is no tailored help at a time of increasing unemployment. They struggle to find work in a more competitive jobs market where, says the Disability Alliance, employer discrimination against the disabled remains high. An estimated 40% of IB claimants have one or more mental health problems, but a recent survey showed that 80% of employers would not take on people with mental health problems. Cameron claims his proposals confirm the Tories as a compassionate party! No less 'compassionate' is New Labour. Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper complained that Cameron's proposals just rehash government plans. She boasted that the government is already implementing tougher tests for everyone on IB, stronger requirements on the jobless to find work and is using private companies. The money that the Tories squeeze out of these vulnerable people will be used to massively expand, in effect, workfare, their 'work for your benefits' system for the long-term unemployed, particularly aimed at those under 25. Unemployed people will be forced to work 30 hours a week for Jobseekers Allowance of just £64.30 a week for those aged 25 and over, and a disgraceful £50.95 a week for those under 25!
The Tories also plan to reduce from a year to six months the period the unemployed can claim Jobseekers Allowance before being forced onto training or into jobs. But New Labour pipped the Tories at the post by announcing their own 'work for your benefits' programme, pilot mandatory work trials and so-called work experience placements for jobseekers out of work for over six months. The Child Poverty Action Group correctly argues that if the government can find temporary work for an unemployed person they should pay them a proper wage. Whoever wins the next general election, these proposals are a thin end of a wedge, the thick end of which could be moves to cap unemployment benefits to a maximum period of six months for everyone, as is already the case in many other countries. Cameron's plans will involve greater use of private companies to deliver their proposals. New Labour has already heavily used private companies to deliver its Flexible New Deal 'back to work' programme. In a scheme intended to involve both private companies and the voluntary sector, fewer than 40% of contracts went to the voluntary sector, despite a DWP fraud investigation into the activities of at least three private 'welfare to work' contractors.
Clearly, whichever party wins the next general election, the sick, disabled and unemployed will feel the brunt of the attacks. Millions of workers, either as employees or users of the public sector, will have no choice but to fight back. The trade unions need to launch a mass campaign, to include unemployed and disabled workers, to defend our public services and the welfare state, a vital part of which is decent benefits for those workers who, for whatever reason, are unable to work. Cuts, outsourcing and privatisation mean vulnerable adults and children are 'falling through the net'. Social care staff are struggling to cope with high caseloads, increasing red tape and worsening pay, terms and conditions at work. Home care, day services, residential homes, social work, child protection, and services for people with special educational needs, mental health services, support for disabled people, people with learning difficulties and older people. All our services are under attack from New Labour in government and the Tories and Lib Dems in our local councils. And more of the same is promised.
In some councils, the tendering process has been refined to little more than an 'e-bay style auction' - rival companies sit at their laptops underbidding each other until the 'race to the bottom' is complete. The contracts for looking after our mums and dads, nannies and granddads, are awarded to the lowest bidder - in one case just over £7 per hour. The only way the companies can make profits at this level is to cut wages and to fiddle the books - claiming for time spent with clients which doesn't happen. Older people are dying through the pursuit of profit. The contracts for looking after our mums and dads, nannies and granddads, are awarded to the lowest bidder - in one case just over £7 per hour. The only way the companies can make profits at this level is to cut wages and to fiddle the books - claiming for time spent with clients which doesn't happen. Older people are dying through the pursuit of profit. The government says that more elderly people want to stay living at home with support, as opposed to going into residential care. The same philosophy drives policies for disabled people and people with learning difficulties. "Independence, freedom and choice" the politicians shout. "Close the residential homes, close the day centres, give everyone freedom and independence".
Socialists believe strongly that all vulnerable members of society should be treated with respect and dignity. They have the same right to a good quality of life as anyone else, including the right to stay at home, live independently, go to work and so on. The truth is, under the present system, these words are a con trick, a smokescreen behind which the politicians can cut back spending on social care, leaving people neglected, alone and abused. Whilst 'old-fashioned' and 'institutional' services such as 9-5 segregated day centres and foreboding residential homes should make way for more mainstream, community-based and inclusive 21st century services, very little resources are being provided for any replacement services. Although care workers in some local authorities have fought for and won improvements to pay and conditions, closures are being used as a way to cut costs and get rid of staff. More and more people are now expected to pay for services themselves - provided mainly by private, profit-making companies and voluntary (charity-based) groups. Councils are providing fewer and fewer services under this con trick of 'promoting independence'.
Work and Pensions (DWP) minister Peter Hain has announced new medical 'tests' from next October for people with disabilities to make it harder to qualify for incapacity benefit. 2.7 million people currently claim £7.4 billion a year in incapacity benefit. Many of them are people chucked out of work when the Tories destroyed industrial jobs but whose redundancy pay has gone. Some have severe work-related illnesses such as emphysema, many are suffering from depression. People with psychiatric illnesses make up 40% of those on incapacity benefit. Katrine Williams, who is DWP Wales Secretary of the PCS union, speaking in a personal capacity, told the socialist: "The targets include getting one million people off sickness and disability benefits. "Most of the onus of the welfare reforms continues to be on the individual claiming benefit and their 'responsibilities' rather than the government taking action to tackle the discrimination that people with disabilities face from employers. This government's welfare reforms coincide with savage job cuts and privatisation of essential services like New Deal for Disabled People and Pathways to Work in the DWP. This has a massive impact on the services we provide to the public. The DWP as an employer is far from satisfactory. In one year alone over 1,000 staff were sacked for being sick.
Many currently face the threat of compulsory redundancy are single parents, have a disability or have caring responsibilities and live in areas where it is difficult to find work. A GMB union survey a few years back showed "a direct link between high employment rates and low benefit claimant rates, and vice versa. Where there are jobs, there are low claim rates. The task for the government in seeking to reduce the number of claimants is to promote the creation of more jobs." Instead, they attack their own workforce and bring in new attacks on sick, disabled and vulnerable people. These cuts need to be fought, and the whole "strongest will survive" elitist mantra scrapped. I've seen people who are homeless. A few friends of mine are on very low benefits, and struggle to afford both bills and food. Incapacity Benefit does not even cover basic needs. Electricity, gas, water, and other bills are much more than this, leaving little left over for food or anything else. Millions live on bank overdrafts and other people face the same problem. Some of them cannot even afford to turn the heating on in winter. There is no doubt that Britain's welfare benefits system is complex, unwieldy and hard to understand for those who claim it and those who administer it. But Labour's current Welfare Reform Bill, that would replace Incapacity Benefit and Income Support for people who are sick with the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), is far worse.
You have to look behind the spin to see what this will really mean for physically and mentally ill and disabled people. Incapacity Benefit and Retirement Pension are the only two benefits that are based on National Insurance contributions in the way envisaged at the Welfare State's creation in 1948. The government is seeking to increase the age when people can claim retirement pension from 65 to 68. Incapacity Benefit recipients have been increasingly subjected to a 'work-focused' regime of interviews over recent years. This bill enshrines this approach in legislation. Replacing Incapacity Benefit with ESA will erode the provision of contributory benefit by limiting the amount of the contribution-based part of the benefit to a low rate. The 'support' or 'work-related activity' components will be added after the person has been assessed as having 'limited capability' for work or work-related activity. This seriously erodes sick people's rights. It is a further clawing back of concessions won by the working class after the second world war. ESA shifts the benefit's ethos away from compensating someone for not being able to do their own job or any work towards making them work.
The bill doesn't accept medical certificates provided by a GP as evidence of 'limited capability of work-related activity'. People will have a 'health-related assessment' by a 'health care professional' to determine what work or work-related activity they can do. Certain people with severe physical or mental health conditions will receive the 'support component'. Everyone else will be subjected to a regime of work-focused interviews, work-related activities and regular reassessments. Failure to comply or cooperate or to participate in a prescribed way will lead to reductions in benefit. This will particularly disadvantage those with mental health conditions who may not be able to cope with complying with prescriptions about the sort of information they supply and how they supply it. The bill clearly lays out the privatisation of the work to administer the benefit's work-focused elements. This will take away core areas of work from civil servants and hand it over to companies who - the government admits - don't have the expertise and don't want to help people, they just want to make a profit; this is no way for the government to support vulnerable sick people.
The number of people on IB is higher in areas where coal mining and heavy industries have closed, because of diseases caused by hazardous work and the devastating effects on mental health of the closure of these industries and the fragmentation of communities. It is these people that New Labour want to get off benefit. The bill's aim is to remove a million of the 2.6 million on Incapacity Benefit. Another aim is an 80% employment rate. Even senior civil servants say that work-focused regimes wouldn't be needed if decently paid jobs with good conditions were available. Instead people will be coerced into low-paid work with poor conditions. In order to reduce the unemployment figures, the Tories also decided that 16 hours work or more was full time. 80% employment based on part-time hours means that the reality for lots of workers is that they have to have several part-time jobs to survive. The Welfare Reform Bill's explanatory notes complain about the 'perverse incentive' to stay on benefit because the benefit rate goes up the longer you're on it. The real 'perverse incentive' offered by New Labour is to private companies whose low pay is subsidised by tax credits paid to workers from the public purse.
In other countries, there have been widespread demonstrations against attempts to dismantle state benefits. In Britain we continue to suffer the death of the post-war welfare state by a thousand cuts, started by Thatcher and followed by Blair. All three main parties have this neo-liberal agenda. Workers need a new party to represent their interests and to protect and rebuild welfare in Britain. Once again workers are paying for the crisis in the capitalist system. Wrapped in words like 'reform', 'modernisation' and 'opportunity', this is an attack on the most vulnerable in our society. In an ideal world, the physically and mentally ill would have the dignity of a living income as well as access to decently paid jobs with good conditions if they were able and wished to work. The Department for Work and Pensions have poorly thought-out plans to get one million people off Incapacity Benefit. The government are trying to divide disabled people into the worthy and unworthy poor. They talk about work for those who can and help for those who can't. The reality is that New Labour plans to bully disabled people off benefits into low-paid, slave labour jobs, which are both exploitative and unsuitable. This isn't only an attack on disabled people but on the wages and conditions of all organised workers - disabled people who refuse such slave-labour employment will have their benefits cut.
The problem isn't in our attitude towards working, it lies in employers' reluctance to offer us jobs. If New Labour were really serious about 'helping disabled people into work' it would do more to tackle the widespread discrimination against us amongst most big employers. Where are these jobs going to come from? Will the government put money into the Access To Work Scheme (set up to provide equipment, etc to disabled people in employment) so as to ensure that any necessary adjustments are made to workplaces? If the government won't find the resources needed, the scheme won't work! Why are they on Incapacity Benefit in the first place? Why did many of us lose our jobs when we became disabled people? Why do employers prefer to train someone new, rather than enable someone who knows the job to carry on working? Why is the media now full of Incapacity Benefit fraud stories? These are the new scapegoats. First it was unmarried mums, next came asylum seekers/refugees. Now add disabled people to that list. Why does New Labour assume it is full-time, long-term work that is wanted, are capable of doing and is available? Many disabled people have fluctuating conditions. Some have regular medical appointments. Some of us need adjustments in the workplace and/or support from work colleagues. If we work, our work patterns need to take these issues into account.
The government's own survey showed last year that only 0.3% of the Incapacity Benefit paid in the UK is fraudulently claimed. You wouldn't think there would be much room for cuts in those figures. But New Labour plans massive cuts in the Incapacity Benefit payment system. It's not easy to get Incapacity Benefit. Last year 2.7 million people applied for it, but only just under 1.5 million received it. A recent TUC study shows that the vast majority of those receiving Incapacity Benefit are either too ill to work or people whose health problems make employers pass them over as job candidates. Incapacity Benefit is paid at three rates, starting at just £55.90, rising at the six-month point and then rising to £74.15 after a claimant has been on the benefit for a year. With additional allowances, the average payment is £84.51 a week. New Labour intend to put all claimants back on £55.90 a week. An extra payment would go to those who could prove they were actively seeking work. A fixed 20% of the most severely incapacitated claimants would receive a top-up, so their total benefit would be higher than the current rate.
Cuts in Incapacity Benefit would cause severe hardship. As a proportion of average earnings, incapacity benefit is already extremely low. The rate for a single person fell from 17.4% of average earnings in April 1995 to 15.2% in April 2003. Nor is Incapacity Benefit a growing problem for government. The number of those receiving Incapacity Benefit has fallen by almost 400,000 since 1995. No one wants to be on Incapacity Benefit. The vast majority of those on the benefit worked for years and once out of work, a significant number suffer from depression. That makes it even harder to get work - where there is any. So do long NHS waiting lists. Unsurprisingly, the areas that have seen the most dramatic loss of jobs over the past 20 years are those with the highest level of Incapacity Benefit - areas of South Wales, Glasgow, Yorkshire, Durham and Liverpool. According to a Merthyr Tydfil council report from 2004, "approximately 30% of the population have a long-term limiting illness". Those actually receiving Incapacity Benefit number 10,000 out of a population of 56,000, which amounts to 22.8% of those of working age. This earned Merthyr the title of "sickness capital of Britain". But Merthyr's figures are matched by 22.1% in Blaenau Gwent and 23% in Easington in County Durham. And of course, where underemployment is high, those with health problems have even less chance of getting a job. New Labour claim that they want to remove "disincentives" to people getting jobs, but they themselves admit that Incapacity Benefit fraud is almost non-existent. In fact, they are simply further impoverishing some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.
Ex-mining and ex-shipbuilding areas are among those with the highest take-up rate for IB. That shows that the conditions that these workers toiled in have made them ill. And many workers in those industries wrecked by previous governments were put off sick rather than adding them to the unemployment figures. Blunkett’s idea of ‘coaxing’ is to cut the income of those who don’t find work. But where is the government going to put these workers eager to "try out" employment, as New Labour coyly puts it? After such disasters as Rover and Marconi there is increasingly only low-paid unskilled work available. New Labour’s majority in Parliament has been cut tremendously and we could see more rebellions from MPs, particularly those from areas with high numbers of IB claimants. A massive campaign of opposition could convince these MPs to join in the fight against this legislation. The government treats Incapacity Benefit claimants as ‘lazy’ and ‘scroungers’. Yet all New Labour’s policies are designed to aid the real scroungers in our capitalist society - the super-rich. Britain’s wealthiest 1,000 people have just got richer and richer over the last 25 years under both Tory and New Labour governments. They are now 'worth' a record £250 billion, up by nearly a quarter on last year, according to the latest Sunday Times rich list. That’s 152% wealthier than when Blair came to power in 1997!
These scroungers gain from pro-rich government policies yet they avoid paying tax on their ‘earnings’. Around the world they avoid taxes totalling a cool $860 billion a year. The rich make this $860 billion out of the $11.5 trillion they stack away. They use ‘offshore’ companies, washing their cash through a host of tax havens, anything rather than contribute towards the societies where their businesses operate. The super-rich are robbing the poor in ‘their own’ countries and in the ex-colonial world. But rich business people, their accountants and tax experts, who bay for punitive action against IB claimants, all say there’s nothing anyone can do about this. When their wealth is threatened the rich often threaten to carry out a ‘strike of capital’, in other words they say they will stop investing. There is ‘something we can do about it’. If these rich individuals try to stop investment, their companies should be taken into public ownership with compensation paid only to those in need. And, if they can’t do a useful job, we could always put them on Incapacity Benefit!
True to form, most of New Labour’s plans are designed to make life better for rich profit-seekers and worse for the rest of us. His big business agenda talks of ‘reforming’ the NHS and the welfare state but he means more private-sector involvement and more cutbacks. One of their most draconian bills aims to curb what ministers call ‘spiralling’ incapacity-benefit (IB) costs. David Blunkett says he wants to "coax" up to a million sick and disabled people off IB and into work. But IB is for people who can’t work through illness or disability. And apart from that very vulnerable group who were incapacitated early in life, most IB receivers have made national insurance contributions all their lives. The Disabled People's Movement agrees meaningful jobs are a key to disabled people escaping out of poverty. But we say NO to being forced off benefits into low-paid work. NO to coercion and punitive cutting of benefits. NO to care charges. NO to their hands in our pockets. They say YES to a flexible and realistic approach to all the issues of work and benefits. YES to disabled people's freedom to choose work. And YES to ending discrimination against disabled people!
Monday, 14 December 2009
Nasty Tory plans against working class
“The Conservative Party has changed. Rich or poor, from north to south, there is an alternative to Labour.” So says David Cameron, in a week where the Tories are desperately trying to claim that their party is somehow different to the party that made working class people’s lives a misery throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Many Tory policies are dressed up as ways to “help” working class people who have been “abandoned” by Labour. But the Tory party is the same nasty party it has always been. That was made clear late September, when it launched an attack on the unemployed and the sick. The Tories want to use medical assessments to force those on incapacity benefit into work; they claim that at least 500,000 of the 2.6 million claimants are capable of working. These policies will leave many people recoiling in horror.
Not surprisingly, they make no sense. The theme of the conference was “Get Britain Working”. But the Tories are saying that they will cut £25 a week from incapacity benefit claimants’ benefits. This is the difference between incapacity benefit currently £89.90 a week - and jobseekers’ allowance - £63.40 a week. So those removed from incapacity benefit won’t be “getting back to work”—they will simply be forced to exist on even lower benefits. And the public sector spending cuts that the Tories want to implement will result in the slashing of thousands of jobs.
So David Willetts, the shadow universities and skills minister, spoke of young people who are “so alienated from education” that they can’t go into an apprenticeship immediately. The solution, he says, is to get them to do work that may lead to an apprenticeship or a job - presumably in the meantime they will be working for free. What’s more, the Tories will pay bosses to take on workers. So unemployed people will have to work for no wages. The bosses will be paid for the strain of taking on unpaid workers. The Tories are still the party of the bosses. Kenneth Clarke, the shadow business secretary, spoke about the need for “tax incentives” and the need to “get rid of red tape” to help business And what has been Labour’s response to all this? To say that most of the proposals are already government policy. So Labour has said that it is already using the private sector to get people off benefits. It has plans in place to force 10,000 medical assessments a week on incapacity benefit claimants—and boasts that the Tories won’t be able to do any more than that. It is a measure of Labour’s betrayal of working class people over the last 12 years that, even when faced with the Tories, so many people will still find it impossible to stomach voting for the Labour Party.
Tory plans to cut benefits and services are a chilling reminder to working class people of the true nature of the bosses’ party. But just as depressing has been Labour’s response. Its reaction to every Tory attack is, as Labour work and pensions secretary Yvette Cooper put it, it’s “a rehash of what we’re already doing”. So the Tories want to raise the retirement age from 65 to 66 by 2016. But this is not an original policy - Labour plans to do the same, only ten years later. And Labour tried to pull the rug from under the Tories’ feet on Tuesday when chancellor Alistair Darling announced a pay curb for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers—a pledge the Tories had planned for later that day. The media focused on the more well-off people that the freeze would affect. But around 700,000 workers will face either a freeze or increases of just 1 percent. The way to beat the attacks will not be to back one neoliberal party to stop the other—it will be to start organising resistance on the ground.
Part of the Tories’ attempt to wipe out the terrible memory of their previous governments is to claim that working class people are backing them. Eric Pickles, chair of the Tory party, opened the conference by making a particular appeal to trade unionists. “I say to union members worried about spiraling debt, job losses and the neglect of thousands of young people consigned to life without a job and a sense of purpose—vote for a party determined to get Britain working, to give our young people a life-changing experience that only a job can bring.” At least ten unions were holding fringe meetings at the Tory conference this year—a worrying and unusually high number. Most shockingly, Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, is set to speak at a fringe meeting titled “Finding the path to economic recovery”. He was to share a platform with Tory policy chair—and bank director—Oliver Letwin. The Tories say that this is the first time they can ever remember this happening. Union leaders may think that because a Conservative government is looming, they need to get a foot in the door to try to have some influence over its policies. But the Tories have made their anti-union agenda clear. The job of trade unionists is not to try and cosy up to them or debate where the cuts will fall—it is to start organising now to stop them.
Not surprisingly, they make no sense. The theme of the conference was “Get Britain Working”. But the Tories are saying that they will cut £25 a week from incapacity benefit claimants’ benefits. This is the difference between incapacity benefit currently £89.90 a week - and jobseekers’ allowance - £63.40 a week. So those removed from incapacity benefit won’t be “getting back to work”—they will simply be forced to exist on even lower benefits. And the public sector spending cuts that the Tories want to implement will result in the slashing of thousands of jobs.
So David Willetts, the shadow universities and skills minister, spoke of young people who are “so alienated from education” that they can’t go into an apprenticeship immediately. The solution, he says, is to get them to do work that may lead to an apprenticeship or a job - presumably in the meantime they will be working for free. What’s more, the Tories will pay bosses to take on workers. So unemployed people will have to work for no wages. The bosses will be paid for the strain of taking on unpaid workers. The Tories are still the party of the bosses. Kenneth Clarke, the shadow business secretary, spoke about the need for “tax incentives” and the need to “get rid of red tape” to help business And what has been Labour’s response to all this? To say that most of the proposals are already government policy. So Labour has said that it is already using the private sector to get people off benefits. It has plans in place to force 10,000 medical assessments a week on incapacity benefit claimants—and boasts that the Tories won’t be able to do any more than that. It is a measure of Labour’s betrayal of working class people over the last 12 years that, even when faced with the Tories, so many people will still find it impossible to stomach voting for the Labour Party.
Tory plans to cut benefits and services are a chilling reminder to working class people of the true nature of the bosses’ party. But just as depressing has been Labour’s response. Its reaction to every Tory attack is, as Labour work and pensions secretary Yvette Cooper put it, it’s “a rehash of what we’re already doing”. So the Tories want to raise the retirement age from 65 to 66 by 2016. But this is not an original policy - Labour plans to do the same, only ten years later. And Labour tried to pull the rug from under the Tories’ feet on Tuesday when chancellor Alistair Darling announced a pay curb for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers—a pledge the Tories had planned for later that day. The media focused on the more well-off people that the freeze would affect. But around 700,000 workers will face either a freeze or increases of just 1 percent. The way to beat the attacks will not be to back one neoliberal party to stop the other—it will be to start organising resistance on the ground.
Part of the Tories’ attempt to wipe out the terrible memory of their previous governments is to claim that working class people are backing them. Eric Pickles, chair of the Tory party, opened the conference by making a particular appeal to trade unionists. “I say to union members worried about spiraling debt, job losses and the neglect of thousands of young people consigned to life without a job and a sense of purpose—vote for a party determined to get Britain working, to give our young people a life-changing experience that only a job can bring.” At least ten unions were holding fringe meetings at the Tory conference this year—a worrying and unusually high number. Most shockingly, Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, is set to speak at a fringe meeting titled “Finding the path to economic recovery”. He was to share a platform with Tory policy chair—and bank director—Oliver Letwin. The Tories say that this is the first time they can ever remember this happening. Union leaders may think that because a Conservative government is looming, they need to get a foot in the door to try to have some influence over its policies. But the Tories have made their anti-union agenda clear. The job of trade unionists is not to try and cosy up to them or debate where the cuts will fall—it is to start organising now to stop them.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Millions in poverty? Welcome to Brown's Britain!
In a 1999 speech Tony Blair declared, “Our historic aim will be for ours to be the first generation to end child poverty forever, and it will take a generation. It is a 20 year mission, but I believe it can be done.” To a standing ovation and with tears in the eyes of his supporters, Blair said, “The child born in the run down estate should have the same chance to be healthy and well educated as the child born in the leafy suburbs.” Why then, despite all the rhetoric and good intention, was the government forced to admit last week that it was failing in its pledge to end child poverty? Its own figures showed that child poverty had increased for the first time in six years while overall poverty had risen for the first time under this government. The number of children living in poverty increased by 100,000 to a total of 3.8 million.
Martin Narey, chair of the Campaign to End Child Poverty, said, “In a country as wealthy as ours it is a scandal that the number of children still growing up in poverty has increased – poverty which blights their life chances, poverty which for many is simply overwhelming.” The effects of poverty are devastating and far reaching. Children from low income families are more likely to live in a poor environment, in poor quality housing and in greater proximity to crime and drugs. Low income has an affect on educational achievements which in turn can lead to a cycle of disadvantage into adult life. Poverty and deprivation limits choice which in turn affects self esteem, confidence, and health. So what is the government’s solution to tackling child poverty?
Gordon Brown stated in 2007, “The key to the future is how many people you can get into work. That’s the bigger contribution to tackling child poverty.” Welfare reform minister Jim Murphy said the government must encourage the unemployed to think, “Work first, benefits second.” Getting people back into work and off benefits has become the mantra of the Blair government. Lone parents are now obliged to take part in work focused interviews every six months. The government also plans to force lone parents to “actively seek work” once their youngest child reaches the age of 12. Those claiming incapacity benefit have also been targeted, with Blair stating that everyone is expected to “fulfil their responsibilities” to work if able to do so. Incapacity benefit claimants have to undergo medicals as often as every 12 months to assess their capability for work. If the medical defines someone as fit for work their benefits are stopped immediately.
The idea that there exists real choice for people to work their way out of poverty is simply not true and is an insult to families forced to live on benefits. People do not choose to live in poverty, but are often trapped by low pay, working patterns that are too inflexible to match parenting responsibilities, disability, illness or discrimination. For others work has proved to be a precarious and ineffective route out of poverty. Over half of poor children – 54 percent – have a parent in work. Kate Green, Child Poverty Action Group’s chief executive, points out, “Britain has one of the highest employment rates in Europe, yet one of the worst child poverty rates. Access to better jobs can help reduce child poverty, but today’s figures for children in working families suggest that simply resorting to getting more parents into work is not good enough.”
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that in order to halve child poverty by 2010 the government needs to make an annual investment of £4.3 billion. It needs to ensure that benefit safety nets are set above poverty levels and investment goes into providing better jobs, training and education. In addition it needs to reverse spending cuts in the civil service to ensure that the delivery of benefits is not affected by job cuts and limited services. While New Labour talks about its great desire to end child poverty it prepares to spend £76 billion on replacing Trident nuclear missile system. Blair and Brown’s priorities lie with big business, privatisation and war. The reality for 3.8 million children living in poverty in Britain today is that New Labour doesn’t offer any hope for the future.
Martin Narey, chair of the Campaign to End Child Poverty, said, “In a country as wealthy as ours it is a scandal that the number of children still growing up in poverty has increased – poverty which blights their life chances, poverty which for many is simply overwhelming.” The effects of poverty are devastating and far reaching. Children from low income families are more likely to live in a poor environment, in poor quality housing and in greater proximity to crime and drugs. Low income has an affect on educational achievements which in turn can lead to a cycle of disadvantage into adult life. Poverty and deprivation limits choice which in turn affects self esteem, confidence, and health. So what is the government’s solution to tackling child poverty?
Gordon Brown stated in 2007, “The key to the future is how many people you can get into work. That’s the bigger contribution to tackling child poverty.” Welfare reform minister Jim Murphy said the government must encourage the unemployed to think, “Work first, benefits second.” Getting people back into work and off benefits has become the mantra of the Blair government. Lone parents are now obliged to take part in work focused interviews every six months. The government also plans to force lone parents to “actively seek work” once their youngest child reaches the age of 12. Those claiming incapacity benefit have also been targeted, with Blair stating that everyone is expected to “fulfil their responsibilities” to work if able to do so. Incapacity benefit claimants have to undergo medicals as often as every 12 months to assess their capability for work. If the medical defines someone as fit for work their benefits are stopped immediately.
The idea that there exists real choice for people to work their way out of poverty is simply not true and is an insult to families forced to live on benefits. People do not choose to live in poverty, but are often trapped by low pay, working patterns that are too inflexible to match parenting responsibilities, disability, illness or discrimination. For others work has proved to be a precarious and ineffective route out of poverty. Over half of poor children – 54 percent – have a parent in work. Kate Green, Child Poverty Action Group’s chief executive, points out, “Britain has one of the highest employment rates in Europe, yet one of the worst child poverty rates. Access to better jobs can help reduce child poverty, but today’s figures for children in working families suggest that simply resorting to getting more parents into work is not good enough.”
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that in order to halve child poverty by 2010 the government needs to make an annual investment of £4.3 billion. It needs to ensure that benefit safety nets are set above poverty levels and investment goes into providing better jobs, training and education. In addition it needs to reverse spending cuts in the civil service to ensure that the delivery of benefits is not affected by job cuts and limited services. While New Labour talks about its great desire to end child poverty it prepares to spend £76 billion on replacing Trident nuclear missile system. Blair and Brown’s priorities lie with big business, privatisation and war. The reality for 3.8 million children living in poverty in Britain today is that New Labour doesn’t offer any hope for the future.
As the sharks circle it's time to defend universal benefits
All of the main political parties have said they want to make cuts to universal benefits, such as child benefit, winter fuel allowances, bus passes and TV licenses for the over 70s. For me, this conjured up the image of a shiver of sharks taking part in a feeding frenzy. Even before I could catch my breath, children’s secretary Ed Balls had snatched it away by declaring that he would cut the education budget by £2 billion. Not to worry, voters like me were informed by Peter Mandelson, Nick Clegg and David Cameron, these proposals are necessary to avoid further economic meltdown and are moral and fair. Their argument is that the old mantra of “from cradle to grave welfare” I grew up with is outdated and inequitable. This is the view of politicians who have bailed out banks and spent billions on unpopular wars.
So to attack one of the cornerstones of public life, they must be confident their argument appears sound. Yet let’s not forget that one in three children suffer hardship and pensioner poverty is crippling. These benefits are essential to millions. A cabinet aide explained that it’s time for “distributional politics”. They want to remove universal benefits paid to people regardless of what they earn and move towards means-tested benefits, which are only for the poorest. A former cabinet minister elaborated by saying. “I’ve just been sent my claim form for winter fuel allowance. Do I really need that?” Well, that depends on which house they are claiming for. On the surface they may have a point. After the expenses debacle, who wouldn’t agree to cutting MPs off from the public purse? And that’s exactly what they want us to think, especially now Labour’s core voters are moving away from the party.
But it is just surface politics, and it’s insulting. I remember asking my nan why Winston Churchill didn’t win the election after the Second World War. She said it was because of means-tested benefits, which had blighted the lives of so many in the 1930s. Churchill represented an era that no-one wanted to return to. The welfare state that grew up over the next 30 years, with council houses, university grants and the NHS, enabled people to feel protected for a short while. Now people talk about being only two pay cheques away from homelessness. One thing the politicians don’t tell us is how and why the universal benefit for children was introduced, and why it has been such a success. It was originally paid to the mother, in recognition that women often had less access to the family finances or were the lowest paid out of a couple. There is no stigma attached to those who apply for it, unlike free school meals – a benefit desperately needed but less used due to the fact that it is means tested.
There is no stigma attached to those who apply for it, unlike free school meals – a benefit desperately needed but less used due to the fact that it is means tested. Means testing means that people feel stigmatised for being poor, so would rather do without. This is a story told time and again by campaigners who state that pensioners are too embarrassed or worried to claim benefits that they are entitled to. New Labour has become adept at stigmatising people, with its attack on the single parent and disability living allowances, and vile adverts attacking benefit fraudsters. At the same time it has presided over a growing gap between the rich and poor. There is a battle taking place throughout the world over universal benefits - it's something that millions of people in poverty cannot afford to lose.
So to attack one of the cornerstones of public life, they must be confident their argument appears sound. Yet let’s not forget that one in three children suffer hardship and pensioner poverty is crippling. These benefits are essential to millions. A cabinet aide explained that it’s time for “distributional politics”. They want to remove universal benefits paid to people regardless of what they earn and move towards means-tested benefits, which are only for the poorest. A former cabinet minister elaborated by saying. “I’ve just been sent my claim form for winter fuel allowance. Do I really need that?” Well, that depends on which house they are claiming for. On the surface they may have a point. After the expenses debacle, who wouldn’t agree to cutting MPs off from the public purse? And that’s exactly what they want us to think, especially now Labour’s core voters are moving away from the party.
But it is just surface politics, and it’s insulting. I remember asking my nan why Winston Churchill didn’t win the election after the Second World War. She said it was because of means-tested benefits, which had blighted the lives of so many in the 1930s. Churchill represented an era that no-one wanted to return to. The welfare state that grew up over the next 30 years, with council houses, university grants and the NHS, enabled people to feel protected for a short while. Now people talk about being only two pay cheques away from homelessness. One thing the politicians don’t tell us is how and why the universal benefit for children was introduced, and why it has been such a success. It was originally paid to the mother, in recognition that women often had less access to the family finances or were the lowest paid out of a couple. There is no stigma attached to those who apply for it, unlike free school meals – a benefit desperately needed but less used due to the fact that it is means tested.
There is no stigma attached to those who apply for it, unlike free school meals – a benefit desperately needed but less used due to the fact that it is means tested. Means testing means that people feel stigmatised for being poor, so would rather do without. This is a story told time and again by campaigners who state that pensioners are too embarrassed or worried to claim benefits that they are entitled to. New Labour has become adept at stigmatising people, with its attack on the single parent and disability living allowances, and vile adverts attacking benefit fraudsters. At the same time it has presided over a growing gap between the rich and poor. There is a battle taking place throughout the world over universal benefits - it's something that millions of people in poverty cannot afford to lose.
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