Poll Tax Reloaded

While much of the recent debate on Welfare Reform has been centred on the Benefits Uprating Bill and demise of DLA, an altogether more insidious change has slipped through with little comment.  This is surprising because, if my view from the public gallery of a council chamber somewhere in the West Midlands yesterday evening is in any way representative, Thatcher's successors have exacted cruel revenge on their political foes without them even noticing. 

They've got them to reintroduce the Poll Tax.

The problem is this.  Central Government has devolved responsibility for devising and implementing a Council Tax Support scheme to Local Authorities, given them 10% less money with which to fund it but attached conditions ensuring that pensioners cannot be worse off under the new scheme than the existing national one.  Councils are therefore faced with either funding the shortfall by a general rise in Council Tax, by cuts in services, by borrowing or by making their scheme for working-age claimants less 'generous' than at present.  A fairly simple calculation tells you that if you are a Council with a better-off population, a 10% cut in subsidy for Council Tax Benefit is fiddling small change, whereas if you've got a lot of unemployed, incapacitated and low-waged residents, the position is very different. 

And where do we find the latter disadvantaged communities?   That's right: overwhelming in Labour-run Local Authority areas, and disproportionally in the Midlands and the North.

The grim truth is that you can't square this circle: unless they are willing to pump in funds from another pot, Councils are going to have to cut benefits in actual terms to some claimants.  Arguably, other pots could have been raided - even the most cash-strapped Councils still get fleeced for more in a day's pay for 'experts' and 'consultants' than a year's Band B - but locally, that was rejected.  Core principles of the new scheme were that 'everybody should contribute to the cost of local services' and that it should 'encourage people to find work.' 

I'll come back to the second point later.  Let's look at 'everybody should contribute to the cost of local services'.  That was precisely the argument behind the Poll Tax - the Thatcherite Government arguing that if people receiving benefits didn't have to pay 'the rates' (as they were then) they wouldn't hold their Council to account when it put them up to fund dreadful things - like the fabulously low bus fares we enjoyed in Sheffield in the early 1980s, for example.  You might just persuade me that there was some merit in that if national rates for Social Security benefits were being increased by a sum equivalent to the 'ideal' contribution an unemployed person would make towards their Council Tax, but they aren't.  On the contrary, it's almost inconceivable that they will rise by more than 1% in the next few years, unless a few more LibDem MP's find the 'conscience' app on their Smartphones and vote against the Benefits Uprating Bill.  But at present benefits contain no allowance at all for Council Tax, so every last penny a Council chooses to demand from its unwaged residents comes directly from money that should be providing them and their families with food, clothes, and fuel.

So the 'fair' principle isn't 'everybody should pay': it's everybody who can afford to should pay.  And because some can't afford to pay anything, those who can afford most should pay more to compensate - I think it goes something like 'From each according to their ability...'  I would be curious, for example,  to see how the sums worked out applying a slightly steeper 'taper' to claims from people with incomes above subsistence level while accepting that anyone whose income was at or below their 'Income Support' equivalent should be exempt. 

Still, the good old Poll Tax was only asking for 10%.  The meeting I observed last night didn't go for 10% - it set the minimum payment for the majority of working age claimants at 30%.  That was down from the 35% initially outlined.  Not that there was a debate or anything silly like that.  The motion was proposed and seconded; not a single Councillor of any political complexion spoke against and on a show of hands, no-one indicated dissent. 

This was in stark contrast to a debate which raged for almost three hours on the pros and cons of relocating the Council offices to a new building intended to be the centrepiece of a new Central Business District.  I watched that as a 'neutral'; there's no question that something needs doing to regenerate the City Centre and I admit to quite liking the funky design for the new building, but I can't help thinking that if those businessmen who supposedly think so highly of this scheme had any real faith in it, they wouldn't be waiting for the Council to make the first move, they'd build their own new HQ on the site - but I digress.  The relevence of this debate to the Council Tax issue is the claim that this scheme will create something in the region of 4,500 new jobs.

Now, even if every one of those new jobs goes to someone from this immediate area currently out of work, it still leaves half of them without a job and either missing a meal, leaving the heating off even in weather like we've had this week (ie rarely above freezing) or playing dodge the bailiff because they've defaulted on that 30% Council Tax payment.

So if there aren't enough jobs here, and even the rosiest predictions don't provide enough for all, making even the poorest pay 30% of their Council Tax doesn't help them find work, it simply forces the unemployed deeper into poverty, takes income out of local shops and businesses, dumps a greater burden on overstretched Foodbanks and underfunded charities, or even compels people to leave an already depopulated city in search of somewhere they can live more cheaply. 

When certain London Boroughs were proposing to move their homeless residents to areas of cheaper housing, the phrase 'Social Cleansing' was coined for it.  I wish I didn't feel that the same game is being played here.

Why 'Keep Disability Living Allowance'?

The only Facebook 'Cause' I signed up to was one called 'Keep Disability Living Allowance'.  It's a well-organised and well-intentioned campaign, but I regret signing up for two reasons.  Firstly, the frequent follow-up emails, while sometimes containing useful information, are inclined to clutter up my inbox.  

And secondly, I don't honestly think we should be campaigning to 'Keep Disability Living Allowance.'  The so-called 'Personal Independence Payments' that are set to replace DLA are indeed a retrograde step and old-style DLA will unquestionably prove to have been fairer and more generous that the punative PIPs, but that in itself does not make DLA any sort of paragon of good practice in welfare provision.  Why not use this debate, and whatever remains of the Paralympic legacy, to demand better?  Because, to borrow the phrase allegedly used in response to a request for directions in Ireland, if I were looking to devise a fair and supportive benefit for disabled people, 'I wouldn't want to be starting from here!'

The main problem with DLA - and the same is equally true of ESA, and its predecessor Incapacity Benefit - is that you can visualise it as a series of steps, when what is actually required is a ramp.  Take the care components.  The lower is payable if the claimant either requires 'significant attention in connection with their bodily functions' or cannot safely prepare a cooked main meal without assistance.  Leaving aside the nightmarish struggles there have been to define what the heck 'significant' attention is, what constitutes a 'bodily function' and how varied a diet the 'main meal' test should allow one to follow, there is one fundamental hitch with the whole concept.  At some stage, a disabled person crosses a notional threshold between being entitled to nothing at all, and qualifying for DLA at the lower rate for care: that threshold might be no more than an extra couple of minutes of personal care. 

Those extra couple of minutes could be worth a great deal more than simply the £20.55 lower rate care.  It could mean a 'disability premium' when calculating a range of means-tested benefits, giving additional entitlement to Income Support, JSA or Housing Benefit. It could also save the claimant a small fortune in 'non-dependent' deductions for working adults in their household from any support with housing they receive.  It might be the difference between free school meals for the children or not, free NHS dental treatment or full price, and a whole range of grants, statutory and voluntary services.

A 'step up' to the middle rate could have even more dramatic consequences.  If those care needs are 'frequent' and 'throughout the day', or 'prolonged or repeated' at night, the weekly benefit is £51.85.  But the claimant might also, if living alone, add a 'severe disability premium' to their entitlement, or enable their carer to claim Carer's Allowance.  A successful claim for DLA at this rate can easily double a claimant's weekly income.  But the difference between this and the lower rate may again be a matter of minutes of care, or the distribution of those minutes 'throughout' the day rather than as one or two longer sessions at the start or end of it.

Now consider the dilemma facing the disabled person who, after a few years coming to terms with perhaps the aftermath of an accident or a traumatic illness, finds they are starting to 'manage' a little better.  They are under a strict obligation to inform the DWP of any relevent change in their circumstances, but if that could halve your income, wouldn't you be tempted to argue this wasn't really a 'change'?  After all, it's not as if your health is actually better - you're just a bit braver about the pain, a bit cleverer about making the best of your 'good days', aren't you?  And what if what was helping you cope better was private therapy or treatment you knew you couldn't afford if the price of your scrupulous honesty was over £100 per week less to live on?

All well and good, until someone feeling jealous of your nice new Motability vehicle sees you out and about on one of your 'good days' and makes that call...

A 'ramped' approach to DLA's successor, and to the spin-off benefits from it, would surely be fairer at the initial claim stage and would take some of the sting out of reporting a change of circumstances.  We might imagine a scheme based on an initial assessment of percentage disability - perhaps akin to that used for Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit.  If, for illustrative purposes, the maximum 'New DLA' payable was £100 per week (it would have to be greater - this is simply for easy sums!), an assessment of 25% would pay £25 per week, and assessment of 64%, £64 per week and so on.  This same principle could feed through to the calculations for means-tested benefits, allocating a single, higher 'disability premium' on a proportional basis, so there would be no more all-or-nothing premium precipices. 

Even quite a modest disability would be reflected in extra entitlement and it should be possible for fluctuating conditions better addressed - for example, a condition giving a 75% disability for two days a week on average, but only 25% for the remaining 'good days' would give an overall score of about 40%, whereas now there might be no entitlement at all.  And why have qualifying times?  A person coping with a short-term but debilitating injury or illness may still require personal care and extra help with mobility costs and there is no reason why a short-term award can't be made and regularly reviewed as improvement is anticipated.

This is just an outline idea.  The percentages might be calculated on much the same basis as IIDB, looking at actual illnesses and injuries  Alternatively, it could instead reflect the additional costs incurred on account of their disability and number of hours care 'reasonably required' by the claimant.  In the latter case, benefit rates might actually correlate with the cost of employing a professional carer for that number of hours.  Under those circumstances, there would be no need for Carer's Allowance as the claimant would pay their carer(s) the rate for the job based on the hours they actually required; ideally, the 'rate for the job' would be better than that offered by many private contractors, which is all too often essentially minimum wage minus travelling costs...

So there's my pitch for a manifesto commitment from the people who hope to be the next Labour Government.  No PIPs, no DLA, but something smarter and fairer.  It isn't simpler, but as I've probably said before, you can't do both 'fair' and 'simple' when it comes to Social Security, and it's time to stop pretending that you can.

Tough on trolls, tough on the causes of trolls

When it can't find stories to print from the Courts concerning claimants being prosecuted for benefit fraud, our local paper likes to ensure its letters page seethes with vitriol towards the Undeserving Poor.  There's a classic in today from a gentleman who seems to think it's time to means-test Child Benefit for all families, though how this is supposed to address his perceived list of social ills has passed me by in his rant, as follows.

"If we can finally, at long last, take state handouts away from the richest families who don't need it, let's also take child benefit away from fit and healthy layabouts who don't do themselves and their children any justice by treating the public purse like a socialist bottomless pit.  Where's the harm in making them support their children by doing a decent day's hard graft?  Funding the fallout of their latest act of promiscuity should rest on their shoulders.  Maybe then, they'd learn the real definition of responsibility.  Maybe then the surplus cash could support children who are forced by successive governments to care for sick and disabled relatives.  Maybe then, children in genuine poverty won't have to rely on food banks to survive.  It's time for a proper national means-test. Even now, child benefit is paying for overweight scroungers to up-size their social housing, smoke 20 cigarettes a day and binge-drink."

Where do we start?  Perhaps with a brief history lesson:

Child Benefit – originally ‘Family Allowance’ - was introduced thanks to the campaigning philanthropist Eleanor Rathbone, who noted that even the children of working families often went hungry because their mothers lacked an adequate, reliable income, sometimes because neither parent had regular employment, sometimes because their wages were too low, and sometimes because the father failed to pass on enough of his wages to support the family.  Over eighty years later, it would be nice to think these problems no longer exist, but they are actually as prevalent as ever and by no means restricted to the poorly-paid or unemployed. 

By making Child Benefit non-means-tested, it gave the same support to all families with children and gave them all an equal stake in the Welfare State.  I am sure that the move to introduce means-testing, and in the clumsy and unfair manner in which it has been done, is actually about divorcing the middle classes completely from the Social Security system, so that as further cuts are made, it no longer matters to them. 

You could equally make a case - and perhaps the Condems will do just this as soon as they dare - that non-means-tested disability benefits aren't needed by the 'better-off'.  After all, the removal of Free Bus Passes and Winter Fuel Allowance from 'better off' pensioners is up for discussion already.  But as anyone who has ever done benefit take-up work will tell you, the very fact that a benefit isn't means-tested is often the key to getting the poor-but-proud person to make that claim.  Years ago, I often got elderly clients of the Home Improvement Agency I worked for to claim Attendance Allowance on the basis that "the Queen Mother could put in for this if she was as poorly as you!"

There has long been a sound argument that Child Benefit should be raised to better reflect the real cost of raising a child, but count as taxable income.  If this happened, there would be no need for means-tested Child Tax Credit and the biggest winners would be those on low to middle earned incomes - the very people Mr Angry thinks he's on the same side as. 

The ridiculous suggestion that benefits cause the 'feckless' to breed is something I'll tackle in more detail in another blog, but I notice it's often the very people most keen to ensure their own children get a good education and nice white-collar jobs who seem most appalled at that prospect.  Which makes you wonder who they think will be collecting their rubbish, clearing their drains and providing their care when they're elderly, if these jobs are beneath their own offspring?

Computer says "No!"

One of the many things that scares me about Universal Credit, the new all-encompassing benefit being launched this year to replace Income Support, Jobseekers Allowance, Housing Benefit and Tax Credits is the plan for it to be 'digital by default'.

In theory, there are obvious advantages for both claimant and DWP here.  From the claimant's perspective, there's no losing the form in the post either on the way out or back in; your claim is received the moment you click the 'finish' button, not several days later at the mercy of the Royal Mail and after languishing in a central DWP post handling centre somewhere.  Perhaps you can even track its progress online, or will get helpful email updates?  "I am delighted to advise that your Universal Credit is on its way today.  I hope that we're able to make your day a special one.  I'm unable to confirm the exact time we'll be delivering your benefit but, rest assured, it's in safe hands.  Many thanks for choosing the DWP." 

Have a Nice Day! 

Except it won't be like that.  For a start, many claimants still don't have access to a computer with reliable Internet access.  Councils shutting libraries as a consequence of the squeeze on their funding hasn't helped.  But even if all potential claimants of Universal Credit could access a secure and private computer to make their claim, that wouldn't solve the problem.

Doing anything official 'online' involves several tiers of security and, as I have found today, unexpected delays at various stages.  When not sitting here putting the world to rights, I'm a self employed gardener and craftsperson, and it's Online Tax Return time.  In fact, I wouldn't be blogging now if that was all going to plan, but it isn't...  

To deal with HMRC online, I need my National Insurance Number, a ten digit personal tax reference number, a separate twelve digit User ID and, in order to activate my online service, a twelve character PIN.  Having acquired all of these components I have duly activated my account, only to find I can do nothing with it for 'up to 72 hours', which is a pain as I had set this afternoon aside specifically as quiet time to do my Tax Return.

Furthermore, despite being well-educated and relatively proficient with a mouse and keyboard, when I first registered as self-employed, somehow I must have entered the wrong year for the commencement of my business, and thus ended up with an assessment form and demand for underpaid Class 2 NI from a year earlier than I should have done, an error which proved impossible to resolve online or by phone and needed the use of old-fashioned ink and paper to sort out.  I'm certain I wouldn't have let the error slip through had I been working with a paper form that could easily be read back through and checked, but I didn't see a 'print-out' or 'check' option when I had completed the online form nor was there any way to look back at it to see whether it was my indeed my error or HMRC's. 

Naturally, I'll be hitting 'print screen' regularly when I can finally get into the system to do that Tax Return, but if the IT system and helpline provision for Universal Credit is anything like this, there will literally be people left starving.  At the very least, the Government should be looking to draft in a lot of extra DWP personnel to staff Jobcentres and 'pop-up' offices and assist claimants through their new claims, and deal with emergency payments if (or when) the system crashes. 

Instead, the plan appears to be to hope there's enough grub for them at the foodbanks.

Family Planning

While the debates will rumble on for a while yet regarding the "Benefits Uprating Bill", at least the idea to limit the payment of benefits to just the first two or three children in a household has apparently slipped off of the agenda.  Like stopping under-25s claiming Housing Benefit, I suspect it's been parked for possible use later, either when the Tories feel they have public opinion so poisoned against the poor that they're ready to see their children starve and young job-seekers sleeping in bin bags on benches, or to be pointed at by the Libdems as nasties they've saved us from; at the price of supporting these other vicious measures.

Something which surprised me - though I suppose it shouldn't bearing in mind the notoriously Victorian attitudes of IDS and Co - was that the plans for Universal Credit contain no proposals to apportion benefits between separated parents. 

It really does seem staggering that where parents live apart but share the care of their child(ren), there is no provision to pay benefits on a pro-rata basis unless the parents themselves make an informal agreement - either that one pays the other their 'share', or where there is more than one child, that they make claims for one (or more) each.  It would surely make far better sense if Mum has 'Junior' for 4 days and Dad for 3, to pay 4/7ths of the child benefit and a pro-rata 4/7ths Child Tax Credit (based on her income) to Mum, and the same to Dad (based on his income) on a 3/7ths basis?  It has to be fairer than the present 'all or nothing' arrangement, surely?

In fact, the sum of the parts ideally would be slightly greater than the whole as the cost of heating Junior's room doesn't go away when s/he does - another example of where 'simple' and 'fair' don't make an easy fit.

A further complication arises with Housing Benefit.  The following comment was posted a few days ago on a thread in my local paper concerning the 'bedroom tax' - or to be precise, the changes in Housing Benefit that will reduce it for Social Housing tenants considered to be 'under-occupying' their home. 

“I've never written into a paper before and I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.  As a father of a 9 year old, who is disabled and wheelchair bound I am outraged about this. I had to move from a one bed roomed flat to a 2 bed roomed maisonette because of my son's disabilities. 

I have my son 3 nights a week, sometimes more. His mother is classed as his carer because he sleeps in hers for 4 nights. But sometimes I have him longer. When he's on school holidays I have him all day (from about 9am) Tuesday till Wednesday evening, Friday morning until Sunday. His mum get respite and goes off on holidays for about 3 weeks a year. During this time I take care of my son full time and I get NOTHING even though I'm using more electric, gas, water, diesel and food.

I know I'm not the only dad, single parent in this position but I am truly scared. I'm barely scraping by now. They think is easy for us and were having an easy time of it. If they only knew how hard it is out here in the real world. It's wrong to rob the poor, why not tax the RICH on their spare bedrooms. I'm sure they get more that way.”

Leaving aside the 'bedroom tax' issue for the moment, and looking at benefits for families again, this has been a problem for private sector tenants for years.  More commonly affecting fathers but not exclusively so, and also affecting second families, claimants would find their housing needs assessed only on the permanent occupants of their home, with no allowance for regular access visits at all.

Thus a woman with a teenage son and a daughter classed as resident with her ex-husband but staying regularly, renting a three bedroomed house, is assessed as 'under-occupying' one of those rooms and receives benefit on the cost of a two-bedroom property.  Or the young single dad, renting a two-bedroomed flat so his child can visit - except that if he needs to claim Housing Benefit, as an under-25 'absent parent' he'll get only the 'single room' rate - the cost of one room in a shared house.  Sometimes it was possible to get additional 'discretionary' payments in these circumstances - if a similar provision exists with Universal Credit, I've overlooked it.

But perhaps the next time someone in Governments starts making pronouncements on responsibility and family values, they'll face some questions on how current policies are supposed to help.

Is this really the best they can offer?

As I write, the debate rages on the Welfare Uprating Bill.  I see from the Guardian that the text of the Labour amendment is as follows:

That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill because it fails to address the reasons why the cost of benefits is exceeding the Government’s plans; notes that the Resolution Foundation has calculated that 68 per cent of households affected by these measures are in work and that figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that all the measures announced in the Autumn Statement, including those in the Bill, will mean a single-earner family with children on average will be £534 worse off by 2015; further notes that the Bill does not include anything to remedy the deficiencies in the Government’s work programme or the slipped timetable for universal credit; believes that a comprehensive plan to reduce the benefits bill must include measures to create economic growth and help the 129,400 adults over the age of 25 out of work for 24 months or more, but that the Bill does not do so; further believes that the Bill should introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee, which would give long-term unemployed adults a job they would have to take up or lose benefits, funded by limiting tax relief on pension contributions for people earning over £150,000 to 20 per cent; and further believes that the proposals in the Bill are unfair when the additional rate of income tax is being reduced, which will result in those earning over a million pounds per year receiving an average tax cut of over £100,000 a year.

I'm genuinely confused by this.  It reads as if they want to ensure that the cost of benefits doesn't exceed the Government's plans (which included swingeing cuts the last time I looked), want to make sure Universal Credit is delivered on time (rather than calling for it to be kicked into touch in favour of something fairer with real people dealing with claims and administration - which would create jobs, by the way), think it's only wrong to freeze the benefits of claimants who are in work, believe in a 'comprehensive plan to reduce the benefits bill' (when surely demographic change flies in the face of this ever actually being possible) and promotes its own proposals for what is effectively a 'workfare' scheme (see 'Right said Ed' post).

Why couldn't they just call for benefits to be uprated in line with the RPI as they used to be and an end to the stigmatisation of the poor, on the grounds that increasing the income of the poorest puts money straight back into their local ecomony, and therefore encourages economic growth, which creates real jobs?

Or if benefit increases must shadow Public Sector pay, then it is time for this too to be linked to an agreed measure of inflation.

Disgusted, Mugsborough.

Atonement

Since losing the 2010 General Election, we've seen some soul-searching and 'apologies' from Labour in respect of policy decisions they now appear to think might have been wrong.  Some have been refreshing (admissions that more ought to have been done to control the City and Financial Services industries, contrition over the Iraq War) others thoroughly depressing (apologies over 'immigration' surely playing into the hands of the Tories and those to their right).

I'm waiting for the apology for Employment and Support Allowance, though I fear I'll wait in vain, but in fact the apology needs to be somewhat more comprehensive.  I saw the following comment from 'Buzzoff2015' in the 'Guardian on an item suggesting lack of enthusiasm for 'Welfare Reform' rhetoric from Nick Clegg, which makes what on the face of it sounds like an audacious claim.

"The government of 1997-2010 were harsher on benefit claimants than any who came before them since at least 1948.
Social security spending by GDP fell.
Claims for most benefits fell.
Those paid more tax credits than they should have got through no fault of their own were pursued mercilessly and without regard to the consequences.
Incapacity Benefit was introduced in 1995, before new claims were stopped by Labour in 2008 as they introduced ESA and the hated Work Capability Assessment. Over that 11 year period they were in control of it, Incapacity Benefit barely rose and even began falling in 2004, which continued right up until ESA was brought in.
The Labour government did not cancel the Benefit Integrity Project, intended to find fraud among Disability Living Allowance claimants where there was virtually none(and denying that was the purpose, laughably).
They increased the number of benefit fraud investigators.
They briefed the newspapers against claimants just as the current government are doing.
They brought in the embryonic workfare programmes.
They presided over the sharpest decrease in Lone Parents claiming Income Support since that decrease started in the 90s and since there had been a Lone Parents category eligible for support.
They changed the Department of Social Security into the Department of Work and Pensions, in the never-ending war against the very idea of 'social security', to make claimants more vulnerable to marginalisation and stigma.
Labour's record is atrocious, but is exactly what the misinformed public at large wanted from them. It was to their advantage that they were misrepresented as being 'soft' because it gave them license to do whatever they wanted."

I'd love to be able to counter that with a lot of 'yes but...' examples, but apart from suggesting that the road to the what for too many was the Hell of Tax Credit overpayments was paved with good intentions, I'm stuck for a defence. 

Right said Ed

On the Welfare Reform agenda, Ed Balls is promising 'tough but fair' measures from Labour, proposing that every adult aged over 25 and out of work for more than two years should be obliged to take up a Government-provided job for six months, or lose benefits.  The implication, yet again, is that out there are hordes of people choosing not to seek work and instead opting for a cushy life at the taxpayer's expense.

Now, forgive me if this is stating the completely bleeding obvious, but the last time I looked at the conditions for receiving Jobseekers Allowance, they included very clear requirements to be 'available for and actively seeking work'.  In the days when sufficient staff were employed at Jobcentres to spend a few minutes talking to claimants on 'signing on' day, you had to show that you had been doing precisely that. No doubt, within the little time the DWP's ever-shrinking front-line workforce get to spend talking to, advising and supporting claimants, they continue to do their best to check these things.  So in theory, if there actually is a job out there that this unemployed-for-two-years person can do, they've been trying to get it, or they've already been sanctioned for not doing so.

So yes, let's create some jobs and give long-term unemployed people a bit of 'positive discrimination' to get them.  But if you're creating jobs using public money, let's make sure we're not effectively putting that money straight into the pockets of the shareholders of Asda, Tesco, Poundland etc, while at the same time allowing these companies to shed permanent staff and replace them with subsidised workers, thus giving them an unfair advantage in the marketplace and dumping at least one worker onto the dole for each taken on through the 'job creation' scheme.  There is plenty of scope for new jobs to be created in communities and caring for the landscape that Councils, voluntary organisations and enviromental groups would love to do, but can't afford to employ the staff for in the present climate.

Ed Balls and Liam Byrne promise the jobs will pay 'the minimum wage.'  This simply won't do if the plan involves placing people with private companies, as again it raises the spectre of substitution.  The worker needs to receive the rate for the job where it is higher, to protect the rights of existing staff and to give them a 'proper job' experience - otherwise, it could easily feel like a six-month 'community punishment' to be put up with, rather than the opportunity and useful experience it ought to be. 

But what makes me saddest about this announcement is that Labour even feel the need to have to sound 'tough' on 'Welfare' rather than seizing the moment to start sounding progressive on Social Security.  There is widespread disgust at the antics of Atos in connection with ESA medical assessments, scorn for organisations such as A4e over their pathetic record on managing the current workfare schemes, and revulsion at the way these companies and others are making profit from recession and poverty.  Ed Balls and Liam Byrne really need to stop running after the Daily Mail readers out there and start setting their own agenda.  They may not win over the swing voters of Middle England, but they just might start winning over the non-voters in the run-down estates and unfashionable streets to be found in even the most prosperous County Town.  They might even get back a few members and activists who left them in the unprincipled Blair Years.

They certainly won't do that while they're defending the 'benefit cap', but that's another story and another blog.

One I did earlier...

Wearing 'another hat', I wrote the following article under the title 'Behind the Curtains' in response to the Chancellor's 2012 Autumn Statement:

David Cameron, George Osborne and the unspeakably self-righteous IDS have latched on to a soundbite they trot out at every opportunity to justify their hatchet job on the Social Security system.  It’s that one about the hard-working man or woman setting off for their job in the morning and gazing resentfully at the drawn curtains of their unemployed neighbours.

Workshy scrounger! Boo, hiss! 

Before we all rush in and beat the lazy blighters around the head with our rolled up copies of the Daily Mail, let’s look behind the curtains at the people curled up in bed and listen in on their thoughts.

“This time last year I was on site by now, but was made redundant when our firm ran out of work.”

“Buy food, or try and pay off the ‘Wonga’ loan?”

“I miss having a laugh with my mates at work.”

“If we stay in bed for another couple of hours, it’ll save putting the heating on.  We can’t cope with another bill like the last one.”

“Who’s going to take me on - at my age and after a heart attack – with so many younger, fitter people out of work?”

 “I hope the agency have something for him today; me and the kids can’t cope with these angry moods much longer.”

“That smug so-and-so over the road won’t be so high and mighty when his boss works out he can replace him with a ‘trainee’ off the Work Programme who’ll do his job for nothing!”

Oh yes, there’s so much to be jealous of, isn’t there?  Far more to hate about the unemployed than, say, the commodities dealer who can spread famine across half a continent with a couple of clicks of a mouse or the investment banker moving virtual funds around in an electronic world whose actions close a real factory in Saigon, Shanghai or Sheffield.  And let’s hear it for the lady living in a mansion on the profits creamed off from a company that farms out unemployed people to fake training schemes giving highly profitable companies free labour, so taking ‘real’ jobs out of the economy, and the smug director of a ‘Pay Day Loans’ company rubbing his hands at the news of the poor getting even poorer and more desperate.  They’re ‘wealth creators’ and worthy of tax cuts, aren’t they George?

And they certainly don’t want you making hostile judgements about the smarmy politician who not only has never had to try and manage on Jobseekers’ Allowance himself, but doesn’t know anyone who ever has either.  If they and their tabloid editor chums keep up the rhetoric about the ‘workshy’, they hope you’ll forget that the ‘working age benefits’ they’re cutting are also paid to disabled people even Atos accepts are unable to work, and that Tax Credits and Housing Benefit help to support to low paid workers too.

Making all these people poorer won’t force a single person back to work who doesn’t fancy going, because the genuinely dodgy few will find the odd bit of cash-in-hand or low-level crime to keep them ticking over whatever happens to their benefits, and cuts at the DWP mean staff have less than half as much time as they used to scrutinise their availability for work or to offer them proper employment advice on ‘signing on’ day.  And anyway, where are all those jobs?  How many of the ‘new’ private sector vacancies were simply the product of the creeping privatisation of our Public Services.

Let’s get the truth about ‘fairness’ out there and nail these lies. 

It’s time to bring down the curtain on this vicious Coalition government.

Resolution

Happy New Year?  It's hardly likely to be any such thing if you live in the UK and depend for all or part of your income on Social Security benefits. 

If you aren't familiar with the main issues facing claimants and their communities in the coming year, this excellent article by the Guardian's John Harris explains them with commendable clarity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jan/01/welfare-a-war-over-benefits?intcmp=122

Today, the news is still full of Ian Duncan-Smith’s latest pronouncements on the ‘dependency culture’ that he chooses to believe is encouraged by what he perceives to be an over-generous welfare benefits system.  His current target is tax credits, almost certainly simply a smoke screen to divert attention away from growing concern at the haste with which Universal Credit is being imposed.

I have spent almost thirty years working in Welfare Rights and Housing, listening to comfortably well-off politicians of all persuasions decrying the negative effects on society and public morals of giving people ‘something for nothing’, but the rhetoric from the present Government is the most hysterical and reactionary I can ever recall.  What disappoints me is the lack of a robust defence, particularly of the unemployed, from the Opposition. 

Unless they intend to be complicit in the systematic dismantling of the complex but still fundamentally humane system that exists at present, in favour of an ugly and judgmental ‘one size fits all’ alternative, riddled with stigma and overbearing conditionality, it is time Labour started to promote their own clear alternative vision. 

In this blog I plan to pitch some suggestions of how this might be done, and to dispatch some of the myths about Social Security that are so easily accepted by much of the media and many of the very people who might soon need to rely upon it.