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.
Thursday 31 October 2013
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'?
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