Well, fancy that. Here we are in the midst of a diabolical ideological attack on the Social Security system and instead of the serious journalism on this subject we are crying out for, I see that prime time viewing on BBC One this Wednesday is a fascinating new series called 'Britain on the Fiddle' about (surprise, surprise) benefit cheats.
I seriously question the purpose of yet another programme looking at benefits from the fraud perspective, especially from what is supposed to be a public service broadcaster. I'm sure these programmes bring in the ratings; how smug we should feel when we see those shameless scroungers caught on camera and banged to rights! But where is the 'balance'? Where are the journalists asking the awkward questions about the number of people falsely accused of benefit fraud by nasty neighbours jealous of the Motorbility car? Where is the documentary looking at how cuts to legal aid are preventing claimants from receiving specialist advice and support at appeals? Who's investigating the benefit fraud cases going to court on the basis of inflated overpayment figures, because the DWP aren't taking account of ongoing entitlement?
Recent surveys have revealed that the general public have alarming misconceptions about the level of benefit fraud, generally believing 24% of payments go on dishonest claims, when the true figure is about 0.7%. But is it surprising that people think a quarter of benefits are claimed fraudulently, when it seems 90% of programming and reporting on Social Security focuses on benefit fraud!
The problem isn't just the ubiquitous nature of these negative stories about claimants, its the prominence they get. To be fair to the BBC, they have made a number of interesting documentaries looking at the origins of the 'Credit Crunch' and the misdemeanours of the bankers, but these are typically tucked away on BBC Two. The 'On the Fiddle' programmes get a BBC One slot, often hot on the heels of a popular soap and ahead of the main evening news.
And whereas bankers and politicians under scrutiny get an office-based interview with a journalist in which to put their side of the story, or allow their spin-doctors or lawyers to do the talking, the claimants are viewed entirely through the eyes and shaky films of the DWP investigators, have absolutely no control over the programme content, no intermediary to spin their story and no right of reply. I may be wrong - unlike Iain Duncan Smith, I don't regard my personal feelings about something as irrefutable evidence of its unquestionable truth - but it seems to me that the public hostility towards claimants and 'welfare' can be traced back to the advent of these nasty, snide excuses for documentaries.
Now you might think there's an obvious way to redress this - some documentaries filmed in advice centres, following people as they struggle through their daily lives, claims and appeals, and indeed the nauseatingly-named 'Saints and Scroungers' does include a heart-warming tale or two of bravery against the odds. But that's done cynically, to put the fraudsters on show into sharper relief. If the programme makers really wanted to help 'deserving' claimants, the show would just look at the 'Saints'.
But where do you find your 'Saints' when claimants now live in a climate of fear and are afraid to tell even their friends and neighbours that they are 'on benefits'? The local media would often ask for a 'human interest' angle on a social security story, but even before we reached the current level of hysteria, it was almost impossible to persuade people to come forward no matter how dreadful the treatment they had received. And as advisers, we couldn't tell their story without their consent. I've ended up addressing the issues and injustices I saw through writing fiction, but the majority of benefit claimants' voices go unheard, especially those accused of being a 'cheat'.
Now some fool is bound to be thinking that this diatribe means I think benefit fraud is somehow 'OK'. It doesn't, and I don't. But it's time for the media to stop obsessing about benefit fraud; IDS will still accuse the BBC of anti-Government bias, no matter how many of these programmes you commission, so stop it now!
Instead, let's talk about the benefits that people are entitled to that go unclaimed - a sum estimated at up to £16 billion annually, over ten times the £1.2 billion attributed to benefit fraud. Let's have some old fashioned 'public information films' aimed at telling people what they are entitled to, and some soap opera storylines where older characters claim their Pension Credit so can turn the heating back on, where sick and disabled characters get reassessed for ESA, lose their money but appeal and win (and we're all cheering them on) and where working characters grumble about how complicated their Tax Credits are. Because when benefits stop being taboo in popular culture, real claimants who aren't desperate exhibitionists lured onto reality TV by the siren hope of becoming a celebrity will be willing to come forward and tell their stories.
Sunday 3 November 2013
Thursday 31 October 2013
Two can live more cheaply than one?
In my recent post 'Poor Old Pensioners' I looked at the way Savings Credit is being allowed to wither on the vine, and also compared the basic benefit entitlement of a 'mixed age' couple (one above Pension Credit age - currently about 61 and three-quarters - and one below) under the current benefits system and after Universal Credit is introduced. The difference being that presently, the elder partner's age determines entitlement, while under Universal Credit, the younger partner's age determines entitlement. In practice, this means the couple eligible for Pension Credit are entitled to £222.05 per week, but those entitled to Universal Credit receive just £112.86.
Right now, this could be the difference between living in Ashton-under-Lyne (where Universal Credit is being rolled out) or Newcastle-under-Lyme (which is currently spared). Or it might be the difference between making your claim at the end of March 2014, when Universal Credit still won't have been introduced in most parts of the country, and making your claim in April 2014, or June 2014, or October 2014 or whatever random date Universal Credit comes your way. It could mean neighbours in the same financial situation receive vastly different levels of state help due to accident of postcode or a day's difference in date of claim.
But while I was explaining this scenario to a colleague, it occured to me that there is something even more bizarre about Universal Credit and people of Pension Credit age, and that concerns what happens if a single person over Pension Credit age finds a partner.
Let's look at an example concerning a single pensioner in the weird benefit world of Universal Credit: for no particular reason, let's call him Bob. Bob is 63 - not old enough for his state pension, but out-of-work. Bob doesn't have to be available for work to claim benefit at his age, and with nothing else to keep body and soul together, Bob qualifies for £145.05 per week Pension Credit.
Bob's a single chap, and a couple of widowed ladies in his street see him as an eligible batchelor - let's call them Betty and Brenda. Betty is also over Pension Credit age and also receives Pension Credit on top of her state pension, giving her a weekly income of £145.05. Brenda is still under Pension Credit age so entitled to only £71.70 per week Jobseekers' Allowance.
If Betty gets her man, the state will assume that 'two can live as cheaply as one', with common fuels bills and other household expenses, and they'll be entitled to £222.05 a week as a couple - £68.05 per week less than they received as individual claimants, but £77 per week more than Bob received on his own.
But if Bob picks the 'younger woman', their joint entitlement is only £112.86 per week Universal Credit, £103.89 less than they received individually and, astonishingly, £32.19 per week less than Bob was entitled to on his own. In this case, two must live more cheaply than one. Bad luck, Brenda: youth loses out to experience where Universal Credit is concerned.
And youth loses out by even more if Bob's house is rented and has a 'spare room' or two, as he and Brenda would then be liable for 'Bedroom Tax' - deducted from their Universal Credit - while he and Betty would not.
Similar financial dilemmas arise for unemployed couples when the elder reaches Pension Credit age. If they stay together under the new benefit regime, it's £112.86 per week Universal Credit for the pair of them (actually paid monthly in arrears), at least until the younger partner crosses the Pension Credit age threshold, but if the 'pensioner' opts to go it alone, he or she is eligible for £145.05 weekly as a single person. With families under exceptional financial and emotional pressure during long-term unemployment, and new work generally harder to find as you get closer to retirement age, it is entirely possible that this will end relationships and that people will have to consider separating in order to pay the bills.
While 'taxpayers' are being offered a tax break, supposedly to encourage stable relationships through marriage and civil partnerships, older unemployed couples face a harsh financial penalty for staying together.
Right now, this could be the difference between living in Ashton-under-Lyne (where Universal Credit is being rolled out) or Newcastle-under-Lyme (which is currently spared). Or it might be the difference between making your claim at the end of March 2014, when Universal Credit still won't have been introduced in most parts of the country, and making your claim in April 2014, or June 2014, or October 2014 or whatever random date Universal Credit comes your way. It could mean neighbours in the same financial situation receive vastly different levels of state help due to accident of postcode or a day's difference in date of claim.
But while I was explaining this scenario to a colleague, it occured to me that there is something even more bizarre about Universal Credit and people of Pension Credit age, and that concerns what happens if a single person over Pension Credit age finds a partner.
Let's look at an example concerning a single pensioner in the weird benefit world of Universal Credit: for no particular reason, let's call him Bob. Bob is 63 - not old enough for his state pension, but out-of-work. Bob doesn't have to be available for work to claim benefit at his age, and with nothing else to keep body and soul together, Bob qualifies for £145.05 per week Pension Credit.
Bob's a single chap, and a couple of widowed ladies in his street see him as an eligible batchelor - let's call them Betty and Brenda. Betty is also over Pension Credit age and also receives Pension Credit on top of her state pension, giving her a weekly income of £145.05. Brenda is still under Pension Credit age so entitled to only £71.70 per week Jobseekers' Allowance.
If Betty gets her man, the state will assume that 'two can live as cheaply as one', with common fuels bills and other household expenses, and they'll be entitled to £222.05 a week as a couple - £68.05 per week less than they received as individual claimants, but £77 per week more than Bob received on his own.
But if Bob picks the 'younger woman', their joint entitlement is only £112.86 per week Universal Credit, £103.89 less than they received individually and, astonishingly, £32.19 per week less than Bob was entitled to on his own. In this case, two must live more cheaply than one. Bad luck, Brenda: youth loses out to experience where Universal Credit is concerned.
And youth loses out by even more if Bob's house is rented and has a 'spare room' or two, as he and Brenda would then be liable for 'Bedroom Tax' - deducted from their Universal Credit - while he and Betty would not.
Similar financial dilemmas arise for unemployed couples when the elder reaches Pension Credit age. If they stay together under the new benefit regime, it's £112.86 per week Universal Credit for the pair of them (actually paid monthly in arrears), at least until the younger partner crosses the Pension Credit age threshold, but if the 'pensioner' opts to go it alone, he or she is eligible for £145.05 weekly as a single person. With families under exceptional financial and emotional pressure during long-term unemployment, and new work generally harder to find as you get closer to retirement age, it is entirely possible that this will end relationships and that people will have to consider separating in order to pay the bills.
While 'taxpayers' are being offered a tax break, supposedly to encourage stable relationships through marriage and civil partnerships, older unemployed couples face a harsh financial penalty for staying together.
Wednesday 30 October 2013
Universal Credit comes to Hammersmith
This week, the unsuspecting, unemployed citizens of Hammersmith became the latest guinea-pigs to be enrolled in the Coalition's floundering Universal Credit experiment. We had been told that six new Jobcentre districts would be taking part, but when the paperwork was published it turned out to be only Hammersmith joining the few boroughs around Greater Manchester where IDS's Great Leap Forward is happening, while the people of Inverness, Rugby, Shotton and the other intended 'Pathfinders' heaved a collective sigh of relief.
It is true that some low-paid workers will be 'better off' under Universal Credit, but there are also bizarre 'cliff edges' built into the scheme which mean that earning a little more can leave you worse off than before and, with no help with mortgage costs for anyone doing any paid work, the wrong job could still make you homeless. Both issues have been well-researched and addressed in other articles: I recommend -
http://blog.cix.co.uk/gmorgan/2013/03/18/three-big-lies-of-welfare-reform/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/12/universal-credit-less-pay
Something I haven't noticed any comments about to date, however, is an insidious feature of Universal Credit which effectively says that people in low-paid work will have to work harder than those in better-paid employment to receive any help from the state with things like housing costs or raising their children.
Central to Universal Credit when it is finally unleashed in its full glory, is the concept of 'in-work conditionality'. At present, some means-tested benefits available for working people require a set number of hours to be worked in a week (16, 24 or 30 for Working Tax Credit, depending on household circumstances) while others do not (Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support consider only household circumstances and resources).
Universal Credit will expect anyone fit for work to have earned income equivalent to a set number of hours at the minimum wage, and where the level of earnings falls short of this, the worker/claimant will be required to demonstrate that they are actively seeking better-paid work or more hours, or risk forfeiting their benefit.
For a single person without caring responsibilities or health problems, this threshold is expected to be the equivalent of 35 hours at the minimum wage. For couples without caring responsibilities, both will be expected to be earning to this level, or actively seeking to do so. Even where there are caring responsibilities - for example, a child of school age - the 'responsible carer' will still be required to work, or seek to do so, for however many hours the decision maker assesses reasonable in the light of those commitments.
Now there may be an argument to be had about the extent to which people should or shouldn't be able to choose how many hours they work, and the extent to which the State/Taxpayer should subsidise those working fewer hours but, unlike the Tax Credit system, the key factor here isn't the number of hours, it's the level of income. And what that means is, the higher your hourly rate, the more 'choice' you have about your work-life balance.
A worker on the minimum wage will have to work the maximum number of hours to avoid falling foul of sanctions, while someone on twice their hourly rate will meet the required earnings threshold on a typical job-share. A highly-paid professional person could supplement a day per week's consultancy or less with an award of Universal Credit, so long as they met their earnings threshold. Arguably, this would still leave them on a low income in most cases and probably keen to find more hours, but with child maintenance disregarded as income, it does set up the notional scenario - especially in prosperous Hammersmith - where a highly-paid professional divorcee might work one day and spend the rest of her week as she pleased, eligible for as much Universal Credit as her cleaner, who's expected to work full-time!
I've long argued that with more people fit for work and of working age than jobs for us all to do, there is an inescapable logic in devising a tax and benefits system that encourages people onto a shorter working week in order to share the hours and wages available more fairly. But a system where the better-paid have that choice but the lowest paid, often in the most dull, physically demanding and unrewarding jobs, are required to work harder than at present, is no 'reform'.
It is true that some low-paid workers will be 'better off' under Universal Credit, but there are also bizarre 'cliff edges' built into the scheme which mean that earning a little more can leave you worse off than before and, with no help with mortgage costs for anyone doing any paid work, the wrong job could still make you homeless. Both issues have been well-researched and addressed in other articles: I recommend -
http://blog.cix.co.uk/gmorgan/2013/03/18/three-big-lies-of-welfare-reform/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/12/universal-credit-less-pay
Something I haven't noticed any comments about to date, however, is an insidious feature of Universal Credit which effectively says that people in low-paid work will have to work harder than those in better-paid employment to receive any help from the state with things like housing costs or raising their children.
Central to Universal Credit when it is finally unleashed in its full glory, is the concept of 'in-work conditionality'. At present, some means-tested benefits available for working people require a set number of hours to be worked in a week (16, 24 or 30 for Working Tax Credit, depending on household circumstances) while others do not (Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support consider only household circumstances and resources).
Universal Credit will expect anyone fit for work to have earned income equivalent to a set number of hours at the minimum wage, and where the level of earnings falls short of this, the worker/claimant will be required to demonstrate that they are actively seeking better-paid work or more hours, or risk forfeiting their benefit.
For a single person without caring responsibilities or health problems, this threshold is expected to be the equivalent of 35 hours at the minimum wage. For couples without caring responsibilities, both will be expected to be earning to this level, or actively seeking to do so. Even where there are caring responsibilities - for example, a child of school age - the 'responsible carer' will still be required to work, or seek to do so, for however many hours the decision maker assesses reasonable in the light of those commitments.
Now there may be an argument to be had about the extent to which people should or shouldn't be able to choose how many hours they work, and the extent to which the State/Taxpayer should subsidise those working fewer hours but, unlike the Tax Credit system, the key factor here isn't the number of hours, it's the level of income. And what that means is, the higher your hourly rate, the more 'choice' you have about your work-life balance.
A worker on the minimum wage will have to work the maximum number of hours to avoid falling foul of sanctions, while someone on twice their hourly rate will meet the required earnings threshold on a typical job-share. A highly-paid professional person could supplement a day per week's consultancy or less with an award of Universal Credit, so long as they met their earnings threshold. Arguably, this would still leave them on a low income in most cases and probably keen to find more hours, but with child maintenance disregarded as income, it does set up the notional scenario - especially in prosperous Hammersmith - where a highly-paid professional divorcee might work one day and spend the rest of her week as she pleased, eligible for as much Universal Credit as her cleaner, who's expected to work full-time!
I've long argued that with more people fit for work and of working age than jobs for us all to do, there is an inescapable logic in devising a tax and benefits system that encourages people onto a shorter working week in order to share the hours and wages available more fairly. But a system where the better-paid have that choice but the lowest paid, often in the most dull, physically demanding and unrewarding jobs, are required to work harder than at present, is no 'reform'.
Sunday 27 October 2013
Poor Old Pensioners
When the Government plays the deserving poor off against the undeserving poor, the Pensioner is always to be found on the side of the angels. Hence, despite the fact that pensions make up something in the region of 46% of all Social Security spending, we are regularly assured by earnestly-spoken ministers that pensioners have been 'protected' from the cuts.
Future pensioners may be less fortunate, especially as Universal Credit takes effect. At present, the effective 'age' for benefit claims from couples is that of the elder of the two - thus a couple where one is above pension credit age and one below are both 'pensioners' for benefit purposes, eligible for higher allowances, exempt from many of the evils inflicted on those of working age; the hated 'Bedroom Tax' and cuts to Council Tax support that have seen thousands of working-age benefit claimants struggling with new housing costs and marched off to Court. They are also not required to prove incapacity, nor to demonstrate availability and active searching for work.
Universal credit turns this on its head, making the younger partner's age the effective one for the claim, with potentially expensive consequences. Income-based Jobseekers Allowance for a couple is £112.55 per week (Universal Credit is projected to be a similar sum), while Pension Credit is £222.05 - more than twice as much - and working-age benefits have a fixed capital limit, lower level of disregarded capital and a higher rate of tariff income for savings. Without taking account of the sharper contrast the capital rules might impose, over a year the difference between being a pensioner and a working-age claimant couple is £5694. An age gap of two years means a loss of £11,388 - an age gap of 20 years, potentially £113,880 at today's values. Though with working-age benefits increasing at no more than 1% while pension-age benefits follow inflation, in reality the gap will widen in real as well as actual terms. And with Council Tax support regulations set up to follow Universal Credit rules once it takes effect, and liability for Bedroom Tax too, the losses to the pensioner and the savings to the Exchequer continue to accumulate.
I often wonder if this measure was the brianchild of an embittered civil servant whose other half ran off with a younger partner!
Existing Pension Credit claimants are safe, pending a 'change of circumstances' that might bring them within the scope of the new regime, but there is a stealth cut already affecting some of them which an eagle-eyed colleague pointed out to me recently, concerning the Savings Credit element of Pension Credit. It's a fairly obscure little piece of the Social Security system, an add-on to Pension Credit intended to address the frequent complaint of many older people that they were being 'penalised' for saving for their old age, and could be no better off than a less thrifty contemporary.
Savings Credit addressed this by paying an additional amount to pensioners over 65 who had a modest amount of savings or income in excess of the basic state pension, to cushion the sharp edge between entitlement to Guarantee Credit and having a few pence too much for it. This very rough diagram, which is not to scale, explains the basic principle:
The dark shaded triangle represents the potential payment of savings credit today, but that Savings Credit triangle is quietly disappearing. The line above represents what entitlement to savings credit would have been prior to the Coalition's 2010 emergency budget. Since then, changes to the qualifying conditions have been effectively been squeezing it from both outer corners.
The weekly income a single pensioner needs in order to qualify has risen from £98.40 in 2010 to £115.30 today, but the maximum credit payable has fallen from £20.52 to £18.06. For a couple, the threshold has risen from £157.25 to £183.90 while the maximum credit has fallen from £27.09 to £22.89.
For a Government supposedly keen to encourage self-reliance, chipping away at this small amount of extra help available to older people who have budgeted to make modest extra provision for their retirement, but are still far from well-off, seems out of step with the rhetoric. And with the long winter evenings and inflation-busting fuel price rises now upon us, those few pounds of savings credit lost every week may prove to have dire consequences.
Future pensioners may be less fortunate, especially as Universal Credit takes effect. At present, the effective 'age' for benefit claims from couples is that of the elder of the two - thus a couple where one is above pension credit age and one below are both 'pensioners' for benefit purposes, eligible for higher allowances, exempt from many of the evils inflicted on those of working age; the hated 'Bedroom Tax' and cuts to Council Tax support that have seen thousands of working-age benefit claimants struggling with new housing costs and marched off to Court. They are also not required to prove incapacity, nor to demonstrate availability and active searching for work.
Universal credit turns this on its head, making the younger partner's age the effective one for the claim, with potentially expensive consequences. Income-based Jobseekers Allowance for a couple is £112.55 per week (Universal Credit is projected to be a similar sum), while Pension Credit is £222.05 - more than twice as much - and working-age benefits have a fixed capital limit, lower level of disregarded capital and a higher rate of tariff income for savings. Without taking account of the sharper contrast the capital rules might impose, over a year the difference between being a pensioner and a working-age claimant couple is £5694. An age gap of two years means a loss of £11,388 - an age gap of 20 years, potentially £113,880 at today's values. Though with working-age benefits increasing at no more than 1% while pension-age benefits follow inflation, in reality the gap will widen in real as well as actual terms. And with Council Tax support regulations set up to follow Universal Credit rules once it takes effect, and liability for Bedroom Tax too, the losses to the pensioner and the savings to the Exchequer continue to accumulate.
I often wonder if this measure was the brianchild of an embittered civil servant whose other half ran off with a younger partner!
Existing Pension Credit claimants are safe, pending a 'change of circumstances' that might bring them within the scope of the new regime, but there is a stealth cut already affecting some of them which an eagle-eyed colleague pointed out to me recently, concerning the Savings Credit element of Pension Credit. It's a fairly obscure little piece of the Social Security system, an add-on to Pension Credit intended to address the frequent complaint of many older people that they were being 'penalised' for saving for their old age, and could be no better off than a less thrifty contemporary.
Savings Credit addressed this by paying an additional amount to pensioners over 65 who had a modest amount of savings or income in excess of the basic state pension, to cushion the sharp edge between entitlement to Guarantee Credit and having a few pence too much for it. This very rough diagram, which is not to scale, explains the basic principle:
The weekly income a single pensioner needs in order to qualify has risen from £98.40 in 2010 to £115.30 today, but the maximum credit payable has fallen from £20.52 to £18.06. For a couple, the threshold has risen from £157.25 to £183.90 while the maximum credit has fallen from £27.09 to £22.89.
For a Government supposedly keen to encourage self-reliance, chipping away at this small amount of extra help available to older people who have budgeted to make modest extra provision for their retirement, but are still far from well-off, seems out of step with the rhetoric. And with the long winter evenings and inflation-busting fuel price rises now upon us, those few pounds of savings credit lost every week may prove to have dire consequences.
Saturday 12 October 2013
Nobody Expects the Social Justice Ambassadors!
A few days ago I attended a meeting for DWP 'Stakeholders' at one of their larger offices in the Midlands, for a presentation on the current Welfare Reform process. I was hoping to get an update on the progress - or otherwise - of Universal Credit, an insight into how DWP staff would be handling the changes to the appeal procedure known as 'mandatory reconsideration' (I will post separately on this at a later date) and some news on when we might see medical examinations and decisions on claims for Personal Independence Payment, as no claims for 'PIP' have yet been assessed or awarded in our area, to our knowledge, except some under the 'special rules' for people with a terminal illness.
Although I had joked with my colleagues beforehand that it would be like a trip to Orwell's Ministry of Truth circa 1984, I didn't honestly expect it to be any such thing and have always cherished the belief that, give or take the odd jobsworth or judgmental scumbag, the majority of DWP staff are on the same side as those of us doing benefits advice work in the voluntary sector, and want to see people properly supported and correctly awarded their benefits in the event of ill-health, unemployment or other troubles.
Be that as it may, I'm convinced that the woman who delivered the presentation on Universal Credit would have had that cage of rats on my face at the drop of a hat. Forget old-fashioned Civil Service principles like impartiality - welcome to the brave new benefit world of 'progressive pathfinders', 'massive cultural change' and 'Social Justice Ambassadors'.
So in the opening speech we were assured that these are 'exciting times' at the DWP and reminded that Welfare Reform had the support of 'the electorate and taxpayers'; in the next, we were told that in his 2010 emergency budget 'the Chancellor showed his support for disadvantaged customers' - a prime example of Newspeak if I ever heard it! Again and again throughout the morning we were reminded of the 'ecomonic necessity' of cutting the 'financial burden' of 'welfare costs', of 'making work pay' and ending the unemployed person's 'choice' to stay at home on benefits. I don't recall hearing the phrase 'social security' from any of them.
Although there was a presentation on Personal Independence Payment - mercifully light on the political message, in contrast to the other speakers - it was hard not to conclude that the senior DWP staff addressing us perceived all claimants as able-bodied 'shirkers' in need of 'tough love'. Indeed, their presentations seemed keen to present an image of the typical benefit claimant as a reluctant jobseeker - that measures such as the Bedroom Tax (whoops - we mustn't call it that!) and Benefit Cap disproportionally affect people not required to seek work, and generally unable to do so to alleviate the cuts to their benefits, passed them by.
But that's how the Government need us to see them to get away with what they are doing. It would all look pretty shabby if the public realised that the losers from all this 'Welfare Reform' were disabled people and little children, wouldn't it? And it was apparent that our hosts for the morning were sticking rigidly to the official line. This was about benefit claimants being encouraged to 'take responsibility for their actions' - as if the Council worker made redundant thanks to austerity cuts is 'responsible' for their joblessness, or the 'striver' diagnosed with multiple-sclerosis or succumbing to heart attack, stroke or depression from overwork was 'responsible' for their ill-health! But we mustn't think about them - the 'R word' is pitched at the young mum with a tribe of kids by different dads and the beer-swilling, pot-smoking job-dodgers beloved of the tabloid press, and that is who we must picture in our minds when we hear the words 'Welfare Reform' - or else perhaps there'll be a knock at the door in the wee small hours from the Social Justice Ambassadors.
And nobody expects the Social Justice Ambassadors!
Challenged by a delegate from a rural area over plans to make long-term unemployed people attend the Jobcentre on a daily basis, who pointed out that it would be prohibitively expensive to do so in her area either by car or public transport, the first response from one of the speakers was 'how would they get to work, then?' - a breathtakingly patronising response which conveniently overlooked the fact that, at least for now, people do generally get a wage from working, sufficient to cover their traveling costs.
Concerns regarding the budgeting difficulties for 'customers' from the monthly payment of Universal Credit were brushed aside by another spokeswoman, who declared 'I have to pay my mortgage!' as if the fact that she managed this feat of financial wizardry on a senior Civil Servant's salary automatically made monthly budgeting childs-play, regardless of the incomings and outgoings involved. It was a singularly poor example, however: while social and private landlords might wring their hands that rent payments will be made direct to tenants under Universal Credit, mortgage payments will in fact continue to be paid to banks and other lenders by direct deduction.
And Jobcentre staff don't sanction claimants, apparently. I know all those nice CAB volunteers and others dealing with record numbers of penniless jobseekers might think they do, but when the matter was raised we were told 'we don't sanction anybody' - it seems claimants sanction themselves by failing to comply with directions, presumably for the fun of it. Must be the excitement of guessing what's in the next three day food parcel that makes them catch the bus that arrives five minutes late, or attend the job interview that clashes with 'signing on' time.
There was doublespeak going on throughout the morning. A presentation on the new Child Maintenance Service (successor to the infamous Child Support Agency) stressed the importance of encouraging parental co-operation and looking beyond money matters to sharing childcare and emotional support. Unless, presumably, the parents are claiming benefits, in which case there's no provision for sharing those and no 'spare room' for the children at the 'absent parent's' home, which might itself be limited to a room in shared accommodation if he or she is under 35. A selection of 'market stalls' showcasing various aspects of the 'cultural change' in progress included one on 'fraud and error', and while the stallholder went all defensive when challenged on why the emphasis was always on 'fraud' when 'error' was the bigger issue, and underpayment and non-claiming of benefits probably saved the exchequer ten times more than 'benefit fraud' cost it, and muttered about 'official error' being as much as a target as claimant misbehaviour, the stall was strewn with surveillance gadgets, presumably from the DWP's very own 'Q', which the stallholder was altogether too keen to show off. Similarly, talk of making Jobcentres more like friendly 'Internet Cafes' where jobseekers will happily choose to drop in for assistance with their full-time task of finding work in the midst of a recession is somewhat at odds with the reality of under-staffed offices where advisers have no time to give proper support to anyone signing on and are - despite denials - clearly under pressure to sanction first and ask questions later.
Now obviously, I wouldn't expect a DWP spokesperson to tell me that it was all dreadful and that IDS was grinding the faces of the poor, but I equally don't expect to find senior regional Civil Servants quoting the Secretary of State with the fervour of a junior Party member clutching a shiny new copy of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book back in the days of the Cultural Revolution. And that's where the Social Justice Ambassadors come in (there are sixty of them in the Central Region, by the way). Their job is to bring about 'cultural change within our people', explaining the ethos behind the current reforms and 'helping staff understand why' the system needs to change. That, to me, looks like using 'taxpayers money' for Party Political propaganda purposes and a gross misuse of the Civil Service.
The event was made all the more chilling by the non-commital answer of the speakers to the audience's questions, glibly promising to 'feed that concern back', which largely served to demonstrate how far removed they were from the day-to-day consequences of their Department's actions. For all the ghastly little graphics in powerpoint presentations about improving the 'customer journey', there was no sense that any of them truly understood that under the present regime, far too many of their customers' journeys are now to the nearest Foodbank.
Although I had joked with my colleagues beforehand that it would be like a trip to Orwell's Ministry of Truth circa 1984, I didn't honestly expect it to be any such thing and have always cherished the belief that, give or take the odd jobsworth or judgmental scumbag, the majority of DWP staff are on the same side as those of us doing benefits advice work in the voluntary sector, and want to see people properly supported and correctly awarded their benefits in the event of ill-health, unemployment or other troubles.
Be that as it may, I'm convinced that the woman who delivered the presentation on Universal Credit would have had that cage of rats on my face at the drop of a hat. Forget old-fashioned Civil Service principles like impartiality - welcome to the brave new benefit world of 'progressive pathfinders', 'massive cultural change' and 'Social Justice Ambassadors'.
So in the opening speech we were assured that these are 'exciting times' at the DWP and reminded that Welfare Reform had the support of 'the electorate and taxpayers'; in the next, we were told that in his 2010 emergency budget 'the Chancellor showed his support for disadvantaged customers' - a prime example of Newspeak if I ever heard it! Again and again throughout the morning we were reminded of the 'ecomonic necessity' of cutting the 'financial burden' of 'welfare costs', of 'making work pay' and ending the unemployed person's 'choice' to stay at home on benefits. I don't recall hearing the phrase 'social security' from any of them.
Although there was a presentation on Personal Independence Payment - mercifully light on the political message, in contrast to the other speakers - it was hard not to conclude that the senior DWP staff addressing us perceived all claimants as able-bodied 'shirkers' in need of 'tough love'. Indeed, their presentations seemed keen to present an image of the typical benefit claimant as a reluctant jobseeker - that measures such as the Bedroom Tax (whoops - we mustn't call it that!) and Benefit Cap disproportionally affect people not required to seek work, and generally unable to do so to alleviate the cuts to their benefits, passed them by.
But that's how the Government need us to see them to get away with what they are doing. It would all look pretty shabby if the public realised that the losers from all this 'Welfare Reform' were disabled people and little children, wouldn't it? And it was apparent that our hosts for the morning were sticking rigidly to the official line. This was about benefit claimants being encouraged to 'take responsibility for their actions' - as if the Council worker made redundant thanks to austerity cuts is 'responsible' for their joblessness, or the 'striver' diagnosed with multiple-sclerosis or succumbing to heart attack, stroke or depression from overwork was 'responsible' for their ill-health! But we mustn't think about them - the 'R word' is pitched at the young mum with a tribe of kids by different dads and the beer-swilling, pot-smoking job-dodgers beloved of the tabloid press, and that is who we must picture in our minds when we hear the words 'Welfare Reform' - or else perhaps there'll be a knock at the door in the wee small hours from the Social Justice Ambassadors.
And nobody expects the Social Justice Ambassadors!
Challenged by a delegate from a rural area over plans to make long-term unemployed people attend the Jobcentre on a daily basis, who pointed out that it would be prohibitively expensive to do so in her area either by car or public transport, the first response from one of the speakers was 'how would they get to work, then?' - a breathtakingly patronising response which conveniently overlooked the fact that, at least for now, people do generally get a wage from working, sufficient to cover their traveling costs.
Concerns regarding the budgeting difficulties for 'customers' from the monthly payment of Universal Credit were brushed aside by another spokeswoman, who declared 'I have to pay my mortgage!' as if the fact that she managed this feat of financial wizardry on a senior Civil Servant's salary automatically made monthly budgeting childs-play, regardless of the incomings and outgoings involved. It was a singularly poor example, however: while social and private landlords might wring their hands that rent payments will be made direct to tenants under Universal Credit, mortgage payments will in fact continue to be paid to banks and other lenders by direct deduction.
And Jobcentre staff don't sanction claimants, apparently. I know all those nice CAB volunteers and others dealing with record numbers of penniless jobseekers might think they do, but when the matter was raised we were told 'we don't sanction anybody' - it seems claimants sanction themselves by failing to comply with directions, presumably for the fun of it. Must be the excitement of guessing what's in the next three day food parcel that makes them catch the bus that arrives five minutes late, or attend the job interview that clashes with 'signing on' time.
There was doublespeak going on throughout the morning. A presentation on the new Child Maintenance Service (successor to the infamous Child Support Agency) stressed the importance of encouraging parental co-operation and looking beyond money matters to sharing childcare and emotional support. Unless, presumably, the parents are claiming benefits, in which case there's no provision for sharing those and no 'spare room' for the children at the 'absent parent's' home, which might itself be limited to a room in shared accommodation if he or she is under 35. A selection of 'market stalls' showcasing various aspects of the 'cultural change' in progress included one on 'fraud and error', and while the stallholder went all defensive when challenged on why the emphasis was always on 'fraud' when 'error' was the bigger issue, and underpayment and non-claiming of benefits probably saved the exchequer ten times more than 'benefit fraud' cost it, and muttered about 'official error' being as much as a target as claimant misbehaviour, the stall was strewn with surveillance gadgets, presumably from the DWP's very own 'Q', which the stallholder was altogether too keen to show off. Similarly, talk of making Jobcentres more like friendly 'Internet Cafes' where jobseekers will happily choose to drop in for assistance with their full-time task of finding work in the midst of a recession is somewhat at odds with the reality of under-staffed offices where advisers have no time to give proper support to anyone signing on and are - despite denials - clearly under pressure to sanction first and ask questions later.
Now obviously, I wouldn't expect a DWP spokesperson to tell me that it was all dreadful and that IDS was grinding the faces of the poor, but I equally don't expect to find senior regional Civil Servants quoting the Secretary of State with the fervour of a junior Party member clutching a shiny new copy of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book back in the days of the Cultural Revolution. And that's where the Social Justice Ambassadors come in (there are sixty of them in the Central Region, by the way). Their job is to bring about 'cultural change within our people', explaining the ethos behind the current reforms and 'helping staff understand why' the system needs to change. That, to me, looks like using 'taxpayers money' for Party Political propaganda purposes and a gross misuse of the Civil Service.
The event was made all the more chilling by the non-commital answer of the speakers to the audience's questions, glibly promising to 'feed that concern back', which largely served to demonstrate how far removed they were from the day-to-day consequences of their Department's actions. For all the ghastly little graphics in powerpoint presentations about improving the 'customer journey', there was no sense that any of them truly understood that under the present regime, far too many of their customers' journeys are now to the nearest Foodbank.
Wednesday 2 October 2013
Hardworking People
I walked past the Conservative Party Conference site in Manchester on Sunday, along with at least 50,000 others craftily avoiding being caught on camera by the BBC.
Emblazoned across the conference centre facade was the motto 'For Hardworking People'. I couldn't help wondering why, if that were so, there seemed to be so many nurses, teachers, firefighters, builders, doctors, paramedics, civil servants and all manner of other unquestionably 'hard workers' marching by outside booing and jeering at the Tories within.
Among the 'workers' were plenty of retired people and many who were clearly permanently severely physically disabled; those who value the NHS more than most and have arguably felt the impact of 'austerity' hardest of all. There were almost certainly some long-term unemployed people as well and, from that snide strapline about 'hardworking people' and a few well-placed leaks, they probably had a fairly good idea that they would be cast as the villains of the economic story once again. But I'm not sure that any of us would have expected not only the odious Secretary of State for Work and Pensions but the Chancellor and today, the Prime Minister himself, to have singled out unemployed people for so much 'tough love' - by which they mean such caring policies as expecting them to pick litter or clean grafitti for their benefits, attend the Jobcentre on a daily basis or, if you're under 25, manage without any benefits at all.
Apparently, or so we are told by the media, proposals of this type are popular with the voters. Naturally they are, when we are spoon-fed such unpleasant stereotypes of what the 'long-term unemployed' look like: that would be Frank Gallagher from 'Shameless' or his real-life equivalent, gleefully tracked down by a so-called 'reality' TV show, accessorised with a can of beer and a big telly. Similarly our unemployed 'youth' is a youth - a young man, smoking, hood up or cap pulled down over his face, sloping out of the jobcentre, swearing and grumbling. You see these images so often that even if you work in welfare rights, they are almost the default, and that's what the Government rely on when they make these announcements - a lack of empathy.
Except that true 'reality' doesn't look like this at all. Real long-term unemployed people don't choose a 'lifestyle' of unemployment and they are as varied as their counterparts still in work. The majority are likely to be older workers from occupations that don't pity advancing age, from manual labourers and care-workers where physical fitness is key to employability, to teaching and technology where burn-out is an occupational hazard and skills quickly become outdated. As likely to be over-qualified as under-qualified: a story today highlights how a woman was threatened with a potential sanction for refusing to 'dumb down' her CV by a Work Programme adviser. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2439989/Job-centre-staff-told-unemployed-graduate-told-dumb-CV-remove-degree-work.html Yes, I'm afraid that is a link to the Daily Mail website - even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Making someone in either group pick litter for a few months will do nothing to usefully bridge the two-year gap in their CV. Once they are 'long-term unemployed', the damage is done. Access to retraining and support needs to be immediate, genuine and compassionate, not imposed as a form of punishment and bullying on people messing up the economic recovery statistics.
Similarly our jobless young people. They aren't all school-leavers, though even if they were, there would be much wrong with assuming their parents could continue to keep them once the tax credts and child benefit run out, even if there are parents. Cutting benefits will make care leavers even more vulnerable than they are already, surely? But by the age of twenty-five, it's possible to have spent nine years in paid employment and been made redundant, to have a partner and children and a home of your own, mortgaged or rented. Even if you have have just left school, there is no guarantee that there will be job opportunities close to home. Students who have studied away from home may have a better chance of securing work in their University town - but how will they do this with no housing benefit even for a room in a shared house while they look, nor the £57 a week or so currently paid in JSA to the under 25s. If you've grown up in a run-down town with few job opportunities, how do you move to a place with better prospects on no money at all? It will leave many young people seeking to make a new life for themselves desperately vulnerable to exploitation and crime.
What is so vicious about these proposals is framing them as a form of community service punishment to be dished out to 'persistent offenders' who have failed to get jobs after two years and a run-in with the Work Programme. As if no-one who has been long-term unemployed might be willing to take a job street-cleaning or catering, only the Councils who employed people to do these jobs have had their budgets slashed and these posts have had to go. As if someone struggling to master writing a CV and manage online Jobsearch might not welcome the opportunity to see their friendly Jobcentre adviser more regularly than once a fortnight, except that the Jobcentre adviser is now expected to manage a massive caseload and cannot treat any of them as individuals, being under pressure to sanction not support. As if people held back by poor educational attainent wouldn't be glad of the opportunity to brush up their maths and English, if so many libraries and adult education facilities weren't being closed. And as if people with addiction issues aren't crying out for support to help them get clean and lead less chaotic lives, only this Government's cuts have made that support harder to access.
But the Government's own plans for 'Welfare Reform' will themselves increase the numbers counted as 'out of work'. Couples who work now need to manage at least 24 hours a week between them to qualify for working tax credit - up from 16 hours, so a typical 181/2 jobshare is no longer enough if your partner is, for example, sick or a carer - you'll have to fight a colleague for extra hours. Lone parents have had to seek work at an ever decreasing age for their youngest child, and people with health problems that previously saw them classed as unfit for work are now miraculously 'cured' via the ESA work capability assessment. Universal Credit goes further, proposing to pressurise increasing numbers of low-paid and part-time workers to get extra hours or risk losing their benefits, and will extend these work-seeking requirements to people currently off the radar as far as unemployment statistics are concerned - the working-age partners of retired people, people with a low income currently claiming for rent only, including volunteers or carers or childminders for their family, or those in some other way playing a small but useful role in society.
With many more people already chasing the jobs available than there are posts, why add people needlessly to the ranks of the 'unemployed'? Because, unless something is done to create more real jobs, rather than continuing to cut public services still further, how are any of them supposed to become 'hardworking people'?
Emblazoned across the conference centre facade was the motto 'For Hardworking People'. I couldn't help wondering why, if that were so, there seemed to be so many nurses, teachers, firefighters, builders, doctors, paramedics, civil servants and all manner of other unquestionably 'hard workers' marching by outside booing and jeering at the Tories within.
Among the 'workers' were plenty of retired people and many who were clearly permanently severely physically disabled; those who value the NHS more than most and have arguably felt the impact of 'austerity' hardest of all. There were almost certainly some long-term unemployed people as well and, from that snide strapline about 'hardworking people' and a few well-placed leaks, they probably had a fairly good idea that they would be cast as the villains of the economic story once again. But I'm not sure that any of us would have expected not only the odious Secretary of State for Work and Pensions but the Chancellor and today, the Prime Minister himself, to have singled out unemployed people for so much 'tough love' - by which they mean such caring policies as expecting them to pick litter or clean grafitti for their benefits, attend the Jobcentre on a daily basis or, if you're under 25, manage without any benefits at all.
Apparently, or so we are told by the media, proposals of this type are popular with the voters. Naturally they are, when we are spoon-fed such unpleasant stereotypes of what the 'long-term unemployed' look like: that would be Frank Gallagher from 'Shameless' or his real-life equivalent, gleefully tracked down by a so-called 'reality' TV show, accessorised with a can of beer and a big telly. Similarly our unemployed 'youth' is a youth - a young man, smoking, hood up or cap pulled down over his face, sloping out of the jobcentre, swearing and grumbling. You see these images so often that even if you work in welfare rights, they are almost the default, and that's what the Government rely on when they make these announcements - a lack of empathy.
Except that true 'reality' doesn't look like this at all. Real long-term unemployed people don't choose a 'lifestyle' of unemployment and they are as varied as their counterparts still in work. The majority are likely to be older workers from occupations that don't pity advancing age, from manual labourers and care-workers where physical fitness is key to employability, to teaching and technology where burn-out is an occupational hazard and skills quickly become outdated. As likely to be over-qualified as under-qualified: a story today highlights how a woman was threatened with a potential sanction for refusing to 'dumb down' her CV by a Work Programme adviser. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2439989/Job-centre-staff-told-unemployed-graduate-told-dumb-CV-remove-degree-work.html Yes, I'm afraid that is a link to the Daily Mail website - even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Making someone in either group pick litter for a few months will do nothing to usefully bridge the two-year gap in their CV. Once they are 'long-term unemployed', the damage is done. Access to retraining and support needs to be immediate, genuine and compassionate, not imposed as a form of punishment and bullying on people messing up the economic recovery statistics.
Similarly our jobless young people. They aren't all school-leavers, though even if they were, there would be much wrong with assuming their parents could continue to keep them once the tax credts and child benefit run out, even if there are parents. Cutting benefits will make care leavers even more vulnerable than they are already, surely? But by the age of twenty-five, it's possible to have spent nine years in paid employment and been made redundant, to have a partner and children and a home of your own, mortgaged or rented. Even if you have have just left school, there is no guarantee that there will be job opportunities close to home. Students who have studied away from home may have a better chance of securing work in their University town - but how will they do this with no housing benefit even for a room in a shared house while they look, nor the £57 a week or so currently paid in JSA to the under 25s. If you've grown up in a run-down town with few job opportunities, how do you move to a place with better prospects on no money at all? It will leave many young people seeking to make a new life for themselves desperately vulnerable to exploitation and crime.
What is so vicious about these proposals is framing them as a form of community service punishment to be dished out to 'persistent offenders' who have failed to get jobs after two years and a run-in with the Work Programme. As if no-one who has been long-term unemployed might be willing to take a job street-cleaning or catering, only the Councils who employed people to do these jobs have had their budgets slashed and these posts have had to go. As if someone struggling to master writing a CV and manage online Jobsearch might not welcome the opportunity to see their friendly Jobcentre adviser more regularly than once a fortnight, except that the Jobcentre adviser is now expected to manage a massive caseload and cannot treat any of them as individuals, being under pressure to sanction not support. As if people held back by poor educational attainent wouldn't be glad of the opportunity to brush up their maths and English, if so many libraries and adult education facilities weren't being closed. And as if people with addiction issues aren't crying out for support to help them get clean and lead less chaotic lives, only this Government's cuts have made that support harder to access.
But the Government's own plans for 'Welfare Reform' will themselves increase the numbers counted as 'out of work'. Couples who work now need to manage at least 24 hours a week between them to qualify for working tax credit - up from 16 hours, so a typical 181/2 jobshare is no longer enough if your partner is, for example, sick or a carer - you'll have to fight a colleague for extra hours. Lone parents have had to seek work at an ever decreasing age for their youngest child, and people with health problems that previously saw them classed as unfit for work are now miraculously 'cured' via the ESA work capability assessment. Universal Credit goes further, proposing to pressurise increasing numbers of low-paid and part-time workers to get extra hours or risk losing their benefits, and will extend these work-seeking requirements to people currently off the radar as far as unemployment statistics are concerned - the working-age partners of retired people, people with a low income currently claiming for rent only, including volunteers or carers or childminders for their family, or those in some other way playing a small but useful role in society.
With many more people already chasing the jobs available than there are posts, why add people needlessly to the ranks of the 'unemployed'? Because, unless something is done to create more real jobs, rather than continuing to cut public services still further, how are any of them supposed to become 'hardworking people'?
Sunday 8 September 2013
Computer still says "No!"
I wish that people who should know better would stop offering 'lifelines' and encouragement to Iain Duncan Smith and his hideous Universal Credit project. As if having the Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions proposing cross-party discussion to salvage it wasn't demoralising enough, on the eve of a scathing National Audit Office report on the mismanagement of the IT for the project The Guardian, no less, waded clumsily into the debate with an editorial encouraging IDS to 'soldier on'.
Universal Credit is currently a fiasco, but with the potential to become a fully-fledged disaster. I've blogged before about the ill-conceived 'digital by default' intention that all claims will be made online or, in exceptional circumstances, by telephone, and this is indeed happening in 'Pathfinder' areas, but while claimants must use computers and there is no provision for them to use paper forms, their actual claims are being printed out in the offices where they are being processed and their benefit calculated manually with the aid of a spreadsheet by extra staff drafted in for the purpose - about as low-tech as the 21st Century gets. Furthermore, claims are still only being taken from single jobseekers in robust good health without children, earnings or housing costs; hardly a test of any system, since the average Year Three class could probably handle the calculations for that scenario.
Panic set in when one of the UC claimants joined someone else's family, and since once a claim is made for Universal Credit, you're stuck with it, the rest of the household will now lose their income support, tax credits and housing benefit and be reassessed for UC, despite there being no systems in place to deal with such a complex claim. Had the claimant's new partner understood this, perhaps they would have been less keen to get together, but s/he is stuck with it now - even if they split up, the partner will also never be rid of Universal Credit.
This raises the grim spectre of UC spreading from claimant to cohabitee, and thus out of the quarantined 'Pathfinder' areas, like some ghastly new STD, while welfare rights organisations warn of the dangers with a gloomy 'Don't Die of Ignorance' style campaign and struggle to develop the case law to treat it effectively.
So why is 'catching' Universal Credit such a risk? Government statistics (yeah, I know...) suggest that approximately 3.2 million claimants will be better of on UC than their present benefits (albeit rigged by tampering with Working Tax Credit entitlement) and there's the lure of 'simplification' to make it appeal further, assuming you can get an Internet connection for long enough to actually make your claim. But if we take that as our starting point - the one claim for all benefits 'advantage' - it swiftly becomes apparent that this is, in gambling terms, putting everything on 'red' or 'black'. And with sanctions and questionable medical assessments making claiming social security benefits as predictable as a roulette game, that carries a massive risk.
At present, if your JSA is sanctioned or your ESA stopped after an Atos misdiagnosis, your main subsistence benefit may well be thrown into chaos, but at least any assistance via housing benefit that you're getting to keep the roof over your head can be maintained. You may need to make a 'zero income' housing benefit claim a bit sharpish, but the Council don't care if you're fit for work, seeking it actively or not, and while you serve out your suspension or make your appeal, your rent continues to be paid. Similarly, if you have children and find yourself in either of those predicaments, at least you know the Child Tax Credit will be paid while you fight your cause.
Contrast this with the fate of the Universal Credit claimant. Sanctioned - perhaps for missing your 'signing on time' due to a late bus or even a job interview (seriously, that isn't an urban myth) - and everything stops, because you aren't entitled to any of it unless you're meeting your 'claimant commitment'. Disputing a fit to work decision? Try surviving your new 'mandatory reconsideration' period with no money for you, but also nothing for your rent or your kids.
It may be convenient to have all your eggs in one basket, but that's only until someone takes the basket away.
Universal Credit is currently a fiasco, but with the potential to become a fully-fledged disaster. I've blogged before about the ill-conceived 'digital by default' intention that all claims will be made online or, in exceptional circumstances, by telephone, and this is indeed happening in 'Pathfinder' areas, but while claimants must use computers and there is no provision for them to use paper forms, their actual claims are being printed out in the offices where they are being processed and their benefit calculated manually with the aid of a spreadsheet by extra staff drafted in for the purpose - about as low-tech as the 21st Century gets. Furthermore, claims are still only being taken from single jobseekers in robust good health without children, earnings or housing costs; hardly a test of any system, since the average Year Three class could probably handle the calculations for that scenario.
Panic set in when one of the UC claimants joined someone else's family, and since once a claim is made for Universal Credit, you're stuck with it, the rest of the household will now lose their income support, tax credits and housing benefit and be reassessed for UC, despite there being no systems in place to deal with such a complex claim. Had the claimant's new partner understood this, perhaps they would have been less keen to get together, but s/he is stuck with it now - even if they split up, the partner will also never be rid of Universal Credit.
This raises the grim spectre of UC spreading from claimant to cohabitee, and thus out of the quarantined 'Pathfinder' areas, like some ghastly new STD, while welfare rights organisations warn of the dangers with a gloomy 'Don't Die of Ignorance' style campaign and struggle to develop the case law to treat it effectively.
So why is 'catching' Universal Credit such a risk? Government statistics (yeah, I know...) suggest that approximately 3.2 million claimants will be better of on UC than their present benefits (albeit rigged by tampering with Working Tax Credit entitlement) and there's the lure of 'simplification' to make it appeal further, assuming you can get an Internet connection for long enough to actually make your claim. But if we take that as our starting point - the one claim for all benefits 'advantage' - it swiftly becomes apparent that this is, in gambling terms, putting everything on 'red' or 'black'. And with sanctions and questionable medical assessments making claiming social security benefits as predictable as a roulette game, that carries a massive risk.
At present, if your JSA is sanctioned or your ESA stopped after an Atos misdiagnosis, your main subsistence benefit may well be thrown into chaos, but at least any assistance via housing benefit that you're getting to keep the roof over your head can be maintained. You may need to make a 'zero income' housing benefit claim a bit sharpish, but the Council don't care if you're fit for work, seeking it actively or not, and while you serve out your suspension or make your appeal, your rent continues to be paid. Similarly, if you have children and find yourself in either of those predicaments, at least you know the Child Tax Credit will be paid while you fight your cause.
Contrast this with the fate of the Universal Credit claimant. Sanctioned - perhaps for missing your 'signing on time' due to a late bus or even a job interview (seriously, that isn't an urban myth) - and everything stops, because you aren't entitled to any of it unless you're meeting your 'claimant commitment'. Disputing a fit to work decision? Try surviving your new 'mandatory reconsideration' period with no money for you, but also nothing for your rent or your kids.
It may be convenient to have all your eggs in one basket, but that's only until someone takes the basket away.
Sunday 1 September 2013
Stale bread and circuses
There were more negative 'people on benefits' stories kicking about in the press this week, from Jamie Oliver slating the eating habits of people claiming to be poor who still - shock, horror - found the money for huge televisions, to a DWP press release on implausible defences put forward by alleged social security fraudsters. What larks! Considering that the latter was so blatant a piece of propaganda that it would have made Orwell's Ministry of Truth blush, it was disappointing to see it run unquestioned and apparently unedited in this weekend's Guardian. A depressing piece of 'friendly fire' from a paper that usually knows better.
The 'Grauniad', ironically giving the smug Mr Oliver its 'My Family Values' slot, also found room for this excellent critique of his latest headline-grabbing, totally-unrelated-to-his-new-TV-series-and- spin-off-book rant, and there is little to add to it except to confirm that low income households get their (expletive deleted) big TVs and other luxuries either on easy terms but at premium prices from the Brighthouses of this world, or occasionally as a gift from better-off relations (often the claimant's parents as a present for their grandchildren).
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/30/credit-jamie-oliver-doesnt-understand
But it's become the staple stereotype proof that life on benefits must be pretty cushy. Not so. Consider that Jobseekers' Allowance is just £112 per week for a couple, to cover food, fuel, 'phone, toiletries, utilities, clothes and shoes and weekly payments off that big TV. It's a sum most people could easily spend on a good meal and drinks for four in a decent pub-restaurant, a thought that occured to me even as we split the bill with friends for just that about a week ago.
As for the DWP press release, the devil is in the detail. While the silly stories steal the headlines, the purpose is made clear when it goes on to say that anti-fraud initiatives are to be stepped up in the autumn. So get used to seeing more drag artists in high heels claiming DLA, though it's tempting to suggest that the defence in that case missed the obvious mitigation that surely anyone trying to walk in those shoes would be in severe discomfort!
But there is a serious point to watch for in all of these cases and which illustrates that the aim is demonisation of claimants and the denegration of the benefits system rather than effective management of erroneous and fraudulent claims. These days, in contrast to common practice some years ago, there is no attempt by the DWP to present figures showing whether the claimant would have been entitled to benefit had their correct circumstances been known, nor to offset this against the sum wrongly paid.
As a result, people are going into Court accused of defrauding the Public Purse of tens of thousands of pounds, with imprisonment a potential consequence, when they might have been eligible for almost as much, and sometimes more, had their true circumstances been known. This is commonly the case where a person claiming as a lone parent has failed to declare a low-waged partner, where time and again they would have been better off receiving tax credits as a working household. In a recent case in my local area, a disabled woman was taken to Court accused of defrauding almost £80,000 for failing to disclose that she had a partner - a sum that would certainly have seen her go to prison - but was 'spared jail' as the papers say thanks to an independent report commissioned by her solicitor that showed the true difference between what she had received and what she was entitled to was an overpayment of barely £1,000.
To use an analogy I've possibly suggested before, it's like being accused of doing 100mph in a 30mph limit, when you were actually doing 35.
Which begs the question: if you genuinely want people to 'come clean' about such arrangements, why wouldn't you make a big splash of publicity about cases of this nature? The cynical side of me wonders whether that might be because it would undermine the 'we need to reform the system to make work pay' litany, since work has 'paid' in relation to out-of-work benefits in the majority of cases since the inception of tax credits and cases like this would serve to reinforce that, and make liars of the present generation of DWP spin-doctors.
Indeed, if what you really want is for people currently claiming dubiously to stop doing so, why not try an amnesty? That would certainly help anyone who knows that they went from 'it's complicated' to 'in a relationship' a little while ago, and is now afraid to own up for fear of being hit with a massive overpayment or prosecuted. It would give 'cash in hand' workers an opportunity to seek a proper contract, without the threat of being dropped in it by the employer whose been exploiting them. It would allow the claimant fighting back after serious injury to take a long, hard look at how far they've come and find the courage to hand back the keys to the motability car, without the fear of being called a scrounger for daring to get well again.
But that isn't what we're going to see. Instead, expect more women in controlling, abusive on-off relationships to be paraded through the Courts as benefit cheats, when all they've been trying to do is maintain a secure income for themselves and their children, and watch as people who've learned to live with the pain of their injuries and disabilities, and would be called 'brave' if they were wealthy, are pilloried in your local paper as play-actors and liars.
Let the Games begin...
The 'Grauniad', ironically giving the smug Mr Oliver its 'My Family Values' slot, also found room for this excellent critique of his latest headline-grabbing, totally-unrelated-to-his-new-TV-series-and- spin-off-book rant, and there is little to add to it except to confirm that low income households get their (expletive deleted) big TVs and other luxuries either on easy terms but at premium prices from the Brighthouses of this world, or occasionally as a gift from better-off relations (often the claimant's parents as a present for their grandchildren).
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/30/credit-jamie-oliver-doesnt-understand
But it's become the staple stereotype proof that life on benefits must be pretty cushy. Not so. Consider that Jobseekers' Allowance is just £112 per week for a couple, to cover food, fuel, 'phone, toiletries, utilities, clothes and shoes and weekly payments off that big TV. It's a sum most people could easily spend on a good meal and drinks for four in a decent pub-restaurant, a thought that occured to me even as we split the bill with friends for just that about a week ago.
As for the DWP press release, the devil is in the detail. While the silly stories steal the headlines, the purpose is made clear when it goes on to say that anti-fraud initiatives are to be stepped up in the autumn. So get used to seeing more drag artists in high heels claiming DLA, though it's tempting to suggest that the defence in that case missed the obvious mitigation that surely anyone trying to walk in those shoes would be in severe discomfort!
But there is a serious point to watch for in all of these cases and which illustrates that the aim is demonisation of claimants and the denegration of the benefits system rather than effective management of erroneous and fraudulent claims. These days, in contrast to common practice some years ago, there is no attempt by the DWP to present figures showing whether the claimant would have been entitled to benefit had their correct circumstances been known, nor to offset this against the sum wrongly paid.
As a result, people are going into Court accused of defrauding the Public Purse of tens of thousands of pounds, with imprisonment a potential consequence, when they might have been eligible for almost as much, and sometimes more, had their true circumstances been known. This is commonly the case where a person claiming as a lone parent has failed to declare a low-waged partner, where time and again they would have been better off receiving tax credits as a working household. In a recent case in my local area, a disabled woman was taken to Court accused of defrauding almost £80,000 for failing to disclose that she had a partner - a sum that would certainly have seen her go to prison - but was 'spared jail' as the papers say thanks to an independent report commissioned by her solicitor that showed the true difference between what she had received and what she was entitled to was an overpayment of barely £1,000.
To use an analogy I've possibly suggested before, it's like being accused of doing 100mph in a 30mph limit, when you were actually doing 35.
Which begs the question: if you genuinely want people to 'come clean' about such arrangements, why wouldn't you make a big splash of publicity about cases of this nature? The cynical side of me wonders whether that might be because it would undermine the 'we need to reform the system to make work pay' litany, since work has 'paid' in relation to out-of-work benefits in the majority of cases since the inception of tax credits and cases like this would serve to reinforce that, and make liars of the present generation of DWP spin-doctors.
Indeed, if what you really want is for people currently claiming dubiously to stop doing so, why not try an amnesty? That would certainly help anyone who knows that they went from 'it's complicated' to 'in a relationship' a little while ago, and is now afraid to own up for fear of being hit with a massive overpayment or prosecuted. It would give 'cash in hand' workers an opportunity to seek a proper contract, without the threat of being dropped in it by the employer whose been exploiting them. It would allow the claimant fighting back after serious injury to take a long, hard look at how far they've come and find the courage to hand back the keys to the motability car, without the fear of being called a scrounger for daring to get well again.
But that isn't what we're going to see. Instead, expect more women in controlling, abusive on-off relationships to be paraded through the Courts as benefit cheats, when all they've been trying to do is maintain a secure income for themselves and their children, and watch as people who've learned to live with the pain of their injuries and disabilities, and would be called 'brave' if they were wealthy, are pilloried in your local paper as play-actors and liars.
Let the Games begin...
Saturday 24 August 2013
Not Sleeping Out
Except that for many middle-aged women, that's exactly the future awaiting them, thanks to the Bedroom Tax. It struck me, as I was driving in to the protest site, that possibly the most likely victims are women, single, divorced or widowed, living in their home of perhaps thirty or more years, where they raised the children who have now left home, leaving Mum with an eerily quiet house and some happy memories...
And a couple of empty bedrooms.
Which is fine, if Mum's got a half-decent job and can afford to pay her rent. But if she's been made redundant, it can be tough finding a new job when you're into your fifties and Jobseekers Allowance for a single person is only £71.70 a week. If she's not in the best of health, she might be on Employment and Support Allowance, which is £30 or so more, unless she's having to appeal a decision refusing it, in which case she's still on £71.70. Or she might be a carer, getting Carer's Allowance and Income Support of about £105 per week.
It's would be a struggle to manage, even before she had to pay 25% of her rent. Right now, a canny budgeter might do it, for the odd week at the height of summer with fuel bills at their lowest. But as the evenings draw in and temperatures fall, those bills will climb to eat up perhaps half of her weekly income.
So, does she eat or pay the rent?
Well, she moves house, obviously! The place she's in is far too big and ought to be freed up for a family, didn't it? Isn't that the whole point of ending the 'Spare Room Subsidy' that used to exist for Social Housing tenants?
But where does she go? Social landlords don't have the smaller properties to offer; the most recent figures suggest less than one tenant in ten affected by the Bedroom Tax can be moved by their existing housing provider. She could look for an exchange, but few families of working age would want to risk moving to somewhere 'too big' in case a change of fortune left them scrabbling about to pay the Bedroom Tax too. The Government imagine single people and childless couples moving back to the private sector, but if you can't find the funds to pay twenty quid or so a week in rent, how are you supposed to save a deposit and rent in advance for a private tenancy, and find the cost of removals? And who wants to be forced into the insecurity of private sector shorthold lettings, especially fairly close to their retirement.
It's not something I can see the MPs who voted for this measure wishing on their own mothers.
Moving may not be an option, especially if Mum's a carer. How far from Grandpa could she move, if she's the keyholder and emergency contact, the one who gets the old chap up, washed and dressed in the morning, sees to his breakfast, pops back to do his lunch and housework and calls again in the evening to get him ready for bed. Or maybe she looks after grandchildren while one of her children works, and needs to be close enough to their school to drop them and pick them up in term time. If Mum has to move, can her daughter still hold down her job?
Not many people will be able to sustain weekly payments of £25 from an income of £71.70, so the rent arrears will build up. Even social landlords chase arrears; locally, we've seen Notice of Seeking Possession served for as little as £40 and cases put into Court for under £100. Facing a suspended possession order, Mum might manage to borrow some money from friends or family, or she might borrow less wisely, but the weekly budget still doesn't balance and missed payments mean eviction.
A fifty-something single woman without serious health problems or a significant disability isn't 'priority need' for rehousing, so the Council has no duty to find her a home if she loses this one. She might find a one-bedroom private property, but it'll have to be no more expensive than one in the bottom third of the local market if she's to receive full Housing Benefit, and she'll still need to find a deposit, rent in advance, the cost of moving...
Remind me - what was I saying about how you can't expect a middle-aged woman to sleep rough under a bit of cardboard..?
Wednesday 14 August 2013
More food for thought
A brief postscript to yesterday's observations on the moral panic over a police force providing foodbank vouchers to people caught shop-lifting due to hunger. That story made the main evening news programmes; this one, as far as I've seen so far, hasn't done.
http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/Mums-selling-sex-feed-children-benefit-cuts-hit/story-19650230-detail/story.html#ixzz2bqKqYByr
In summary, it's a damning account from a voluntary organisation in Hull, concerned for the welfare of street sex workers, that women are turning to prostitution to feed themselves and their children specifically due to benefit sanctions and cuts to their income arising from 'welfare reform'.
There should be anger and outrage at this. It should be headline news and a resigning matter for those ministers responsible for the regime that leaves anyone so desperate.
Instead, the silence is deafening.
http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/Mums-selling-sex-feed-children-benefit-cuts-hit/story-19650230-detail/story.html#ixzz2bqKqYByr
In summary, it's a damning account from a voluntary organisation in Hull, concerned for the welfare of street sex workers, that women are turning to prostitution to feed themselves and their children specifically due to benefit sanctions and cuts to their income arising from 'welfare reform'.
There should be anger and outrage at this. It should be headline news and a resigning matter for those ministers responsible for the regime that leaves anyone so desperate.
Instead, the silence is deafening.
Monday 12 August 2013
Food for Thought
On my way to work one day last week, I heard on our local radio station that a foodbank in Sussex had reported seeing children suffering from scurvy. The discussion moved on from mild surprise to some practical tips from a nutritionist for foodbank donors regarding their contributions, in order to ensure users received their optimum vitamin C intake.
I'm not sure what I found most disturbing: the fact that in a relatively properous part of a First World country in the 21st century children were being diagnosed with a disease from the days of press gangs and broadsides, or the matter-of-fact way in which this was discussed. The problem, it seemed, was that kind-hearted but misguided donors weren't making healthy enough contributions. If only they would give more tinned fruit in juice rather than syrup, all would be well! The atrocious scandal that today families are relying on Foodbanks, even as our Social Security system is dismembered - supposedly with 'tax-payers' and 'hard-working families' cheering the process on - was not up for debate.
Another day, another Foodbank story - this time, a local newspaper splashing a headline that the police 'Give Criminals Free Food' all over its front page and billboards, with the result that the scheme under scrutiny is suspended by the local Police Commissioner, the story makes the 'nationals' and TV and the trolls come out to play. The background to this story - that since March, seven vouchers for the local foodbank, each worth three days' food, had been given out by the police, apparently to people caught shop-lifting due to hunger. That's barely one a month, so hardly an incentive to adopt a life of crime, but it's a sad sign of the times that anyone should be forced to steal simply to feed themselves, and a pretty clear indication that these people aren't hardened criminals if the police are moved to find them a square meal rather than the inside of a prison cell.
The worry has to be that the negative headlines will put people off donating - one commenter on the paper's website claimed that s/he had been about to set up a monthly donation to the foodbank, but changed their mind on reading the story. I suspect that comment was simply hot air from a regular grumbler, but it will give some people pause for thought when they see a collection being made and someone with no food will spend another day hungry as a consequence, or may feel driven to theft or other crime.
Bad journalism suggesting that a compassionate scheme encouraged shop-lifting won't stop desperate, hungry people from stealing food for themselves and their families; the threat of hanging or transportation didn't do that, and sadly it's unlikely that even the most well-provisioned foodbank will achieve that either, when benefit cuts are leaving single people and families without the bare minimum they need to live on. And demand has soared during the summer holidays according to this disturbing article from the Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/summer-of-hunger-huge-rise-in-food-bank-use-as-demand-linked-to-welfare-reform-8755101.html?origin=internalSearch
The comment late in the item from the DWP stating that they do not believe the rising demand for foodbank provisions is linked to the 'welfare reform' process is demonstrably untrue, if only because a specific piece of that reform - the dismantling of the discretionary element of the Social Fund and the devolving of its remit to help people in crisis situations to Local Authorities - has led very directly and deliberately to a rise in referrals to foodbanks.
Much as I admire the dedication and compassion of foodbank volunteers and the humanity of people who donate, the sad fact is that foodbanks are masking the true impact of benefit cuts and allowing charity to be substituted for proper state support. But if the alternative is hungry kids during the school holidays and people stealing food through hunger, I'd better look out for the special offers on tinned fruit in juice, and lob a few cans into the collection trolley.
I'm not sure what I found most disturbing: the fact that in a relatively properous part of a First World country in the 21st century children were being diagnosed with a disease from the days of press gangs and broadsides, or the matter-of-fact way in which this was discussed. The problem, it seemed, was that kind-hearted but misguided donors weren't making healthy enough contributions. If only they would give more tinned fruit in juice rather than syrup, all would be well! The atrocious scandal that today families are relying on Foodbanks, even as our Social Security system is dismembered - supposedly with 'tax-payers' and 'hard-working families' cheering the process on - was not up for debate.
Another day, another Foodbank story - this time, a local newspaper splashing a headline that the police 'Give Criminals Free Food' all over its front page and billboards, with the result that the scheme under scrutiny is suspended by the local Police Commissioner, the story makes the 'nationals' and TV and the trolls come out to play. The background to this story - that since March, seven vouchers for the local foodbank, each worth three days' food, had been given out by the police, apparently to people caught shop-lifting due to hunger. That's barely one a month, so hardly an incentive to adopt a life of crime, but it's a sad sign of the times that anyone should be forced to steal simply to feed themselves, and a pretty clear indication that these people aren't hardened criminals if the police are moved to find them a square meal rather than the inside of a prison cell.
The worry has to be that the negative headlines will put people off donating - one commenter on the paper's website claimed that s/he had been about to set up a monthly donation to the foodbank, but changed their mind on reading the story. I suspect that comment was simply hot air from a regular grumbler, but it will give some people pause for thought when they see a collection being made and someone with no food will spend another day hungry as a consequence, or may feel driven to theft or other crime.
Bad journalism suggesting that a compassionate scheme encouraged shop-lifting won't stop desperate, hungry people from stealing food for themselves and their families; the threat of hanging or transportation didn't do that, and sadly it's unlikely that even the most well-provisioned foodbank will achieve that either, when benefit cuts are leaving single people and families without the bare minimum they need to live on. And demand has soared during the summer holidays according to this disturbing article from the Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/summer-of-hunger-huge-rise-in-food-bank-use-as-demand-linked-to-welfare-reform-8755101.html?origin=internalSearch
The comment late in the item from the DWP stating that they do not believe the rising demand for foodbank provisions is linked to the 'welfare reform' process is demonstrably untrue, if only because a specific piece of that reform - the dismantling of the discretionary element of the Social Fund and the devolving of its remit to help people in crisis situations to Local Authorities - has led very directly and deliberately to a rise in referrals to foodbanks.
Much as I admire the dedication and compassion of foodbank volunteers and the humanity of people who donate, the sad fact is that foodbanks are masking the true impact of benefit cuts and allowing charity to be substituted for proper state support. But if the alternative is hungry kids during the school holidays and people stealing food through hunger, I'd better look out for the special offers on tinned fruit in juice, and lob a few cans into the collection trolley.
Tuesday 16 July 2013
Blue Monday
So this blog is back after a long break, the day after the introduction of the highly popular 'Benefit Cap' policy which, supposedly, ensures that a household reliant on out-of-work benefits cannot receive more than one working and on average earnings.
Naturally, it actually does no such thing, nor does it even promise to save a significant sum from the 'Welfare' bill, but did any of us who follow these things closely ever believe that was the intention? I think not. There have already been many excellent responses to this poisonous policy - I would draw readers' attention to http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/07/five-things-iain-duncan-smith-doesnt-want-you-know-about-benefit-cap and http://acuriousorange.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/so-this-morning-i-flicked-on-to-bbc.html#comment-form as two excellent examples.
Having listened with a mixture of inpatience and incredulity to Iain Duncan Smith justifying this disgraceful policy on yesterday's Today programme on Radio 4, during which he appeared to suggest that the truth of the matter was anything he believed it to be, I am moved to resume this blog. Not specifically on account of anything IDS had to say, neither his willful insistence that the Truth was whatever he claimed it to be, nor his calculated suggestion of bias against the BBC: yes, the TV channel that brought us 'On the Fiddle', 'Saints and Sinners' and most recently 'We Pay Your Benefits', and unwittingly or otherwise played straight into the worst prejudices of IDS's cheerleaders with a radio interview on the Benefit Cap issue with one of those likely to suffer - from her accent, an immigrant living in London of African origin. Hardly a propaganda coup for the Left. I bet IDS couldn't believe his luck!
Then we had his taunting of the Labour Party as the 'Welfare Party'. I wish! The people who brought you Employment and Support Allowance and hired Atos to do Incapacity Benefit and ESA medicals - the Welfare Party! Give me strength!
In fact, it was Labour's response which drew me back to the keyboard today.
Unless I have it completely wrong, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne appeared to suggest that the problem with the benefit cap was that it didn't impact large families hard enough, as the Governement's shifty tactic of making Local Authorities impose the cap via Housing Benefit let large households with low housing costs off the hook. To hell with the issues of 'Social Cleansing' of London Boroughs and leafy shires and the sheer absurdity of forcing larger households out of the very areas in which job opportunities are most plentiful. Never mind the homelessness and family breakdown likely to result, the extra mouths to be fed by hard-pressed Foodbanks. Let IDS tell his statistical lies unchallenged. What's wrong with this policy is that some people won't be affected by it!
Well, there goes my idea of rejoining the party once I have a steady wage again. At least not while Liam Byrne is within spitting distance of anything Work and Pensions related.
How should the response have gone? Imagine for a moment, Ed Milliband on his feet at that 'Welfare Party' gibe. He faces the Government benches defiantly...
'Mr Speaker, the Right Honourable Member for Toryshire implies that I should feel shame at the suggestion that Labour is 'The Welfare Party'. Should not every party have the welfare of this country and its people at heart? If we are not the 'Welfare Party', what should we be? The 'Workfare Party'. who allow profitable multi-national companies to use the labour of unemployed workers for profit at taxpayers' expense? Or the 'Workhouse Party', who would confine young mothers and their babies to hostels out of spite, regardless of the needs of the children and the best interests of the women?
'I'm proud of my Party's part in founding our Welfare State at a time of great economic hardship, and of all that it has done to create a fair and modern Social Security system; but I agree, there is much to reform. Tax Credits are no substitute for fair wages, and a generous income from Housing Benefit should not be a lifestyle choice for landlords. The next Labour Government will therefore bring forward legislation to increase the Minimum Wage to a Living Wage. We will build adequate Social Housing and reintroduce rent controls in the private sector, in order that key workers are not priced out of our wealthier cities. These measures will reduce the cost of Social Security spending to the state, but not by taking food from the mouths of the poorest children, or driving our most vulnerable citizens to despair. And that is not all...'
I woke up at that point, to find myself still in this place where politicians try to outbid each other in their attacks on the poorest members of society in a desperate competition to capture the moral low ground of perceived public opinion. But the dream was great, while it lasted...
Naturally, it actually does no such thing, nor does it even promise to save a significant sum from the 'Welfare' bill, but did any of us who follow these things closely ever believe that was the intention? I think not. There have already been many excellent responses to this poisonous policy - I would draw readers' attention to http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/07/five-things-iain-duncan-smith-doesnt-want-you-know-about-benefit-cap and http://acuriousorange.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/so-this-morning-i-flicked-on-to-bbc.html#comment-form as two excellent examples.
Having listened with a mixture of inpatience and incredulity to Iain Duncan Smith justifying this disgraceful policy on yesterday's Today programme on Radio 4, during which he appeared to suggest that the truth of the matter was anything he believed it to be, I am moved to resume this blog. Not specifically on account of anything IDS had to say, neither his willful insistence that the Truth was whatever he claimed it to be, nor his calculated suggestion of bias against the BBC: yes, the TV channel that brought us 'On the Fiddle', 'Saints and Sinners' and most recently 'We Pay Your Benefits', and unwittingly or otherwise played straight into the worst prejudices of IDS's cheerleaders with a radio interview on the Benefit Cap issue with one of those likely to suffer - from her accent, an immigrant living in London of African origin. Hardly a propaganda coup for the Left. I bet IDS couldn't believe his luck!
Then we had his taunting of the Labour Party as the 'Welfare Party'. I wish! The people who brought you Employment and Support Allowance and hired Atos to do Incapacity Benefit and ESA medicals - the Welfare Party! Give me strength!
In fact, it was Labour's response which drew me back to the keyboard today.
Unless I have it completely wrong, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne appeared to suggest that the problem with the benefit cap was that it didn't impact large families hard enough, as the Governement's shifty tactic of making Local Authorities impose the cap via Housing Benefit let large households with low housing costs off the hook. To hell with the issues of 'Social Cleansing' of London Boroughs and leafy shires and the sheer absurdity of forcing larger households out of the very areas in which job opportunities are most plentiful. Never mind the homelessness and family breakdown likely to result, the extra mouths to be fed by hard-pressed Foodbanks. Let IDS tell his statistical lies unchallenged. What's wrong with this policy is that some people won't be affected by it!
Well, there goes my idea of rejoining the party once I have a steady wage again. At least not while Liam Byrne is within spitting distance of anything Work and Pensions related.
How should the response have gone? Imagine for a moment, Ed Milliband on his feet at that 'Welfare Party' gibe. He faces the Government benches defiantly...
'Mr Speaker, the Right Honourable Member for Toryshire implies that I should feel shame at the suggestion that Labour is 'The Welfare Party'. Should not every party have the welfare of this country and its people at heart? If we are not the 'Welfare Party', what should we be? The 'Workfare Party'. who allow profitable multi-national companies to use the labour of unemployed workers for profit at taxpayers' expense? Or the 'Workhouse Party', who would confine young mothers and their babies to hostels out of spite, regardless of the needs of the children and the best interests of the women?
'I'm proud of my Party's part in founding our Welfare State at a time of great economic hardship, and of all that it has done to create a fair and modern Social Security system; but I agree, there is much to reform. Tax Credits are no substitute for fair wages, and a generous income from Housing Benefit should not be a lifestyle choice for landlords. The next Labour Government will therefore bring forward legislation to increase the Minimum Wage to a Living Wage. We will build adequate Social Housing and reintroduce rent controls in the private sector, in order that key workers are not priced out of our wealthier cities. These measures will reduce the cost of Social Security spending to the state, but not by taking food from the mouths of the poorest children, or driving our most vulnerable citizens to despair. And that is not all...'
I woke up at that point, to find myself still in this place where politicians try to outbid each other in their attacks on the poorest members of society in a desperate competition to capture the moral low ground of perceived public opinion. But the dream was great, while it lasted...
Wednesday 13 March 2013
Big Game or Endangered Species?
Baroness Hollis, a Labour peer, said recently there was a danger that in some areas the poor would end up fighting each other for increasingly scarce resources, rather like the boys in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies'.
In my neighbouring local authority area they got a Home Office award last year for encouraging them to do exactly that. Strapped for cash as they were, they found the funds to commission some striking 'Know a cheat in your street' posters (with a cheetah on - geddit?) targeting benefit and tenancy fraud, and splashed them on billboards and bus stops all over town, even picking up the theme on the reverse of car park tickets.
They're clearly so proud of the campaign that they've had some nice fresh ones printed and plastered them all around the city again, and while it probably isn't a deliberate move to stop anyone feeling too sorry for the benefit claimants who are suddenly going to have to find 30% of their Council Tax from April, pay 'bedroom tax' or face eviction and contend with numerous other cuts and challenges this year, the timing is, to say the least, unfortunate.
With just about the entire UK media in full hue and cry against benefit claimants in general and Government rhetoric more vicious and poisonous than anything from Thatcher's time, I honestly find it incredible that a cash-strapped council, which already knows that Government cuts are going to take millions of pounds out of the pockets of its poorest citizens, has made campaigning against benefit fraud a priority. The odds are, unless the city in question is a long way out of step with the national average, that there's a much bigger amount of benefit to be claimed legitimately currently not being paid to its citizens than being pocketed dishonestly.
I must make one thing very clear, or I will run the risk of being accused of being 'soft' on benefit fraud or even of supporting it as a kind of jolly Robin-Hoodery. I'm not, and it isn't. It is a crime and it isn't a victimless one; every £1 lost to benefit fraud is £1 potentially lost to public services elsewhere. Where someone is guilty of benefit fraud, and we're talking about making a claim on the basis of deliberately false or incomplete information, or knowingly withholding information that would reduce their entitlement, they should face penalties on a par with other perpetrators of financial crime, but naturally with their 'mitigating circumstances' - which will be a longer list for many this year - taken into account, as they are for all criminal cases.
But they don't. Our local paper seem much better at snapping a photo of the convicted 'benefit cheat' leaving Court than if it's a VAT fraudster or even a dishonest bank clerk swindling a pensioner (both recent stories), when there's 'naming and shaming' but no picture for the rogues' gallery. And those who sneer do so like to be personally abusive about benefit claimants' physical appearance. Though most are quite incapable of recognising, or couldn't care less, about the risk of a serious miscarriage of justice. When a woman accused of benefit fraud was charged on the basis of incorrectly calculated figures from the DWP - no less than three times the true sum overpaid - there was neither press nor public outrage even though, but for the diligence of her defence, she would have gone to prison if convicted on the original figures. That, surely, is a scandal? Apparently not.
In the current climate, it must be all-but impossible for anyone accused of benefit fraud to get a fair trial, especially a jury trial. Cases are often bundled into Court ahead of tribunal hearings, so considered by magistrates, judges and jurors with no specialist knowledge of Social Security regulations but years of negative stereotypes clouding their judgement. Many defence solicitors and barristers see these as lost causes and go for a 'guilty' plea and mitigation even where there is a case that no fraud was ever intended; perhaps, in view of the above, they are right? And while there remains Legal Aid for the criminal case, it's about to vanish for specialist advice for appeals, so even more accused claimants will enter Court without having received specialist benefits advice, or having their case considered by an expert tribunal first.
So where is the massive benefit take-up campaign that ought to be the answer to these cuts? Where are the posters asking 'Is your neighbour missing out on Tax Credits?' and 'Disabled? Claim DLA while there's still time'? It seems there isn't one; presumably, no-one at the Home Office is handing out prizes for that. Worse, while the information leaflet the council are sending out with their Council Tax billing information finds room for a full page reproduction of the 'cheetah' poster, it has the affrontery to ask claimants to let them know if they are entitled to the 'severe disability premium' and thus potential entitlement to Council Tax Support based on 100% of their Council Tax. It completely fails to even give a clue as to how you might know this - where you might find the information if you get it already (ie the calculation sheet for another means-tested benefit), what the qualifying conditions are...
And as I explained in a previous post: http://raggedskirt.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/postcode-lottery.html the 'severe disability premium' isn't even a measure of severe disability. So surely the 'cheetah' page could have been put to much better use? But 'benefit take-up' of Council Tax Support is no longer in a council's own financial interest, with the bill having to be met from their own budget. Sadly, it pays them to have the poor - especially the 'severely disabled' poor - uninformed.
In my neighbouring local authority area they got a Home Office award last year for encouraging them to do exactly that. Strapped for cash as they were, they found the funds to commission some striking 'Know a cheat in your street' posters (with a cheetah on - geddit?) targeting benefit and tenancy fraud, and splashed them on billboards and bus stops all over town, even picking up the theme on the reverse of car park tickets.
They're clearly so proud of the campaign that they've had some nice fresh ones printed and plastered them all around the city again, and while it probably isn't a deliberate move to stop anyone feeling too sorry for the benefit claimants who are suddenly going to have to find 30% of their Council Tax from April, pay 'bedroom tax' or face eviction and contend with numerous other cuts and challenges this year, the timing is, to say the least, unfortunate.
With just about the entire UK media in full hue and cry against benefit claimants in general and Government rhetoric more vicious and poisonous than anything from Thatcher's time, I honestly find it incredible that a cash-strapped council, which already knows that Government cuts are going to take millions of pounds out of the pockets of its poorest citizens, has made campaigning against benefit fraud a priority. The odds are, unless the city in question is a long way out of step with the national average, that there's a much bigger amount of benefit to be claimed legitimately currently not being paid to its citizens than being pocketed dishonestly.
I must make one thing very clear, or I will run the risk of being accused of being 'soft' on benefit fraud or even of supporting it as a kind of jolly Robin-Hoodery. I'm not, and it isn't. It is a crime and it isn't a victimless one; every £1 lost to benefit fraud is £1 potentially lost to public services elsewhere. Where someone is guilty of benefit fraud, and we're talking about making a claim on the basis of deliberately false or incomplete information, or knowingly withholding information that would reduce their entitlement, they should face penalties on a par with other perpetrators of financial crime, but naturally with their 'mitigating circumstances' - which will be a longer list for many this year - taken into account, as they are for all criminal cases.
But they don't. Our local paper seem much better at snapping a photo of the convicted 'benefit cheat' leaving Court than if it's a VAT fraudster or even a dishonest bank clerk swindling a pensioner (both recent stories), when there's 'naming and shaming' but no picture for the rogues' gallery. And those who sneer do so like to be personally abusive about benefit claimants' physical appearance. Though most are quite incapable of recognising, or couldn't care less, about the risk of a serious miscarriage of justice. When a woman accused of benefit fraud was charged on the basis of incorrectly calculated figures from the DWP - no less than three times the true sum overpaid - there was neither press nor public outrage even though, but for the diligence of her defence, she would have gone to prison if convicted on the original figures. That, surely, is a scandal? Apparently not.
In the current climate, it must be all-but impossible for anyone accused of benefit fraud to get a fair trial, especially a jury trial. Cases are often bundled into Court ahead of tribunal hearings, so considered by magistrates, judges and jurors with no specialist knowledge of Social Security regulations but years of negative stereotypes clouding their judgement. Many defence solicitors and barristers see these as lost causes and go for a 'guilty' plea and mitigation even where there is a case that no fraud was ever intended; perhaps, in view of the above, they are right? And while there remains Legal Aid for the criminal case, it's about to vanish for specialist advice for appeals, so even more accused claimants will enter Court without having received specialist benefits advice, or having their case considered by an expert tribunal first.
So where is the massive benefit take-up campaign that ought to be the answer to these cuts? Where are the posters asking 'Is your neighbour missing out on Tax Credits?' and 'Disabled? Claim DLA while there's still time'? It seems there isn't one; presumably, no-one at the Home Office is handing out prizes for that. Worse, while the information leaflet the council are sending out with their Council Tax billing information finds room for a full page reproduction of the 'cheetah' poster, it has the affrontery to ask claimants to let them know if they are entitled to the 'severe disability premium' and thus potential entitlement to Council Tax Support based on 100% of their Council Tax. It completely fails to even give a clue as to how you might know this - where you might find the information if you get it already (ie the calculation sheet for another means-tested benefit), what the qualifying conditions are...
And as I explained in a previous post: http://raggedskirt.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/postcode-lottery.html the 'severe disability premium' isn't even a measure of severe disability. So surely the 'cheetah' page could have been put to much better use? But 'benefit take-up' of Council Tax Support is no longer in a council's own financial interest, with the bill having to be met from their own budget. Sadly, it pays them to have the poor - especially the 'severely disabled' poor - uninformed.
Wednesday 6 March 2013
Postcode Lottery
Over the past couple of days I have been delivering training on the new 'Council Tax Reduction Schemes' that Local Authorities are in the process of devising ready for the replacement of the current national Council Tax Benefit scheme in April 2013. This situation has been foisted on them by Central Government - for reasons best known to themselves, but which must surely include a pathological hatred of benefit claimants and poor cities from the inevitable consequences - who have decided that this coming finacial year Local Authorities will have the discretion to devise their own schemes for working-age claimants, but must protect the entitlement of people over Pension Credit age.
But they will have to deliver this from a budget reduced by 10% from current expenditure on Council Tax Benefit in their area.
I have already explained in my post 'Poll Tax Reloaded' how this has a disproportionate effect on Councils where more Council Tax payers are reliant on benefit. It is also the case that working-age claimants in a district with a high proportion of poorer pensioners are also likely to take a harder hit on their own entitlement, since all of the cut must come from the younger claimants' benefits. Factor in Councils' social and economic policies, and councillors' and officers' preferences, prejudices and misunderstandings, and we are left with getting on for 300 different schemes across the country, with some subsidising the benefit budget to protect their less well-off residents and the businesses and communities dependent on their spending power, and others being altogether less far-sighted or charitable.
Locally, I looked at our five nearest Councils. An attempt to create a county-wide framework collapsed, and instead there are wild variations between neighbouring authorities. The majority of working-age claimants in Stoke-on-Trent will pay at least 30% of their Council Tax even from what are supposed to be merely subsistence benefits such as Income Support and Jobseekers Allowance. In neighbouring Staffordshire Moorlands, the figure is 8.5% for someone in the same circumstances. Stafford Borough appears to have tried to be 'family friendly', allowing families with children under five potentially a maximum 100% benefit if their incomes are low enough, but promptly undermined this by taking both child benefit and child maintenance into account in full as income where it is generally disregarded, a move that will hit working lone parents especially hard.
One especially frustrating feature of several schemes is their insistence of using eligibility for an element of means-tested benefit calculations called the 'severe disability premium' (SDP) to define severe disability, and give entitlement to a potential 100% reduction. It sounds to the lay person as if that is what it might define, but it actually does no such thing. To be entitled to a 'severe disability premium' in the calculation of your benefit, you must meet three conditions. Firstly, you need to qualify for Disability Living Allowance at the middle or higher rate for care - arguably, a reasonable measure of severe disability. But the other two qualifying criteria are not. For the SDP, you must also 'live alone' (although certain other disabled people, children and young people in your household are ignored) and not have a carer claiming Carers Allowance for looking after you. These latter criteria are clearly about household composition and care provision, not the extent of your disabilities.
The consequence of adopting this benchmark is iniquitous. You might have two people living next door to each other in identical properties, with identical health problems, both entitled to DLA at the higher rate for care and receiving identical earnings-replacement benefits. One has a single regular carer who claims Carers Allowance as his/her main income: the other has two carers who share the role, so neither provides sufficient hours of care to qualify for Carers Allowance. The first claimant doesn't qualify for a 'severe disability premium' and so can receive no more than 70% or 80% of their Council Tax bill in benefit, no matter how poor. The other, simply on account of having different arrangements to provide the same level of care, can receive up to 100%.
Logically, if the intention was to devise a scheme to protect the entitlement of severely disabled people, you would link it to receipt of given components of DLA - or rather, if you knew anything about benefits, that's what you would tend to do. Sadly, even this botched attempt to give some protection to disabled people is more than some Councils have resolved to provide.
Similarly, elements of the Discretionary Social Fund are also transfering to Local Authorities in April, also with a slice of funding based on current expenditure. While Stoke have produced some broad principles, we are still waiting for any clue as to what the County Council have in mind for this, so it is too soon to do a detailed critique.
What I can say from looking at both Council Tax Support/Reduction schemes and 'son-of-Social Fund' is that there is a disturbing trend here towards the localisation of Social Security provision, which if not checked may lead to area rates for all Social Security Benefits, potentially decided locally, possibly with discretion even not to provide them at all - the Social Fund budget for Councils isn't ring-fenced, for example, and some Councils may opt to use the funds elsewhere. Hard-pressed districts will struggle to provide for their poorest citizens, even where they have the political will to do so. In privileged districts the plight of the 'undeserving poor' may be left increasingly to the well-intentioned, under-funded and occasionally judgmental sphere of charities and churches. This may lead to a 'race to the bottom' to keep provision at the bare minimum required in law, to deter long-term claimants who know their job prospects are poor from moving to areas seen as a 'soft touch'.
That's hardly the spirit of 1945.
But they will have to deliver this from a budget reduced by 10% from current expenditure on Council Tax Benefit in their area.
I have already explained in my post 'Poll Tax Reloaded' how this has a disproportionate effect on Councils where more Council Tax payers are reliant on benefit. It is also the case that working-age claimants in a district with a high proportion of poorer pensioners are also likely to take a harder hit on their own entitlement, since all of the cut must come from the younger claimants' benefits. Factor in Councils' social and economic policies, and councillors' and officers' preferences, prejudices and misunderstandings, and we are left with getting on for 300 different schemes across the country, with some subsidising the benefit budget to protect their less well-off residents and the businesses and communities dependent on their spending power, and others being altogether less far-sighted or charitable.
Locally, I looked at our five nearest Councils. An attempt to create a county-wide framework collapsed, and instead there are wild variations between neighbouring authorities. The majority of working-age claimants in Stoke-on-Trent will pay at least 30% of their Council Tax even from what are supposed to be merely subsistence benefits such as Income Support and Jobseekers Allowance. In neighbouring Staffordshire Moorlands, the figure is 8.5% for someone in the same circumstances. Stafford Borough appears to have tried to be 'family friendly', allowing families with children under five potentially a maximum 100% benefit if their incomes are low enough, but promptly undermined this by taking both child benefit and child maintenance into account in full as income where it is generally disregarded, a move that will hit working lone parents especially hard.
One especially frustrating feature of several schemes is their insistence of using eligibility for an element of means-tested benefit calculations called the 'severe disability premium' (SDP) to define severe disability, and give entitlement to a potential 100% reduction. It sounds to the lay person as if that is what it might define, but it actually does no such thing. To be entitled to a 'severe disability premium' in the calculation of your benefit, you must meet three conditions. Firstly, you need to qualify for Disability Living Allowance at the middle or higher rate for care - arguably, a reasonable measure of severe disability. But the other two qualifying criteria are not. For the SDP, you must also 'live alone' (although certain other disabled people, children and young people in your household are ignored) and not have a carer claiming Carers Allowance for looking after you. These latter criteria are clearly about household composition and care provision, not the extent of your disabilities.
The consequence of adopting this benchmark is iniquitous. You might have two people living next door to each other in identical properties, with identical health problems, both entitled to DLA at the higher rate for care and receiving identical earnings-replacement benefits. One has a single regular carer who claims Carers Allowance as his/her main income: the other has two carers who share the role, so neither provides sufficient hours of care to qualify for Carers Allowance. The first claimant doesn't qualify for a 'severe disability premium' and so can receive no more than 70% or 80% of their Council Tax bill in benefit, no matter how poor. The other, simply on account of having different arrangements to provide the same level of care, can receive up to 100%.
Logically, if the intention was to devise a scheme to protect the entitlement of severely disabled people, you would link it to receipt of given components of DLA - or rather, if you knew anything about benefits, that's what you would tend to do. Sadly, even this botched attempt to give some protection to disabled people is more than some Councils have resolved to provide.
Similarly, elements of the Discretionary Social Fund are also transfering to Local Authorities in April, also with a slice of funding based on current expenditure. While Stoke have produced some broad principles, we are still waiting for any clue as to what the County Council have in mind for this, so it is too soon to do a detailed critique.
What I can say from looking at both Council Tax Support/Reduction schemes and 'son-of-Social Fund' is that there is a disturbing trend here towards the localisation of Social Security provision, which if not checked may lead to area rates for all Social Security Benefits, potentially decided locally, possibly with discretion even not to provide them at all - the Social Fund budget for Councils isn't ring-fenced, for example, and some Councils may opt to use the funds elsewhere. Hard-pressed districts will struggle to provide for their poorest citizens, even where they have the political will to do so. In privileged districts the plight of the 'undeserving poor' may be left increasingly to the well-intentioned, under-funded and occasionally judgmental sphere of charities and churches. This may lead to a 'race to the bottom' to keep provision at the bare minimum required in law, to deter long-term claimants who know their job prospects are poor from moving to areas seen as a 'soft touch'.
That's hardly the spirit of 1945.
Friday 22 February 2013
Pride and Pensioners
I was far from surprised to read yesterday of evidence that an increasing number of retired people are failing to claim the benefits to which they are lawfully entitled.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/feb/21/pensioners-state-benefits-failing-to-claim
If true - and the survey is relatively small - this is sad news. Benefit underpayment is the unsung scandal of these tough times, while apparently endless column inches can be found for overpayment and fraud tales; more disturbingly, this suggests the current generation of pensioners are at least as conscious of a stigma attached to Social Security Benefits as the previous one.
Almost twenty years ago I started work for a Home Improvement Agency, a project assisting older and disabled people to arrange repairs and adaptations to their homes. Part of my role was to check benefit entitlement, and then to advise and assist with claims where appropriate. A successful claim for a qualifying benefit might lead to entitlement to free energy efficiency work, grants for minor repairs and reduced contributions to the costs of larger projects, so much more than extra weekly income was at stake. Despite this, I would often struggle to persuade clients that making a claim was the right thing to do. Even the elderly woman who couldn't afford to switch the heating elements of her electric fire on, but had the light on for the illusion of a warming glow, needed patiently reassuring that there was nothing shameful in claiming Council Tax Benefit and Attendance Allowance.
'Means-tested' was a phrase to be avoided at all costs, even if what you were advising them to claim was a means-tested benefit. But these were the children of people who, if they fell on hard times, might have had their homes inspected to ensure they hadn't frittered funds away on luxuries and trivialities, before some well-meaning but judgmental middle-class inspector awarded them emergency relief. Their own children, raised with the Welfare State and the promise of support from the cradle to the grave are now pensioners and should be able to stand clear of the shadow of the workhouse, but for some reason the reticence to claim lives on.
There appear to be several barriers. The complexity of the benefits system hinders many people identifying their entitlement, regardless of age, but I believe there's more to it with older people. It probably doesn't help that, according to the papers' own figures, 74% of Daily Mail and 76% of Daily Express readers are aged over 45, with the Express giving it's over 65s readership as 40% and the average age of its readers as 59. So in the run-up to and years of retirement, these poor misguided souls exist on a diet of shirkers and scroungers stories, often contrasting these 'undeserving' characters with 'our pensioners' stoically coping with hardship. Today, for example, the DM has a suitably shocking tale combining those twin evils of benefit claiming and animal cruelty while the DE continues to focus its self-righteous malice on a woman 'on benefits' with eleven children.
And day after day, you'll find the same. Our 'local rag' from the Mail's stable, has already run three stories about an alleged benefit fraudster before her case has even concluded, though doubtless it's pure coincidence that the woman in question is black, of non-UK nationality and has a potentially amusing surname for trolls to mock. Another story concerning a pensioner still delivering the aforementioned 'local rag' well into her eighties predictably attracts comments contrasting her to 'lazy workshy youngsters' - exactly what it was intended to do, I suggest.
For all their best efforts to combat these attitudes, organisations like Citizens Advice, Age UK, Disability Alliance and the Pensioners Convention are fighting an unequal battle against such a hostile press. Their reasoned voices will always be drowned out by tabloid hysteria from those same papers who will point the finger of blame at Social Workers, Civil Servants and Modern Society in general every time a 'poor but proud' older person dies from hypothermia, without asking if perhaps their 'independence good: benefits bad' message wasn't at least equally to blame.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/feb/21/pensioners-state-benefits-failing-to-claim
If true - and the survey is relatively small - this is sad news. Benefit underpayment is the unsung scandal of these tough times, while apparently endless column inches can be found for overpayment and fraud tales; more disturbingly, this suggests the current generation of pensioners are at least as conscious of a stigma attached to Social Security Benefits as the previous one.
Almost twenty years ago I started work for a Home Improvement Agency, a project assisting older and disabled people to arrange repairs and adaptations to their homes. Part of my role was to check benefit entitlement, and then to advise and assist with claims where appropriate. A successful claim for a qualifying benefit might lead to entitlement to free energy efficiency work, grants for minor repairs and reduced contributions to the costs of larger projects, so much more than extra weekly income was at stake. Despite this, I would often struggle to persuade clients that making a claim was the right thing to do. Even the elderly woman who couldn't afford to switch the heating elements of her electric fire on, but had the light on for the illusion of a warming glow, needed patiently reassuring that there was nothing shameful in claiming Council Tax Benefit and Attendance Allowance.
'Means-tested' was a phrase to be avoided at all costs, even if what you were advising them to claim was a means-tested benefit. But these were the children of people who, if they fell on hard times, might have had their homes inspected to ensure they hadn't frittered funds away on luxuries and trivialities, before some well-meaning but judgmental middle-class inspector awarded them emergency relief. Their own children, raised with the Welfare State and the promise of support from the cradle to the grave are now pensioners and should be able to stand clear of the shadow of the workhouse, but for some reason the reticence to claim lives on.
There appear to be several barriers. The complexity of the benefits system hinders many people identifying their entitlement, regardless of age, but I believe there's more to it with older people. It probably doesn't help that, according to the papers' own figures, 74% of Daily Mail and 76% of Daily Express readers are aged over 45, with the Express giving it's over 65s readership as 40% and the average age of its readers as 59. So in the run-up to and years of retirement, these poor misguided souls exist on a diet of shirkers and scroungers stories, often contrasting these 'undeserving' characters with 'our pensioners' stoically coping with hardship. Today, for example, the DM has a suitably shocking tale combining those twin evils of benefit claiming and animal cruelty while the DE continues to focus its self-righteous malice on a woman 'on benefits' with eleven children.
And day after day, you'll find the same. Our 'local rag' from the Mail's stable, has already run three stories about an alleged benefit fraudster before her case has even concluded, though doubtless it's pure coincidence that the woman in question is black, of non-UK nationality and has a potentially amusing surname for trolls to mock. Another story concerning a pensioner still delivering the aforementioned 'local rag' well into her eighties predictably attracts comments contrasting her to 'lazy workshy youngsters' - exactly what it was intended to do, I suggest.
For all their best efforts to combat these attitudes, organisations like Citizens Advice, Age UK, Disability Alliance and the Pensioners Convention are fighting an unequal battle against such a hostile press. Their reasoned voices will always be drowned out by tabloid hysteria from those same papers who will point the finger of blame at Social Workers, Civil Servants and Modern Society in general every time a 'poor but proud' older person dies from hypothermia, without asking if perhaps their 'independence good: benefits bad' message wasn't at least equally to blame.
Wednesday 13 February 2013
Losing sleep
It doesn't take many minutes of web-surfing to discover that there are huge numbers of people feeling frightened and angry about one of the most notorious measures the present Government have introduced as part of their 'Welfare Reform' agenda, namely the so-called 'Bedroom Tax'.
Although that's a catchy expression, 'Bedroom Tax' is somewhat misleading as what we're actually talking about isn't a tax at all; the 'under-occupation penalty' is a reduction in Housing Benefit entitlement set to affect tenants in Social Housing from April.
The Government's justification for introducing the measure, which will reduce entitlement by 14% of eligible rent for one additional bedroom and 25% for two, is that firstly, it will control the spiralling cost of Housing Benefit and secondly, it will make better use of the limited supply of Social Housing available. Naturally, being a measure from the ConDems, it will do this by putting various poor and vulnerable families through months of uncertainty, additional financial hardship and misery - and in many cases throw them out of the homes they've occupied for decades -rather than tackling the root causes of either problem. They'll also be giving Housing Associations and Councils who still own and manage housing stock an almighty headache as they attempt to shuffle their tenants into small enough properties to avoid the 'Bedroom Tax' and when they fail (which they will, because most have 'too many' larger properties and 'too few' small ones) they'll have an even bigger headache dealing with rent arrears and the grim prospect of evicting the very people it was their mission to help and house.
And Local Authorities, who administer Housing Benefit, will end up looking the villain of the piece, whereas if the Government had waited to tie these changes in with the introduction of Universal Credit, the DWP would have carried the can and the buck would have stopped more sharply at No 10.
I'm not going to run through a long, detailed list of the type of people likely to suffer as a consequence as those with the most plaintive and, at least from a media perspective, 'deserving' stories are already finding their way into the press. But we're talking about disabled people needing rooms for special equipment or for carers to stay in during bad times, separated parents who aren't the principal carer for their children, families with grown up kids working away from home on short-term contracts, and more mundane situations, such as couples who want a bedroom each because one (or both) snores like a jumbo jet taking off. But you'll see plenty of similar cases in your local paper soon enough.
Before I go on, I'm going to take a brief moment to remind readers that, contrary to the impression given by Government ministers and the usual suspects in the press, Housing Benefit is paid to working people on low incomes and not just people out of work. Just in case you're still swallowing the shirkers/strivers rhetoric. I'm sure you're not. What I'm going to try to do is debunk the Government's argument about 'fairness' and parity with the private sector, and suggest some logical alternatives.
Firstly, the myth that this simply brings provision for Social Housing tenants into line with that for people in the private sector. The only thing the 'Bedroom Tax' has in common with the Local Housing Allowance scheme for private tenancies (introduced by Labour in 2008, but made tougher by the ConDems) is the calculation of how many 'bedrooms' a household requires. There, the similarity ends.
In the private sector, Housing Benefit is paid based on the 'Local Housing Allowance' (LHA) for a property of the size required by the claimant's family or household. This was, when the system was set up, the median price for rented accommodation in any given district, but has subsequently been moved down to reflect the cost of the lowest third of private rented housing, limiting the availability of affordable private rented housing to benefit claimants. Prior to the introduction of LHA, councils were still expected to cap Housing Benefit for private tenants to a level commensurate with the size of property a household required, and set the rent at a rate judged appropriate by a rent officer if it appeared excessive for the type. But it was never utterly inflexible as councils did have the discretion to allow higher payments in exceptional circumstances - for example where a larger property was needed due to disability.
So, private tenants claiming Housing Benefit have limited access to housing due to the level at which LHA is set and also a built-in 'under-occupancy' provision stating how many rooms they need. However, if they are fortunate enough to find a three-bedroomed house or flat for the same price as the LHA for a two-bedroom property in their area, they can receive Housing Benefit based on their full rent. It even used to be the case that if they could track down a property for less than the LHA for the size they required, private tenants could keep up to £15 per week of the difference; but that's gone now, of course, along with any idea that you might actually try to reward benefit claimants for making canny financial decisions. Though to be fair, there was always the risk that what this would actually do was lure poor families into cheap but substandard accommodation, or encourage landlords to set their rents at LHA levels where previously they had been below.
So it's a tough regime for private tenants - especially when you add reduced security of tenure into the mix - and many must look enviously at their peers in Social Housing, especially if they have been shuffling from one shorthold tenancy to the next waiting in vain for a Council or Housing Association allocation to come their way. If you're that family, it's going to look very unfair to you that a couple whose adult children have left home is now living in a three-bedroom Council House all on their own. And maybe it is, but being equally unpleasant to another family is hardly 'fairness' and anyway, the root cause of this 'unfairness' isn't the couple in the Council House, it's the fact that when the people next door to them bought theirs, they got it at a knock-down price and even then the Council couldn't use the proceeds to build a replacement.
Social landlords are not reckless and wasteful with their housing and they have always tried to fit the house to the tenant as best they can. As a Housing Officer in the 1990s I was regularly involved in arranging all-expenses paid moves for willing pensioners from big family houses into retirement bungalows, for example. Much under-occupied housing could be freed up if there was more good-quality, secure, affordable accommodation close to their existing support network for older people though interestingly, doubtless mindful of the bad press persecuting pensioners would get, not to mention the power of the 'grey' vote, pensioners are completely exempt from these 'Bedroom Tax' proposals.
Most tenants don't want a property that's too big for their needs either. It costs more to heat and furnish than something 'just right'. And while there will be squeals of disapproval from some that 'The Public Purse' is paying for the spare bedrooms needed to house children staying with a separated parent, better that perhaps than pick up the less visible but probably higher costs of estrangement and anxiety that are the alternative.
Arguably, then, the problem of excessive Housing Benefit cost solves itself if you allow - indeed fund and encourage - Social Landlords to build the range of housing the communities they serve require, and to buy and renovate existing properties, enabling those who want to to 'downsize' (possibly even providing positive incentives for them to do so, such as assistance with removals and setting up their new utility accounts) and others from the over-priced private sector housing to move into better-value, more secure tenancies. The last time I looked, there were no shortage of contractors willing and able to do this work looking for projects, and tradespeople 'signing on' who could be working, earning and incidently, not claiming Housing Benefit.
Or you could be really radical and introduce rent control back into the private rented sector. Because what you won't get ministers telling you is that a substantial chunk of this 'out-of-control' welfare bill isn't going to the 'shirkers' and 'scroungers', it's actually lining the pockets of landlords and, where the shortage of accommodation is most acute, those pockets are likely to be on some very expensive items of clothing.
Instead, when you confront a minister with the hardship this is going to cause, you get the suggestion that tenants might manage the extra expense - and alleviate the housing crisis - by taking in lodgers. In some cases, that might indeed be a practical proposition, but in plenty of others it's quite impractical (eg. where rooms are needed for visiting carers or children), fraught with complications for benefit entitlement and an outright danger to some vulnerable households. One of the local Councils in this district ran a high profile anti benefit-fraud campaign only last autumn encouraging neighbours to report people they believed were co-habiting - and I'll look at how fine the line can be between sharing a home and 'living together' in a future blog - so that's almost certainly not a sensible tactic if you're single (note that you can be 'living together' in a same-sex relationship).
And if you've read the book which inspired the title of this blog, you'll probably remember what happened to the Eastons when they decided to try and balance their budget by taking in a lodger, who seemed thoroughly decent and respectable, at first...
(SPOILER ALERT - it didn't end well.)
And if you haven't read 'The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists' by Robert Tressell, it's probably time you did!
Although that's a catchy expression, 'Bedroom Tax' is somewhat misleading as what we're actually talking about isn't a tax at all; the 'under-occupation penalty' is a reduction in Housing Benefit entitlement set to affect tenants in Social Housing from April.
The Government's justification for introducing the measure, which will reduce entitlement by 14% of eligible rent for one additional bedroom and 25% for two, is that firstly, it will control the spiralling cost of Housing Benefit and secondly, it will make better use of the limited supply of Social Housing available. Naturally, being a measure from the ConDems, it will do this by putting various poor and vulnerable families through months of uncertainty, additional financial hardship and misery - and in many cases throw them out of the homes they've occupied for decades -rather than tackling the root causes of either problem. They'll also be giving Housing Associations and Councils who still own and manage housing stock an almighty headache as they attempt to shuffle their tenants into small enough properties to avoid the 'Bedroom Tax' and when they fail (which they will, because most have 'too many' larger properties and 'too few' small ones) they'll have an even bigger headache dealing with rent arrears and the grim prospect of evicting the very people it was their mission to help and house.
And Local Authorities, who administer Housing Benefit, will end up looking the villain of the piece, whereas if the Government had waited to tie these changes in with the introduction of Universal Credit, the DWP would have carried the can and the buck would have stopped more sharply at No 10.
I'm not going to run through a long, detailed list of the type of people likely to suffer as a consequence as those with the most plaintive and, at least from a media perspective, 'deserving' stories are already finding their way into the press. But we're talking about disabled people needing rooms for special equipment or for carers to stay in during bad times, separated parents who aren't the principal carer for their children, families with grown up kids working away from home on short-term contracts, and more mundane situations, such as couples who want a bedroom each because one (or both) snores like a jumbo jet taking off. But you'll see plenty of similar cases in your local paper soon enough.
Before I go on, I'm going to take a brief moment to remind readers that, contrary to the impression given by Government ministers and the usual suspects in the press, Housing Benefit is paid to working people on low incomes and not just people out of work. Just in case you're still swallowing the shirkers/strivers rhetoric. I'm sure you're not. What I'm going to try to do is debunk the Government's argument about 'fairness' and parity with the private sector, and suggest some logical alternatives.
Firstly, the myth that this simply brings provision for Social Housing tenants into line with that for people in the private sector. The only thing the 'Bedroom Tax' has in common with the Local Housing Allowance scheme for private tenancies (introduced by Labour in 2008, but made tougher by the ConDems) is the calculation of how many 'bedrooms' a household requires. There, the similarity ends.
In the private sector, Housing Benefit is paid based on the 'Local Housing Allowance' (LHA) for a property of the size required by the claimant's family or household. This was, when the system was set up, the median price for rented accommodation in any given district, but has subsequently been moved down to reflect the cost of the lowest third of private rented housing, limiting the availability of affordable private rented housing to benefit claimants. Prior to the introduction of LHA, councils were still expected to cap Housing Benefit for private tenants to a level commensurate with the size of property a household required, and set the rent at a rate judged appropriate by a rent officer if it appeared excessive for the type. But it was never utterly inflexible as councils did have the discretion to allow higher payments in exceptional circumstances - for example where a larger property was needed due to disability.
So, private tenants claiming Housing Benefit have limited access to housing due to the level at which LHA is set and also a built-in 'under-occupancy' provision stating how many rooms they need. However, if they are fortunate enough to find a three-bedroomed house or flat for the same price as the LHA for a two-bedroom property in their area, they can receive Housing Benefit based on their full rent. It even used to be the case that if they could track down a property for less than the LHA for the size they required, private tenants could keep up to £15 per week of the difference; but that's gone now, of course, along with any idea that you might actually try to reward benefit claimants for making canny financial decisions. Though to be fair, there was always the risk that what this would actually do was lure poor families into cheap but substandard accommodation, or encourage landlords to set their rents at LHA levels where previously they had been below.
So it's a tough regime for private tenants - especially when you add reduced security of tenure into the mix - and many must look enviously at their peers in Social Housing, especially if they have been shuffling from one shorthold tenancy to the next waiting in vain for a Council or Housing Association allocation to come their way. If you're that family, it's going to look very unfair to you that a couple whose adult children have left home is now living in a three-bedroom Council House all on their own. And maybe it is, but being equally unpleasant to another family is hardly 'fairness' and anyway, the root cause of this 'unfairness' isn't the couple in the Council House, it's the fact that when the people next door to them bought theirs, they got it at a knock-down price and even then the Council couldn't use the proceeds to build a replacement.
Social landlords are not reckless and wasteful with their housing and they have always tried to fit the house to the tenant as best they can. As a Housing Officer in the 1990s I was regularly involved in arranging all-expenses paid moves for willing pensioners from big family houses into retirement bungalows, for example. Much under-occupied housing could be freed up if there was more good-quality, secure, affordable accommodation close to their existing support network for older people though interestingly, doubtless mindful of the bad press persecuting pensioners would get, not to mention the power of the 'grey' vote, pensioners are completely exempt from these 'Bedroom Tax' proposals.
Most tenants don't want a property that's too big for their needs either. It costs more to heat and furnish than something 'just right'. And while there will be squeals of disapproval from some that 'The Public Purse' is paying for the spare bedrooms needed to house children staying with a separated parent, better that perhaps than pick up the less visible but probably higher costs of estrangement and anxiety that are the alternative.
Arguably, then, the problem of excessive Housing Benefit cost solves itself if you allow - indeed fund and encourage - Social Landlords to build the range of housing the communities they serve require, and to buy and renovate existing properties, enabling those who want to to 'downsize' (possibly even providing positive incentives for them to do so, such as assistance with removals and setting up their new utility accounts) and others from the over-priced private sector housing to move into better-value, more secure tenancies. The last time I looked, there were no shortage of contractors willing and able to do this work looking for projects, and tradespeople 'signing on' who could be working, earning and incidently, not claiming Housing Benefit.
Or you could be really radical and introduce rent control back into the private rented sector. Because what you won't get ministers telling you is that a substantial chunk of this 'out-of-control' welfare bill isn't going to the 'shirkers' and 'scroungers', it's actually lining the pockets of landlords and, where the shortage of accommodation is most acute, those pockets are likely to be on some very expensive items of clothing.
Instead, when you confront a minister with the hardship this is going to cause, you get the suggestion that tenants might manage the extra expense - and alleviate the housing crisis - by taking in lodgers. In some cases, that might indeed be a practical proposition, but in plenty of others it's quite impractical (eg. where rooms are needed for visiting carers or children), fraught with complications for benefit entitlement and an outright danger to some vulnerable households. One of the local Councils in this district ran a high profile anti benefit-fraud campaign only last autumn encouraging neighbours to report people they believed were co-habiting - and I'll look at how fine the line can be between sharing a home and 'living together' in a future blog - so that's almost certainly not a sensible tactic if you're single (note that you can be 'living together' in a same-sex relationship).
And if you've read the book which inspired the title of this blog, you'll probably remember what happened to the Eastons when they decided to try and balance their budget by taking in a lodger, who seemed thoroughly decent and respectable, at first...
(SPOILER ALERT - it didn't end well.)
And if you haven't read 'The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists' by Robert Tressell, it's probably time you did!
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