tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6351141174311806312024-03-19T02:47:29.343-07:00Poor LawsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-16078083751090312702015-07-01T10:48:00.000-07:002015-07-01T10:48:14.081-07:00CHILD POVERTY TARGETS<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/01/government-scrap-legal-requirements-child-poverty" target="_blank">scrapping of the 'relative poverty' target</a> from the Child Poverty Act 2010, as announced by Duncan Smith today, is the clearest indication yet of the nature of the changes to be announced on 8th July. I stand by my <a href="http://poorlaws.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/whats-happening-on-july-8th.html" target="_blank">prediction </a>that Osborne will be targeting specifically larger families, rather than making a generalised assault on tax credits - and as well as, of course, new restrictions of Housing Benefit and cuts to disability and incapacity benefits.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, the best commentary and analysis on the child poverty targets - and demolition of Duncan Smith's arguments - comes, as so often, from the churches. Specifically the<a href="http://www.jointpublicissues.org.uk/" target="_blank"> Joint Public Issues Team</a> of the Methodist, URC, Baptists and Church of Scotland. As they say "The question asked by ...[Duncan Smith's] ... proposed measures is not 'Are you poor?'; it is instead "What personal flaws can your poverty be blamed on?"</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-75044584532235349592015-06-14T12:32:00.001-07:002015-06-14T12:32:11.360-07:00WHAT'S HAPPENING ON JULY 8TH?<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In June 2010 the Coalition government announced its intentions for the following five years in their first emergency budget. Against a hastily sketched backdrop featuring the fantasy economics of a 'budget deficit' for an institution that can create its own money, it was the cuts to welfare that, quite deliberately, were given centre stage. Nearly all the £17 billion a year cuts to working age benefits that have been implemented to date were announced in that one budget, or in the spending review a few months later.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This frontal assault on welfare was, it is important to register, an outstanding political success for the Tories. They won the debate. Their principal, if entirely nominal, opponents on the Labour front bench were left making goldfish gawps, then flopping around trying to move in the same direction - as they still are. The irregulars of the (not very) hard left were bemused, since welfare fell outside their stylised and outdated account of what class struggle was supposed to look like. The terms of public debate and understanding - already debased by New Labour - were shifted decisively to the right, to open hatred of the poor. The controlling mind behind the attack - the sadistic thug Osborne not the ineffectual Duncan Smith - learned the value of striking swiftly and early.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Since then the class struggle - which is what we are talking about here - has seen a few victories on our side, like the dispatch of ATOS, but the political impetus has stayed with the Tories. They have cemented their alliance of the relatively affluent - people in stable employment, home owners, many pensioners - in opposition to the threatening hordes of foreigners, disabled people and the dispossessed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, on the 8th July, Osborne is goi</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ng to try the same trick again. His budget will have as its centrepiece the pre-announced but unspecified, additional £12 billion in welfare cuts. The austerity narrative may be falling apart, the figures may be utterly arbitrary, the inevitable effect a further shift of resources to the rich; the key aim however will be to claim more political ground for reaction by creating a new popular consensus. They want not just acquiescence but class hatred and daytime TV shows. They want to be sure of silencing their victims with self loathing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The main features of Osborne's package of welfare cuts will be determined by these political imperatives. Pensioner benefits will be as far as possible untouched - enough in itself to show that saving money is not the real objective here. Child Benefit is popular and universal so Cameron has reserved that as well. Many of the 2010 cuts did not take effect until 2013; they were still a little nervous of any opposition. This time the entire package has to be effective within two years. The cuts will be relatively larger than before - about one eighth of working age expenditure on my estimate. And they need by their very operation and targeting to establish the worthlessness of their victims</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Divination is a hopeless pastime but if we on the left are to meet the renewed political assault on welfare more effectively this time around some haruspicy - inspection of George Osborne's coke spiced entrails - may help us prepare our defensive lines. There are other technical analyses of the problem - I rely mainly on that from the IFS - but the main intention here is to sketch an outline of the political arguments most likely to be used by our enemies in the hope that we will not be completely silenced on July 8th.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So here are some of the horrors we can expect, roughly in descending order of probability:</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Housing Benefit. </b>Big cuts in the £25 billion HB budget are a certainty, all the larger because the pensioner portion will likely be exempted. There are various means they could adopt to do this but the simplest, easiest and most probable - because most politically effective - is to restrict maximum HB to 80 - 90 percent of eligible rent. "Co-payment" is the key phrase - everyone has to pay a portion of their rent, regardless of income. No-one gets a free ride. Claimants have to be incentivised to find cheaper accommodation. Working HB claimants will be hit as much as non-working, private tenants who already pay a shortfall in their rent as much as social sector tenants; but the emphasis will be on putting a stop to 'free' accommodation. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This brings rent into line with council tax, in most areas, and lines up with the emphasis on enforcing behavioural change in Universal Credit, the benefit of choice for neo-liberals. The effects will include a huge increase in the number of evictions, the complete conversion of the social housing sector to a neo-liberal enforcement agency, and a further explosion in long term foodbank usage as the available cash income of poor people has to be devoted to rent, fuel, council tax and other state or quasi-state charges. The political response needs to centre on an absolute right to secure, decent housing, regardless of ability to pay.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>taxation of DLA and PIP. </b>But probably not Attendance Allowance (for people aged 65+) and DLA for pensioners. Why should better off disabled people not pay some tax? - except that 'better off' here just means living slightly above subsistence levels. There are very few rich disabled people, for some reason.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>abolition of contributory ESA and JSA. </b>The Tories will take the chance to eliminate the last two remnants of the Beveridge model of welfare, and its contributory principle, at the same time that they are replacing state Retirement Pension with a flat rate version with, effectively, a 35 year residence condition. Contributory JSA is so restricted in scope that it is virtually useless and its abolition will arouse little opposition. Contributory ESA has already been restricted to 12 months payment, except for people in the support group. But there are a lot more people being put into the support group than Duncan Smith expected or intended, because of opposition to ATOS and the work capability assessment, internal and external; and more radical surgery is needed. Plus it simplifies the operation of Universal Credit</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>restriction of Child Tax Credit to two children. </b>This, I am predicting, will be the outcome of the debate on cutting back the Tax Credit system - perhaps not the only one because there are a number of other parameters they could adjust, but the biggest. It is a solution that lends itself to reactionary ends. It can be used to promote, and in turn be reinforced by, racist and sexist attitudes towards people with large families. The continued payment of Child Benefit for third and subsequent children can be used to obfuscate the issue, ignoring the difference between £53.31 per week CTC and £13.70 CHB. The alternative is a generalised cut in Tax Credits which is possible but awkward politically - difficult to dress up as anything but an attack on the working poor. Even the Labour Party could manage some degree of opposition to this. But present Labour with this poisonous mix of racism and sexism and they won't know how to react at all. Either way, expect to see a lot more hungry and homeless children, and a lot more fragmented families and children in care. And remember the Tories have long promoted adoption as a solution for the excess poor.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>abolition, complete or effective, of the work related activity component in ESA. </b>To a large extent this is happening anyway. People in the work related activity group, supposedly accepted as having limited capability for work, are increasingly being placed in Work Programme schemes and sanctioned, like regular unemployed folk. Many are struggling to get that far because of delays in assessment and never get out of the "assessment phase". Those who do are all trying to get into the support group which has more money and no WP placements. And again abolition simplifies Universal Credit.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>abolition of Carers Allowance. </b>A possibility if they are desperate enough to reach their £12 billion but I would guess one they would prefer to avoid. It was mentioned February's leaked civil service briefing on possible cuts</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>abolition of Industrial Injuries Benefit and transfer to employers. </b>Again a possibility but it would require major legislative surgery and would not be ready in two years. Plus employers would hate it</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>restrictions on SSP and SMP. </b>For instance restricting SSP to three months, SMP to six months. A distinct possibility. Employers would like this and it fits well with an increasingly casualised workforce.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>a generalised cut in benefit rates. </b>If they can't get to £12 billion any other way they could always go back to 1931 try a straight cash cut. It split the Labour Party asunder then and guaranteed a National government for a few elections</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But that's enough speculation - the inventive fecundity of neo-liberal dungeon masters like Osborne necessarily outruns the imaginative powers of his victims. What matters is that he meets a response in the days and weeks after July 8th and not a stunned silence.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-66852952012320097482014-11-09T11:38:00.001-08:002014-11-09T11:39:03.228-08:00THE MEANING OF THE COALITION’S WELFARE REFORM PROGRAMMESilent here for a while; this is because I was writing a big piece on the meaning if welfare reform. This was first published by the International Socialist Network here: http://www.internationalsocialistnetwork.org/index.php/ideas-and-arguments/analysis/506-some-arguments-about-the-uk-government-s-welfare-reform-programme and I,m now working on an edited version for a pamphlet.<br />
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Here it is:<br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THE MEANING OF THE COALITION’S WELFARE REFORM PROGRAMME </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are not trying (very hard) to reduce welfare expenditure </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They do not want, at all, to reduce benefit dependency</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are not interested in getting people into work ... </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… because they don’t know what to do with people when they are working </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are not, exactly, aiming to abolish the welfare state…</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… not least because the present welfare state is their own, neoliberal, creation </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are converting the DWP into a punitive arm of the state</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are looking to create a low waged, unskilled, precarious workforce </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are enforcing a patriarchal discipline on women and families by means testing </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are winning ... </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...and Universal Credit will seal their victory for a generation</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They have a problem with pensioners, which they have yet to sort out</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Labour are as deeply committed to these aims as the Tories </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why it’s ‘Welfare’, not Social Security</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why it’s back to 1601 not 1834 </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No-one asked for welfare</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Against welfare: for class independence </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ADDENDUM - on proposals for an unconditional basic income</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WHY UNCONDITIONAL BASIC INCOME IS NOT THE SAME AS NEGATIVE INCOME TAX</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">UNCONDITIONAL BASIC INCOME IS NEITHER A PANACEA NOR A NEOLIBERAL PLOT</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">GETTING AN UNCONDITIONAL BASIC INCOME IS NOT GOING TO BE EASY</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sources</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are not trying (very hard) to reduce welfare expenditure </span></h2>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The total welfare spend under the Coalition is </span><a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmworpen/1153/115305.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">still increasing</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (as critics from the right have</span><a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100257048/nigel-farage-the-tories-have-failed-only-ukip-dares-cut-spending-on-nhs-and-pensions/?fb" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> noted)</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> instead of flatlining as they originally claimed to plan. Had they been serious about reducing expenditure they could not have largely exempted pensioners, who receive approaching 60% of all welfare payments from the scope of their cuts. Reducing expenditure is not in fact their main aim. Rather they aim to reconfigure both expenditure, and the experience and understanding of welfare, to meet the needs of capital</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This does not mean the cuts are not real: they are and they are getting worse but they are concentrated on the working age population. The </span><a href="http://www.nawra.org.uk/wordpress/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Benefit-changes-Parts-1-and-2-April-2013.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">total planned cuts</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, not yet fully implemented, amount to about £23 billion a year, or around 25%, compared to what expenditure would have been, for people aged 16-65. The effects are generalised across the working age population, in work and out of work. Disabled people will face the biggest cuts of all proportionately but many of these cuts have yet to be fully implemented. This has been enough to cause widespread hardship but not enough seriously to divert the demographic growth of pensioner welfare and the impact of rising rents and declining real wages. Notably, there has been no attempt at all to reduce the scope of the welfare system, for instance by excluding people in work.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The earliest cuts, from 2010, affected primarily people in work - like the increase (from 16 to 24) in the hours limit above which couples could claim Working Tax Credit; the time limiting of contributory Employment Support Allowance (ESA) - marking the effective end of the contributory system established in 1948 - and restrictions in the rent allowed in private rented accommodation. These amounted to a major attack in themselves but were just a preliminary exercise before the assault which began from April 2013</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The biggest reductions in expenditure since 2013 are hidden - they come from below inflation annual uprating (1%; nil from 2015) across most benefits and tax credits combined with a steadily increasing pressure on household incomes. More money is needed for rent because of Housing Benefit reductions; contributions to council tax are now required from all non-pensioner households; working tax credit is reduced, employment support allowance is means tested for people with other resources like a working partner. These cuts are now set to continue indefinitely under the </span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26743802" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">caps on welfare expenditure</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> supported by both Labour and the Tories, creating a background of misery for millions of people at the mercy of the neoliberal state.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More dramatic in effect than these systemic attacks have been cuts which are actually smaller in the savings achieved but deliberately targeted at the points where they produce most pain. The bedroom tax claims to save £500 million and in fact probably saves almost nothing - but people lose their homes through it. The abolition of the Social Fund - emergency cash support from the DWP - saves even less because the help formerly provided was largely in the form of loans and recovered from later benefit payments - but it is the biggest single factor behind the explosion of food bank usage. The abolition of council tax support is producing a cumulative nightmare as one years arrears are added to the next and enforced, increasingly, by </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/dec/23/council-tax-arrears-bailiff-citizens-advice" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bailiff action</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The benefit cap affects mainly people with large families or with private rented accommodation in London where it designed to enforce a social cleansing of the most expensive areas. Less than 50,000 households have been affected in total, often not by much and not for long, but the propaganda value has been maximised by publicising a few statistical outliers. (Recent Tory proposals for a reduced benefit cap of £23,000 will have a more widespread effect). Coming in October 2014 is a </span><a href="http://ssac.independent.gov.uk/news/press-releases/23-05-14.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7 day waiting period</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at the start of most benefit claims - again the savings are tiny but the rule is deliberately designed to have maximum impact at the most difficult time. These are cuts for their own sake - official, politically sanctioned sadism with no fiscal or economic rationale at all but intended to normalise and make acceptable new levels of cruelty. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is the April 2013 cuts that account for the </span><a href="http://www.trusselltrust.org/stats" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sharp rise in food bank usage</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> since then. They are </span><a href="http://www.cesi.org.uk/social-inclusion-news/2013/aug/ground-breaking-study-illustrates-cumulative-impact-welfare-reforms" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cumulative</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and multiple cuts can affect the same people. It takes time for the full effects of falling incomes and withdrawn services to be felt and sure enough, we are only now beginning to see the first signs of increasingly acute, widespread, distress: </span><a href="http://www.cih.org/news-article/display/vpathDCR/templatedata/cih/news-article/data/Headline_homelessness_figures_hiding_disturbing_picture" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">homelessness</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is starting to rise as repossessions increase; </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/27/top-lowest-earners-inequality-ons" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">household incomes </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for the poorest families are falling; increasing numbers of </span><a href="http://www.baaf.org.uk/res/statengland" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">children</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are being taken into care. But it is only eighteen months into this new regime and the worst is yet to come.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then consider that much of the most acute suffering associated with welfare reform has been caused, not so much by cuts to expenditure as by the associated tightening of claimant discipline through sanctions, and through ATOS medicals. And offset against notional savings to the state through welfare reform should be several billion pounds paid to </span><a href="http://ersa.org.uk/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">welfare to work providers</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> like ATOS, G4S and other Work Programme contractors to implement these new punishments - both costly and </span><a href="http://www.cesi.org.uk/responses/dwp-work-programme-how-it-performing-0" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">largely ineffective</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in their stated aims, these programmes have nonetheless been uncritically adopted by this ‘austerity’ government. These costs are never included if official counts of welfare expenditure. But then reducing overall expenditure on welfare is not really what they are after.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They do not want, at all, to reduce benefit dependency</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They want to increase benefit dependency (if benefit dependency means being dependent on benefits). They have been doing so systematically, forcing more and more people in work to become claimants, since the Thatcher government introduced rent allowances (a precursor to housing benefit) in 1981 and Family Credit in 1985. Now they are proposing to transfer millions of people from Tax Credits, administered by the HM Revenue and Customs, and housing benefit, administered by local authorities, onto universal credit, a means tested, DWP administered benefit. They are content to leave the forces driving new benefit claims - unemployment, poor health and disability, low paid, insecure work and escalating rents - untouched: indeed they are enforcing substantial rent increases throughout the social housing sector, attacking health and social care provision, cutting jobs and driving down wages wherever they can.They are fully aware that these factors will increase the numbers claiming both in work and out of work support and their actions show that they are fully content to let this happen.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But that is not what they mean when they denounce benefit dependency. They do not actually have a problem with people being dependent on benefits. In fact they like people being dependent on benefits because they are then - precisely - dependent. The last thing our ruling class and its politicians want is an independent, self-reliant working class - they had enough of that in the 1970’s.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Benefit dependency is, first of all, a deliberately created, purely ideological, confection rather than a reflection or real economic and fiscal relationships, which are much more subtle and complicated. Taxation reverses many of the apparent effects of a fortnightly ESA payment while benefits like JSA can, in many cases, can be better considered as deferred wages, an analysis commonly applied to pensions but never to working age benefits. The effective end of most contributory benefits leaves no route open to arguments that your benefit is not a state dole but an entitlement you have paid for. - which is why the Tories have consistently cut contributory benefits, since the 1980’s, and Labour have never restored any of them.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But benefit dependency is also an increasingly brutal fact - a power relation requiring that the claimant subjugates themself to state examination and assessment at regular intervals and accepts that they can have no control over most of the major decisions in their life. This again is a situation neoliberalism is deliberately creating and will make strenuous efforts not to abolish. The usual terms of debate about benefit dependency in fact need to be reversed: it is the left, the working class who should be seeing to abolish dependency on state welfare; it is the ruling class who are determined to maintain it</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what they really mean by benefit dependency is an attitude problem. They mean anyone who thinks that claiming benefit is a right. </span><a href="http://www.channel5.com/shows/on-benefits-proud" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“On Benefits and Proud”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, as the TV programme puts it. They mean anyone who does not cringe and take down their hoodie in their </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yste5LzF4ag&feature=kp" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dealings with the state</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. They mean anyone who does not recognise that their only purpose and the only meaning to themselves and their lives is that they work, or work towards work, or work on the concept of work, even when there is no work. They mean, in long, anyone who does not accept that “the sole duty of man in a commercial society” is “never to leave off conjugating the Imperative Mood, Present Tense, of the verb To keep always at it. Keep thou always at it. Let him keep always at it. Keep we or do we keep always at it. Keep ye or do ye or you keep always at it. Let them keep always at it” as Mr Pancks put it in his </span><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/963/963-h/963-h.htm#link2HCH0068" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">great peroration</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to Bleeding Heart Yard, the Benefits Street of 150 years ago. For unless we are kept always at it we might do something useful, and what would happen then, pray, to the circulation of value?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are not interested in getting people into work ... </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They do not give a shit whether people get work or not. Unemployment is a forgotten problem, reclassified as a welfare issue. In the 1980’s, frightened by the 1981 riots, Thatcher’s government introduced genuine job creation schemes like the Community Programme - proper paid jobs, if temporary (I got one). No-one so much as mentions the possibility of job creation schemes now. The Coalition’s flagship scheme for driving people into work, the Work Programme is a proven failure, performing no better than claimants would have done unaided. And for all the efforts of ATOS to drive sick and disabled people off benefit the total numbers of people </span><a href="http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/number-of-employment-support-allowance-claims-on-the-rise-is-iain-duncan-smith-making-us-sick/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">claiming ESA</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has hardly reduced - people are cycling on and off ESA and JSA, at reduced levels, rather than getting jobs. The theory underlying these programmes - that unemployment is a ‘supply-side’ problem, caused by over generous benefits - has been comprehensively discredited. (It was only ever a vacuous gesture towards a theory in the first place).</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even when Osborne claims to be targeting </span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26814423" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘full employment’</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> this is a threat not a concession, given the nature of the employment his policies are producing. Insecure, low paid employment is the very best on offer for most of us. No pay at all is the offer for people on </span><a href="http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=3588" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community work placements</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and is the effective outcome for many notionally self employed people who set up unviable businesses to escape the Jobcentre by claiming</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tax credits. Add no effective rights at work - because nominal rights have become impossible for most people to enforce since the introduction of </span><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/254326/T435_1113.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fees</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for Employment Tribunal cases in July 2013 - and the punitive nature of much employment becomes clear.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In fact though,Osborne’s claim is not entirely empty. They do not have any plans for full employment but they do have a scheme to abolish unemployment. Universal Credit, if it is ever fully implemented, will end the separate categorisation of unemployed people claiming Jobseekers Allowance and replace it with a single population of people in low paid or casualised work, unemployed people, people with illnesses and disabilities, single parents, all claiming the same benefit and distinguished only by their ‘conditionality levels’ - the rules they have to satisfy to get benefit. The ‘claimant count’ figure for unemployment will be no more.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">None of this is of any concern to the government. The Work Programme works for them because it has opened up more state revenue to the extraction of value by private capital and because it enforces the ideology of ‘work’, rather than increasing the amount of actual work. People may not have been driven off benefit in great number but they have been terrorised, their income cut drastically and their worth - everyone’s worth - redefined as their willingness to be exploited. Which is, more or less, what they wanted.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… because they don’t know what to do with people when they are working </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And yet the work still isn’t there. Falling unemployment is itself now an artefact of the welfare system as people are driven off benefits into Work Programme schemes or fake self employment; actual employment is barely increasing at all (and in so far as it has increased the increase is driven by more people staying on in employment than by people starting work). There is a slightly frantic quality to the constant invocation of work as the sole fitting aim to life, to the endlessly repeated story of the “hard working family” whose only function is to be the vehicle of a manufactured outrage against the supposedly idle. Our ruling class, and much of the left, appear to believe in a myth of meritorious, productive work, probably in a factory making useful widgets, established by an entrepreneur who works all hours to maintain his business and his loyal workforce. The actual experience of most work - even of inherently valuable work - is by contrast of layer upon layer of bureaucracy, deepening all the time, without apparent purpose or value but requiring more and more </span><a href="http://www.hazards.org/stress/workplacetyranny.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">manic levels of activity</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from everyone trapped inside their job. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This suggests that capital, in the advanced, deindustrialised, economies, is experiencing a problem in reproducing the wage labour relationship on which it depends. There is nothing new of course in capitalism failing to provide full employment and relying on a reserve army of the unemployed to reduce wage pressure. What does look new is a certain difficulty they may be experiencing in persuading people that work, on all available terms and conditions, is actually the unqualified good it is supposed to be. In this difficulty capital is experiencing, once again but in a new form, the unforeseen consequences of its own development. If wage labour becomes unsustainable without state support, and if means testing then removes most or all of the benefits of work, then what’s so great about a job? If the need of capital for a deskilled, routinised labour denudes work, traditionally a source of pride and self respect, of all meaning then why should anyone value it?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a purpose to the growing bureaucratisation of capitalist employment, the </span><a href="http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bullshit jobs</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, other than simply disciplining us all into mindlessness. The endless unread records, the risk assessments, the bills and invoices, the charges, the quality standards, the supervision records, the never-consulted policy documents are there to allocate and protect income streams and support the claims of individual capitals within the overall system. ( And if there are no privatised income streams in a given system as yet, then the procedures are in place to allow them later). The function of most human labour for capital is, increasingly if not yet completely, to generate the records and claims, to police the procedures and processes, to manage and manipulate the human raw material</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which are the origin of of the employing capital’s return, rather than to produce use values. All with a compulsory smiling face.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Employment is not coming to an end anytime soon. And it is emphatically not the case that there is no useful role for human labour and creativity; indeed global warming is a collective crisis that will need the full commitment of billions to negotiate.But it is possible now to suggest that capitalism itself has exhausted the potential of the wage labour relationship and is pointing towards a destination beyond - even while capitalism’s rulers and ideologues dictate an ever more frenetic commitment to the virtues of work in the abstract.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are not, exactly, aiming to abolish the welfare state…</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">British capitalism has done well out of the welfare state. It kept the social peace after the war and was </span><a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/saville/1957/xx/welfare.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">largely paid for by the working class who used it</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> through National Insurance contributions and consumption taxes. Its expansion, which really began in the 1980’s, has opened up new possibilities. In work benefits have funded the expansion of low paid and part time employment. Housing Benefit - about a quarter of all working age benefit expenditure - has been turned into a hidden subsidy underlying the huge expansion of the private rented sector and its new class of rentier capitalists. A new, multi billion pound, </span><a href="http://ersa.org.uk/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">industry</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has developed on the back of government contracts for welfare provision. And all the while the growth of indirect taxation, like VAT, has universalised the cost, spreading it right across the population. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">People on benefits pay tax, </span><a href="http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/attachments/resources/Unfair%20and%20Unclear.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">quite a lot of it</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The contrary impression is created by a discourse on taxation that is as as skewed and misinformed as that on benefits. Income tax, the only tax the government, and other spokespeople for ‘taxpayers’ like to mention, makes up only around 25% of all tax income. The true position is that around half of all tax receipts are accounted for by indirect, consumption, taxes and duties. These taxes are regressive; the lower your income the higher the proportion that goes on indirect taxation - because poor people necessarily spend all their income on immediate, taxable items while the rich can invest and save. Because of the combined effects of taxation and benefits the scale of the net transfers of income towards the poorest people is much smaller than is supposed or apparent. </span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/105217604/A-Fair-Income" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Simon Duffy of the Centre for Welfare Reform has established that, as of 2009, people whose income fell in the lowest 10% of the population received a total transfer (roughly: benefits less tax paid) amounting to just £1,500 a year. The same people used much less than average of the services (education, NHS etc) provided by taxation so that, after allocating this cost saving, their net use of the welfare state in all its forms was negative. The maximum tax actually paid, by contrast, by the 10% on the highest incomes, net of benefits and services received, was about 27% - a remarkably good deal for the rich, given that these figures do not even touch on inequalities of property and wealth</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are not going simply to abolish something so useful for them. They are going to reconstruct it to meet capital’s needs. British capital, increasingly unable to find profitable openings in the production of commodities or the supply of services, needs access to all the revenues of the state, needs to have every transaction opened to it. Old style privatisations, where whole corporations were transferred from public to private sector, turned out to be not enough (capitalists still had to produce something in return for their new preserves). Better to tap straight into government income streams and auction off the rights of access. The Roman Empire had a crude form of the same idea with its tax farming. Absolutism introduced the sale of state offices. Under the modern version each and every state function can be let out to the highest bidder, avoiding any formal transfer of sovereignty or responsibility while allowing private capital a cut in every transaction, everywhere. That overall costs are inflated wildly in this process is of concern only if one believes that government is concerned with efficiency and economy: they are not; they are concerned with profits. The resulting extra expense after all is met by taxes and the deficiencies in service are of concern only to those who use them, not to our rulers.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hence the reduction of the NHS to a brand, hollowed out and depleted, but not formally abolished. Hence the, still far from complete, spread of private contractors in welfare. Hence the entry of </span><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n01/james-meek/where-will-we-live" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">private finance into social housing</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and the resulting rent inflation. A welfare state of sorts will still exist in the future of capitalism but it will not be one socialists should lay claim to.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… not least because the present welfare state is their own, neoliberal, creation </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The UK welfare system, as we now have it, is very largely a creation of the 1980’s and Thatcherism. Thatcher it was who began slicing away most of the 1948 vintage contributory system, and replacing it with means testing. Thatcher began the process of tightening discipline for unemployed claimants. Thatcher introduced new ‘in-work’ benefits (Housing Benefit from 1981) and expanded old ones - Family Income Supplement, introduced by the Heath government in 1970, but </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_benefits_in_the_United_Kingdom#Family_Income_Supplement" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">expanded massively</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> under Thatcher and renamed Family Credit in 1986. She massively extended, instead of reducing , the scope of capitalist welfare. Council house sales were funded, for a time, directly by welfare payments while the parallel growth of private renting was, and is, underwritten by Housing Benefit. Thatcher again, or Major after her, closed all the old, lingering, Poor Law institutions. Those gigantic, Largactil sodden Gormenghasts, the mental hospitals that ringed London and other cities were replaced by community care while the land was sold off cheap. Council old peoples homes were forced to close while private nursing homes mushroomed everywhere - and this new financial architecture for care was funded almost entirely from the ever expanding welfare budget.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="£welfare.jpg" height="257px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/d63WYmJjANsEAL5glcg_STQ5jjse-yiYtxtInPVoPgLIFvvON47lQSfDWQpRUZHdfakg-WOT1jmgaObWWq3VlZJtPd7efoifIhpkE7fI2QilQ__q6YLJJnfmthp7QXQL7A" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="472px;" /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Above all Thatcher created mass unemployment which changed fundamentally the meaning of welfare. A contributory, insurance based system cannot survive when it becomes a long term means of support for millions. And Thatcher deliberately ensured that was the fate of the generations cast off by her de-industrialisation - miners, factory workers, dockers and all their dependants - they were all carefully allowed welfare to fall back on. In fact, notoriously, they were systematically encouraged, throughout the eighties, to claim the more generous sickness and incapacity benefits in order to reduce unemployment figures. And so welfare became a badge of defeat and despair, associated only with wrecked communities carved open by heroin addiction, offering not security but degradation. Its subsequent fall in popular esteem, through the nineties, should not have been a surprise.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All Thatcher’s policies were continued by her epigones. But now that - after the miners’ strike - the threat of organised class opposition had been largely seen off, the need for a comfortable welfare cushion had passed. Gradually, incrementally, and above all under the Blair government, the pressure on welfare recipients could be increased - for their own good naturally. Because worklessness was bad for you and only work was good for you. And there was enough truth in this for it to influence people, provided only that you forgot who had created mass welfare, and in whose interests. And since the left believed - still believes today in large part - that they were duty bound to defend the system created by Beveridge and Bevan, never noticing that its meaning and social content had been transformed by Thatcher, we had no effective answer.</span></div>
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<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are converting the DWP into a punitive arm of the state </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Services for poor people are poor services’ is a commonplace of social studies and has been true enough since the inception of the welfare state. What is happening under the Coalition’s reforms however goes above and beyond anything that went before.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/13/adrian-mole-sue-townsend-welfare" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bureaucratic indifference</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was the characteristic emotional mode of the post 1945 welfare state, alternating with conservative moralising especially for single women with children. Benefit provision and personal social services were closely integrated under the original National Assistance scheme of 1948 so that claiming state support meant agreeing to moral supervision by the state. Children were still being transported to Canada and Australia by the British welfare state </span><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/8488113.stm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">up to 1970</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><a href="http://www.motherandbabyhomes.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mother and Baby Homes</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> were widely used and children who escaped forced emigration faced equally forced adoption by middle class families, a process which reached a peak of 16,164 adoption orders made in 1968. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of disabled people were incarcerated in asylums, long stay hospitals and homes run by Leonard Cheshire and similar charities - all lingering memories of the workhouses of the 19th century.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Thatcherite welfare system that emerged from the 1980’s dispensed with most of these encumbrances, in favour of purely cash transactions. Hospitals, asylums, old peoples’ homes, were closed down and replaced with private sector residential provision, funded through Income Support (introduced 1988) and Housing Benefit. The Children Act (1990) and the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) represented major, genuinely liberalising, reforms introduced by Tory governments of the time; but they were also strategic withdrawals by the state in favour of market provision and monetised transactions. The introduction of Disability Living Allowance (1992, bringing together the existing Attendance Allowance and Mobility Allowance, with some loosening of conditions) similarly represented both a popular reform, responding to the demands of the disabled peoples movement (and DLA remains a genuinely popular benefit, pending its abolition) and a precursor to the extensive privatisation of care services which were to be funded to a large extent through DLA and Income Support. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most fundamentally, it was the Thatcher governments that did away with the paternalistic exercise of discretion, left over from Poor Law days, in favour of a comprehensive, legalistic, code of entitlements - a change accomplished by the abolition of supplementary benefit in 1988 and its replacement by Income Support. This shift wrong footed most oppositional welfare rights organisations, formed in imitation of the much larger US movement for whom the establishment of legal rights and the enforcement of due process were central and continually contested objectives. But in a UK context the formalisation of welfare arrangements had multiple advantages for an emerging neoliberal state: it removed any scope for discretion by individual benefit officers, which might be influenced in its exercise by local political campaigns; it began the process of training claimants in the requirements of a neoliberal bureaucracy; and it enabled, in due course, the increasing automation and depersonalisation of welfare administration.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Blair and Brown left this modernised welfare largely untouched, with the addition of Tax Credits and Pension Credit. Their major contribution was to use what ideological credibility they had, as supposed heirs to and guardians of the post war welfare settlement, to popularise a neoliberal account of welfare. They began the promotion of work - any work - as the solution to all ills - and they could do so without raising hollow laughter because they were not saddled with Thatcher’s legacy of having recreated mass unemployment. They identified benefit dependency as a central ‘problem’ - meaning an opportunity to make political gains from attacking the poor - </span><a href="http://poorlaws.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/gobsm-acked-birkenhead-labour-mp-and.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Frank Field</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was bemoaning the existence of a dependent underclass as early as 1989. They introduced ATOS and the work capability assessment to restrict the scope of sickness benefits in 2008. At the same time they introduced local housing allowance to the private rented sector - a necessary move in the development of the bedroom tax. They pioneered the involvement of the private sector ‘welfare to work industry’ in disciplining unemployed people. And they ‘modernised’ the Department of Work and Pensions.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This meant cutting tens of thousands of jobs, introducing features like call centres and the closure of local benefit offices. By 2010 it was already the case that it was impossible to see a DWP employee in person about your benefit claim, all transactions being handled by phone or in writing. The Coalition introduced new perversions to this already depersonalised system. Labour still occasionally used the language of customer service and satisfaction; the Tories pioneered the new concept of deliberately appalling customer service on the grounds that the customers were all worthless (the flip side of all those advertisements which urge a luxury service on you “because you’re worth it” - to which the only appropriate response is “how do you know?”).</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Postal communication with the DWP is now a lottery which routinely takes weeks - all post being handled, or lost, by the giant West Midlands Mail Centre (1, Sun Street, Wolverhampton, is its rather extraordinary geographical address) and arriving at its destination, a Benefits Delivery Centre by unknown means. Since mail is never logged until is is acted upon any query you make about a claim, a letter, a sick note is invariably answered by the bland statement that the communication has not been received which is usually untrue but might just be the case so you have to send another … Naturally the DWP is promoting electronic communication - with the exception of e-mail. There are no e-mail facilities at all open to claimants to make enquiries about their claims. You can of course phone, if you can wait 20-30 minutes, when your call can be routed to a call centre anywhere in the country - and you have to pay for the call, only the initial claim being on a freephone number (which isn’t free on many mobiles). However the facility which formerly existed in Jobcentres to phone a benefit office was withdrawn from every Job Centre in the land in February 2014 for no reason at all except that it was a nasty thing to do. (</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343231; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobcentres are moving to an assisted service model and providing digital access to job search and benefit applications. As a consequence, we are removing warm phones from local jobcentres. Claimants who are vulnerable or unable to access our services in other ways will be assisted at their local office to resolve any queries that they have.' </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343231; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Esther Mcvey, Hansard, 10.2.14.)</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And it goes on. </span><a href="http://poorlaws.blogspot.co.uk/2013_09_01_archive.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mandatory reconsideration</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a procedure designed to prevent people appealing was going to take 2-4 weeks. It takes double or more and it is succeeding in its aim - </span><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/352914/tribunal-statistics-quarterly-april-june-2014.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">appeal numbers</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have been cut drastically with the result thatthere is now no effective check on DWP decision making and maladministration. DLA claims were processed in 2-4 months - PIP claims take twice that or longer, as a side effect of the chaos surrounding ATOS. Short term benefit advances (STBA’s) proposed as the solution to delays, are next to impossible to obtain (just </span><a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm140113/text/140113w0004.htm#1401145000056" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">£3.3 million</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> paid out in six months) with claimants being referred to non-existent local authority services or food banks to sort out DWP delays. This is administration as an open expression of class contempt.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If payment is so wayward as to be almost a punishment what of provisions that are actually intended to be punitive? The effects of almost a million </span><a href="https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=CB5ED957FE0B849F!350&app=WordPdf&authkey=!AJTbB-gzwsSCayQ" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sanctions</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a year are fairly well known. Less noted are a series of lesser punitive measures:</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">penalties.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> If you are paid too much benefit for almost any reason, you do not merely have to repay the overpayment you receive a £50 spot fine as well. So you get a job, and not wanting to take an hour or more off work, you don’t phone the DWP until a few days later. You’re quite happy to pay back any overpayment - but you’re fined as well - in effect fined for finding work.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">overpayments - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at present you only have to repay overpaid benefit if, loosely, you are responsible for the overpayment occurring. If it’s an official error you don’t have to repay it. When Tax Credits were introduced, with overpayments guaranteed however scrupulous you were about notifying them, the Brown government decreed that all overpayments would be recovered, subject only to an official mercy provision. Universal Credit adopts the Tax Credit rule</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">benefit fraud </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can now be punished not only by a criminal sentence (now with </span><a href="http://poorlaws.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/keir-starmer-is-fraud-massive-press.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">extended sentences</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) and not only by having to repay any overpaid benefit (both of which have always happened) but also by a three year ban on claiming any other benefits and total recovery of any assets (house, car) under the Proceedings of Crime Act (POCA).</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The neo-liberal welfare state, then, sees </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/25/pauper-management-g4s-serco-atos-poor-laws" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">punishment as a central purpose</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, not as an adjunct to good administration or an incentive to good behaviour. The boundaries of punitive welfare furthermore extend well beyond the DWP. Local authority Social Services Departments are increasingly called upon to exercise punitive measures from repatriation to the removal of children. Both the Tories and Labour have </span><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2656727/Feckless-parents-stripped-benefits-unless-lessons-raising-family.html#ixzz34VqsqcGH" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">plans</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to extend this role and deepen local authority involvement in the discipline of ‘feckless’ or ‘troubled’ families. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This poses a problem for socialists and trade unionists working within the welfare system. There comes a point when the ability to moderate the system from inside no longer seems adequate compensation for the cruelties that you are required to participate in. This is not an easy judgment to make. There has always been a tendency within state bureaucracies, and many other institutions to develop a contemptuous attitude to the punters, tempered perhaps by a recognition of their necessity. And of course there is no shortage of annoying and obnoxious claimants. However the sharper grows the contradiction between, say, the PCS’s official, very civilised, stance against welfare reform and the behaviour required of its members, and the longer unions put off any effective opposition to the transformation of the social content of their members’ work, on the spurious grounds they they are concerned only with the terms and conditions of that work, the more difficult it becomes to justify continued participation in a state campaign of enforced hunger and petty tyranny. Effective sabotage then becomes the minimum requirement of an active conscience and obstruction of the system a central campaigning objective for socialists both inside and outside the neoliberal welfare system.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">8.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are looking to create a low waged, unskilled, precarious workforce </span></h2>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s forever incidentally, if they get their way, and not just for young people. And it’s for nearly everyone - middle class professionals and the skilled working class not excluded. This is only in small part a result of globalisation; in greater part it is about automation reducing the need for human labour, skilled labour especially, everywhere in the world (so it isn’t a trend that can be reversed by ‘reshoring’ as the Greens like to imagine). The drive to automation, and simple, tightly specified, repetitive procedures in those areas that cannot be automated, is relentless. From teachers and university lecturers facing replacement with unskilled assistants simply following prescribed textbooks, to train drivers and signallers displaced by </span><a href="http://www.globalrailnews.com/2014/06/27/future-of-rail-driverless-high-speed-trains-and-maintenance-drones/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">automatic train operation</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, to law firms applying mass production techniques to litigation, capitalism no longer requires our skills and creativity; just that we follow procedures. Even in areas generally assumed to be the preserve of human labour - like the provision of care to other humans - automation strides on in the form of </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistive_technology" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">assistive technology</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Not the least significant reason for the rise of ATOS was their use of computer based systems to bypass the role of expensive doctors in medical assessments.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They have made substantial progress. As David Renton </span><a href="http://livesrunning.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/neoliberalism-and-the-employment-form/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">almost pointed out</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it seems likely (</span><a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_354442.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">official statistics</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are inadequate to capture this) that something under half of the total population of working age is now in full time, secure, employment: the rest, the majority, being unemployed or otherwise inactive, self employed, in part time work, or in variously casualised forms of full time employment. And the sustained fall in real earnings since 2010 is now underwritten by the guarantee of a workforce of millions forced into accepting any work available by Jobcentre sanctions.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the same time they are enmeshing the wages system at every level with state provision and taxation. Fifty years ago the primary, often the only source of income for working class families was the wage packet or salary. They generally didn't pay much, if any, income tax out of this, just national insurance. Today for anyone on or below average wages, for anyone in rented accommodation, for anyone with children or a disability, their financial relationship with the state is likely to be as important - as determinative for their standard of living - as their wage - which is itself set by the state for anyone on or near minimum wage. Income Tax and NICs, Child Benefit, Tax Credits, Housing Benefit, council tax reductions, DLA, free nursery places, prescription charges, TV licences, free school meals, </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/sep/30/tuition-fees-bonanza-for-one-per-cent-danny-dorling?" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">student loan repayments</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, care charges if a family member is disabled - and so on, and so on. All of which has to be claimed, every detail verified, every change reported.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A central aim of welfare reform is to is to enforce this new White Collar Taylorism. Jobcentres are the Board Schools of the day training people of all ages to submit to meaningless bureaucratic procedures, teaching by rote the infinite virtues of work, and handing out lessons in hunger and penury to any who will not submit. And Universal Credit will seal off all the exits.</span></div>
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<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are enforcing a patriarchal discipline on women and families by means testing </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Separate income tax assessments for couples were introduced in 1990, abandoning any assumption about family composition and income structure and ending any interference by the state in the private lives of people paying income tax. Ironically this interference had to be partially re-introduced when the Coalition tried to introduce taxation of Child Benefit for higher band income taxpayers in January 2013. They then realised they had no means of knowing when taxpayers were members of a couple, information they needed to apply the new rule. But for benefit and Tax Credit claimants the requirement to inform the state when you began to live with anyone never went away and has always been rigorously enforced (as the Child Benefit rule won’t be).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you start to live with anybody “as man and wife”, or “as civil partners” for same sex couples, and you claim means tested benefits or Tax Credits, you must inform the DWP or the Revenue immediately or risk benefit fraud sanctions and prosecution. (Anyone who falls foul of the new Child Benefit rules by contrast is penalised, if at all, under the much gentler income tax rules - they may have to pay something back but there is zero chance of prosecution). And they decide when you are living with someone, not you, under very opaque guidelines.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The result is that poorer women, in particular, live with the permanent threat of state scrutiny of their personal and sexual behaviour:</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">your son storms out after a row. You don't know if or when he's going to move back in but he keeps coming back for a sub. So you keep claiming for him. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or your kids are taken into care. You want them back but you've got a dodgy boyfriend so the social workers will only let you have daytime contacts - no overnights. You've still got the expenses so you still claim for them. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or your boyfriend sort of comes and goes. Good fun when he's around, brings drugs for you and presents for the kids. But you've got two kids and you can't rely on him so you claim as a single parent. BIG overpayment because he used your address to apply for a credit card and you can't prove he wasn't there most of the time.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or you get divorced but you can't get rid of your ex. He keeps coming round because he can't find anywhere half decent to live so you drift into letting him sleep on the sofa. That neighbour you quarreled with phones the fraud hotline and you're in Court for cohabitation.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The mistake people make is to assume that the complicated messes they make of their lives are their problem and their business. WRONG. If you're poor and claiming benefit, and especially if you're a woman with children, it's the state's business and you account for it in Court. This is happening every day - Styal prison is half full of women caught for ‘cohabitation’. Because it only happens to poor people, and mainly to poor women, it is considered acceptable. It is a direct consequence of a means tested benefit system, and is high on the list of reasons for abolishing any such system.</span></div>
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<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are winning ... </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We all knew bad things were approaching after the 2010 election, that Austerity was coming. </span><a href="http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745333281" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Others have written</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> about the false choices being posed by all the parties then and about the gradual rise to dominance, the dominance of commonsense, of a set of neoliberal ideas over the preceding decades. But the particular form austerity took was not preordained. That welfare reform took centre stage from the beginning, from the first wave of welfare cuts announced in the June 2010 emergency budget, was a deliberate political choice by the Tories. They knew where they would be strongest, they knew that cuts to welfare would receive no effective opposition. And they were right. They were able to tap into deep reserves of resentment, confusion and deliberately created ignorance and shift, massively, the terms of public debate and perception. Let no-one, inhabiting an oppositional environment, doubt how much ideological damage has been done. They have been able to make cuts in provision previously thought impossible. Most of the cuts were announced in 2010 and although their consequences, as they came into effect, were both predictable and predicted, a stunned silence was the response where opposition might have been expected.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An inadequate way of understanding the ideological distinctions now being drawn by neo-liberalism is to refer back to the age old distinction between deserving and undeserving poor. This is not the current proposition. While the theoretical possibility of deserving poverty is still allowed for, the notion of a deserving benefit claimant is not. Only pensioners are exempt from this rule, for now. Again and again, in the poverty porn shows, in newspaper exposes, it is the fact of claiming benefit that is damning, even, in fact characteristically, for people who are in work. This is not a mistake or misunderstanding. The point is to demean and stigmatise receipt of welfare, whatever the reason for it, and thereby to create a new pauperism, not so much for its own sake, but as at once a standing threat, and a despised and feared minority for everyone else</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The left, including the revolutionary left, has paid little or no attention to the emerging new role for welfare outlined here. No-one theorised the significance of the in work benefits introduced under Thatcher in dampening down traditional forms of class struggle, other than routinely to deprecate them as a subsidy for low paying businesses. We deplored the piecemeal destruction of social security and its replacement by means testing but offered no analysis of the reasons for, or consequences of, this consistent shift towards greater state control of claimant’s lives. We have been content very largely to rely on a modestly critical account of the achievements of 1948, at most trying to extend or liberalise that settlement - not least perhaps because much of the left has made its home in the welfare institutions that have grown up since 1948. And when opposition has been expressed it has usually been in terms of ‘unfairness’, of attacks on the ‘vulnerable’ and ‘needy’; terms which the Tories were equally happy to use (and reverse the meaning of by inserting ‘genuinely’ or ‘the most’ in front of them). We should ask ourselves before using such words whether we would be happy to apply them to ourselves - as distinct from frank and respectable words like ‘poor’ and ‘claimant’. The alternative language of asserted ‘rights’ and entitlements was better but won equally little purchase. We might have done better to take seriously the idea of benefit dependency as something to be resisted.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When resistance did emerge - first in the student riots of 2010, then in the </span><a href="http://www.internationalsocialistnetwork.org/index.php/ideas-and-arguments/analysis/371-after-atos" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">campaigns against ATOS and the bedroom tax</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - it came about largely outside the existing structures of the Left (there were no Trudges Against ATOS from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square). The small victories that resulted give us some space not just to work out how to resist further cuts to welfare, which will come whichever party of capital is in power, but also to ask, not so much how to win the war on welfare, rather what a victory for our side would even look like.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">11.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...and Universal Credit will seal their victory for a generation </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Complexity in a welfare scheme is generally seen as an unavoidable cost of fairness. Outcomes must reflect either people’s needs, in a means tested scheme, or their contributions in a contributory or an insurance based scheme; and these factors are infinitely variable. But complexity has other implications. It deprives people of control of their own income and vests that control in a separate, expert, caste. It makes people’s income a mystery and therefore allows myth, disinformation and resentment to grow unchecked. It disempowers and infantilises.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No surprise then that the Coalition government’s long term fix for welfare - Universal Credit - uniting as it does most DWP benefits with housing benefit and tax credits, sets a new high water mark for the floods of complexity. The fact that the government computer systems aren’t up to the job is entirely welcome but given cross party support for the principles of Universal Credit, not perhaps for long. They will introduce it anyway - are introducing it slowly - and provided the effects of all the inevitable chaos of errors and missing payments is felt only by the poor, will congratulate themselves on a job well done.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Universal Credit is intended to replace entirely most existing benefits - Income Support, Housing Benefit, ESA, JSA, Income Support - and all Tax Credits. A single, common, means test will apply to all claimants and a common range of ‘conditionalities’ - from the full work seeking requirement applied to unemployed claimants to no requirements for a few of the most severely impaired disabled people. A common, online or telephone, administration and claims system will be introduced. All payments will be monthly in arrears (causing long delays at the start of a claim) and adjusted in line with the previous months earnings through a realtime link to the PAYE tax system (or by monthly declarations of income for self employed people). All overpayments, however caused, will be recoverable. Immediate penalties will be in place for any claimant errors. All payments of UC, whether for housing costs, children or adults will be subject to sanctions for breaches of conditionality.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The claimed advantages of this totalitarian system of control are that it will “improve work incentives”. This claim is still repeated by a lot of organisations in the welfare sector who should know better. True there is a more generous ‘disregard’ - the amount of income that can be earned before UC payments are affected - for some people. But the rate at which UC will be withdrawn once it starts to be reduced for earnings - 65%, or about 85% for householders liable for council tax - is no better, or worse, than under present systems; self employed people will, after 12 months, be assumed to be earning at least minimum wage, whatever their actual takings; and there is nothing like the delay effect in Tax Credits where additional earnings did not take affect until the next tax year, which often worked to claimants’ advantage.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Similarly claims that people will be better off under UC are almost entirely illusory, with losses more than balancing gains. Extra expenditure under UC is caused entirely by ‘transitional protection’ - maintaining existing claimants on their current benefit rates, but frozen, where they would otherwise lose out. And Mr Duncan Smith’s repeated claims that take up rates will improve under UC are pure fantasy. Most people, I predict. will undergo a great deal of deprivation rather than claim this nightmare benefit. But we will never properly know this because the government, quite uncoincidentally, are</span><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/220495/take_up_irb_consultation.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> going</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to stop collecting data on the take up of means tested benefits.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then, even in cases where there is a slight gain, who will actually receive it? Families claiming benefit or tax credits under present arrangements will generally have several income streams - tax credits, child benefit, DWP benefits, earnings - which will usually be divided among both members of a couple. But for UC only one person can claim (although both members of a couple are liable to sanctions). The entire income of a family (apart from Child Benefits and earnings) will be dependent on the UC claim,</span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/52829788/A-Gender-Perspective-on-21st-Century-Welfare-Reform" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> deepening the financial dependence of women</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (mostly) in couples and making all low income families just one official error away from penury. Direct payment of the rent element in UC which replaces Housing Benefit (direct to the claimant that is, rather than the landlord) </span><a href="http://speye.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/direct-payments-the-tenant-moves-from-captive-customer-to-real-customer/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">could ameliorate</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> this slightly but the DWP are back-pedalling fast on this in the face of protests from social landlords.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, in so far as anyone is notionally better off under UC, how is this funded? The bulk of the cuts fall on the most severely impaired disabled people. The </span><a href="http://www.entitledto.co.uk/help/severedisabilitypremium.aspx" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘severe disability premium’ </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a £61 a week addition to most low income benefits for people with the most severe impairments, and a keystone in the financial architecture of most supported housing schemes, is abolished under Universal Credit (although existing claimants will have their current payments frozen at present levels under transitional protection).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Universal Credit, in fact, is the realisation of a long held neoliberal dream. In 1962 Milton Friedman </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_and_Freedom" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">advocated </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a scheme for a negative income tax for the USA. This was to replace the entire US welfare and social security system with a common, universal, means tested benefit integrated with the income tax system with the aim of ‘making work pay’ and applying common conditionalities. In fact the closest approach to implementation of such a system in the USA was Nixon’s proposal for a Family Assistance Programme which covered families with children only and did not make it through Congress (so that, uniquely among developed capitalist countries, the USA has never had a comprehensive minimum income guarantee scheme).</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friedman’s disciples in the UK however have now seized their chance with Universal Credit. The only aspect of Friedman’s scheme on which it falls short is integration with income tax; in all other respects UC is the perfect neoliberal benefit. Automating administration reduces costs. Universal, graded, conditionality with sanctions and penalties, disciplines the entire underclass of their fantasies. The live feed of earnings information from PAYE ensures a seamless join with even the most casualised forms of work. The system is, by design, ideally suited to zero-hours contracts, precarious jobs and total casualisation. Millions of people in permanent, automated dependency are set to make Friedman’s fantasies real.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">12.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They have a problem with pensioners, which they have yet to sort out</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thus far the Coalition have avoided tackling the problem of pensions, a growing and unwanted expense for capital. They have excluded most pensioner benefits from the war on welfare, in the hope of gaining a short term electoral advantage. They have allowed the benefit for the poorest pensioners - Pension Credit - to be </span><a href="http://poorlaws.blogspot.co.uk/2014_03_01_archive.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">eroded in value</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> but protected the universal State Retirement Pension. But this still leaves them with a growing pensioner population and a growing cost to which Cameron has committed the Tories at least, indefinitely. The calculation has been that the electoral return on this cost (that is the degree of consent to neoliberal, austerity policies) has been sufficient to justify the expense - but the calculus here can shift.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One effect of all this is that the one date which is imprinted in the psyche of most poor people from their late 50’s on is their </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">qualifying age for state pension credit </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(QUASPC - yes it’s an acronym). This is actually female retirement age but also the qualifying age for pension credit for men and for mixed-age couples; it is going up continuously until 2021 by which time it will be 66 for both sexes; until then it changes month by month. This date acts like a promise of deliverance and plenty when you’re struggling along on on JSA or ESA. Your money will often more than double overnight on that frabjous day. Problems like the bedroom tax and abolition of council tax benefit will simply evaporate. You escape the benefit cap and get guaranteed annual upratings. You can no longer be vilified in the press and on TV; you have suddenly become a meritorious citizen with richly deserved entitlements, not a scrounging lowlife. You have moved into a different realm and have your bus pass as proof of citizenship there.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pensioners in fact are being recreated as a separate, loyalist, enclave within the neoliberal state, whose political effectiveness was apparent in Indyref - around 70% of Scottish pensioners voted ‘No’. This is a development not confined to the UK - social security and Medicaid, the principle elderly benefits in the USA, were exempt from most of the Reagan and Clinton welfare cuts - and relatively recent - the more generous treatment of the elderly poor in the UK dates only from the 1990’s.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Within that enclave things look different. Income inequalities within the pensioner population are real enough but lower than in the rest of the population and are, for now, </span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20066854" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">decreasing</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Welfare cuts do affect some pensioners but not very visibly. Pensioner poverty is at lower rates than poverty elsewhere and mitigated by the continuation of the full range</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of free services - prescriptions, bus travel, TV licences etc. Pensioners, at the most basic level, do not tend to use food banks.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem for the ruling class is that this relative generosity is unsustainable. They have the sketch of an outline for a solution. They will abolish the efficient, low cost, SERPS and replace it with a </span><a href="http://www.ageuk.org.uk/money-matters/pensions/what-the-new-state-pension-reforms-mean-for-you/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">flat rate pension</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, leaving the field open to the private pensions industry to sell its high cost, massively corrupted wares as a supplement. Then they are considering privatising the administration of State Pension to create yet another cash flow infusion for needy contractors. They will raise state pension age - to 66 for both sexes from 2021 - and keep raising it. They will squeeze the life out of public sector pension schemes, purloining the assets wherever they can. They will ration, cut back, automate and inflate the charges for, both social and NHS care. They will try to incite generational resentment. But still approaching 60% of the welfare budget is directed at pensioners and they need more ways of getting at this income stream.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are divided about what further moves to make. The Tories have committed themselves to maintaining present provision for another electoral term in a straightforward calculation of the political benefits. Labour politicians are practically wetting themselves in their eagerness to present their alternative, their hands spearing the air like a coven of Hermione Grangers - ‘Please sir, we know the answer’ - as they audition for the government role.</span></div>
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<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">13.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Labour are as deeply committed to these aims as the Tories </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The opening words of the National Assistance Act 1948 were an unusually forthright statement of intent: “The existing poor law shall cease to have effect”. In many ways this was a high point, in the UK, for the long wave of working class resistance which shaped the first three quarters of the twentieth century. It was a real, not a symbolic victory: there were no more workhouses, there was no household means test. A centuries old nightmare was lifted. This was actually a cross-party achievement. The Tory R A Butler spoke powerfully, if pompously, in favour of ‘social certainty’, a phrase he preferred to ‘social security’. The Liberal Beveridge made most of the proposals, which were significantly watered down by the Attlee government (benefit rates for instance were set at a level - and have remained there - 30% below Beveridge’s recommendations). But it remained the core element, the collectively remembered centre, of Labourism the ideology and to a lesser extent of the Labour Party.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Labour are a party committed to governing under capitalism, meaning that they must always, ultimately, be alert first to the needs of capital. Labour could not have instituted the system of neo-liberal austerity in as sweeping or decisive a way as did the Coalition in 2010, which is why they were destined to lose that election - and when the electorate showed signs of confusion about the historic necessity of austerity our ruling class had Gus Macdonald in place to finesse the right outcome.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet if Labour could not have initiated austerity, they are now well placed to continue it after 2015, on-message, online and</span><a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timwigmore/100241230/labours-new-plans-to-dismantle-the-welfare-system-make-ids-look-like-a-wimp-the-left-will-be-furious/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> eager to prove just how tough they can be</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. They have made precisely two commitments in advance - to abolish the bedroom tax (in fiscal terms a minor element in the Coalition’s assault significant mainly as a step towards equalising rent and other conditions between social and private housing provision and the eventual subsumption of the former under the latter; a process which can be advanced by other means) and to replace the Work Programme with a scheme to provide 25 hours a week at minimum wage for long term unemployed people (with ample supervisory contract opportunities for the welfare to work industry).</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of the remaining Coalition welfare cuts, £23 billion a year of them, Labour are committed to restoring none at all. Their recent commitment to review the work capability assessment is almost perfectly free of content since it says nothing about altering the detailed conditions of that assessment. Of the central coalition strategy - to extend the reach of welfare further into the underemployed and casualised working class, and to deepen means testing and conditionality through Universal Credit - Labour have uttered no criticism. (They have criticised the implementation of Universal Credit but not its aims; they have made occasional noises about the growth of in-work benefits but no systematic critique). In this they are following well established tradition. Welfare policy since 1948 has been a matter of bipartisan agreement most of the time, rhetorical flourishes aside.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The one theme Labour have consistently if quietly drawn out is the continuing existence of the universal pensioner benefits - free bus passes, TV licences, prescriptions and ultimately State Retirement Pension itself. These they plan to means test, using fake leftist arguments - why should we be subsidising wealthy pensioners when everyone else in suffering? - where necessary. That is the significance of Labour’s most pointed policy difference with the Tories about post 2015 welfare - Labour’s version of the overall welfare expenditure cap will include the State Pension; the Tory’s version will not. It will be Labour’s role, should they win in 2015, to finish off the final surviving, non-means-tested, pensioner, elements of a once universal welfare state - and they will use the authority and memory of 1948 to perform this task for capital.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">14.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why it’s Welfare, not Social Security </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Social Security was the name given in the 1940’s, in the UK and in the USA, to a certain pattern of welfare provision. Men (women were an afterthought assumed to be dependent on their males and provided for mainly as widows) paying in to a state run insurance scheme could receive relatively generous, non means tested, benefits in the event of unemployment or incapacity, and on retirement. Even on its introduction in the UK, in 1948, it soon became clear that Social Security could not and did not provide for a wide range of people and the role of the means tested National Assistance scheme, originally intended as as a residual safety net, was more substantial than expected. Post war demographic trends - increasing numbers of single parents, increasing lifespan especially for disabled people - then increased the role of what, in 1966, became Supplementary Benefit.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nonetheless Social Security survived intact for the first thirty years after 1948 because unemployment was, for most of this period, a forgotten problem in the post war boom. Only in the 1970’s did the strains start to show and only in the 1980’s did the Thatcher government draw appropriate conclusions. Margaret Thatcher did not embark upon the sort of all out assault on ‘welfare’ that her successors are engaged in. Indeed her government were happy to oversee the massive expansion of welfare as a safety valve after they had deliberately recreated mass unemployment. Instead they did two things - they systematically chipped away at Social Security, time limiting Unemployment Benefit for instance and restricting the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS), while expanding means tested welfare in the form of Housing Benefit, Family Income Supplement (the precursor of Tax Credits) and Income Support. The last rites for Social Security are now being gabbled through at indecent speed by the Coalition with the time limiting of contributory ESA, from April 2012, and the forthcoming abolition of SERPS.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The replacement of social security by welfare (which to anticipate objections is neither an American word nor a neologism - if you really don’t like ‘welfare’ though I won’t quarrel if you just call it ‘benefits’) has been an accomplished fact these thirty years. Recent Labour Party gestures - one proposal is for a slightly enhanced rate of contributory JSA for those with five years or more of NI contributions - are an attempt to create a nostalgic backlash pitting the respectable working class of Frank Field’s fantasies against the welfare horrors. (“Is that all?” is the invariable cry of someone pitched from secure work onto the dole when they learn what they will get). It will fail because there is no real nostalgia for social security which was at best a grudging, convoluted, bureaucratic and sexist scheme, funded by a regressive tax (National Insurance), which locked in existing patterns of inequality and couldn’t cope at all with international labour mobility. We waste our time by mourning it. Instead we need to rethink the whole history and experience of the English Poor Laws, past and present, and come up with something better.</span></div>
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<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">15.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why it’s back to 1601 not 1834 </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Early</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">modern welfare began in 1601 when the nascent English capitalist state introduced the first Poor Law and began the process of replacing private and Church provision with the ministrations of a secular state machine - a machine which created itself, at a local level in England, largely for and through this purpose. This settlement for the rural poor became firmly established, with remarkably little opposition, after the English Revolution. It became an essential element in dampening down what would otherwise have been the turbulent process of dispossession of the surviving peasantry and the establishment of a still largely rural working class disciplined to the wages system. It was able to root itself firmly in the new society, despite regular objections and disputes, because its costs - the poor rates - were administered in and through sections of the local ruling class who were able to establish certain perquisites and advantages for themselves in terms of subsidised labour and rents. And, incidentally, it warded off the intermittent famines still endemic in the rest of Western Europe.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By the early 19th century, developments within British capitalism, mandated a new approach. The centre of capitalist development had moved to the cities and factories and it was now the urban working class that required discipline while rural Poor Law provision had become a drag on development. Step forward Edwin Chadwick, Bentham’s creature, to introduce the new, workhouse based, ideologically sound, drastically cut down Poor Law of 1834. Most of the ideology turned out to be fantasy and Chadwick himself was removed when inmates at the Andover workhouse, operating under his precepts, were found to be eating the rotting animal bones they were given to crush, but the New Poor Law survived riots and armed risings to enforce the mass transfer of rural labour to the new industrial cities and to terrorise generations to come.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a natural tendency therefore to see the Coalition’s premeditated war on welfare, launched in 2010 as the successor to, and through the prism of, Chadwick’s reforms 180 years earlier. And there is reason to suppose that Mr Duncan Smith, a vain man, is fully aware of the parallel and eager for a Chadwickian place in history. Nonetheless the outcome of the current war on welfare will be something much closer in spirit to the 18th century poor law, an extensive system accommodating ruling class needs at every level, than the minimal, workhouse based, 19th century version. We are not, in any literal sense, going back to the workhouse (workhouses, apart from anything else, were expensive). The Victorian ruling class, especially its industrial fraction, benefited from the 1834 Poor Law because it removed any floor to working class living standards and therefore licenced intensified exploitation while at the same time supplying the necessary workforce by forcing agricultural workers off the land. However they did not profit directly from its operations on any scale and all support for people in work was, in principle if not quite in practice, abolished. The 21st century settlement by contrast prioritises capital’s involvement at every point in the system through subcontracting its operations. It provides an extensive system of subsidies to rents and wages. It disciplines claimants into complying with mindless bureaucratic processes, which mimic those of capitalist employment. It subjects every element of support to an intensely intrusive and oppressive means test. These features are not incidental, not mistakes or policy failures. Private provision at every level, subsidies for rents and salaries, intrusive means testing and bureaucratic discipline are the very core and purpose of 21st century welfare’s</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> New Speenhamland System</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">16.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No-one asked for welfare</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The British working class, whether at the heights of class struggle or in the depths of defeat, has rarely, of its own motion, sought out a welfare solution for its needs. In the English Revolution no demands were made for a better Poor Law. Insofaras the labouring classes made their demands heard, through the Levelers and Diggers for instance, they were demanding land, or the use of it, to allow them their independence. The battles in the 18th century were against enclosures or the Game Laws, against restrictions on class independence. The struggle against Chadwick’s New Poor Law of 1834, though near insurrectionary at times, was couched in terms of the defence of traditional perquisites, and against an unprecedented degree of state control - and were soon subsumed into the aggressive class demand for the Charter. Passive resistance to the New Poor Law however never went away - a resistance unto death in many cases: Mayhew, Marx and Dickens all noted how the working class would often rather starve than surrender to the ministrations of the workhouse. Unemployed struggles from the 1880’s onwards were primarily demands for employment - Work or Dole - while the shape of actual provision was determined by wouldbe liberal benefactors from the Webbs onward. The welfare rights movement of the 1970’s - my background - acquired some popularity only as a result of the defeats and demoralisation of the 1980’s, with backing from Labour local authorities. The miners’ demand however was Coal Not Dole and one of the greatest achievement of the strike was the implementation of a mass welfare system - run by miners provisioned by supporters - against and in place of the state system which denied most help.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps most strikingly the disabled people’s movement, beginning with the Union of the Physically Impaired against Segregation (UPIAS) in 1974, was formed precisely to distinguish itself from liberal campaigns like the Disablement Income Group (DIG) which were proposing more state support, by demanding instead the right to independent living and the assertion that disabled people, if set free and given the means, could decide their own destiny.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In short, if there is a red thread through the history of UK Poor Laws - and there is - it is the demand for independence and the resistance to - the loathing of - dependency, means testing and state intrusion into people’s lives. This is why Tory propaganda against welfare dependency can strike a chord - and why that propaganda is the most monstrous hypocrisy coming from a government which seeks only to deepen and extend welfare dependency.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is relevant recent history here as well. The Brown wing of the Blair governments attempted two major welfare reforms - Tax Credits and Pension Credit - designed to make an impact on child poverty and pensioner poverty respectively. They were genuine attempts to address real issues through a variety of social engineering. Ultimately they failed - because social engineering which does not engage the people affected or take their experiences seriously must always fail. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tax Credits were introduced precisely to avoid the stigma of claiming benefits - a stigma Labour were at the same time systematically strengthening - having an effect on children. They represented a real shift of income towards low income families with children and might even have proved popular but for the disastrous decision to make the provision under tax law, rather than benefit law which resulted in horrendous complexity, incomprehensible decisions and the near universal experience of massive overpayments, all of which could be, were, </span><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-we-know-tax-credits-were-overpaid-now-its-revealed-the-figure-is-56bn-9701865.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and still are</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> clawed back. As a result not a word was said, or perhaps could be said, in defence of Tax Credits when Universal Credit was proposed to replace them.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pension Credit was Brown’s equivalent attempt to address pensioner poverty - and can be credited with eliminating the most acute deprivation for the over 60’s (60 was the initial age limit, since raised and still rising). Brown was never to get the credit for this however because, again, he insisted on burying the real improvements under a complex means test - with the result that they were not noticed. What were noticed were the miserly rises, at the same time, in the near universal state retirement pension (SRP) which unlike Pension Credit was a popular institution:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There were one or two poorer couples, just holding on to their homes, but in daily fear of the workhouse. The Poor Law authorities allowed old people past work a small weekly sum as outdoor relief; but it was not sufficient to live upon, and, unless they had more than usually prosperous children to help support them, there came a time when the home had to be broken up. When, twenty years later, the Old Age Pensions began, life was transformed for such aged cottagers. They were relieved of anxiety. They were suddenly rich. Independent for life! At first when they went down to the Post office to draw it, tears of gratitude would run down the cheeks of some, and they would say as they picked up their money ‘God bless that Lord George! (for they could not believe that anyone so powerful and munificent could be a plain ‘Mr’) and God bless </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, miss!’ and there were flowers from their gardens and apples from their trees for the girl who merely handed them their money”. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flora Thompson - ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’, 1939.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Tories have taken due note and, anxious for now to retain the pensioner vote, have made a new, increased but flat rate, SRP the centrepiece of their pension reforms (the main aim of which however is to boost the private pensions industry).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It may be possible to take a hard headed, economist’s, view of welfare - as transfer payments - under which all that matters is the distributional impact of welfare policies: but not when you are actually receiving them. Then the terms and conditions under which you are paid matter. Humiliation matters. Having to provide every possible detail of your life and what has happened to it to get help is humiliating. Dependency matters. Being made to feel guilty about claiming, bad about not working. Complexity matters. When it is impossible to understand what you receive, or what anyone else receives, then resentment and misinformation can thrive.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the other hand simple, universal benefits are popular - people value them, over and above the money, for their simplicity and reliability. Child Benefit - which they have begun to means test - State Retirement Pension - which will be next - to a lesser extent Disability Living Allowance - which they have abolished for new claims - and Carers Allowance. It is the degeneration of British welfare into universal means testing, the erosion of universality, actively promoted at every stage by the Tories, never opposed by Labour, that has allowed the Tories to indulge in a hate campaign against claimants; a campaign whose effect is to deepen the dependency it claims to combat.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">17.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Against welfare: for class independence </span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is the position of welfare in the class struggle, at this particular point in history, not abstract principles, that should decide for the left the main positions to adopt. Quoting Marx’s description of full communism - “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” - as though it were a prescription for 21st century welfare does not actually get us very far. If Mr Duncan Smith had the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">penchant</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for ideological mischief making of a Michael Gove he would have adopted Marx’s dictum as the inspiration for Universal Credit since it is, when misapplied in this context, nothing other than a description of a completely means tested benefit system. Perhaps another ideologue of the right, Richard Milhous Nixon, did just that when arguing for his abortive Family Assistance Programme in 1970:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It provides help to those in need and in turn requires that those who receive help work to the extent of their capabilities”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If, by contrast, we pay attention to Poor Law history, if we respect the attitudes of people subjected to its various systems, if we think about the actual experience of coming under the protective wing of the capitalist state, if we attach as much or more importance to the power relationships involved in welfare provision as to its equity and form, then I think certain conclusions follow. (We might even derive similar conclusions from actually reading and thinking about the “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Critique of the Gotha Programme”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> rather than just citing one of its concluding rodomontades). </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I suggested above that the British working class has rarely sought a welfare solution for its needs. There are some apparent exceptions (which however merely serve to confirm the centrality of independence and hatred of state domination). </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In July 1921 the Wandsworth Poor Law Guardians announced the suspension of all ‘outdoor’ relief, forcing all applicants into the workhouse. Members of the newly formed National Unemployed Workers Movement responded by a mass application for admission to the workhouse. When the Guardians agreed, as they had to, the workhouse was soon effectively occupied, the food improved, discipline and segregation defied and, eventually, the red flag raised over the building. Within a week the guardians had restored the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">status quo ante.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This was the first of many collisions between the Communist Party dominated NUWM and the Poor Law authorities culminating in the Birkenhead riots of 1932, as the great historical movements of English capital and insurrectionary proletarianism collided. Always the NUWM demands were for the absolute right to relief, against any exercise of discretion by the Poor Law Guardians. In other words the NUWM and others were trying to refashion the Poor Law into a system of rights and entitlements that allowed claimants a degree of independence. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The same theme can be found in the welfare rights movement which began in the 1960’s USA, the revolutionary decade, and was uneasily transplanted to the UK from the mid 1970’s: fixed rates; an end to discretion and conditions; no to sex snooping and midnight raids to uncover cohabiting mothers; legal entitlements. The struggle was always about power as much as money, in much the same way as it was for the factory shop stewards movement of the 60’s and 70’s in the UK. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The US welfare rights movement is magnificently documented in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Regulating the Poor </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (1971 and 1993)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, one of the very few radical political works on welfare. Piven and Cloward’s central argument - that welfare provision in the USA fluctuated in response to the levels of popular resistance, especially in the ghettos, is surely right for the USA. But it omits the UK experience, where neoliberalism took a different line - Regan cut back welfare; Thatcher expanded it. Welfare provision can grow as a result of popular mobilisation; its expansion can also be a deliberate ruling class strategy to demobilise and demoralise a previously combative working class. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The German experience has other lessons. Bismarck's Germany was the very first capitalist state to introduce a modern social security system, in the late nineteenth century - and this was quite explicitly conceived as a rejoinder to the growing movement of the industrial working class, organised under the SPD. When this was not enough parts of the still fairly disjointed German state (but not Prussia itself) then attempted to incorporate the workers’ party into the state’s welfare system - SPD representatives were either consulted on or actually ran the social security system. This corporatism of course became habitual in Germany and the tradition was maintained by both the Nazis and the post war government; but the early attempts in that direction were likely to have played their part in the rise of reformism within the SPD and the disaster of August 1914.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the same theme it is notable that Poor Law Overseers and Guardians were always </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">elected </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in England. From 1895 the elections were by universal suffrage, with votes for women and no property qualifications - by 1909 there were 1,300 female Guardians in office. There was some slow amelioration in work house rules and conditions, perhaps as a result, but no dramatic changes.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pulling together this very skimpy patchwork of examples and trying to draw out some principles for a socialist approach to welfare:</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">every trace of charity and discretionary welfare, every Poor Law residue, every suggestion of state benevolence and pity - which can always become control and punishment without notice - must be opposed. We must first demand, then establish, absolute rights in every field of subsistence;</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we should reject the idea that participation in the capitalist labour market is the only form of meaningful productive activity and a uniquely desirable goal; demands for ‘work’ at all costs should go - they no longer fit the reality of capitalist employment, often empty of all social benefit, nor the needs of a working class more varied in its social and physical makeup;</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we have no interest in administering a welfare system which should be automatic as far as possible - perfectly possible for all payments of money or credit. Experience suggests that participation in such a system merely elevates a small minority into a bureaucracy, whose values they then internalise;</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">any system we promote should be, as far as possible, universal, not a special arrangement for poor people which will inevitably be poorly and oppressively administered, derogatory and stigmatising. It is essental that the rich are forced to claim welfare;</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a future welfare system will have to be based on individual entitlement for adults - not a household based system like all current means tested benefits. Not to do this merely perpetuates a whole range of inequalities and oppressions within the household;</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but a socialist welfare must go hand in hand with the widest possible extension of free provision - transport, childcare, access to computers and communication networks, housing, social care must all join health care as free goods - with the aim in time of reducing the necessity for free money.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These are deliberately immodest proposals. Times like the present, when welfare is not simply under ruling class attack, but is itself the means of that attack, are not propitious for tinkering. We have to be able to turn their weapons against them. We can reverse the political meaning of ‘benefit dependency’ - that is their project, we want independence. We can start to insist that benefits and tax are a single process, not two separate ones, with outcomes disturbing to any number of misconceptions. We can build up an integrated understanding of benefits, nationality and the movement of labour - immigration </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> emigration - to counter the racists (albeit not from this essay from which these essential features are missing). And we can fight their assault on welfare all the more effectively if we have an understanding of our own alternative.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><br /></b><br />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ADDENDUM - On proposals for an Unconditional Basic Income. </span></h2>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By unconditional basic income I mean an income sufficient for survival in an advanced society, paid to each individual (or to children through a parent or carer) at a flat rate, without a means test and without conditionality, funded through taxation, and replacing much or all of the current welfare system. Everyone gets it, and everyone gets the same. For a representative mainstream argument and history see </span><a href="http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-date/the-economic-necessity-of-basic-income.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. For the reasons why experience of current welfare points towards a UBI as the organisational basis for its replacement, see the whole of the rest of this long essay.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are only a limited number of ways of organising a welfare system. At the highest level of abstraction only three organising principles have ever been adopted - means testing, insurance and universality. The story of neoliberal welfare in the UK is one of the systematic degradation - the virtual elimination for people of working age - of both national insurance based and universal benefits, with the single exception of the state retirement pension (SRP), and their replacement with means tested benefits. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is odd therefore to find proposals for a systematic extension of universal benefits - the Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) or citizens’ income - being vilified from the left - particularly in Left Unity - as being somehow a neoliberal plot against our much loved welfare system. We have only to look around us to see what neoliberalism actually plans for welfare; and it is immediately apparent that universal benefits - again with the one huge exception of SRP - let alone a basic income - play no part in those plans.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WHY UNCONDITIONAL BASIC INCOME IS NOT THE SAME AS NEGATIVE INCOME TAX</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In part the confusion arises from proponents of UBI who like to emphasise support for the proposition ‘from both left and right’ - they usually then cite Milton Friedman’s support for a negative income tax as somehow relevant. In fact negative income tax and UBI are diametrically opposed. Usually the claim that they are </span><a href="http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/welfare-pensions/the-negative-income-tax-and-basic-income-are-pretty-much-the-same-thing/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the same thing</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> rests on the fact that rates of UBI and income tax can always be set so as to achieve the same gross distributional effects across income levels as an NIT system. If UBI is funded solely through income tax then at a certain income level the extra income tax payable exceeds the taxpayer’s income from UBI - and that income level is functionally equivalent, it is claimed, to the point under a negative income tax system at which an individual moves from receiving a payment to paying tax.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But ALL systems involving </span></div>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">welfare expenditure, funded by </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">taxation of income </span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are equivalent to NIT according to this argument. All such systems, including the existing UK welfare state, involve a transfer of goods, in cash or kind, to part of the population. And at a certain point on the income scale the income tax paid to fund that transfer exceeds the value of the goods received. What NIT and UBI have in common is that they make that point visible - nothing else.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One obfuscation here is the unstated assumption that income tax is the only form of taxation, and therefore the only possible source of funding for an unconditional basic income. In fact income tax amounts to less than a quarter of UK government tax receipts. National Insurance and corporate taxation account for about another quarter; indirect taxes like VAT and various duties make up about half. Neoliberals do not like to discuss other forms of tax because this leads unto dangerous ground like corporate tax and,above all, the taxation of wealth and property. There is no reason why we should accept that restriction when considering UBI.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a further, historical, source of confusion. When Friedman made his case for a negative income tax (in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Capitalism and Freedom</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, 1962) there were a variety of proposals for some kind of guaranteed minimum income in the USA, including proposals for something like UBI. All these ideas tended to get lumped together as ‘guaranteed annual income’ proposals in the USA - with a result Friedman himself noted:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“... the appearance of growing agreement - of support for a negative income tax by the right and left, by businessmen and professors, by Republicans and Democrats - is highly misleading. In large part it reflects the use of the same term to describe very different plans” - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from a Friedman</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Newsweek</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> column, September 1968.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quite.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In fact NIT is a proposal for a comprehensive system of means testing most fully instantiated in Universal Credit; UBI for a non-means tested, universal payment, like Child Benefit. NIT proposals are always conditional, requiring work seeking activity wherever possible (and often where not possible); UBI is unconditional. UBI promotes social solidarity in that every individual gets a payment at the same rate; NIT promotes division by creating two (readily identifiable) populations, income tax payers and negative income tax recipients, and setting their interests at odds. UBI can be funded from any source, NIT </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ex hypothesi</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is funded only from income tax. UBI is a flat rate payment; NIT is variable. NIT, in most options, is based on household incomes, thus perpetuating gender based dependency within households; UBI is individual. UBI is genuinely simple, cheap and easy to administer, like other universal, flat rate, benefits; NIT is complicated because income tax is complicated, as anyone who has had to consult the many volumes of income tax law can testify. They are not the same thing; they are opposites.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">UNCONDITIONAL BASIC INCOME IS NEITHER A PANACEA NOR A NEOLIBERAL PLOT</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Advocates for UBI often make sweeping claims for it and, as we have seen, can be muddled about what is and what is not an unconditional basic income. (To be fair there are plenty of more nuanced contributions as well, for instance </span><a href="http://basicincome.org.uk/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). But the strongest motive behind UBI campaigns today, and what is now giving them impetus in the UK, is the experience of claiming benefits and, especially, sanctions. The state should not have the ability to deprive anyone of a basic income - simple as that.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This motive chimes in with the history of the demand. UBI is often presented as a proposal by off-beat economists and long-sighted futurologists, and sometimes it is. However it is also a demand that has emerged wherever claimants have got themselves organised - a demand that reflects the experience of claiming benefit. From Huey Long’s</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_Our_Wealth" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ‘Share the Wealth’ </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">programme of 1934 on the far left of the Democratic Party, to </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_for_housework" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Italian autonomist feminists</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> demanding wages for housework , UK </span><a href="https://www.academia.edu/4509927/Missing_Women_The_Forgotten_Struggles_of_Single_Mothers_for_Basic_Income" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">claimants unions</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and Japanese</span><a href="https://www.academia.edu/4516487/UNA_SOLA_MOLTITUDINE_Struggles_For_Basic_Income_and_the_Common_Logic_that_emerged_from_Italy_the_U.K._and_Japan" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Blue Grass” </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">disability activists (“living itself is work”) it has been very much a demand at the margins of the mainstream labour movement and socialist organisations; but then one could equally say the labour movement and socialist organisations have been marginal to the experiences of claimants, disabled people and housewives.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Context is all though. A basic income within a neoliberal economy where every conceivable transaction is monetised is not the same proposition as a basic income in an economy where the realm of free goods is being systematically expanded. A basic income funded by taxes on wealth and land value has a different class basis to basic income funded by indirect taxes like VAT. A basic income without a minimum wage risks being just an employer subsidy. A basic income that does not include an additional disability payment is an attack on disabled people. A basic income without an attached right to adequate housing is useless in the UK. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Above all the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">rate </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of basic income is critical. Too low a basic income becomes merely an employer subsidy; it needs to do what it says and mean that significant numbers of people do not, immediately, have to take any work on offer, so that workers’ position in the employment market is strengthened. Too high and it threatens expansion of the universal, free services that should accompany it. A basic income of £2,500 a year funded by a VAT increase is a (completely hypothetical) neoliberal attack on the poor. A basic income of £3,500 a year, funded from income tax (which was the UK Green Party offering at the last election) is feeble and misses many of the possible advantages of UBI. A basic income of £12,500 a year is an invitation to recoup the income through increased prices, rents and charges.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">UBI then is a proposal for the architecture of fiscal transfer systems. It is the best system architecture available because it is is simple and transparent and reduces or eliminates dependency and stigma. It has the potential to be an advance over the current UK welfare system but whether that potential can be realised depends entirely on the political aims with which it is brought about and the class content of what is achieved.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">GETTING AN UNCONDITIONAL BASIC INCOME IS NOT GOING TO BE EASY</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many of the arguments advanced here - against means testing, for universality - point towards an unconditional basic income as a significant feature in any counter-movement to the Coalition government’s ‘welfare reform’. It matches the reality of work today and points forward to new ways of organising human labour power. It requires, at the least, a significant reconstruction of the state and removes some of its, more quotidian, repressive power. It is an option, in short, for a liberatory welfare.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But only an option. It is not the case that any version at all of UBI is going to be an improvement and socialists need to be involved in the debate on this, stressing the need to expand the realm of free goods - universal benefits in kind rather than in cash. One possibility for ameliorating fuel poverty for instance is to have a free basic allowance with charges for usage above that level increasing sharply at the top levels - reversing the current position where you pay more per unit, the less you use. And why can’t buses be made free to everyone, not just pensioners?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But having a bright idea is not enough to enforce social change. To get close to an unconditional basic income scheme worth having is going to involve a prolonged social struggle - because any version of UBI that is simply delivered to us by the rich will be one that is in their interests and therefore not worth having.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What social struggle? - the struggle against welfare reform. The demand for UBI needs to be rooted in the fight against ATOS and the work capability assessment, in the resistance to Jobcentre sanctions and workfare, in opposition to the bedroom tax. UBI should aim to become the common sense of all these oppositional movements</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">SOURCES, roughly chronological by subject:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poverty-Policy-England-British-History/dp/0582489652/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Paul Slack, 1988</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Standard work on the early Engish Poor Law</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Invention-Capitalism-Classical-Political-Accumulation-ebook/dp/B00EDIWR9M/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Invention of Capitalism</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Michael Perelman, 2000 </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- contains a useful account of the Game Laws</span></div>
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<a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Cobbett_s_Legacy_to_Labourers.html?id=-C8cAQAAIAAJ" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Legacy to Labourers</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, William Cobbett, 1834 </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Cobbett’s furious lament for the old Poor Law</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">State-Building and Poverty: The Poor Law Report of 1834, Colin Barker, 1988 - </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fascinating, detailed, treatment of the famous Royal Commission on the Poor Law and its role in reconstructing the capitalist state - available on Scribd</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Rise of the Welfare State, English Social Policy 1601 - 1971 ed. M Bruce, 1973</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Collection of original documents</span></div>
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<a href="http://archive.org/stream/bittercryofoutca00pres#page/n0/mode/2up" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Bitter Cry of Outcast London</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - an Enquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor - Rev.Anthony Mearns, 1883 - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an influential and vivid tract, predating Seebohm and Rowntree</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43472" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">English Poor Law Policy</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 1907 </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- voluminous, dull, but still essential for detail on the 19th century Poor Law</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.scribd.com/book/233092235/Regulating-the-Social-The-Welfare-State-and-Local-Politics-in-Imperial-Germany" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Regulating the Social: the Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, George Steinmetz 1993 - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">models of provision in the first welfare state up to WW1</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.scribd.com/book/224277225/From-Poor-Law-to-Welfare-State-6th-Edition-A-History-of-Social-Welfare-in-America" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From Poor Law to Welfare State - a History of Social Welfare in America</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Walter Trattner, 2007 (sixth edition) - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">standard history</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unemployed-Struggles-1919-36-Wal-Hannington/dp/0853154090/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unemployed Struggles 1919-1936</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Wal Hannington, 1936 - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">history of the NUWM by its CP leader</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">T</span><a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/saville/1957/xx/welfare.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he Welfare State: An Historical Approach</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #330000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, John Saville, 1957 </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #330000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- rare Marxist account of the UK welfare state</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Regulating-Poor-Functions-Public-Welfare-ebook/dp/B006ZAZ4GE/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Regulating the Poor - the Functions of Public Welfare</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, 1971 and 1993 </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - the most important existing radical account of welfare, from a largely US perspective</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Failed-Welfare-Revolution-Americas-Guaranteed-ebook/dp/B005646EZA/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Failed Welfare Revolution</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - America’s Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy, Brian Steensland, 2008, Princeton UP</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - UBI and NIT in 1960’s policymaking</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.academia.edu/4509927/Missing_Women_The_Forgotten_Struggles_of_Single_Mothers_for_Basic_Income" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: #f0f0f0; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Missing Women: The Forgotten Struggles of Single Mothers for Basic Income</span></a><span style="background-color: #f0f0f0; color: #4b4b4b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (2010) </span><span style="background-color: #f0f0f0; color: #4b4b4b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><a href="https://www.academia.edu/4516487/UNA_SOLA_MOLTITUDINE_Struggles_For_Basic_Income_and_the_Common_Logic_that_emerged_from_Italy_the_U.K._and_Japan" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: #f0f0f0; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: #f0f0f0; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">UNA SOLA MOLTITUDINE: Struggles For Basic Income - Italy, the U.K., and Japan (2003)</span></a><span style="background-color: #f0f0f0; color: #4b4b4b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: #f0f0f0; color: #4b4b4b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- two pieces by Toru Yamamori on the radical history of the Basic Income demand</span></h1>
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<a href="https://libcom.org/library/dole-autonomy-aufheben" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dole autonomy versus the re-imposition of work: analysis of the current tendency to workfare in the UK</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2a31; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (1998) </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2a31; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><a href="http://libcom.org/library/renewed-imposition-work-era-austerity-prospects-resistance" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The renewed imposition of work in the era of austerity: prospects for resistance</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2a31; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (2011) </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2a31; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">two essential (UK) articles from libertarian communist journal Aufheben </span></div>
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<a href="http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-date/lets-scrap-the-dwp.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s Scrap the DWP</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2a31; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Simon Duffy and John Dalrymple, 2014. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2a31; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Recent sample of arguments from the Centre for Welfare Reform - with which I don’t always agree but which always have valuable statistical analyses.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2a31; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The two major new sources used are:</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.welfareweekly.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Welfare Weekly</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2a31; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - a mainstream UK news aggregator (formerly Welfare News Service) and</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rightsnet</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2a31; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- a professional welfare rights site - news items are subscription only.</span></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-40608732722796859252014-06-19T10:13:00.000-07:002014-06-19T11:00:49.756-07:00Miliband and the IPPR<br />
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The IPPR are a well connected think tank. As I noted in a<a href="http://welfarenewsservice.com/labour-party-left-wing-think-tank-telegraph-whos-telling-porkies/" target="_blank"> response</a> to an earlier iteration of their current proposals, they are guaranteed a good spread in the Telegraph, the Guardian and the New Statesman. This time they have prepared the ground more thoroughly and got<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/18/labour-welfare-plan-benefits-means-testing-training-ed-miliband" target="_blank"> Miliband well on board</a> before they launched their<a href="http://www.ippr.org/assets/media/publications/pdf/the-condition-of-britain_June2014.pdf" target="_blank"> report</a>.<br />
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Not that it's much better than before. As befits an organisation whose <a href="http://www.ippr.org/about/how-we-are-funded" target="_blank">largest funders</a> are the JP Morgan Chase Foundation they carefully, compendiously (the report runs to 280 pages) and on the whole quite accurately analyse a problem before coming up with solutions that leave everything just the same or worse. No root cause fails to be overlooked, no powerful interests are at any risk of being challenged, concentrations of wealth and power can breathe again. The IPPR have done their job and ruled out any radical change at all, while covering their reactionary proposals with a convincing patina of concern<i> </i>and engagement<i>.</i><br />
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If there is a theme to this report, and Labour's accompanying proposals, it is that if poor people want better services, or any other improvements, they can damn well pay for them themselves. If benefits for young people are a mess - and they are - then young people and their families are going to lose all current entitlements to get something better. If Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) is set at a laughably low level any improvement is going to have to come from other people on JSA. If Housing Benefit, instead of going on inflated rents, is going to be diverted to house building, then current tenants are going to have to meet the bill. Greater equality in incomes it seems (they ignore inequality of wealth almost completely) is an outmoded and unnecessary aim, compared to the truly significant "equality in social relations" (presumably the sort of equality Anatole France had in mind: "the law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread")<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17.318561553955078px;">. </span>On which basis the IPPR proposes to reduce incomes for the poorest families to further their equality in social relations.<br />
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There are three concrete proposals from the report that Labour have picked up on. The first is a unified 'youth allowance' for people aged 18-21, replacing JSA paid to the young people themselves, and also replacing Child Benefit (CHB)and Child Tax Credit (CTC) paid to their families when they stay in education past 18. This youth allowance will be means tested <i>on parental income</i> in the same way as student grants and loans - and it will be conditional on the young person undergoing some kind of continuing education or training. (The IPPR report recommends extending these proposals to disabled young people by removing their entitlement to Employment Support Allowance (ESA) as well but the Labour announcements are silent on that - it may have been a step too far, at this stage, for Miliband).<br />
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It is the extension of means testing to young unemployed people's families that is nastiest here. There is already a difficult transition for any family when a young person leaves education and benefits and tax credits for them stop. These proposals will make that transition far worse and multiply the numbers of young people for who there is no provision at all.<br />
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And how is this 'training' to be provided? What happens if it breaks down for any reason? There are currently, according to the IPPR report, 230,000 young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) who do not receive any benefits at all. The one certainty from Labour's proposals is that total will rise sharply. More hunger, more hardship.<br />
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And all unnecessary because all that is required is to amend the JSA rules to allow young people to undertake education and training, and to make that training available. But that wouldn't allow Miliband to strike his radical, cost-cutting poses at the expense of poor families and their children.<br />
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The second proposal that Labour have adopted is a futile attempt to make JSA less utterly unattractive to a small minority. There will be an extra £30pw in the contributory version of JSA only, for six months, for anyone becoming unemployed who has paid at least five years national insurance contributions, plus some help with mortgage interest payments. This will actually help rather few. If you were self employed your contributions don't count for JSA. If you're in rented accommodation the extra JSA will be largely cancelled out by reduced housing benefit. If you have children, similarly, you will probably lose most of the extra through reduced Tax Credits. All this will be funded by excluding anyone with less than 5 years contributions from contributory JSA.<br />
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As always the real purpose here is ideological. It is a half-hearted attempt to respond to the relative popularity of contributory benefits. Too little, too late. The means testing of just about everything has ensured that few will actually benefit significantly from this change; and if they are well off enough not to be caught be means testing, £30pw will not be significant enough to change attitudes.<br />
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Meanwhile the biggest cut to the contributory benefits system - the time limiting of contributory ESA to 12 month from April 2012 - goes unmentioned and unresolved. A supposed insurance scheme that provides no long term help with an acquired disability or incapacity is not a functioning scheme at all and Labour's attempt to play on a memory of a time when there was such a scheme will get them no credit.<br />
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Thirdly Labour like the idea of giving local councils - the largest ones at any rate - control of their Housing Benefit budget so that they can divert money saved from that budget into housebuilding. But how do councils save the money in the first place? IPPR has some fanciful proposals, like bulk buying accommodation, but will any local authority resist the temptation to save by restricting still further the Housing Benefit paid to current tenants? Absent the political will to take on landlords and banks (who will lend the money for any new developments) all that will result will be a few more unaffordable "affordable" homes.<br />
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There are a few unobjectionable proposals in the report - like extended paternity leave and more free child care. These will not happen. They propose cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners to fund enhancements to social care but Labour, I predict, will make the cut without the enhancement.<br />
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But Miliband and the IPPR make fitting partners, even if they don't agree on every detail. They share a common root to their politics in their cowardice. They do not dare speak the truth to anyone, let alone to power. They do no dare to mention the rich. They do not dare to challenge corporate power. The only proposal they can make is to make the poor pay for poverty which is what they they have done today.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-59282917609772343652014-03-21T13:30:00.002-07:002014-03-24T14:44:09.528-07:00POOR PENSIONERS<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3199999928474426; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">News coverage of the Budget rightly identified the political significance of Osborne’s give-away to affluent pensioners - it is a straightforward political bribe to potential UKIP voters. But there was no coverage of the ongoing cuts facing the poorest pensioners - the Tories are being allowed to get clean away with this.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-21e13daa-e655-0d00-cac7-c9b3d94a5c52" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In fact, far from protecting the elderly, the Coalition are actively dismantling provision for the pensioners on the lowest incomes, while protecting only the relatively affluent. They have exempted pensioners from the most severe of the benefit cuts affecting working age people - all pensioners are exempt from the bedroom tax for instance and have not been affected by the abolition of Council Tax Benefit - but they are systematically attacking incomes and services for the elderly poor.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3199999928474426; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For 3 million low income pensioners it is not the rate of State Retirement Pension that matters but the rate of Pension Credit. This is the guaranteed level of income for all pensioners, introduced by Labour - currently £145.40 a week for a single person. Pension Credit succeeded in alleviating the most acute pensioner poverty when it was introduced. The Tories are cutting it. They froze Savings Credit - which provides a small addition to Pension Credit for those with other income - in 2012, saving £330 million. More importantly the much vaunted 'triple lock' on pensions merely guarantees the same cash increase to Pension Credit rates as is applied to State Retirement Pension. But Pension Credit is higher than State Retirement Pension so applying the same cash increase results in a lower percentage increase. So in April 2013 State Retirement Pension for a single person increased by £2.70pw or 2.5%. Pension Credit also increased by £2.70 but this was an increase of just 1.9% - well below inflation. The Tories are systematically eroding the income of the poorest pensioners</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pensioners, while exempt from many of the Tories welfare cuts, are not exempt from cuts to Housing Benefit in the private rented sector. Again, this affects the poorest pensioners who are more likely to be in private rented accommodation. Low income pensioners who are in work, or who care for children or grandchildren, are also affected by cuts to Tax Credits and Child Benefit. All this is difficult to quantify but low income pensioners are bearing their share of the billions being cut from welfare overall.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poorer pensioners are also likely to be in worse health and therefore more severely affected by the financial starvation diet and chaotic privatisation being inflicted on the NHS. They are especially likely to be users of local authority funded care services, which are at the forefront of every council’s cuts (because they are every council's biggest expense). Increasingly stringent charging regimes mean that most affluent pensioners do not use local authority funded care services - which are therefore becoming a ghetto for the poor and disabled. Service standards are falling because of continual pressures for savings. and more and more elderly people cannot get a service at all. Charges meanwhile take away the whole of any spare income care service users have</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">meanwhile genuinely helpful measures like free bus passes - which could be extended at little extra cost - are of no value when the bus service is withdrawn or cut, as is happening in many areas</span></li>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A further cut from October 2014 will mean that low income pensioners, who have a younger partner, below pensionable for women, will no longer be able to claim Pension Credit at all - the younger partner is expected to claim JSA instead to top up the older partner’s pension </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And the steady increase in pensionable age - 66 for both men and women by 2021 - means a longer wait, often in poor health, for what help there is. The years leading up to state pensionable are now often the hardest and most poverty stricken in working class lives, as earning potential is reduced with few having occupational pensions to make up the difference - especially women.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then there's the 'welfare cap' announced by Osborne - an annual cap on nearly all welfare expenditure. State Retirement Pension - by far the biggest element in total welfare expenditure - is NOT included in the cap. Pension Credit, and other pensioner benefits mainly claimed by lower income pensioners - like Attendance Allowance - ARE included. So benefits for the poorer pensioners are going to go on being squeezed, while Retirement Pension, which mainly benefits middle and high income pensioners, is protected.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana;"><span style="line-height: 23.4666690826416px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3199999928474426; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally real pensioner inflation, especially for the poorest pensioners is likely to be higher than the official CPI because pensioners spend a greater portion of their income on basic items like food, fuel and rent which have increased faster than overall inflation.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The truth is that Cameron is providing some assistance to middle and higher income pensioners, through the Budget giveaways, the triple lock and through increases in the basic income tax allowance, but is systematically neglecting millions of the poorest pensioners by these various statistical sleights of hand. But then poor pensioners don't vote Conservative.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And Labour? Labour have said not a word in defence of Pension Credit and poor pensioners; instead they are planning to slash universal pensioners benefits like fuel allowances and bus passes.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-39497520823558676392014-01-20T09:40:00.007-08:002014-01-20T09:40:45.543-08:00A REPLY TO RACHEL REEVES<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rachel Reeves in her big speech on welfare claims stirringly that </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“it’s only by getting more people into work and creating better paid and more secure jobs, that we’ll tackle the drivers of rising benefits bills and ensure the system is sustainable for the long term.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yet what she is proposing will lock low pay and insecurity in work firmly into the system for generations to come. By compelling millions of unemployed people - especially young people - into six month miserably paid half jobs on pain of destitution, Labour is proposing permanently to reshape the lower end of the jobs market as a guarantee of a low wage, insecure future. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If this is an improvement on the Tory Community Work Programme - which from April offers the same deal for no wages at all - that merely serves to make the proposals acceptable to many more employers - large and small, public sector and private - who will leap on this opportunity to substitute publicly subsidised labour for real jobs. No cost and no labour discipline problems either - this is to be outsourced to the DWP who can reduce workers to penury with no protection through their sanctions regime.</span><br />
<b><br /></b>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is Labour’s flagship proposal, their big idea. We can safely ignore their small idea - a few weeks enhanced dole for people coming out of long term jobs - as the trivial gesture it is. What is important though is what they are not saying:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">no proposals for relaxation of the sanctions regime, instead its extension to many more people in make work schemes</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">no restoration of emergency help from the social fund</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">no reform of the work capability assessment for sickness benefits which drives disabled and chronically ill people onto reduced benefits and into unsuitable work. These first three omissions alone guarantee a thriving future for food banks</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">no halt to the abolition of DLA and its gradual replacement by Personal Independence Payment, which is terrorising disabled people under pension age</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">no halt to the implementation of Universal Credit which will extend the DWP’s punitive regime to millions more workers</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">no restoration of any of the myriad other cuts to in-work and out of work benefits implemented since 2014; instead the attack on the living standards of the poorest people has become permanent.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There has always been a large element of continuity between Labour and Tory governments over welfare but never more so than now. The rhetoric is different but the substantial aim of enforcing British capital’s requirements remains the same. The danger is that many people appalled by the Tories’ constant scrounger attacks will climb aboard with Reeves’ more moderately framed proposals as a welcome relief.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We need to be putting forward a more radical proposal. The Welfare State as is - the new old Poor Law providing subsidy for employers and landlords, degradation and privation for claimants - cannot simply be defended. As a minimum an unconditional basic income - for everyone rich and poor - is a transitional demand which will abolish existing welfare and free millions of workers from the control of the state and employers.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-33689015472098278262013-12-06T11:26:00.002-08:002013-12-06T11:29:44.863-08:00THE SMELL OF MONEY<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, someones telling porkies. The ostensibly leftish </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPPR" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Institute for Public Policy Research</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (IPPR) prepares a </span><a href="http://www.ippr.org/images/media/files/publication/2013/11/no-more-neets_Nov2013_11516.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">report</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> advocating wholesale reform of benefits, training and education for young people with the stated aim of eliminating NEETs (young people not in employment, education or training). The IPPR are well connected. The report is flanked by puff pieces in both the leftish </span><a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/plan-end-neets-through-reform-not-cuts" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New Statesman</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and the right wing </span><a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/11/the-government-must-prevent-young-people-from-falling-into-the-benefits-trap" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Spectator</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; it even gets a </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/20/youth-unemployment-learning-earning" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Guardian editorial</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in support.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-2e5ba9a0-c960-97c9-d27d-c20aee90f238" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately the carefully crafted attempt to fashion a ‘debate’ in which the great and the good and the policy wonks were all agreeing with each other is rather knocked off course when the </span><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10461175/Labour-Well-scrap-benefits-for-under-25s.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Daily Telegraph</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> headline their report ‘Labour: We’ll scrap benefits for under 25’s’. That is crude and creates altogether the wrong impression. Labour’s new social security spokesperson, Rachel Reeves, is forced into a denial - to much </span><a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/plan-end-neets-through-reform-not-cuts" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gnashing of teeth</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from Blairite supporters of the report. Suspicion abounds that a Tory spoiling operation has deliberately wrecked the IPPR’s launch of a reasonable and progressive policy.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Erm...no, actually. The Telegraph report was accurate. The IPPR report, coming from the heart of the Labour establishment (with no less than three articles in the New Statesman promoting it), fully warrants the headline. Rachel Reeves</span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/20/labour-unemployment-benefits-under-25-neets" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> now says</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - or rather, tweets - that this is not her position. Polly Toynbee </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/22/young-vote-lost-generation-strike-back-coalition" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">elaborates</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for her. Good. Because the proposals in the report are truly shocking.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The </span><a href="http://www.ippr.org/images/media/files/publication/2013/11/no-more-neets_Nov2013_11516.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">report </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">does make some valid points. It </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> cruel and outrageous that people of any age, but especially young people, are obliged to claim JSA and then forbidden to try any form of training or education to improve their prospects of work, or indeed just to improve themselves. Instead they are required to undertake an endless, pointless search for jobs that either aren’t there or aren’t worth doing. It really</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> unacceptable that young disabled people find door after door closing in their faces as they try to get a an education, get laid, and do something useful and interesting with their lives.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Although it also has some curious omissions. Nowhere in the report does it ask </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">why</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> millions of young people in the UK and across the world can’t find work any more. What has changed? Nor does it ask whether there is any relationship between young people’s increasing poverty (a word that doesn’t feature in the report at all) and the burgeoning, blooming, exploding wealth of the world’s elites. Questions which might suggest some different answers.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But anyway, how does this sound for a solution? - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">let’s take all their money off young people and their families and give it to our friends in the government contracting industry</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Doesn’t immediately grab you? The fairness, reasonableness and progressive nature of this proposal doesn’t leap off the page? Never mind, let’s wrap it up a bit.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And, fair dos, the IPPR do nice wrapping, or at least there’s a lot of it. Their basic proposals are:</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">youth allowance</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, at a flat rate £56.80 a week to replace all income support, JSA and ESA for 18-24 year olds not in work, conditional on participation in purposeful training or intensive jobsearch. DLA or PIP and tax credits would be available as at present as well but not Housing Benefit in most cases. The allowance would be available to young people in further education as well as unemployed young people. However “given fiscal constraints and public scepticism about benefit expenditure” it would only be paid where parental income was less than £25,000 a year</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">youth guarantee </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that, within six months, they will be provided with further education, vocational training, paid work experience or paid training. Deep in the technical bits of the report that no-one reads one discovers that ‘paid’ here means £2.68 an hour, the ‘minimum wage’ for young ‘apprentices, or £67 for a 25 hour week. All accompanied by ‘intensive jobsearch’. All compulsory. Fall out with someone, miss an appointment and there’s nothing. </span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But given the grand ambitions the report claims to aspire to - no more NEETs - when you actually examine it, it’s all a bit vague. There’s supposed to be a guarantee of something but it’s not quite clear what. Faced with this, one approach to understanding what’s going on is to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">follow the money</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For instance, under the last Labour government one of the things they did that actually worked to a degree was the introduction of Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) - paying young people a bit of real, extra, money - up to £30 a week - if they stayed in education or training. How do we know this worked? Because young people, who have been asked about none of the IPPR’s proposed changes, said so. Withdrawal of EMA was one of the very first acts of the Tory government and first on the list of complaints in the riots and student protests of 2011. For EMA, the money went from government, direct to young people - and it helped, as money does.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this case the whole programme of training and forced labour the IPPR proposes, and which partly replaces EMA, is to be funded by: </span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">removing the additional components in young disabled people’s ESA - typically £43.35 a week - and its replacement by the proposed youth allowance of £56.80 only</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">removing all extra elements in young parents’ income support or JSA beyond the basic £56.80 - typically £14.95 a week</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">removing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> benefit entitlement - the new youth allowance, housing benefit, everything - from young people under 21 whose</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> parents</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> earn over £25,000 a year between them.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So the money comes from young people, especially young disabled people, and their families.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unsurprisingly the report doesn’t explain itself as bluntly as this but all these proposals are there. In addition, says the report, there would be further savings from a ‘shakeout’ of present income support and ESA claimants faced with ‘full conditionality’. In other words some young people with an illness or disability, or with children, would not be able to cope with demands for full time training, education or work experience and would drop out of claiming. What would happen to them? Why does this not amount to creating even more NEETs? That is beyond the ken of the IPPR, and therefore beyond all human knowing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The total savings from these proposals are estimated at £1.97 billion (you won’t see this figure in the report just its constituent parts, possibly because the IPPR can’t add up but, not to worry, I’ve done it for them). That’s the amount at stake then, the amount which it is proposed to take away from young people and their families. Where does this money go to? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of it appears to go back to different young people - young people from low income families in further education, after their 18th birthday. But this is sleight of hand. Buried deep in the report (pp.40-41) is the proposal that when any young person begins to receive the youth allowance of £58.60 a week, their family will cease to receive child benefit and child tax credit for them. Amounts of child tax credit and child benefit can vary but in the majority of cases will be more than the £58.60 youth allowance, sometimes a lot more. So an apparent generosity, of which the report’s promoters </span><a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/plan-end-neets-through-reform-not-cuts" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">make great play</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> becomes a trap which will plunge more families into poverty.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If the claim that money is being re-routed to young people in education is bogus, what is it actually being spent on, under the IPPR’s plans? On the Youth Guarantee it seems. Who would provide the things that are guaranteed under the Youth Guarantee? Training, jobsearch, work experience, that sort of thing? Well, the IPPR a very keen on getting local authorities involved in co-ordinating here. Co-ordinating, yes but local authorities don’t remotely have the means or resources to actually provide all this. Who would actually provide the services that are guaranteed under the Youth Guarantee and get the money for doing so? Well, you know, colleges could do some of it, erm, employers might, erm ...</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Silence.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Silence is always suspicious. There is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">scarcely a word</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the 50 pages of this report about the existence of an entire industry of government contractors - ATOS, Capita, A4E and the like - who thrive on these sorts of contracts. Funny that, because it was the IPPR who recommended the changes which resulted in the last Labour government’s New Deal programmes which provided the point of entry into the warm embrace of state funding for these sorts of company.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So a Labour friendly think tank produces a report, promoted in Labour friendly media, which advocates a further massive cut in young people’s benefits and transferring most of the money to the private companies who got their first big contracts under the last Labour government. They fail in their initial attempt to bounce Ed Miliband’s Labour into supporting their proposals and get </span><a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/plan-end-neets-through-reform-not-cuts" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a fit of the sulks</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But this is an ongoing project and an ongoing battle. There is a lot of money to be made from welfare reform and the think tanks, consultancies and policy experts sense a change of regime coming. Expect to hear more of this type of proposal as the next election approaches. Don’t expect to hear from the millions of people whose lives are wrecked in the process - unless we get organised to make our voices heard.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Originally published 23rd November 2013 by <a href="http://welfarenewsservice.com/" target="_blank">Welfare News Service</a></b></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-42547557768211828622013-10-26T16:25:00.000-07:002013-12-06T11:56:16.464-08:00PIP GOES THE WEASEL<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">decision making farmed out to government spies?</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PIP (Personal Independence Payment) is the Coalition government's replacement for Disability Living Allowance (DLA). Its introduction is accompanied by the usual media assault of lies and half truths:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DLA expenditure, nearly £13 billion a year, is out of control they say. Not so: it is increasing mainly because disabled people are living longer;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">only 6% of claims are decided after a face to face medical assessment, it is claimed. Not so: only 6% of claims are decided on the basis of a medical assessment<i> by a DWP doctor.</i> Most of the rest are decided on the basis of other medical evidence, like GP and consultant reports, all of which involve face to face assessments;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DLA awards are not reviewed. Not so yet again: all DLA awards can be reviewed at any time, and many are. They are not <i>all</i> reviewed because most disabling conditions are permanent and not likely to change.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact the replacement of DLA was announced in the June 2010 emergency budget with no other aim than to achieve a minimum 20% cut in expenditure, at the expense of working age disabled people - DLA claimants who have passed 65 are not being transferred. The government expects <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/220176/dla-reform-wr2011-ia.pdf" target="_blank">at least 500,000 people</a> to have their DLA awards stopped or reduced on tra</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">nsfer to PIP.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the introduction of PIP is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/25/personal-independence-payments-postponed" target="_blank">not going well</a> (like everything else Mr Duncan-Smith has a hand in). A central role in the introduction of the new benefit is given to medical assessments. Every claim must have a medical assessment. The conditions of entitlement for PIP are based on a system of 'descriptors' - brief statements about functional disabilities - which can be applied to any individual on a cursory yes/no basis and which attract points. The number of points awarded gives your PIP entitlement. It is a system designed to allow rapidly produced, standardised medical reports which minimise entitlements. And it is closely based on the computer system used by ATOS to generate reports on Employment Support Allowance (ESA) claims.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.dwp.gov.uk/supplying-dwp/what-we-buy/welfare-to-work-services/health-and-disability-assessment/" target="_blank">contracts for PIP assessments</a> - four of them worth over £400 million in total - were divided between ATOS and their rivals in the business of contracting for government services, Capita. ATOS proposed an ambitious programme - which they have not delivered - of setting up <a href="http://www.thefedonline.org.uk/disability-in-the-news/dwp-finally-reveals-shocking-number-of-atos-pip-assessment-sites" target="_blank">examination centres</a>. Capita by contrast proposed to do most assessments by home visits. ATOS have also, for some unfathomable reason, had difficulties in attracting and retaining staff and now face industrial action. That ATOS is in difficulties is confirmed by the latest delays in the introduction of PIP.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Delays</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PIP was initially only introduced in selected areas from April 2013. Since 10th June 2013 however no new claims for DLA have been accepted - everyone not already claiming DLA has had to claim PIP instead. Four months on and what is most striking is that there have been virtually no decisions made on PIP claims anywhere (apart from special rules claims for terminally ill people).</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One reason for delay was the government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/251631/pip-mobility-consultation-government-response.pdf" target="_blank">consultation</a> on the 20/50 metres criterion for the enhanced mobility component of PIP. The long established rule of thumb for DLA was that entitlement to higher rate mobility (which brings with it Motability cars and bus and rail passes) depended on establishing, in most cases, that you were unable to walk more than 50 metres without severe discomfort. For PIP that test distance is reduced to 20 metres, provided you can walk that distance "<span style="background-color: #ffebf2; color: #333333; line-height: 21px;">safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly and within an acceptable time period</span>".</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Under threat of judicial review the government agreed to a fake consultation on that provision which, to no-one's surprise, left the PIP rule unchanged, despite its being supported by just five of 1142 responses to the consultation.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But although the 'consultation' delayed decision making, that only disguised the delays in the PIP assessment process. The scale of these became clear when a<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-personal-independence-payment-toolkit-for-partners/the-personal-independence-payment-pip-toolkit-for-partners" target="_blank"> revised timetable</a> for the transfer of existing DLA claimants to PIP was announced this week.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are about 2.5 million people aged 16-64 who currently receive DLA. They all have to be re-assessed and transferred to PIP. This was going to happen from 28th October but will now only happen in <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/252321/pip-postcode-map.pdf" target="_blank">selected areas</a>: roughly Wales and the central band of England. These are the areas that went to Capita under under the government's contracts and are now called 'reassessment areas'. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is no indication at all as to when the areas covered by ATOS contracts will become reassessment areas. With the start of transfer delayed it is difficult to see how the time table as a whole can be maintained. The mass transfer of people with indefinite DLA awards to PIP was due to start in October 2015, conveniently after the next election, and be completed by 2018. The potential delay is, to be clear, unambiguously good news for disabled people. But ...</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Two schemes</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The result is that there are now two schemes operating, depending on where you live. Under <i>both</i> schemes it remains the case that you cannot now claim DLA for the first time, only PIP. And PIP decisions may now start to trickle through, which will give us a better idea of how the new benefit is likely to affect people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But what if you are already claiming DLA? Then the two schemes come into play. In the ATOS areas (Scotland, Northern England, London and the South East and South Western England) although you cannot claim DLA for the first time:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you CAN renew your claim for DLA when it expires, and </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you CAN claim DLA as a adult from your 16th birthday if you were getting it as a child, and </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">if your condition worsens (or improves) you CAN ask for your DLA award to be reconsidered, under DLA rules, without being transferred to PIP, but</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you cannot claim PIP instead of DLA, even if you want to</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">until further notice.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the Capita areas however (Wales and Central England), if you already have a DLA award:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">if your DLA award is for a fixed period and that period expires <b>on or after 17th March 2014</b> you CANNOT reclaim DLA. You will be 'invited' to claim PIP instead. (If your DLA award expires before 17th March 2014 you can still reclaim DLA)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">if you received DLA as a child, and your 16th birthday was on or after <b>7th October 2013,</b> you CANNOT reclaim DLA as an adult. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You will be 'invited' to claim PIP instead</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">if you notify the DWP of a change of circumstances, particularly any change in your condition, you will be 'invited' to claim PIP instead - and your DLA award will be stopped after four weeks. Anyone who currently receives DLA, especially on a indefinite award, should get advice and <i>then</i> think long and hard before contacting the DLA office because of this rule;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you can claim PIP instead of DLA if you want to (a few people might be better off under PIP rules but it would be better to wait a while and see how actual PIP awards are going before deciding on this).</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">don't be fooled by the phrase 'invited to claim PIP' that the DWP are using. You have no choice because if you don't claim PIP when 'invited' your DLA will stop anyway.</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hope you've got that. Oh, and please note, one of the stated aims of PIP was to make it a simpler, more readily understandable benefit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Informers</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One rule among these <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/387/made" target="_blank">complex transition rules</a> that always looked particularly dodgy is the one which says that you will move from DLA to PIP if you "notify [the DWP] of a change in your condition". If you write in to them saying 'please supersede my DLA award because x, y, z' then OK you've asked for it. But most people phone. And on the phone, anything can happen: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Can you tell me when my next payment is due because I have to arrange for someone to go to the Post Office with me?'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'It sounds like your condition has got worse' says the helpful lady on the other end</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Oh, yes, well, I suppose it has a bit'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Then I think we should have another look at your award, in case it needs increasing'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Oh, alright then'. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And you're transferred to PIP.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That may not be typical but the point is, there's no way of telling with a rule this vague. Then it gets worse. The actual <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/387/made" target="_blank">regulations</a> governing DLA to PIP transitions are clear that this sort of compulsory transition should normally occur when <i>the claimant </i>informs the DWP of a change in their condition. However DWP official guidance, dated 23rd October, says something different:</span><br />
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<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From 28 October 2013 we will start inviting individuals [to claim PIP] if:</span></em></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, from whom do the DWP 'receive information' about an apparent 'change in care or mobility needs' other than from the claimant or their family and carers? From informers on their various fraud hotlines. The very language of the guidance suggests they have this in mind. 'We receive information' is suggestive; 'change in care or mobility needs' is even more so because this is the wording they invariably use when alleging DLA fraud. (They have no evidence of fraud from the outset so when someone is filmed rock climbing or whatever it is always attributed to an undeclared 'change in care needs' or 'change in mobility needs'). And <a href="http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/5419/" target="_blank">at least one DWP official</a> has confirmed this publicly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is probably just about 'legal'. The DWP appear to be given enough discretion in the regulations (<a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/387/made" target="_blank">Reg. 3(1)</a>) to 'invite' PIP claims on any ground at any time. If they adopt a policy of outsourcing this discretionary power to informers it will be difficult to prove or challenge especially with<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/10084925/Proposals-to-limit-legal-aid-for-judicial-review-will-undermine-the-rule-of-law.html" target="_blank"> restrictions on judicial review</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, disabled people from this Monday, will, it seems, be at the mercy of anyone who makes a malicious phone call. Their DLA award will be ended early on receipt of that call and they will be transferred to PIP, with its potentially lower entitlement. It won't assist in the least that, on investigation, the DLA award was found to have been fully justified because the information will still have been received and the transfer to PIP, once started, is irreversible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In case anyone thinks this is nothing to worry about, I offer my own case as a counter example. I receive DLA higher rate mobility and lowest rate care. Under PIP I expect to retain the higher rate mobility because, although I can walk more than 20 yards, I can do so only very slowly, using a crutch - so I can't walk 20 meters 'to an acceptable standard' and 'within a reasonable time period'. I do not expect to keep the care award however so I anticipate losing about £100 a month on transfer to PIP. The longer this loss is delayed, the happier I will be.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As it happens I escape (by a single postcode digit) being in a Capita contract reassessment area. But it is not clear if that will be any protection in the event of a fraud allegation. I am not unknown locally and it is far from inconceivable that some anonymous citizen might take a dislike to my protests and letters to the paper and decide it is their civic duty to inform on me. If they do so, the DWP may investigate, but they will find nothing at all about my activities which is inconsistent with the statements I made on my DLA claim (because I'm careful like that). But still I could Iose about £100 a month, immediately and without appeal, up to five years before it might otherwise have happened, on the bare word of a malicious sneak. Informers, in short, will be allowed to impose a loss of benefit on disabled people, in a complete perversion of normal legal procedures..</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I really don't like this but I can't claim it's particularly unusual. In fact, one of the characteristics of the new 'austerity' is the general disregard and degradation of established rights and procedures. From <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/21/jobcentre-set-targets-benefit-sanctions" target="_blank">tricking claimants into benefit sanctions</a>, to ignoring rules then backdating changes to cover up the malfeasance, to the attacks on the Human Rights Act, the whole concept of legal procedures and rights is being pushed aside by executive action, backed by a carefully manufactured public opinion. This is why I am not particularly reassured by claims I have seen that, because the regulations imply that it is only disclosure by the claimant that triggers transfer to PIP, that precludes the DWP from putting into effect a policy to the contrary. They will do what they are told and I strongly suspect that, under this government, the instructions will be to speed up the transfer rate by all means available, if only to save Mr Duncan-Smith's blushes</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-13377937717551451892013-10-03T13:18:00.002-07:002013-10-12T15:45:58.289-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">GOBSMACKED</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Birkenhead Labour MP, and ‘poverty tsar’ to the Coalition government, Frank Field, has </span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/172102929/Letter-to-the-Prime-Minister-Regarding-Hunger-and-Food-Poverty" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">written to the Prime Minister</span></a><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with some questions about food banks. Mr Field </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/30/food-bank-inquiry_n_4016631.html?utm_hp_ref=uk" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">claims</span></a><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> he is ‘gobsmacked’ by the need to ask such questions, and that he, and other MP’s, were ‘taken by surprise’ by the rapid growth in the use of food banks.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am gobsmacked by Mr Field’s cheek. If any one person can be said to be responsible for shifting the ideological climate in support of the government’s welfare ‘reforms’ it is the former anti-poverty campaigner, Frank Field. And it is those reforms, supported by Mr Field, which are causing the increasingly desperate food bank queues.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So here are some answers to Mr Field’s (pompous and illiterate) questions:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WHAT ARE THE CAUSES THAT INFLUENCE WHY FAMILIES BECOME HUNGRY?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">benefit sanctions, especially since Mr Cameron’s ‘stricter benefit regime’ (SBR) was introduced on 1.11.12; </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Social Fund abolition - all emergency help from the DWP was deliberately ended in April, without replacement; </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">endless delays in processing benefit claims, caused by cuts in the DWP and a culture there which priorities sanctions over paying people their legal entitlement;</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the bedroom tax; </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">abolition of Council Tax Benefit and its replacement by reduced local council tax support - in Birkenhead even the poorest householders are being required to pay at least 22% of their council tax, however low their income; </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cuts to Working tax Credit and Housing Benefit, coupled with falling real wages, all affecting working families; </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">below inflation uprating of most benefits when inflation for basic items like food and fuel is increasing more than general inflation; </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ATOS medicals resulting in disabled people losing all their income overnight - losses to be extended with mandatory reconsideration from 28.10.13.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The effect of all these changes was widely and correctly predicted by everyone who, like you Mr Field, knows about the welfare system. Yet NOT ONCE did you raise your voice while these changes were introduced.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Incidentally you should learn to write English properly.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WHAT IMMEDIATE FOOD SUPPORT EXISTS AND FOR HOW LONG IS IT REQUIRED?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What exists are largely Church run food banks, increasingly overwhelmed. You claim to be a Christian, Mr Field so you should know the injunction in Deuteronomy 15:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 12px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7 </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lord</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother:</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 12px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">8 </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth</span></i><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why then did you not object, Mr Field, as a Christian MP, when abolition of the Social Fund was announced in June 2010? You must have known that Crisis Loans from the Social Fund were the only way many of your constituents survived and that food banks were the only replacement on offer.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And food banks try to restrict their supplies to a limited period; unfortunately benefit delays and sanctions are not so limited. People need help with food for as long as they have no money.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">HOW DOES THE ISSUE OF DEBT INFLUENCE THIS DEMAND?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ‘issue of debt’ doesn’t influence food bank demand at all. Debt does. You pay your rent shortfall, thanks to HB cuts, you pay your council tax, thanks to CTB abolition, you pay your inflated fuel bills, you repay your payday lender, you repay your Social Fund loan, you pay your bedroom tax. Then you have no money left for food. Not complicated.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WHAT PART OF BUDGETARY AND HOUSEHOLD SKILLS CAN BE IMPROVED TO HELP TACKLE THIS PROBLEM?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No part, you sanctimonious slimeball. When you benefit is stopped by an ATOS medical, or sanctioned because you were 10 minutes late to sign on you have no money.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> What part of ‘no money’ don’t you understand Mr Field?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And when you do still have some money it’s precisely your budgeting skills that drive you to the food bank. You pay your bills first. Then you use your household skills to make a four day food bank donation last a week.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">HOW DIFFICULT IS IT NOW TO LIVE ON BENEFITS IN TERMS OF THEIR BEING A RELIABLE SOURCE OF INCOME?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since most means tested benefits can be and are sanctioned, suspended or stopped without notice at any time I think you know the answer to this one. Since every one of these things happens as a matter of deliberate government policy - your government Mr Field since you agreed to provide them political cover in your role as ‘poverty tsar’ - I think you know WHY benefits are not a reliable source of income as well.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">HOW CAN THE GOVERNMENT’S WORK PROGRAMME BE IMPROVED TO BETTER SUPPORT FAMILIES IN FOOD POVERTY?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It can’t. Are you really so naive, Mr Field? The private companies who run the Work Programme are not in the business of helping poor families or anyone else. They are in the business of milking the government for every drop of money they can. They are an organised, government approved, institution for benefit fraud. They do not remotely help people find work - they rely on people doing that for themselves, as they do; whereupon the Work Programme contractors claim their payments for something not of their doing at all.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WHY DOES IT APPEAR THAT THE STATUTORY SERVICES ARE LARGELY INACTIVE IN THE FACE OF HUNGER?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because the government has deliberately caused that hunger, removed all the services that were provided to prevent it, and drowned out the voices of anyone who tried to point this out in a concerted chorus of class hatred and contempt for poor people from their press. Your government, Mr Field.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">*</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Frank Field, for anyone who doesn’t know, has been MP for Birkenhead, one of the poorest areas of the country, since 1979. Before that he was Director of both the Child Poverty Action Group and the Low Pay Unit. While MP he set up the Birkenhead Resource Unit, primarily to take up benefit issues for his constituents (the Unit failed after the collapse of Barings Bank since it was funded by the Barings Foundation charity). The BRU employed bright campaigning lawyers like Nick Warren and Phil Shiner to take on cases against the DHSS (as it then was) and earned Mr Field an undeserved reputation as a good constituency MP. (I took on some of the BRU cases when it closed, to give my credentials here).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mr Field in short knows full well that benefits have never been generous, that families struggle in low paid work. Unfortunately Mr Field, over the years, alone in his Hamilton Square flat, came to hate and despise the people of Birkenhead, who had elected him as a campaigning MP who was on their side. I have if front of me a book Mr Field wrote in 1989 - “Losing Out - the Emergence of Britain’s Underclass” in which the contempt practically drips of the pages with talk, however qualified, of the ‘pathologies of the underclass’. He was a pioneer in the process of demonising and pathologising people who claim benefits which has risen to new heights under the Coalition government.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-e7fvrTB0xuaSXuIgLEUGwsWRFvdrYSGLNk7lAvaOwa7TzZh_B9v-6paIIJcGqdZ4pkw7MDFNo_-u9mPyBkT5j02ADkRpW05w3K4iPQBpUwlupNEhDWJ9UkcIt3vZbqxomIzFMhHJbIs/s1600/hamilton+square.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-e7fvrTB0xuaSXuIgLEUGwsWRFvdrYSGLNk7lAvaOwa7TzZh_B9v-6paIIJcGqdZ4pkw7MDFNo_-u9mPyBkT5j02ADkRpW05w3K4iPQBpUwlupNEhDWJ9UkcIt3vZbqxomIzFMhHJbIs/s1600/hamilton+square.jpg" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More recently Mr Field has been campaigning again. Crusading against the welfare reform that are creating child poverty on a level not seen for generations? Nope. His recent activities include:</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a </span><a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110120090128/http:/povertyreview.independent.gov.uk/media/20254/poverty-report.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">report</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, for the coalition government, blaming poverty on bad parenting, demanding more state control of working class families with young children, and replacing benefit increases for children with more funding for Sure Start and the like. Not one of the proposals have been adopted (except the benefit cuts);</span></span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">claiming that </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/09/11/frank-field-universal-credit-benefit-system-a-disaster-_n_1873212.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Universal Credit will be a disaste</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">r. OK: he got that right. But why: because claiming benefits ‘rots the soul’ according to Mr Field. That’s unfortunate for disabled people and others who have no choice but to claim benefit, like me, like many of his constituents. (Be warned, Mr Field can smell our rotten souls). He’s not entirely wrong of course. Being poor, unemployed, disabled, badly housed does not do anyone any good. But for Mr Field the problem is not the poverty, the unemployment, the disability or the bad housing; the problem is the benefits and ‘benefit dependency’;</span></span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/04/15/frank-field-council-houses-immigrants-_n_1426375.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">claiming</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that too much social housing goes to immigrants. The high minded, austere Mr Field is as capable as the rest of his peers of passing on gobbets from the racist gutter;</span></span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">advocating </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/10/25/frank-field-labour-mp-say_n_1029753.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">extensions to the ‘right to buy’</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Apparently this will solve the housing shortage; I won’t even try to fathom out why. It’s probably better for people’s souls to be homeowners or something;</span></span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">complaining that the Labour Party is dominated by by </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/10/25/frank-field-labour-mp-say_n_1029753.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scots</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Oh, FFS.</span></span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, it seems, Mr Field has belatedly realised that much of the genuine campaigning work he did as a young man, and others did for him as an MP, is being systematically undone by the Coalition’s war on welfare. He is trying, ever so cautiously and politely, to distance himself with this letter.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Too late, Mr Field, much too late. You have done your work for the ruling class and had your reward. They don’t need you any more. Nor do the people of Birkenhead. Resign, die, do what you will, but don’t befoul politics any more by turning your self disgust against the people in poverty you once used to work for.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-9215087436260670992013-09-23T11:38:00.002-07:002013-12-06T11:50:12.847-08:00MANDATORY RECONSIDERATION - now they want to stop us appealing<h2>
</h2>
<br />
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">The one consolation and defence for the hundreds of thousands of people forced into the farce of an ATOS medical was that they could always appeal if the decision was negative. Over 400,000 people now appeal ESA decisions every year. Appeals are not perfect, not least because Tribunals still have to apply the same, crazy test. But at least you get a proper hearing before people who know something about the subject - and about 40% of the time the appeals succeed.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 17px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">Now they want to stop that too ...</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">At present, if you fail your ESA medical, you can appeal and stay on the basic rate of ESA, as long as you keep sending in sick notes, until your appeal is decided by a Tribunal. <a href="http://www.cpag.org.uk/content/new-appeals-rules-and-procedures" target="_blank">Mandatory reconsideration</a> means that you are not allowed to go straight to an appeal; you must first ask the DWP to reconsider their decision. On its own this would just be a way of discouraging people from appealing - a quite unneccessary extra bureaucratic hoop to jump through, and perfectly futile since DWP decisions always have been reconsidered - and occasionally changed - when you appeal. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">The really nasty part of this though is that, although you can still be paid basic rate ESA while you are waiting for an appeal to be heard, from 28th October, you CANNOT be paid ESA while you are waiting for your mandatory reconsideration request to be decided. There is no time limit within which the DWP must make a decision on a mandatory reconsideration request - they are aiming at 4-6 weeks but there is no reason why it should not take them months.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">So the scenario, from 28th October, will be that you fail your ESA medical, you request a reconsideration, whereupon all your benefit stops completely for an unknown period. Your only option, in most cases, is to claim Jobseekers Allowance - or try to.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Now people SHOULD try to claim JSA when this happens. It DOESN'T, which a lot of people worry about, mean that you are accepting the ESA decision and can't succeed on the appeal (it doesn't usually come up at all in the appeal). And it doesn't mean you are acting fraudulently - they have decided you are able to do some work, not you, and you are taking them at their word. But it may not be easy because the Jobcentre will want to see some evidence that you are able to do some work, and looking for it. If you go in saying that you aren't fit for any work, your JSA claim will be refused. The line to take is that the DWP have decided that you are fit for some kind of work and you are ready willing and able to take on any work they can find which is suitable for you, given your conditions. The fact that that there probably isn't any such suitable work is not your problem. Being found fit for work doesn't mean fit for any kind of work at all and the Jobcentre can and do make some allowances when you have a disability or a health problem.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Nonetheless, a lot of people will have problems claiming JSA, signing on every fortnight, saying all the right things about looking for suitable work and maintaining their jobsearch activity. When the Jobcentre are told about your health problems, their usual reaction is to tell you to claim ESA! And if you can't, don't or won't claim JSA, you get nothing while waiting for mandatory reconsideration.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">That's why we have to protest loud and long about mandatory reconsideration;<a href="http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/ian-duncan-smith-targets-the-sick-vulnerable?source=facebook-share-button&time=1379530586" target="_blank"> this petition</a> is a start. It is yet another blatant attack on sick and disabled and their rights. We are being driven to foodbanks and starvation by ATOS and denied access to justice.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Finally a few practical points:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">1. Mandatory reconsideration <i>only</i> applies if the DWP letter notifying you of their decision says it does - the letter should say that you cannot appeal until you have requested a reconsideration.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">2. You can request a reconsideration of the ESA decision, either by writing to the DWP (at the address on the letter giving you the decision OR by telephoning one of their call centres. You have one month from the date on the decision letter. The DWP <i>say</i> they will consider admitting a late review request but there is no right of appeal if they don't. So get review requests in on time - by phone if you are approaching the one month limit.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">3. But when you get you mandatory reconsideration notice, you must appeal in writing, enclosing a copy of the notice (you should be sent a spare copy). You can download the appeal form <a href="http://hmctsformfinder.justice.gov.uk/courtfinder/forms/sscs1-eng.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. Again you have one month from the date of decision</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">4. If you lose all benefit under mandatory reconsideration, you can still claim Housing Benefit for your rent. Ask the council to assess you on a 'nil income' basis.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />5. The DWP, as part of mandatory reconsideration, will want to contact you by phone to 'discuss' your case and see ask you to send in any additional evidence. Do not be bullied into dropping your review request when this happens, even if they tell you you cannot succeed - it is not their decision. And do not agree to send in further evidence at this stage - it will only add to the delay and mean you have to survive longer with no payment of ESA. Send in evidence either when you first request a reconsideration or later, once your appeal has been admitted.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">6. Once you have your mandatory reconsideration decision notice and make an appeal, your ESA can be restored, at the basic rate, but only from the date of your appeal. But you must then provide sick notes - so make sure you keep in touch with your GP and keep getting sick notes. If you are signing on, keep hold of the sick notes until you are allowed to make an appeal and submit them then.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><b>EDITED 23rd September to update advice following publication of the regulations about mandatory reconsideration (<a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/2380/made" target="_blank">SI 1983 2380</a> if you're interested) and to make this a separate post</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><b>UPDATED 6th December 2013: Esther McVey has <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm131125/text/131125w0005.htm" target="_blank">said</a> in answers to Parliamentary questions that:</b></span></span><br />
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<li><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;"><b>a 'straightforward' mandatory reconsideration of an ESA decision is expected to take about 14 days. Straightforward apparently means that there is no extra evidence which reinforces the advice NOT to send in any additional evidence at the reconsideration stage;</b></span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;"><b>Jobcentre Plus CANNOT overrule a decision that you are fit for work and refuse to pay you JSA pending reconsideration. However you must still agree to be available for any 'suitable' work and sign a jobseekers agreement. So, as I said, don't tell the Jobcentre you are not fit for any work at all. Tell them that DWP have decided you are fit for some, unspecified, work and you are available to do that work, whatever it is. They made the decision, not you, so it's up to them to help you find that work they say you can do.</b></span></span></li>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-2709752632101145982013-09-22T15:26:00.001-07:002013-09-23T11:37:09.039-07:00<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>ESA - THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH</b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">The Sickness Unto Death was Kierkegaard's diagnosis of life without faith in God. As we <a href="http://dpac.uk.net/2013/09/scrap-atos-end-the-work-capability-assessment-28th-sept-london/" target="_blank">commemorate</a> the 10,000 and more who have died awaiting, or after failing, their work capability assessments with ATOS, it is worth considering the analogous condition of those of us who are obliged, by ill health or disability, to claim Employment Support Allowance (ESA).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">ESA was introduced in 2008 to replace both Incapacity Benefit (IB) and Income Support (IS) paid to people claiming 'on the sick'. As such it takes two forms - contributory ESA, based on NI contributions and not means tested, and income related ESA, replacing Income Support. With ESA was introduced a new assessment process to decide who was sufficiently incapable to qualify - the work capability assessment (WCA). This assessment results in everyone either failing to qualify for ESA at all, or being placed in one of two groups - the work-related activity group for people held to have some prospects of work, and the suppport group for people with more severe problems. The contract to assess people under the WCA was given to the French IT and services company ATOS.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Initially ESA was only for new claimants; the transfer of existing IB and IS claimants to ESA began in 2011 and is now nearing its end. One of the first and biggest benefit cuts anounced by the coalition government was that, on transfer to ESA, entitlement to the contributory version of the benefit would only last for 12 months, unless you were placed in the support group - after that all help is means tested. There is now no state provision for long term ill health, except for the most severely disabled people, without a means test.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">At the core of ESA then is the work capability assessment. Although everyone, including government ministers, refers to this as a test of whether you are 'fit for work' the legal wording is different: you can have 'limited capability for work', in which case you are placed in the work-related activity group or 'limited capability for work related activity' which puts you in the support group.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">The development of the work capability assessment was heavily influenced by the development, by private insurance companies seeking to avoid paying out on compensation claims, of new, 'functional', tests of disability, and the computer programes which apply those tests. The programme for the work capability assessment is called LIMA (Logical Integrated Medical Assessment) and is owned by ATOS. For a detailed account of the interpenetrating influences of ATOS, the American insurance giant Unum (with their <a href="http://beastrabban.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/paul-foot-on-the-insurance-company-unum-and-cuts-to-disability-benefit-in-private-eye-from-1995/" target="_blank">long history</a> of scandals) and the British state see <a href="http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/library/jolly-A-Tale-of-two-Models-Leeds1.pdf" target="_blank">this excellent piece</a> by Debbie Jolly of DPAC.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>THE WORK CAPABILITY ASSESSMENT</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">This is where different philosophies and perceptions of ill health and disability meet and clash. The government, and the private insurance companies who tell government what to think, claim to be using sophisticated and intimidating theories such as the 'bio-psychosocial model of disability' (which just means they don't have to involve doctors and so save money) and 'evidence based medicine' (to be distinguished from the fantasy medicine most doctors practice). They claim that their 'functional' test is objective as distinct from the sloppily subjective opinions of disabled people themselves or the people who live and work with them. They claim that if the test encourages work, that is because work is good for you (but the evidence they cite is that work <i>in a good job</i> is good for you, not any work).</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">What they are actually applying is the crudest possible combination of prejudice and ideology. They use a test which considers an incredibly narrow range of functions and allows only for yes/no answers which completely fail to capture the many practical problems which people with disabilities or serious health problems fact if they try to work. From this test you would imagine that most 'work' involves sitting down and pressing a button occasionally, includes almost no travelling or stairs, requires only occasional communication of the simplest messages - oh, and the employer would prefer you not to black out or crap yourself more than once a week. You can <a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_2024175404"></span>try the test for yourself<span id="goog_2024175405"></span></a> at the Benefits and Work site if you think I'm exaggerating.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">Occasionally, the more sophisticated politicians claim that the WCA follows the social model of disability, as developed by disabled people themselves. They lie. The social model asserts that 'impairments' become 'disability' only because of the systematic discrimination and oppression of disabled people. Disabled people can do many things, including work, but not when the jobs, systems, physical structures and attitudes involved in work make no allowance for their impairments. The WCA apes the social model in distinguishing between the underlying condition and the disability, then makes a mockery of it by using a ridiculous caricature of what work under capitalism is like and ignoring everything we ourselves say about our impairments.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">Worse, politicians and<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415778/Paralysed-Dr-Stephen-Duckworth-Why-Britain-expect-disabled-good.html" target="_blank"> a few privileged disabled people</a>, claim that opposition to the WCA and ATOS underestimates what disabled people can do and condemns them to a life on benefit. This is utterly cynical because it ignores the actual effects of an ATOS assessment. If you are found 'fit for work' it does not raise your horizons or encourage you to try working. Still less does it mean you get any actual help to work. It simply cuts your benefits by 40%. Then it requires you to spend most of your time looking for crap work in jobs you can't do and won't get. The alternative on offer to a life on ESA is a life on the dole interspersed with Work Programme placements.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">And as for the actual experience of work capability assessments ... a computer that repeats all negative findings over and over while ignoring any problems it does identify ... assessments that can last less than 20 minutes at inaccessible venues ... all alternative evidence ignored ... formulaic judgments applied without thought .... and much more.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">That is why you get results <a href="http://www.perthshireadvertiser.co.uk/entertainment-perthshire/gigs-music-perthshire/2013/09/20/double-amputee-fails-to-overturn-atos-decision-73103-33863455/#.Uj2pxW1-l10.facebook" target="_blank">like this</a> - a person with both legs amputated failing the assessment. Now of course a double, below-knee, amputee can work - with suitable adaptations, in a workplace they can get to and provided their stumps aren't playing up too much. Disabled people spent 40 years campaigning against government policies that consigned them to inactivity or incarceration and we're not going to have the door slammed in our faces again and be told we can't work.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">But here the government and its propagandists deliberately confuse the issue. They apply a test which says it is a test of 'limited capability for work' but is in fact a crude list of a limited range of impairments. They then ignore all the difficulties people with impairments <i>still</i> face in finding and keeping suitable work. Then they use the result to drive disabled people into penury - and brand them skivers and fakers on the way out.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">A person with a double leg amputation is not incapable of work. They do face significant barriers to work. Those barriers should be recognised in any civilised system. The decision that this man is not entitled to ESA looks unconscionable and it is - not because he cannot ever work but because he has impairments, and the consequent disability, which demand recognition but are being denied.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">These fundamental considerations mean that the work capability assessment <i>cannot</i> be reformed<i>. </i>No programme of tinkering with descriptors can produce a test that is remotely fair because the work capability assessment is not designed to be fair. It is designed to discipline and humiliate. It is designed to block the legitimate claims disabled people have for support they need to be independent. It has to be ended.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">Nor does Liam Byrne's announcement that ATOS's contract would not be renewed by Labour in itself change anything. The contract for ESA assessments is due for renewal anyway in 2015 and other firms are waiting in line, with Capita probably at the head of the queue. And ATOS still have the contract for PIP assessments over most of the country (PIP - Personal Independence Payment - is the replacement for Disability Living Allowance designed to cut 20% from expenditure and reduce support for 500,000 disabled people). And ATOS's replacement will still be implementing the same work capability assessment. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">ATOS are not simply incompetent anyway. They have done what government - the last Labour government - asked them to do. They have implemented a system designed to reduce expectations of, and demand for, support by the state for disabled people. They have enabled a campaign of harassment and abuse, orchestrated by the coalition government, against disabled people and other claimants. They have done what they were paid to do even if 10,000 died in the process.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">That does not mean we have wasted our time in all the campaigns, pickets and protests, just that we have a long way still to go. There are some signs for instance that Tribunals - and even decision makers at the DWP - are coming to recognise how crude and inadequate is the work capability assessment. Many more decisions are being made that circumvent the test proper by using the 'exceptional circumstances' provisions that exist alongside the test. Regulations 29 and 35 of the ESA Regulations are the ones to cite. If you can show that there would be 'a serious risk to your physical or mental health' if you were to fail the test - either for the support group or for the work related activity group - then a Tribunal in particular can bypass the points system and award ESA regardless.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">But NOW - now it gets worse. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17px;"><b>SEE NEXT POST ON MANDATORY RECONSIDERATION</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-15946326905425468402013-09-19T07:09:00.001-07:002013-09-25T14:43:25.433-07:00<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">WE OWN YOU</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A short comment on<a href="http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/officials-who-caught-benefits-cheat-1284342" target="_blank"> this case</a>. Joanne Gibbons, "a benefit cheating single mum" as the MEN nicely puts it, was claiming Income Support and Child Tax Credit when she started a job which must have been for over 16 hours a week. What she was supposed to do then was to switch her </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Income Support </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">claim</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to a claim for Working Tax Credit. She didn't, she went on claiming Income Support and didn't tell the DWP about her work.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Someone informed on her, anonymously as always. The DWP investigated and got details of the work. She will have been interviewed under caution, admitted the work and her Income Support will have been stopped. Then she was charged, probably with 'knowingly' failing to disclose a material fact under S112, Social Administration Act. This is a relatively minor charge, used when dishonest intent cannot be proved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As part of their preparation for Court, the DWP will have prepared a statement of how much extra money Ms Gibbons received through her non-disclosure as compared to what she would have received had she gone about it in the approved way. At that stage they made what should have been an embarrassing discovery: her Working Tax Credit, had she claimed it, would have been approximately double the amount she in fact claimed. It's not possible to check these figures without knowing more of Ms Gibbons' circumstances but this is perfectly plausible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even a couple of years ago, this discovery would, in all probability, have led to the charges being dropped. They might have issued a caution or applied an administrative penalty (£350 or a 50% increase in the sum to be repaid) instead. Not now; the case went ahead. Ms Gibbons was convicted as charged, sentenced to 80 hours community service and required to pay £100 costs. Her solicitor, Julian Farley, described the case as "perhaps an indictment of the benefits system".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No, Mr Farley, it is most definitely an indictment of the criminal justice system. What happened was that Ms Gibbons made a decision to let her benefits roll on rather than take the risk of disruption and accidental overpayments associated with the tax credit system. I don't know if that was a fully informed decision, whether Ms Gibbons was aware of the respective figures for each benefit, but it wasn't either a simply stupid or a remotely criminal decision.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now she has a conviction, she has costs and a community order to contend with and, unless the DWP are unwontedly generous, the civil penalties that flow from a conviction are still to follow. She will probably have to repay the £3,140 Income Support overpaid - I think the statement to the contrary in the article just means that the Court didn't order repayment. However the DWP can still recover that amount, do not have to offset </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">notionally underpaid tax credits against </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">overpaid Income Support, and generally don't. And s</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ince she has been convicted of a benefit offence she also faces an automatic three month benefit sanction, during which period she cannot be paid either Income Support or working tax credit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what was the point of this prosecution where there was no fraud and no loss to anyone except Ms Gibbons? I think the DWP and CPS prosecuted simply because they can - it was an exercise of power. They want to assert that power because they, and their political masters, want to send a message to anyone claiming benefit:<b> we own you.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We own you because you are poor and have to claim benefit. If you break our rules, you will pay. We will humiliate and disempower you at every turn. We will use our press to denounce and stigmatise you. We will sneer at you behind your back. We will do this if you do not work and we will do this if you do work. Your labour is at our disposal through workfare schemes. Your children are under our scrutinity. You are poor: only our rules apply.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This, more or less, is the intended outcome of the government's sustained hate campaign against anyone who, through poverty or disability, has to claim benefit - a sort of modern helotry. They are not there yet. Universal Credit will take them closer. Solidarity in action between workers, especially workers in the state machine, benefit claimants, disabled people and any other oppressed groups can roll them back.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-5894858011855350322013-09-17T06:56:00.000-07:002013-09-19T07:12:35.530-07:00<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: white;"><b>KEIR STARMER IS A FRAUD</b></span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The massive press coverage given to Keir Starmer's </span><a href="http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/latest_news/director_of_public_prosecutions_sets_out_charging_standards_for_benefit_and_tax_credit_fraud/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">announcement</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> of new Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) guidance on benefit fraud cases emphasises just how central a </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">political </i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">role benefit fraud, and the war on welfare generally, have for the Coalition government's project. That it is purely a political issue, that it is not genuinely an economic or fiscal problem of the slightest significance, is immediately apparent from the latest </span><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/206552/nfa-annual-fraud-indicator-2013.pdf" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">report </a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">from the National Fraud Authority. From a total loss to the public sector from fraud of £20.6 billion, £14.1 billion is attributed to tax fraud as against only £1.9 billion, less than 1% of expenditure, in benefit and tax credit fraud. And this tax loss is only for fraud narrowly defined - tax evasion of the Google/Starbucks/Amazon kind is vastly more extensive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This much is widely accepted on the left. But, too often, statements pointing this out are accom-panied by a ritual denunciation of benefit fraud - "of course people who defraud the benefits system should be prosecuted" - with no critical examination of the category itself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I want to argue here that 'benefit fraud' is, like poaching under the Game Laws of the 18th century, both a class crime - one that is committed only by working class people driven by necessity - and a political crime, one created and prosecuted for purely political purposes. The vast majority of benefit fraud is not in fact 'criminal' in any generally recognised sense at all and the left should not be joining in its demonisation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what did the one time liberal and mainstay of the Legal Action Group, Keir Starmer QC, have to say on Monday - at a time, quite coincidentally, when signs of public disaffection with the war on welfare were starting to appear? "It is vital that we take a tough stance on this type of fraud". Radical stuff. He then went on to announce two things: that prosecutors would make more use of charges under the Fraud Act, which carry maximum sentences of up to 10 years, instead of specific charges under social security legislation for which sentences are capped at seven years; and that former guidance that suggested using only the magistrates court, with its limited sentencing powers, where the amount allegedly defrauded was less than £20,000, would be withdrawn. This follows the merger of the former DWP prosecution office with the CPS in April 2012.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How much difference will this make? The new guidance will have some effect, leading to more prosecutions and stiffer sentences, over a period. The publicity will do more - when a routine policy announcement from the CPS fills the front page of the Times, that is tantamount to an instruction from our ruling class, to its junior members and acolytes in the lower reaches of the state, to show no mercy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From now on then, there will be more families broken up, mothers and babies in <a href="http://www.justice.gov.uk/contacts/prison-finder/styal" target="_blank">Styal</a>, and tabloid denunciations for people who took one chance too many to salvage or improve their lives; all to promote class hatred, salvage the coalition and procure another term as Director of Public Prosecutions for Mr Starmer. For the record, I'm against benefit fraud on an individual level: you'll probably get caught which can ruin your life - and I wouldn't want anyone to give these bastards a chance to do that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What then does benefit fraud, this affront to decency and scourge of the nation, look like? </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/v_to_z/welfare_rural_and_health_cases/" target="_blank">new CPS guidance</a> for prosecuting counsel actually includes a useful and quite accurate typology of benefit fraud - I think we are to understand the four categories as listed in decreasing order of frequency:</span></div>
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1) A failure to declare true financial circumstances</h4>
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e.g. employment (paid or unpaid, employed or self employed work), household income of any kind, capital (including savings, properties owned, investments, student status (including loans or grants), outgoings over declared (including rent or childcare), nursery care</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So you do a bit of work, don't fancy seeing 85% of what you earn go in lost Housing Benefit, and keep it quiet. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or you help a mate out with his business and he can't pay you properly and slips you the odd twenty. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or your ex-husband put your name down as joint owner of a property in some shady dealings of his and, since you never want to see him or his again, it doesn't occur to you to declare it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or, desperate for a bit more money, you and your childminder overstate the fees charged and split the difference (which is conspiracy and more serious). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or you're a Polish single parent, can't get work, can't get benefit unless you do work, so you invent some self employment. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or you get 20K compensation for something or other. Money for the first time in your life. Pay some debts, get a few nice things, spread it out a bit among all your nice new friends and it's gone. So you don't tell the social.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You do it because feel like you've got to. I did it when I was unemployed with a young family - two years undeclared cleaning work for family and friends. It got us through.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Occasionally you get some rich bastard stashing away millions then trying to claim Housing Benefit. Usually a pensioner. There were a few more like that after the property crash. But mostly its desperation and survival in this category.</span></div>
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2) Failure to declare true social, personal or family circumstances</h4>
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e.g living with a partner as husband and wife, children leaving, dependants dying</div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">The last one has me stumped; I have never come across anyone trying to go on claiming for a child after they have died. I think they made that up. </span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">But the others ... </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">Your son storms out after a row. You don't know if or when he's goi</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">ng to move back in but he keeps coming back for a sub. So you keep claiming for him. </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">Or your kids are taken into care. You want them back but you've got a dodgy boyfriend so the social workers will only let you have daytime contacts - no overnights. You've still got the expenses so you still claim for them. </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">Or your boyfriend sort of comes and goes. Good fun when he's around, brings drugs for you and presents for the kids. But you've got two kids and you can't rely on him so you claim as a single parent. BIG overpayment because he used your address to apply for a credit card and you can't prove he wasn't there most of the time.</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">Or you get divorced but you can't get rid of your ex. He keeps coming round because he can't find anywhere half decent to live so you drift into letting him sleep on the sofa. That neighbour you quarreled with phones the fraud hotline and you're in Court for cohabitation.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">The mistake people make is to assume that the complicated messes they make of their lives are their problem and their business. WRONG. If you're poor and claiming a means tested benefit, and especially if you're a woman with children, it's the state's business and you account for it in Court.</span></div>
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3) Disability related fraud</h4>
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e.g. unreported improvement in mobility or diminished care needs (Disability Living Allowance cases), unreported improved capacity to work (Incapacity Benefit and Employment and Support Allowance cases)</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This always makes good press. Plenty of hearty scoffing and guffaws to be had over the story of the man claiming DLA who ran a marathon dressed as a parrot, or climbed Mt. Everest - or whatever. The thing is though, even in the most egregious examples, it's not that the person doesn't have a problem at all; they do. The condition might have eased off, they might find they can do more than they thought but, on the inside, they know they're not right. But it's appearances that count and if you don't look disabled enough you can have a problem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But of course if you've got a proper disability this won't happen to you. Like the woman in her 50's who had three strokes but recovered well enough to potter slowly round the house (although she tended to walk into doors) - prosecuted and convicted. Like the young woman with cystic fibrosis who was investigated, videoed, raided and prosecuted for all the DLA she had received in her adult life - the prosecution was dropped at the last minute and she was dead soon afterwards. Like the man, a single parent with multiple sclerosis, who got a part time job, declared it, but didn't tell DLA - prosecution averted but the DLA stopped. People I knew.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Disabled people today face continual and repeated challenge, disbelief and punishment, by the state and its agents, for their impairments. We have to be ready, all the time, for the next ATOS medical, DLA reassessment, Social Services review of our care package, or argument at the disabled parking space. We internalise the pressure, feeling guilty when we have a good day, rehearsing our defence in an inner monologue. We think twice before demonstrating our real capabilities for who knows who is watching?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And now Mr Starmer wants to make sure we are prosecuted to the full extent of the law if we are held by someone, anyone, in authority to have overstated our disability.</span></div>
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4) Identity or organised fraud</h4>
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e.g. applying for national insurance numbers, benefits, payments or other financial advantage, using a false or hijacked identity and/or false identity documents in support; forgery and counterfeiting, or an organised attack or manipulation of the welfare payment system such as a cyber attack, internal or contract fraud.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">OK, I concede the point; this stuff is straightforwardly criminal. It's also rare and not what the Tories actually mean when they talk about benefit fraud.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I also concede that not everyone who is accused of of benefit fraud is a nice person and upright citizen (although many are). That is not the issue. The issue is that almost everyone accused of benefit fraud is poor, disabled, or both, and that their 'crime' is created and structured entirely by a jealous, intrusive and punitive system of means testing and assessment which is applied exclusively to them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In times to come, I hope and believe, it will seem as cruel and bizarre to have criminalised and destroyed people in their tens of thousands for behaviour forced onto them by this system, as the deadly struggle between landlords and poachers under the Game Laws seems today.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We must demand, as a partial minimum reform, an unconditional basic income (coupled with a <a href="http://inclusionlondon.co.uk/domains/inclusionlondon.co.uk/local/media/downloads/UK_Disabled_People__s_Manifesto___Reclaiming_Our_Futures.pdf" target="_blank">basic disability income</a>) which will eliminate most elements of the so-called crime of benefit fraud. And Keir Starmer has to go.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two additional points. First it might be supposed that the process of bringing a criminal charge of benefit fraud is surrounded with checks and balances to ensure that justice is done. Surely the case will have been thoroughly and forensically investigated to ensure both that the facts are beyond reasonable dispute, and that the law is being correctly applied? Someone's liberty is at stake and the defendant is legally represented.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact the procedure is slipshod and full of error. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The amount overpaid (critical for sentencing) is routinely exaggerated. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most basic question - whether the accused was or was not entitled to the benefit they received - is invariably assumed by the criminal court to have been authoritatively decided by the initial, purely administrative decision of the DWP. The best chance for the defendant is to have that decision overturned on appeal by a benefit tribunal. However, criminal defence lawyers do not do benefit tribunals and judges characteristically ignore or dismiss tribunal proceedings. For a full account of the grotesque inadequacies of benefit fraud trials see <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmworpen/memo/decision/ucm0102.htm" target="_blank">this excellent and detailed memorandum</a> by Neil Bateman, who has been ploughing a lonely furrow in this field for years. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Second, press accounts of benefit fraud cases (which are always based on material presented to them by the DWP and never investigated) invariably feature only the criminal sentence and fail to mention the wide range of civil sanctions which are imposed by the DWP alongside the sentence - any overpayment is always recovered from ongoing benefit entitlement and receipt of future benefits is now barred, on conviction, for between three months and three years. This includes Housing Benefit so loss of the home almost always follows on conviction.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>EDIT: </b> Keir Starmer is apparently not to seek a new term as DPP. Good. I hope his actions come back to haunt him.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12265816634238174252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635114117431180631.post-18660290560551309462013-09-15T09:35:00.001-07:002013-09-15T09:35:17.101-07:00<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18pt;">ON BENEFIT FRAUD, ABUSE AND THE LAW<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Welfare fraud stories often repay critical examination. They can tell
you a lot about how the law works and the press report it. I will have a
look at some reported cases from time to time on this blog. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Consider </span><a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/benefits-cheat-mum-jailed-150000-2272465#ixzz2esjYL8G8"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">this case</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">, from the Daily
Mirror: a woman, Jayne Young from Hartlepool, who allegedly claimed,
fraudulently, up to £150,000, mostly in Income Support and Housing
Benefit. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The article makes much of the fact that, at £40 per month, Ms
Young will take 178 years to repay less than half the total (the figures are
inaccurate but never mind). And, it notes bitterly at the end, the repayment
order only applies if she gets a job - HA!</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">In fact following conviction, and on release from prison, she will be
barred from claiming almost all benefits for three years. When she is allowed
to claim, any benefit she gets will be reduced by at least £78 a month, indefinitely.
The Court compensation order is on top; her punishment is going to go on for a
long time.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">But what was the crime? She allegedly claimed benefit as a single parent
for 10 years while living with her partner, Jason Swanson. He is the father of
her two eldest children. <span style="background: white;">They had three
holidays together in 10 years. </span> According to the
defence "<span style="background: white;">Young had a troubled life and
difficult partner and there were times when she was living alone. She has
severe depression".</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">That's all we know but it suggests a bit more. Mr
Swanson is apparently <i>not</i> the father of some younger child or
children. He was 'difficult' in unspecified ways. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">We can assume he was
working or the overpayment would have been much lower.<span style="background: white;"> And they did not actually live together all the time.</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">It seems just remotely possible on these facts that
the person who actually gained from all this was Mr Swanson. He was
accommodated for free. He did not have to make more than minimal provision for
his children. He could go off and leave Ms Young when the fancy took him. He
either knew, or deliberately failed to know, that Ms Young was claiming benefit
as a single parent and accepted the resulting financial gains. And he faces
none of the consequences.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">There are clearly darker possibilities of mental or
physical abuse as well but, discounting these, something still looks rather
wrong here. And it is not an uncommon story at all.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">I worked in welfare rights for thirty years. We
would see this type of case quite regularly - a 'cohab' case we would call it,
in the cynical shorthand you fall into; short for cohabitation. The actual
legal provision is that a man and a woman "living together as husband and
wife" will have their income aggregated for the purposes of all means
tested benefits. And for some benefits, like Income Support, a couple cannot be
entitled if either of them are in full time work.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">If you claim Income Support as a single parent you
are therefore required to disclose if you start to live with someone as husband
and wife. If you either fail to disclose such a fact, or if you positively
misrepresent it - by ticking 'No' in answer to the question that is on every
claim form: "Do you have a partner" - then you have committed a
criminal offence.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Back in the 1970's one of the early campaigns of the
then flourishing claimant's movement was against 'sex snoopers' - social
security officials investigating with whom a woman claimant was sleeping (it
was never the other way round). The campaign worked. Social Security officials
stopped asking questions about people's sexual activity. In fact they stopped
so completely that it became a problem. People in entirely non-sexual
relationships could end up being treated as LTAHAW (living together as husband
and wife; yes, it's an acronym) and have to insist on talking about their
absence of sexual relations.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
However the need for the state to know when a man and woman formed a couple
remained. They could rely on informants much of the time, <i>via </i>various
fraud hotlines. More recently they have been able to use credit reference
agency and other records to pick up any electronic trace of a male presence in
a single parent household. When they have a hot enough tip they deploy
surveillance - a car parked at a discreet distance with an observer taking
notes of comings and goings, or motion sensitive cameras, trained on the
'suspect's' front door, and mounted in a convenient tree. When they're ready
they can raid the house looking for physical evidence of a male presence, and
tour the neighbours, touting for unfriendly statements. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Some people really like doing this stuff. It's like <i>The Sweeney</i> -
a bit.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
But what they actually uncover is, almost always, a long way from the picture
of cynical lies and manipulations that is presented in Court. They find
unstable relationships with the man coming and going as it suits him. They find
men who, when they are in the house, don't feel obliged to contribute
financially. They find wideboys and charmers who keep several houses going They
find violence and abuse. They find disabled children making life difficult or
mothers with major mental health problems. They find women, bringing up their
children effectively alone, who absolutely need their own income, and claiming
benefit is the only way of getting it.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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They find, in short, in a context of low incomes and poverty for both people of
both sexes, a world of relative privilege and freedom for working men, and
women forced, by childcare responsibilities into the 'crime' of benefit fraud.
And this system is created and enforced by the state.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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There are always exceptions of course. Plenty of men do take on their
responsibilities; the downside of that for the woman being that they lose most
of their income. Sometimes the DWP appear vaguely aware that there might be an
issue here and respond by trying and failing to bring conspiracy charges
against the man involved. But the narrative of benefit fraud goes unchallenged,
even on the left, where we tend to argue merely that it is much less prevalent
than government and their media make out - not that the category of fraud
itself is an agent of oppression.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The real crime here then is that there is no right to an independent income for
women taking on childcare responsibilities. Until 1948 there existed, as a
relic of the old Poor Law dating from 1601, a family means test. Any member of
an extended family could, in principle, be made responsible for the support of
any other so that when the young adult son of a family, say, found work, support
for the entire family might stop. Abolition of the household means test in 1948
was rightly celebrated as a great victory for the whole working class movement.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
However the 1948 settlement was still rooted in, and structured by, a host of
gender based assumptions which have only gradually and partially been reformed
away. Still reigning unchallenged is the principle of aggregation of income and
joint means testing of couples for benefits and tax credits. In fact this
principle is being extended. Low income same sex couple are now caught in
exactly the same way as male-female couples - the definition of living together
as husband and wife has been extended to people "living together as civil
partners". And Universal Credit will draw millions of working couples into
the DWP's policing system.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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In 1990, middle and upper class women benefited from the abolition of the
same gender assumption in the tax system - separate taxation was introduced.
That the same principle could be extended to working class women is a notion
met by silence or incredulity. Feminists and socialists need to address this as
a central priority. We need to be demanding a <a href="http://www.basicincome.org/bien/">basic income</a> scheme and an end to
all means testing.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Meanwhile here are a few practical suggestions:</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">if you're claiming as a
single parent, don't let anyone else use your address and return any mail
you receive for someone else. I know it can be hard for people without an
address but the risks here are too unequal for you to be able to help;</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">if there is any question of
you becoming a couple with someone else, set a date: until then they are
only a guest - don't let them use you address, don't let them keep their
things in your home. But don't panic about how many nights a week they
stay - there is no rule about this. What matters is that they have a home
somewhere else, which they still use;</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">if you are pulled in for
cohabitation, the central question is: are you members of the same
household? Not, say, is he your boyfriend or, does he give you any money?
You need evidence, like paying of rent or bills or use of the
address, showing that they live somewhere else;</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">appeal any and all benefit
decisions saying you are a member of a couple. Concentrate on these
appeals, rather than the criminal case. You have a much better chance of
winning at a benefit tribunal than in a criminal court. And if you win the
appeal, the criminal case usually collapses.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
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