A Month of Shame

Today is April Fool’s Day and we were the fools who believed the Cameron lie that there is such a thing as “Caring Conservativism”. Since then, he and his cronies must have been laughing all over their faces. Even worse, since Thatcher destroyed our trade union movement and Blair hijacked the Labour Party and swung it even further to the right there has been no effective opposition to the Tory destruction of the Welfare state.

Admittedly there are marvellous groups such as the Coalition of Resistance and the Right to Work campaign, but on the whole they cater for existing activists and have done little to draw in new people.

The People’s Toff Celebrates

So, what has been the consequence? Over the course of April we will see

1. The introduction of the bedroom tax - 660,000 people in social housing will lose an average of £728 a year.
2. Thousands of people will lose access to legal aid
3. Council tax benefit moves into local control resulting in increased bills for most people
4. 240 local commissioning groups made up of doctors, nurses and other professionals will take control of budgets to buy services for patients
5. Disability Living Allowance is scrapped
6. Benefit uprating begins - Nearly 9.5 million families will be affected, including 7 million in work, by £165 a year.
7. Welfare Benefit cap - no welfare claimants will receive in total more than the average annual household income after tax and national insurance
8. Universal Credit introduced

As if that isn’t bad enough, Cameron will rub salt into the wood by scrapping the 50p tax for high earners.

Without doubt it can only be described as a month of shame for the Tories, but they do not see it that way. They remain convinced they are in the right – and without an effective opposition they will undoubtedly stretch things further.

Over the coming weeks we must organise an effective opposition. The Labour party has failed to take that lead and though the trade unions have made some effort, the result has been limited. Hopefully the Bedroom Tax campaign will be the start of something powerful – a return to the mentality of the Poll Tax campaign. If we can bring about an effective challenge to the Tories there is a chance we can rebuild the left, but if we fail then we risk obscurity for at least a generation.

Beware the Savage Jaw

They'll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air

And tell that you're eighty, but brother, you won't care

You'll be shooting up on anything, tomorrow's never there

Beware the savage jaw

Of 1984

Those of you who have taken the time to read George Orwell’s “1984” will remember the story of an oppressive society dominated by deceit. A society where facts are distorted to meet the needs of the government and where the people are forced to accept this rule blindly and without question.

I recently reread this outstanding novel and could not help draw huge similarities between the society Orwell predicted and the current state of the Welfare to Work industry. No doubt those readers working in that sector will have gasped in horror at such an outrageous statement, but indulge me for a moment and allow me to explain.

Just like Orwell’ society, the Welfare to Work industry depends on adherence to four central mottos:

Ignorance is Strength

War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Long live Big Brother!

Now, let’s look at those mottos and see how they apply to the Welfare to work industry.

Ignorance is Strength

Central to the running of the variety of provisions supplied by the industry is the need to obscure facts. Many years ago, I read a marvellous book entitled “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics”. In the book the author outlined how statistics can be used to the advantage of the person reporting them. Take for example the following two statements:

1. The lifetime risk of Alcohol Dependence is approximately 15% in the general population. In any year, 5% of the general population will actively be suffering from Alcohol Dependence.

2. The lifetime likelihood of being free from any form of alcohol dependence is now 85% in the general population. In any year, 95% of the general population will be from all signs of Alcohol Dependence.

Technically both say the same thing, but the conclusion reached by the reader would be quite different, depending on which one was read.

It is the same with the “statistics” offered by the W2W industry. Take the figures released a couple of months ago about the “success rate” of the Work Programme. The figures disclosed would suggest that delivery was achieving nothing. Indeed, the evidence would go so far as to suggest that as many people would have secured work without any involvement with the sector. Nonsense, screamed supporters of welfare to work. You haven’t given us time. Wait until another year has passed and you will see how things have improved. But isn’t that a little like a 35 year old inexperienced athlete saying ‘if I’d had another hundred metres I would have beaten Usain Bolt’?

The government are quite happy to go along with this subterfuge. Indeed, they have a vested interest in maintaining the illusion that the broad spectrum of programmes are delivering well above target – even if it isn’t true. What they don’t tell us is the number of providers who fail, the number who are forced to give back their contracts and the number who consistently fail to reach targets.

War is Peace

A browse through the web pages of Indus Delta or the Department of Work and Pensions would soon give the reader the illusion that the vast majority of long-term unemployed are time-wasting, work-dodging, lazy individuals who do all they can to obstruct the ‘support’ offered to them by providers. Whistleblown mail has come into the hands of this blogger confirming that both JCP and the providers ‘attack’ clients from the underlying assumption they will do all they can to avoid work.

As a result, casework is undertaken in a spirit of hostility, where the client/ customer/ service user is brow beaten into accepting the authority of the provider. From the start it is not set up as a help-providing environment but as a controlling one where the client is obliged to do as the provider demands of face the threat of a loss of benefit.

Take the case of Geraldine, a mother of two who had been out of work for ten years. When told she would be referred to a Work Programme provider she was excited, believing it would be a certain route to helping her find work. Nine months on and she continues to see her caseworker, who in turn regularly offers her jobs that have expired or are unsuited to her qualifications (she has a degree and masters from Cambridge University in mathematics). Lately, and in desperation, the caseworker has been offering her vacancies in the caring sector. She dare not complain. If she does she might be seen as hindering her chances of work … and so she continues to keep the peace, because if she doesn’t, she fears she might lose her entitlement to benefit.

Freedom is Slavery

Within every family there are rules – we all grew up with them and we have them in our families today. They range from the simple ‘take your shoes off before entering the house’ to the more intense, such as ‘children should be seen and not heard’. But one of the greatest rules is ‘thou shalt not talk about the rules’. Over the years a number of people have criticised the Welfare to Work industry and their comments are usually dismissed and ridiculed. Media inquiries into the workings of the industry have generally been ignored and their conclusions buried.

Take for example some of the responses I have received as a result of questioning the broad opinions and practices of providers:

Tacticus … Why are you in the employment support industry? Your constant arguments are tiresome, totally unprofessional and are becoming an embarrassment to the profession.

Tactitus .... MOVE AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD. Keep it out of reach (I appreciate it may need surgical removal). You do not have to respond to comments. Your hands are controlled by your brain. They do not have a mind of their own. Self-control is key.

Interestingly, the Indus Delta webpages have been ‘edited’ and some of the more personal comments raised against me have been removed. No doubt regular readers of my comments will recall them with some disgust.

The bottom line is that freedom of expression is not welcome in the sector. Far from being a broad church of ideas, it is a narrow-minded right-wing oligarchy intent on promulgating the policies of a Thatcherite government. All this under the pretence of extending social welfare when the reality is that it is for the great god of profit.

Long Live Big Brother

Once the ‘customer’ has been referred to a work programme provider they are inducted into the process. This will include the usual overt passing on of information designed to help them understand how WP will work in their lives. The more covert process is to ensure the ‘customer’ realises that the caseworker, along with JCP have the capacity to pull their strings in any way they choose. If they fail to comply they can face the loss of benefit. Equally, if they dare to complain (assuming they are made aware of a complaints procedure and this blogger found a significant number of cases of clients not being informed) the client is likely to be pigeon-holed as a troublemaker and parked.

‘Tammy’ is a Service Desk manager who had been unemployed for 16 months. During that time she had started a correspondence course designed to help him obtain a place at university to study to become a nurse. For a variety of reasons she felt it necessary to complain to her provider about the way she was being treated. Until her complaint they had frequently cancelled appointments without notification, offered her jobs out of the area or requiring her to travel for over two hours each day, and suggested her course inhibited her chance of taking work and informed her that unless she stopped it, the provider might be forced to refer her back to JCP to face sanctions. This is despite her making it abundantly clear she would take any job and work her course around her work hours.

Tammy’s case is not unusual. Rather than using motivational and/ or cognitive behavioural processes recognised within other fields, providers use pressure and sometimes gentle bullying to achieve their end. Why? The answer is simple – the vast majority of staff working as caseworkers have had no formal training in motivational change. Many come from a sales background and use those techniques to coerce clients to do what the caseworker sees as being in their best interests. It is a travesty. How can an entire industry, earning so much government money each year justify delivering programmes with untrained and frequently incompetent staff? They have no excuse – other than to explain it as a desire to make more money.

And let’s take a closer look at these caseworkers – are they really there to help the customer? Or is their role precisely the same as Orwell’s ‘Thought Police’? An army of pro-provider staff whose sole aim is to monitor client thought processes and guarantee they do not stray from the mainstream. If the client begins to question or desire to have a say in their future they are deemed troublesome and risk sanctions.

True there are some caseworkers who genuinely care about their clients, but the good ones soon realise they are facing an uphill struggle and so they leave the sector. Welfare to work has been around for a number of years, but look around the staff and see how many fieldworkers and trainers have been in the sector for over ten years. Nurses, doctors, social workers, teachers stay working on the coalface throughout their careers. Very few Welfare to work staff will do the same.

It needs to end. What is needed is for the government to have a radical rethink about the way it helps people back into work. They need to decide what they want, how they want it delivered and who they want it delivered by. Once this has been decided the government should set up a monitoring body capable of removing contracts and sanctioning providers. It should also have the capacity to register staff working in the sector and demand a minimal standard of training.

But none of this will happen because just like Orwell introduced the concept of Doublespeak to hide the truth from the populace, so the Welfare to Work sector have created Dolespeak, where lies become truth, where coercion becomes help, where bullying becomes support and where incompetence becomes professionalism.

It needs to come to an end, but with the Tories and Labour now entrenched in a core belief that Welfare to Work is the best way forward, despite evidence to the contrary, we are a long way away from sacking the providers.

But don’t give up hope – IT WILL HAPPEN.

Tory slash and burn economics are hurting the most deprived

A financial education charity has said tax and benefit changes coming into force today will leave households £200 worse off. Credit Action, a financial education charity, has calculated they will leave households £200 a year worse off.

According to their research reductions to what parents could claim in childcare costs through the working tax credit alone would leave some families worse off by up to £1,560 a year.

Other changes due to come into force today include a £1,000 rise in the threshold at which people start paying income tax - this will mean 500,000 people will be lifted out of paying income tax altogether, a freeze in the inheritance tax threshold, an extra 5% on stamp duty for homes worth more than £1m and restrictions on tax relief on pension contributions for those on more than £150,000 a year.

The government is also cutting childcare support through the working tax credit. The resolution foundation says this will cost 450,000 people, which includes almost 290,000 lone parents, an average of £436 a year. For some families with two or more children it could be up to £1560 lost. This little-noticed change will have a huge impact on hundreds of thousands of families, but particularly mothers who work part time for low pay. Cuts to childcare support make no sense if it simply makes it harder for parents to work – as the office for budget responsibility has warned – and so ends up costing the taxpayer more.

The biggest losers will be those earning more than £35,000, with someone on £50,000 seeing their take-home pay reduced by £500 a year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The results of Osborne’s Budget are really quite frightening, especially for the poorer sector of our society. And what are the government doing to help them? Nothing – it seems they are oblivious to the demise of the average man and woman in this country. Understandable really, given that over 20 of the Cabinet are millionaires and have never really experienced hardship.

This bunch of elites and toffs are totally unaware of the economic realities facing society -

1. The VAT rise will cost families with children £450 this year alone
2. Tax credits and child benefit will be frozen from April
3. Petrol prices are soaring with the VAT rise adding 3p per litre
4. Economic growth has stalled
5. Unemployment is rising again – now at a 17 year high
6. Nearly 1 million young people are now out of work

But fear not, for the government have a strategy to help the less well off. Called the child poverty strategy, it aims to offer genuine opportunities to the most deprived people in Britain. Many disagree with the principles outlined in it pages and argue it is a bungling attempt to solve a critical problem.

Responding to the publication yesterday of the Government’s child poverty ‘strategy’ and social mobility strategy, the Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group, Alison Garnham, said:

“A child poverty ‘strategy’ which does not set out how poverty numbers will fall, and by when, is not a strategy and is incredibly disappointing and surprising given the Prime Minister’s stated commitment on tackling poverty.

“The ‘strategy’ is unlawful because it has not kept to the requirements laid down in law by Parliament. An expert Child Poverty Commission should have been set up and consulted in the strategy’s preparation. This failure shows in the poor quality of the ‘strategy’ itself.

“It is absolutely staggering to see in the 'strategy' cuts to housing benefit and support for sick and disabled families that will make poor families poorer. On top of benefit cuts, wage stagnation and rising prices for basics like food, fuel and clothes mean there is an immediate crisis for families. Urgently addressing the financial crisis for families should be the foundation for the strategy.

“Requirements on social inclusion and the progress Ministers expect to make on their targets by 2014 are missing. We are astonished to see a consultation on scrapping child poverty duties for local government promoted in the ‘strategy’, instead of being clearly ruled out.

“The ‘strategy’ starts from a false premise, suggesting that the last decade made no progress and did not address worklessness. In fact there’s been a downward trend for child poverty in workless households, but an upward trend for in-work poverty, which is now the larger problem.

“Although we finally have a document that tells us what the Government plans to do, it appears to do very little. Taken together with the social mobility strategy it is hard to see how they will have any traction on the major problem of child poverty we face. Britain could have the same low rates of child poverty as other European countries, but to achieve this we need a strategy that learns the lessons of what successful countries on child poverty have got right and addresses the structural unfairness in our own economy.”

On top of all this, on April 1st housing workers and their tenants faced the start of a two-year package of reforms to housing benefit that will have far-reaching effects on families and communities across the whole of the UK.

The new housing benefit caps for people in the private rented sector and the move to cut the number of properties people can choose from will have an immediate impact on families looking to find a new rented home.

There is also an important change to the levels of housing benefit that people in both the social and private sectors will receive if they have adult children at home.

From 1 April, tenants sharing their home with other adults need to collect more money from them to contribute towards the rent, or make up the difference from their own money. This will be an incentive to tenants to encourage their children to leave home and could also lead to greater risks of rent arrears.

Sarah Webb, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), said:

"People are going to have their options about where they can live cut significantly and it is likely that demand for the properties that remain available will be squeezed further.

"Government has argued that rents will fall as a result of the measures. There is no evidence at this time to suggest that landlords will respond to the changes by cutting their rents. Indeed, the latest surveys from across the sector suggest that rents are going up as demand outstrips supply and the number of new homes being built continues to be half of the level needed."

The average rent in England and Wales edged ahead by 0.2% to £684 a month in February 2011, to leave the typical cost of being a tenant 3.9% higher than in February last year, according to letting agency network LSL Property Services.

Ms Webb added: "Where tenants face significant shortfalls the choice is going to be stark, find money from somewhere else or move. Given these are people on low incomes their ability to save by cutting back on other items is severely limited.

"Ultimately, this will mean low-income families moving from the communities where they have jobs, where their children are in schools, where they having strong social networks."

The full measures which have now come into force are:

1. There will no longer be a five bedroom Local Housing Allowance rate. Weekly Local Housing rates will not exceed £250 for a one bedroom property; £290 for a two bedroom property; £340 for a three bedroom property; £400 for a four bedroom property.
2. The £15 excess will be removed as soon as the Local Authority reviews a claim. Claimants will no longer be able to pocket any excess money after their rent is paid.
3. Non-dependants living in households of Housing Benefit claimants will see their deduction increases take effect from April 2011.
4. Disabled people with a long-term health condition who need overnight care or live with someone with similar needs, may now be able to claim Housing Benefit for a private rented property which has an additional bedroom for a non-resident carer.

Bearing all this in mind, how can the government legitimately talk about increasing fairness, supporting those who are less privileged and increasing the chances for the poor? Once again it seems the Tories are full of lies and dishonesty just so they can hang onto power.

IDS - a very dangerous Tory

Next week, the Welfare Reform Bill will receive its second reading in the House of Commons. However, within its content there are significant problems. Already a number of charities and social care organisations have spoken against aspects of the Bill and, more recently, the Child Poverty Action Group has launched a legal challenge against the government’s plans to cap housing benefit from 1 April.

They told the Guardian newspaper it has "issued urgent proceedings for judicial review” on grounds that large areas of the south-east will no longer be affordable to the poor, with lone parents and ethnic minorities "disproportionately affected".

From April, weekly housing benefit payments cannot exceed £250 for a one bedroom flat, with a maximum £400 for a four bedroom house. Any excess in rent payments will have to be met by claimants via other means. The campaigners argue these changes will begin a forced migration of thousands of families – particularly in central London but soon after in the wider south. Only 7% of central London would be available for benefit tenants after the changes come in to force on 1 April – down from 52% the day before.

But these are far from the only problems in the Bill. Even the Church of England has voiced some concerns over its content. Speaking to the Guardian on the 22nd October, 2010, the Bishop of Blackburn said:

“The government has said that there will be personalised back-to-work support for those with the greatest barriers to employment. However, among this group are those people who are chronically sick and disabled. Sometimes it may seem that they have a remission of their illness sufficient to enable them to do some kind of work and at other times their illness makes this impossible. The prospects for this group are bleak under the new allowance arrangement. At the end of a year receiving the employment and support allowance, they will be "means tested" for future benefits or be faced with finding a job which they can fit around their unpredictable condition."

The Bishop is not alone in his fears. The charity, Family Action, which provides support to socially disadvantaged families, has argued:

“But perhaps most worryingly of all, the Universal Credit Impact Assessment admits that questions around childcare remain unresolved. Under some of the proposals for childcare costs hinted at in the white paper, some parents could end up paying ten times more towards their childcare costs from their own pockets than they do at present (a reduction from 97% to 70%). Parents who would otherwise be better off under the Universal Credit could end up considerably worse off as a result of these proposals if they have high childcare costs. In some circumstances they could pay to take on extra working hours, if this means that they have to pay for additional hours of childcare.”

So why are the Tories proceeding so heartlessly without taking into account the views of so many people? The answer is not so simple.

There are three key players moving the Bill through its stages in the House of Commons – Chris Grayling, Steve Bell and, of course the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith,

Grayling is an old style Tory with traditional values. He is steeped in the traditions associated with Conservativism, including the ‘value and need to work’ and personal responsibility.
He has previously held high office, but after a rather unpleasant homophobic incident was pushed down a level in Citizen Dave’s selection of Government ministers. Make no mistake, he wants Iain Duncan Smith’s job and will do anything to get it. He lacks the intellectual capacity of IDS, but is nobody’s fool and whilst it suits him, he will campaign vociferously for the Bill.

Steve Webb is rather different. A Liberal democrat who has sat rather comfortably around Tory circles since last May. He was the Lib Dem spokesperson for Work and Pensions in the past, though tended to shine more as an expert on pensions, rather than welfare benefits.

Ideologically, Webb leans more to the left and as wants a fairer welfare system. It has long been his contention that Universal Credits will ’level the playing field’ and. He has yet to comment on the many arguments against aspects of the Bill and will want to be seen as being loyal to Clegg and the Cabinet – partly because he has some idea of seeking the leadership himself at some future stage in his career and does not want to do anything to blot his copy book..

Iain Duncan Smith is different. He was thrown out of office as leader of the Conservative Party and spent many years in the political wilderness He wasn’t wasting his time. At the bequest of Citizen Dave, he set up the Centre for Social Justice, a right-wing think-tank dedicated to offering a more traditional view on social issues. His position as Chair and Founder of the Centre allowed him to meet the charismatic figure of Debbie Scott, the Chief Executive of welfare to work charity, Tomorrow’s People. Here he discovered a whole arena of social problems relating to unemployment and his mission became to talk to large numbers of those affected by poverty.
It led Peter Watt, the past Secretary of the Labour Party to say of him:

“Take the example of welfare policy. Listen to Labour and the assumption is that IDS wants to punish the poor, somehow that he gets off on increasing vulnerable people's suffering. What we don't think is that he wants to improve the lives of the poor but just doesn't think that the current incarnation of the welfare state is the best way to achieve this.”

It is a realistic analysis. IDS is not ‘your typical Tory’ - he doesn’t want to smash the poor, or create a divided Britain. He genuinely believes the existing welfare system is broken and his reforms will bring about greater opportunity for all. He genuinely feels many people on incapacity benefit have been sidelined and need help back into work and he truly thinks Flexible New Deal was a disaster and his new Work Programme will be the solution.

Of course, the evidence says he is wrong and many readers of this blog will know I have outlined many of my concerns on previous pages. But we should not batch IDS into the same pot as Citizen Dave or any of his toff friends. Certainly IDS comes from a privileged background and has never experienced poverty, but do not fall into the mistaken assumption he doesn’t care – he does – unfortunately, his values and beliefs have directed him to conclusions that will continue to divide this country.

Make no mistake – Citizen Dave and his Tory cronies are a nasty smear on British politics, but their political naïveté will ultimately be their own downfall. Iain Duncan Smith is ideologically driven and has a very clear mind of the society he wants to bring about – and that makes him the most dangerous kind of Tory. We have yet to see the worst of IDS. Watch this space.