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.
