Prime Minister David Cameron made what was billed as his big speech on immigration a few miles east of me yesterday, at the massive JCB factory near Uttoxeter. Headlines stressed the plan to make EU national workers wait at least four years for 'in work' benefits such as Tax Credits and we were all invited to applaud this as a 'good thing', on the grounds that it will reduce 'benefit tourism' and save money on 'welfare' - a further attack in a year that has already seen their entitlement to Tax Credits, Jobseekers Allowance and Housing Benefit significantly cut back.
Today, the headlines are all about 'modern slavery', particularly the plight of exploited workers in agriculture, domestic service and sex work. There are UK citizens among them - often vulnerable due to learning disability or mental health issues - but the majority of those affected appear to be migrants. The two issues are linked: the fear-of-UKIP fuelled policies which have seen access to benefits for EU migrants systematically degraded have contributed to the problem of 'modern slavery' by leaving people already unsure of their rights with still fewer of them.
When politicians of all parties (except the Greens, who don't play this game) talk about 'migrant workers', it's very obvious that they're thinking of an able-bodied, resilient male who can, in the absence of work that pays enough to feed and house him, sleep on a mate's sofa or under a bridge until his luck changes, or hitch a lift back to Victoria Coach Station and thence back to his homeland.
They trust their audience to picture this same worker: if you start seeing vulnerable young men and women instead, under the thumb of illegal gang-masters who take most of their earnings in fees and rent, all the talk of 'fairness' starts to ring hollow. Take away their right to benefits if they leave and they're trapped. Many won't have earned enough to be treated as 'workers' despite labouring on the land from dawn to dusk, so would get nothing if they fled. Domestic and sex workers are in the same desperate predicament, especially if they have dependent children, with no proof of earnings and no NI contributions - and their exploiters will know this and point it out to them.
Similarly, people who have been working legitimately but have reached the end of their benefit entitlement are easy prey.
If this or any other Government were serious about cutting Social Security paid to migrant workers and ending modern slavery, they would realise that the humane way to tackle both is to rigorously enforce payment of the minimum wage (and ideally raise it) and clamp down on exploitative gang-masters. Every £1 in extra wages paid to a migrant worker is, potentially, 41p less paid out in Tax Credits or 65p less housing benefit. The same applies to UK workers too, of course.
Odd then, that since the present Government came to power, only two employers have been prosecuted for not paying the minimum wage; though more have faced 'civil penalties', this is hardly a deterrent.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/22/firms-minimum-wage-not-prosecuted
Contrast the 'get tough' attitude to benefit fraud - claimants can expect to go to Court or prison for deliberate acts and face a financial penalty even for innocent mistakes. Arguably, this is benefit fraud by employers, since the people they underpay will often rely on the state to make up the shortfall, but that's different...
Ditto prosecutions of gang-masters acting illegally: where they do occur, the penalties are again derisory. One is left with the feeling that the Government will do anything to stop migrants allegedly exploiting the system, but is quite happy for the system to exploit migrants.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/14/gangmaster-prosecutions-decline-home-office-hanson-may
Did the Opposition raise either of these issues in response? Not where it was reported, if at all, and since they have been involved in an ugly arms race to be tougher than the Tories, I'm not holding my breath waiting.
Saturday 29 November 2014
Monday 27 October 2014
What to do with Universal Credit
Channel 4 - not necessarily the advisers' favourite TV company since the ghastly Benefits Street - is promising us half an hour on the Universal Credit debacle this evening. I may be jumping the gun to post about this benefit ahead of the show, but while preparing some notes for a talk on UC, it struck me that the fiasco we have now could easily have been avoided and the 'good bits' of UC already introduced if this ridiculous concept of 'Pathfinder' areas had been scrapped and an altogether different approach to bringing in changes adopted.
Here's my alternative plan. If we accept that it would actually be helpful to claimants to combine some benefits into one to save a new claim having to be made every time there's a change from sickness to health, part-time worker to carer etc (and I think we all do), that's surprisingly easy. What we now call Income-based Jobseekers Allowance and Income-related Employment and Support Allowance are no more than mutated forms of Income Support, which once provided means-tested support for jobseekers and the sick as well as lone parents and carers. It even encompassed what we now call Guarantee Pension Credit.
It cannot surely be beyond the wit of even IDS's minions to stitch IS, IbJSA and IrESA back together as Income Support, with multiple routes to entitlement. Do this, and you're already half way to Universal Credit - and without any expensive new IT. It could literally happen overnight and nobody would notice the difference, except the poor souls currently caught floundering about between ESA and JSA while they challenge a 'fit for work' decision.
On a technical point, I would dump the separate ESA components and use the existing IS 'disability' and 'enhanced disability' premiums to supplement the personal allowances of people in the WRAG and Support groups respectively, with transitional protection for any losers, though most claimants and couples will stand to gain.
Stage 2 is to tackle earnings disregards. IDS claims his reforms will 'make work pay', but he's left these untouched, like all of his predecessors since 1988 (there's a previous post from 27th March 2014 on this very point) while we wait for UC to come to the rescue. Nothing at all stops these from being uprated now. If you want to 'make work pay', make it! Put the disregard for a single person up from the insulting £5 per week to something vaguely credible - a day's work at the minimum wage, at least? What could be easier? I don't recall the system going into meltdown when the capital limits were made more generous.
Bringing Tax Credits back from HMRC and into this system is much more challenging but again, if we remember that personal allowances for children used to be an integral part of Income Support, to make them so again and to use these personal allowances and income disregards as the basis of in-work benefit calculations would seem the logical starting point - it is, after all, the basis of Housing Benefit. Key to this being seen as 'fair' would be a reasonable 'taper' applied to excess income. The current 65% for HB and UC, which diminishes additional earnings by more than half of their value and exceeds the top rate of income tax, is not 'reasonable'. Full credit for childcare costs should also be on our wish list.
As for housing costs, that is where I find myself in a quandary. The 'easy' option is to allow actual costs (subject to some restrictions on excessive rents and high mortgages) as part of the 'applicable amount' and let the DWP do the calculations, but there are arguments for keeping HB separate and under Council control. Local authorities are in a far better position than the DWP to spot landlord fraud; they know how many homes there are in a particular street, how many rooms in any given HMO. And what about discretionary payments? I am unclear on where or how (or if) these will be administered under UC.
As for payment - why not let claimants choose their payment interval? If they are used to budgeting on a monthly basis, tick for that; if weekly payments are more managable, tick for those. Let them choose to have their landlord paid direct too, if they want. Why is 'choice' the mantra for the middle-classes, whether we're talking education or healthcare, but benefit claimants are denied it to the point where they now face the prospect of pre-paid storecards for 'sensible' purchases only.
However we tackle any reform, a key factor in keeping the system 'fair' should be that it is not a 'postcode lottery', which is precisely what we have with UC. Claimants in neighbouring Councils currently have entirely different regulations applied to their claims, more or less generous disregards to part-time earnings. People in identical circumstances claiming a few days apart as UC 'rolls out' get paid different sums at different intervals, but both receive letters telling them they are getting 'what the Government says you need to live on.' The same problems plague PIP.
This isn't 'simplification' - it's a scandal. It will be interesting to see what Channel 4 makes of it.
Here's my alternative plan. If we accept that it would actually be helpful to claimants to combine some benefits into one to save a new claim having to be made every time there's a change from sickness to health, part-time worker to carer etc (and I think we all do), that's surprisingly easy. What we now call Income-based Jobseekers Allowance and Income-related Employment and Support Allowance are no more than mutated forms of Income Support, which once provided means-tested support for jobseekers and the sick as well as lone parents and carers. It even encompassed what we now call Guarantee Pension Credit.
It cannot surely be beyond the wit of even IDS's minions to stitch IS, IbJSA and IrESA back together as Income Support, with multiple routes to entitlement. Do this, and you're already half way to Universal Credit - and without any expensive new IT. It could literally happen overnight and nobody would notice the difference, except the poor souls currently caught floundering about between ESA and JSA while they challenge a 'fit for work' decision.
On a technical point, I would dump the separate ESA components and use the existing IS 'disability' and 'enhanced disability' premiums to supplement the personal allowances of people in the WRAG and Support groups respectively, with transitional protection for any losers, though most claimants and couples will stand to gain.
Stage 2 is to tackle earnings disregards. IDS claims his reforms will 'make work pay', but he's left these untouched, like all of his predecessors since 1988 (there's a previous post from 27th March 2014 on this very point) while we wait for UC to come to the rescue. Nothing at all stops these from being uprated now. If you want to 'make work pay', make it! Put the disregard for a single person up from the insulting £5 per week to something vaguely credible - a day's work at the minimum wage, at least? What could be easier? I don't recall the system going into meltdown when the capital limits were made more generous.
Bringing Tax Credits back from HMRC and into this system is much more challenging but again, if we remember that personal allowances for children used to be an integral part of Income Support, to make them so again and to use these personal allowances and income disregards as the basis of in-work benefit calculations would seem the logical starting point - it is, after all, the basis of Housing Benefit. Key to this being seen as 'fair' would be a reasonable 'taper' applied to excess income. The current 65% for HB and UC, which diminishes additional earnings by more than half of their value and exceeds the top rate of income tax, is not 'reasonable'. Full credit for childcare costs should also be on our wish list.
As for housing costs, that is where I find myself in a quandary. The 'easy' option is to allow actual costs (subject to some restrictions on excessive rents and high mortgages) as part of the 'applicable amount' and let the DWP do the calculations, but there are arguments for keeping HB separate and under Council control. Local authorities are in a far better position than the DWP to spot landlord fraud; they know how many homes there are in a particular street, how many rooms in any given HMO. And what about discretionary payments? I am unclear on where or how (or if) these will be administered under UC.
As for payment - why not let claimants choose their payment interval? If they are used to budgeting on a monthly basis, tick for that; if weekly payments are more managable, tick for those. Let them choose to have their landlord paid direct too, if they want. Why is 'choice' the mantra for the middle-classes, whether we're talking education or healthcare, but benefit claimants are denied it to the point where they now face the prospect of pre-paid storecards for 'sensible' purchases only.
However we tackle any reform, a key factor in keeping the system 'fair' should be that it is not a 'postcode lottery', which is precisely what we have with UC. Claimants in neighbouring Councils currently have entirely different regulations applied to their claims, more or less generous disregards to part-time earnings. People in identical circumstances claiming a few days apart as UC 'rolls out' get paid different sums at different intervals, but both receive letters telling them they are getting 'what the Government says you need to live on.' The same problems plague PIP.
This isn't 'simplification' - it's a scandal. It will be interesting to see what Channel 4 makes of it.
Friday 3 October 2014
The Children Tax
Looking back at the party conference season, it's hard to decide which left me fearing most from next election.
I expect to be depressed by the Conservatives' self-righteous parade of prejudice, so George Osborne's miserly pledge to freeze working-age benefits and IDS's plans for a pre-paid card to stop feckless claimants splurging the hard-working taxpayers' largess on booze and fags (or public transport, charity shop clothes and market stall food for that matter) did little more than raise my usually low blood pressure to near-normal levels.
I have also pretty much abandoned hope of hearing anything truly compassionate or inspriring from the red corner when it comes to Social Security. Yes, they will abolish the Bedroom Tax - but we knew that already. We also know - for certain now the rest of the picture starts to take shape - that this is because it is already unpopular and it is hurting the budgets of Labour councils who retain their own housing stock. That it is wrong alone is not enough - other wrongs remain and are not to be righted.
On the contrary, we again had the unedifying spectacle of Labour again trying to look 'trustworthy' and 'tough' on economic issues at the expense of the poor. They would extend the freeze on Child Benefit beyond Osborne's original timescale - despite CB being disregarded for means-tested benefit purposes, making it something that can be increased without the gain being lost elsewhere, but meaning losses aren't compensated for by a corresponding rise anywhere else.
Ed Balls also made a point of stating that a future Labour Government would retain the 'Benefit Cap', limiting the weekly sum any family or individual could receive in certain benefits to no more than the average wage. I pulled apart the Tories' justification for this in an earlier post which showed how benefits payable to someone on the average wage would keep them ahead of their counterpart on benefits only:
http://raggedskirt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/cloth-caps-benefit-caps-and-northsouth.html
The excellent 'Benefits in the Future' blog did a neater job with more maths and graphs here:
http://blog.cix.co.uk/gmorgan/2014/02/07/the-benefits-cap-and-real-income-levels/
The calculations aren't that difficult - I'm sure Ed Balls is more than capable of working them out for himself or has minions available.
What he isn't apparently willing to do is scrap something 'popular' with voters, because they wrongly believe it is dealing with the stereotypical - yet mythical - single parent choosing to have children solely as an alternative to working for a living, despite the fact that even very 'average' out-of-work families with two or three kids can no longer afford to live in most London Boroughs, even in supposedly affordable Social Housing.
In areas with lower rents the Benefit Cap is, to borrow an expression coined by the Chief Executive of our CAB, a 'Children Tax', as singles, childless couples and small families aren't affected. In this low-rent region of the north Midlands, you're allowed the equivalent of four-and-a-half children before the current cap kicks in. More than that and you'll lose a chunk of Housing Benefit, putting you in immediate danger of Court procedings (with costs) and ultimately eviction. If you receive no more than 'the amount the Government says you need to live on' in other benefits, it's inevitably going to be a struggle to make up the difference.
The maximum Child Tax Credit for one child is £2750 per annum, so trimming another £3,000 off of the cap as proposed this week - thus breaking any possible justification based on average wages - is the equivalent of telling families they are allowed one less child and for four and a half weeks of the year they are allowed two fewer children.
It's not as if affected families can retrospectively do anything about this policy. Even if it puts someone off having another child, what about the 'surplus' children they already have? Should they put them up for adoption? Leave them in baskets outside the door of the local Workhouse or Foundlings Hospital? Expose them on a hillside to await the fate appointed for them by the Gods? You could move away from the south, but £3000 per year less means you're going a couple of shires further up country this coming year for an insecure private tenancy - unless you're lucky enough to get a house on a northern Council estate full of voids left by the Bedroom Tax.
Don't be ridiculous, the Tories will say - the feckless poor simply have to find more affordable places to live, get jobs and in the meanwhile cut back on the booze and fags. Which completely disregards the fact that there are generally more and better-paid jobs where property prices are highest, that finding and moving to a new address isn't something that happens overnight and that unemployed people are less, not more, likely than their working counterparts to spend money they haven't got on cigarettes and alcohol.
I cannot stress enough that the real losers in all of this are children. Uprooted from the schools, friends and communities they know or going short because their parents are having to keep three of them on the money for two, education disrupted, family strife increased, living in cheaper, smaller and less safe or secure accommodation 'because we are too many'. As rents continue to rise and this cap stays in place, increasing numbers of families will literally have insufficient money to cover their rent anywhere in the country and landlords - including social landlords - will become wary of letting to large families, even those in work, in case unemployment or separation leaves them unable to pay their way. They will be forced to share or squat, borrow to cover debts with no chance of repayment or put children into care.
In short, this policy is so utterly morally bankrupt that it is frightening how little debate it now raises, let alone condemnation. But Ed says it stays, and George says it's going to be cut by £3000 per annum. I'm not holding my breath waiting for Ed to argue that it needs to go back up. The social ideals of 'Cathy Come Home' have turned into 'Cathy - f**k off to a slum up north, and take your kids with you.'
I expect to be depressed by the Conservatives' self-righteous parade of prejudice, so George Osborne's miserly pledge to freeze working-age benefits and IDS's plans for a pre-paid card to stop feckless claimants splurging the hard-working taxpayers' largess on booze and fags (or public transport, charity shop clothes and market stall food for that matter) did little more than raise my usually low blood pressure to near-normal levels.
I have also pretty much abandoned hope of hearing anything truly compassionate or inspriring from the red corner when it comes to Social Security. Yes, they will abolish the Bedroom Tax - but we knew that already. We also know - for certain now the rest of the picture starts to take shape - that this is because it is already unpopular and it is hurting the budgets of Labour councils who retain their own housing stock. That it is wrong alone is not enough - other wrongs remain and are not to be righted.
On the contrary, we again had the unedifying spectacle of Labour again trying to look 'trustworthy' and 'tough' on economic issues at the expense of the poor. They would extend the freeze on Child Benefit beyond Osborne's original timescale - despite CB being disregarded for means-tested benefit purposes, making it something that can be increased without the gain being lost elsewhere, but meaning losses aren't compensated for by a corresponding rise anywhere else.
Ed Balls also made a point of stating that a future Labour Government would retain the 'Benefit Cap', limiting the weekly sum any family or individual could receive in certain benefits to no more than the average wage. I pulled apart the Tories' justification for this in an earlier post which showed how benefits payable to someone on the average wage would keep them ahead of their counterpart on benefits only:
http://raggedskirt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/cloth-caps-benefit-caps-and-northsouth.html
The excellent 'Benefits in the Future' blog did a neater job with more maths and graphs here:
http://blog.cix.co.uk/gmorgan/2014/02/07/the-benefits-cap-and-real-income-levels/
The calculations aren't that difficult - I'm sure Ed Balls is more than capable of working them out for himself or has minions available.
What he isn't apparently willing to do is scrap something 'popular' with voters, because they wrongly believe it is dealing with the stereotypical - yet mythical - single parent choosing to have children solely as an alternative to working for a living, despite the fact that even very 'average' out-of-work families with two or three kids can no longer afford to live in most London Boroughs, even in supposedly affordable Social Housing.
In areas with lower rents the Benefit Cap is, to borrow an expression coined by the Chief Executive of our CAB, a 'Children Tax', as singles, childless couples and small families aren't affected. In this low-rent region of the north Midlands, you're allowed the equivalent of four-and-a-half children before the current cap kicks in. More than that and you'll lose a chunk of Housing Benefit, putting you in immediate danger of Court procedings (with costs) and ultimately eviction. If you receive no more than 'the amount the Government says you need to live on' in other benefits, it's inevitably going to be a struggle to make up the difference.
The maximum Child Tax Credit for one child is £2750 per annum, so trimming another £3,000 off of the cap as proposed this week - thus breaking any possible justification based on average wages - is the equivalent of telling families they are allowed one less child and for four and a half weeks of the year they are allowed two fewer children.
It's not as if affected families can retrospectively do anything about this policy. Even if it puts someone off having another child, what about the 'surplus' children they already have? Should they put them up for adoption? Leave them in baskets outside the door of the local Workhouse or Foundlings Hospital? Expose them on a hillside to await the fate appointed for them by the Gods? You could move away from the south, but £3000 per year less means you're going a couple of shires further up country this coming year for an insecure private tenancy - unless you're lucky enough to get a house on a northern Council estate full of voids left by the Bedroom Tax.
Don't be ridiculous, the Tories will say - the feckless poor simply have to find more affordable places to live, get jobs and in the meanwhile cut back on the booze and fags. Which completely disregards the fact that there are generally more and better-paid jobs where property prices are highest, that finding and moving to a new address isn't something that happens overnight and that unemployed people are less, not more, likely than their working counterparts to spend money they haven't got on cigarettes and alcohol.
I cannot stress enough that the real losers in all of this are children. Uprooted from the schools, friends and communities they know or going short because their parents are having to keep three of them on the money for two, education disrupted, family strife increased, living in cheaper, smaller and less safe or secure accommodation 'because we are too many'. As rents continue to rise and this cap stays in place, increasing numbers of families will literally have insufficient money to cover their rent anywhere in the country and landlords - including social landlords - will become wary of letting to large families, even those in work, in case unemployment or separation leaves them unable to pay their way. They will be forced to share or squat, borrow to cover debts with no chance of repayment or put children into care.
In short, this policy is so utterly morally bankrupt that it is frightening how little debate it now raises, let alone condemnation. But Ed says it stays, and George says it's going to be cut by £3000 per annum. I'm not holding my breath waiting for Ed to argue that it needs to go back up. The social ideals of 'Cathy Come Home' have turned into 'Cathy - f**k off to a slum up north, and take your kids with you.'
Saturday 20 September 2014
Why I write what I write
What's got me riled is a story doing the rounds of various social media disability rights and anti cuts groups (several of which I support) which has recently been published in the Mirror. Headlined "Humiliated blind woman asked by ATOS benefits assessor: 'How many fingers am I holding up?' " it describes a fairly typical Work Capability Assessment - typical in that the probably under-trained and inappropriately qualified assessor stuck to a standard script rather than tailoring the assessment to the obvious impairment of the claimant. Discourteous, humiliating and arguably in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act. Maddening - but that's not what's making me seethe.
My problem is with the alleged quote from the subject of the story. According to the Mirror:
'Natasha said: "There are so many people receiving benefits that they don't really deserve, people who don't want to work. And yet people like me who have genuine disabilities, many much worse than mine, are being forced to do humiliating tests like this. Benefits Street is being filmed a couple of miles away in Stockton and programmes like that give people the impression benefits are being handed out to everyone. I listened to the first series and there was someone on there with 11 kids who didn't seem to want to work. And yet I'm told I have to find a job based on tests I am still struggling to understand."'
Natasha may very well have said just that. People naturally lash out when they're angry. My former clients often did - so often, that there were times I could have hurled someone's appeal papers at them for being so damned self-righteous. It's what we're all told: it's what Benefits Street exists to tell us. But the Daily Mirror proports to be a left-wing, or at least a Labour, newspaper. I don't expect the same old, same old. I expect proper analysis and truth. If this is a journalistic licence version of what she said, shame on them. Even if it is what was said verbatim, I fail to see how it helps the story to incite ill-feeling towards other benefit claimants who are already frequent victims of hate crime.
Proper analysis of this story wouldn't be asking readers to vote on whether Natasha should be reassessed either. You could reassess Natasha a dozen times and, if you followed the regulations, you'd get the same result. Seriously. 'Atos' are not the problem here. Yes, their assessor was clumsy, insensitive and sceptical, but a paragon of good practice would also have to give 9 points because, since April 2011, that is the law. I know this, because I wrote a minor character with an identical degree of visual impairment and mobility into Limited Capabilty to make that very point (Linda Jenkins - ebook Episode 2). She got 9 points from one of the 'good' assessors at my fictional assessment centre; there were no solid grounds for her to appeal.
Unless the actual Work Capability Assessment is changed - or scrapped - the real Natasha's and Linda's will keep being found fit for work. Arguably, they are - the DWP itself had a blind Secretary of State in 2005! But they are also quite obviously of 'limited capability for work' in any meaningful sense of the phrase since many roles and professions would be precluded by their disability and many others by the unsuitability of too many workplaces and inflexibility of too many employers. Benefit entitlement should surely reflect this.
Finally, I'm not at all sure where the Mirror got their numbers from, but I sincerely hope they haven't gone away without telling Natasha about PIP (if she isn't already getting DLA - high rate mobility, low rate care?) and that in fact her JSA wouldn't be a basic £72.40 at all, but should include a disability premium of over £30 a week.
Sorry - does that count as a spoiler?
Friday 12 September 2014
What's in a name?
I am trying not to be cynical about the way the Parliamentary Labour Party is patting itself on the back for supporting a motion by a Libdem back-bencher to water down the 'Bedroom Tax', and thus manage a rare defeat of the Government, but it's hard. Great though it always is to see the Tories defeated and the Coalition coming apart at the seams, Labour's fixation with the 'Bedroom Tax' as the big evil of Welfare Reform, from which they will deliver us all when they come to power, strikes me as either deeply naïve or horribly disingenuous.
I often wonder if Labour would have been so willing to stand up against this policy if they weren't under pressure from northern Labour councils, who still have large amounts of their own housing stock and are feeling the financial pinch as their tenants struggle to pay the shortfall. In short, is it concern for councils, rather than compassion for claimants, that drives this policy at all?
The 'under-occupation penalty' or 'removal of the spare room subsidy' - as the Tories spectacularly failed to christen it - is set apart from the other Coalition benefit horrors by one key thing; a catchy, derogatory nickname. Coining the phrase 'Bedroom Tax' has helped to make the policy unpopular and catch the critical public eye in a way other 'reforms' have failed to. To be fair, the Bedroom Tax is also relatively easy to explain and to debunk as policy. To the Government's claim that it stops 'hard-working families' and 'tax payers' subsidising 'spare rooms' in workshy council tenants' homes, there is the response that many of these rooms aren't really 'spare' at all, but necessary to meet the special needs of disabled adults or children. And that there is nowhere for the 'under-occupier' - workshy or otherwise - to downsize to.
But other 'Welfare Reforms' are at least as easy to knock down if you care to try. Private tenants are treated at least as unjustly, since the Local Housing Allowance was cut to give benefit claimants access to only the cheapest 30% of properties. A steep rise in non-dependent deductions amounts to a 'tax' on those grown up children stuck at home with mum and/or dad, unable to afford a place of their own. The 'benefit cap' is demonstrably unfair if you show the benefit entitlement of a family on the average wage (see previous post).
What about terminating Contribution-based ESA for those in the work-related activity group rate after 12 months, when both ESA and the Incapacity Benefit which pre-dated it were payable for the duration of the claimant's illness - until the Coalition came to power? Contribution-based benefits are earned through paying NI contributions and are most useful to those with 'hard-working' spouses whose wages take the couple's joint income over the miserly means-tested benefit rates, or who have saved for a rainy day. A canny Labour politician could surely sell repealing this mean-spirited measure to the most ardent of Daily Mail readers.
Then there's turning Council Tax Support into the ultimate 'postcode lottery', with a mess of different schemes and only the vulture flocks of the bailiffs gaining anything from the charges. The cruel chaos of PIP's bungled implementation. The morass of local Social Fund schemes - and the fact that, having landed councils with responsibility for administering these, the Government is ceasing to fund them next year.
The Opposition has fought shy of taking on these issues from a claimant-focused angle until now, believing the public to have swallowed whole the 'strivers and skivers' tales they also once told. But perhaps there are important lessons to be learned from the Scottish Independence debate. North of the border, an awful lot of people haven't bought that story. They aren't fooled by the 'ending the something for nothing culture' and 'making work pay' mantra trotted out in the face of every reported injustice by increasingly desperate DWP ministers and nameless spokespeople. They have seen the stories about suicide and starvation in their local papers, on social media and even - occasionally - the national press. They know this is wrong. More than that, they're prepared to register to vote, sometimes after decades (post Poll Tax) of not doing so, and to risk a great deal on the chance of a genuinely fairer society. Women and younger voters in particular like this vision.
With Labour's conference almost upon us, I'll be curious to see whether they'll grasp this last chance before the election to change the debate from one about cutting the cost of 'welfare' to saving Social Security.
I often wonder if Labour would have been so willing to stand up against this policy if they weren't under pressure from northern Labour councils, who still have large amounts of their own housing stock and are feeling the financial pinch as their tenants struggle to pay the shortfall. In short, is it concern for councils, rather than compassion for claimants, that drives this policy at all?
The 'under-occupation penalty' or 'removal of the spare room subsidy' - as the Tories spectacularly failed to christen it - is set apart from the other Coalition benefit horrors by one key thing; a catchy, derogatory nickname. Coining the phrase 'Bedroom Tax' has helped to make the policy unpopular and catch the critical public eye in a way other 'reforms' have failed to. To be fair, the Bedroom Tax is also relatively easy to explain and to debunk as policy. To the Government's claim that it stops 'hard-working families' and 'tax payers' subsidising 'spare rooms' in workshy council tenants' homes, there is the response that many of these rooms aren't really 'spare' at all, but necessary to meet the special needs of disabled adults or children. And that there is nowhere for the 'under-occupier' - workshy or otherwise - to downsize to.
But other 'Welfare Reforms' are at least as easy to knock down if you care to try. Private tenants are treated at least as unjustly, since the Local Housing Allowance was cut to give benefit claimants access to only the cheapest 30% of properties. A steep rise in non-dependent deductions amounts to a 'tax' on those grown up children stuck at home with mum and/or dad, unable to afford a place of their own. The 'benefit cap' is demonstrably unfair if you show the benefit entitlement of a family on the average wage (see previous post).
What about terminating Contribution-based ESA for those in the work-related activity group rate after 12 months, when both ESA and the Incapacity Benefit which pre-dated it were payable for the duration of the claimant's illness - until the Coalition came to power? Contribution-based benefits are earned through paying NI contributions and are most useful to those with 'hard-working' spouses whose wages take the couple's joint income over the miserly means-tested benefit rates, or who have saved for a rainy day. A canny Labour politician could surely sell repealing this mean-spirited measure to the most ardent of Daily Mail readers.
Then there's turning Council Tax Support into the ultimate 'postcode lottery', with a mess of different schemes and only the vulture flocks of the bailiffs gaining anything from the charges. The cruel chaos of PIP's bungled implementation. The morass of local Social Fund schemes - and the fact that, having landed councils with responsibility for administering these, the Government is ceasing to fund them next year.
The Opposition has fought shy of taking on these issues from a claimant-focused angle until now, believing the public to have swallowed whole the 'strivers and skivers' tales they also once told. But perhaps there are important lessons to be learned from the Scottish Independence debate. North of the border, an awful lot of people haven't bought that story. They aren't fooled by the 'ending the something for nothing culture' and 'making work pay' mantra trotted out in the face of every reported injustice by increasingly desperate DWP ministers and nameless spokespeople. They have seen the stories about suicide and starvation in their local papers, on social media and even - occasionally - the national press. They know this is wrong. More than that, they're prepared to register to vote, sometimes after decades (post Poll Tax) of not doing so, and to risk a great deal on the chance of a genuinely fairer society. Women and younger voters in particular like this vision.
With Labour's conference almost upon us, I'll be curious to see whether they'll grasp this last chance before the election to change the debate from one about cutting the cost of 'welfare' to saving Social Security.
Friday 29 August 2014
Cloth Caps, Benefit Caps and the North/South Divide
I'm sure there are times when this blog appears to exist primarily to take pot shots at my local paper, and this post may appear one such salvo.
Let's start with its resident 'humourist' looking at the very serious situation of a woman with three children told to move to Stoke-on-Trent as, thanks to the 'Benefit Cap', she will have to leave her north London home. Entitled 'Stoke-on-Trent is not a dumping ground for Londoners' it starts by informing us 'A woman from London this week complained that being forced to move to the Potteries is inhumane. A bit rich from the city which gave us the jellied eel.'
The same gift for wit and cultural sensitivity shines through as the article continues:
and
Depressingly, someone was indeed paid to write this - and without having to use a Tardis to return to a 1970s variety show to collect the cheque. http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/John-Woodhouse-Stoke-Trent-dumping-ground/story-22838895-detail/story.html
The 'serious' news item on this story was little better, treating it as if the woman herself had 'dissed' Stoke-on-Trent and seeking to reassure her it was a wonderful and welcoming place, while giving no explanation of how the 'Benefit Cap' of an apparently generous £500 per week, coupled with obscenely high London rents, was forcing her to move to a city she had never heard of. Predictable consequence - a troll-fest of cliches about lone parents on benefits, a sprinkling of racism once a photograph showing her to be black appeared and any impression of Stoke-on-Trent being a friendly, welcoming city obliterated by its own knuckle-dragging army of keyboard warriors.
Meanwhile, 'darn sarf', at least the political context got a fairer airing, though 'Things to do and see... it’s a 28 minutes drive to the Alton Towers theme park. Surrounding area? Mainly just the Alton Towers theme park,' is perhaps the faintest praise dished out to what is actually a great part of the world to live in (this from a southern exile) since the Hitchhiker's Guide summed up planet Earth in two words. So, better than the Sentinel's approach, but 'could do better.' http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/local-news/mother-dealt-inhumane-ultimatum-council-7651899
As none of these august publications have explained it, here's a brief guide to the 'benefit cap', not to be confused with the 'welfare cap' on overall Social Security spending.
In a nutshell, exempting some claimants in receipt of certain disability benefits, it limits the total amount that can be paid in benefits each week to no more than £350 for a single person and £500 for a couple or family, including housing costs. The justification is that the average wage of £26,000 amounts to no more than £500 per week, therefore those who don't work, and don't have to contend with serious disabilities, shouldn't receive more than this. A deceptively simple premise which sounds fair (as indeed does most effective propaganda), especially in this part of the world where £500 per week is a damned good wage. Or it does, until you break it down a bit.
Do all families 'on benefits' get £500 per week? Of course not! Excluding housing costs, a lone parent with three children and no other income (like the woman facing rehousing in Stoke) would get £72.40 income support for the adult, plus £169.28 child tax credit and £47.60 child benefit. Letter after letter will tell her 'this is the amount the Government says you need to live on.' A total of £289.28. The maximum she could receive in housing benefit for a private tenancy in this area would be £109.62 per week, taking the total to £398.90, plus 70% of her Council Tax bill. But at no point does she have anything like £500 to spend on herself and her children.
If this person was instead in paid work and earning £26,000 gross per annum, she could still bring home more than her benefits after tax and NI, and qualify for £105.75 child tax credit every week and her child benefit, and in her first year back to work, it would be more than that. In Stoke-on-Trent, her rent would be too low for her to receive housing benefit and she would have her full Council Tax to pay. Until the present Government reduced the percentage to 70%, she would also have got 80% of any reasonable childcare costs covered by working tax credit. How cutting support for childcare costs is 'making work pay' escapes me, but in the Secretary of State's world I'm sure it makes perfect sense.
But I digress.
Let's run those sums again with some London rents. Harrow's Local Housing Allowance for a three bedroom house is exactly £300 per week, the sort of happy coincidence that usually only happens in made up examples, so without the 'benefit cap', our lone parent with three children would get £289.28 benefits for herself and her children, plus £300 housing benefit (all of which would go out in rent) - a total of £589.28.
The 'benefit cap' limits what she gets to £500 per week, but does so by reducing housing benefit payments - shifting the perceived blame for the measure to the councils who administer HB and keeping the anger at arms length from the Government in the process. So every week, her rent payments are £89.28 short. Or, to put it another way, if she pays her full rent, her weekly disposable income is almost a third less than 'the amount the Government says you need to live on.' It's more than the allowance she receives for keeping herself, as an adult, fed, clothed, clean and warm. That is unsustainable. It is 'inhumane'.
In work - again at £26,000 - our Londoner still gets her £105.75 tax credits and £47.60 child benefit, in addition to her wage, and she'll get housing benefit too. On £300 per week rent, it works out at about £189 HB per week. But at no point, either in Stoke or Harrow, is our 'worker' worse off than her counterpart on benefits. I'm not saying it isn't possible when you start to take work-based expenses into account, but you don't make the worker better off by cutting the claimant's income - you make the system fairer by allowing the real costs of transport, work clothes, childcare, union subs etc to be disregarded as income when assessing in-work benefits.
There is an argument that the worker isn't sufficiently better off, but taking money away from someone else does not actually make them a penny richer. It merely makes the workless person poorer and, as driving down benefits drives down wages, neither actually wins in the long run.
The immediate consequence of this policy for someone like Cecilia Bruce-Annan and her children isn't just to uproot them from a neighbourhood they know and send them 200 miles north to live among strangers, some of whom have already formed their hostile opinions based on a half-telling of her story in the local press. It also moves them away from a location where there are more job opportunities, and at a higher typical rate of pay, than there are in Stoke. In the long run, there is a strong possibility it will cost the state more in benefits, as Ms Bruce-Annan may well be jobless for longer here than in Harrow and whatever is 'saved' now on her housing costs will be lost in long-term tax credits to compensate for the local lousy wages. What price too the disruption to her children's education, the loss of the family's circle of friends? Talk about knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing!
Of course the sensible way to solve this isn't a 'benefit cap' but a 'rent cap', which would take the steam out of the Capital's run-away house price inflation (predicted today at a possible 26% this year) and help benefit claimants and non-claimants alike, though from the comments in the papers, you'd think the reintroduction of the Workhouse was the preferred option.
Does anyone else understand what the benefit cap is and why it's unfair? Actually, they do. Unsurprisingly, it took a local Green to write to the Sentinel with what we might once have hoped a local Labour politician would have the guts to say.
'The 'bedroom tax' and other reforms conducted in the name of austerity have created a gulf of inequality that may be impossible to bridge. They have hammered mercilessly the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, whilst large corporations and wealthy individuals are allowed to evade tax with impunity. Even though the sum lost to the Treasury as a result dwarfs spending on welfare.'
The full letter is here: http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Situation-makes-Stoke-Trent-inhumane-Cecilia/story-22831018-detail/story.html
After a barnstorming performance at a public meeting on the threatened privatisation of local cancer services, it really won't take much more from the Greens for my party membership fee to be in the post.
Let's start with its resident 'humourist' looking at the very serious situation of a woman with three children told to move to Stoke-on-Trent as, thanks to the 'Benefit Cap', she will have to leave her north London home. Entitled 'Stoke-on-Trent is not a dumping ground for Londoners' it starts by informing us 'A woman from London this week complained that being forced to move to the Potteries is inhumane. A bit rich from the city which gave us the jellied eel.'
The same gift for wit and cultural sensitivity shines through as the article continues:
and
Depressingly, someone was indeed paid to write this - and without having to use a Tardis to return to a 1970s variety show to collect the cheque. http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/John-Woodhouse-Stoke-Trent-dumping-ground/story-22838895-detail/story.html
The 'serious' news item on this story was little better, treating it as if the woman herself had 'dissed' Stoke-on-Trent and seeking to reassure her it was a wonderful and welcoming place, while giving no explanation of how the 'Benefit Cap' of an apparently generous £500 per week, coupled with obscenely high London rents, was forcing her to move to a city she had never heard of. Predictable consequence - a troll-fest of cliches about lone parents on benefits, a sprinkling of racism once a photograph showing her to be black appeared and any impression of Stoke-on-Trent being a friendly, welcoming city obliterated by its own knuckle-dragging army of keyboard warriors.
Meanwhile, 'darn sarf', at least the political context got a fairer airing, though 'Things to do and see... it’s a 28 minutes drive to the Alton Towers theme park. Surrounding area? Mainly just the Alton Towers theme park,' is perhaps the faintest praise dished out to what is actually a great part of the world to live in (this from a southern exile) since the Hitchhiker's Guide summed up planet Earth in two words. So, better than the Sentinel's approach, but 'could do better.' http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/local-news/mother-dealt-inhumane-ultimatum-council-7651899
As none of these august publications have explained it, here's a brief guide to the 'benefit cap', not to be confused with the 'welfare cap' on overall Social Security spending.
In a nutshell, exempting some claimants in receipt of certain disability benefits, it limits the total amount that can be paid in benefits each week to no more than £350 for a single person and £500 for a couple or family, including housing costs. The justification is that the average wage of £26,000 amounts to no more than £500 per week, therefore those who don't work, and don't have to contend with serious disabilities, shouldn't receive more than this. A deceptively simple premise which sounds fair (as indeed does most effective propaganda), especially in this part of the world where £500 per week is a damned good wage. Or it does, until you break it down a bit.
Do all families 'on benefits' get £500 per week? Of course not! Excluding housing costs, a lone parent with three children and no other income (like the woman facing rehousing in Stoke) would get £72.40 income support for the adult, plus £169.28 child tax credit and £47.60 child benefit. Letter after letter will tell her 'this is the amount the Government says you need to live on.' A total of £289.28. The maximum she could receive in housing benefit for a private tenancy in this area would be £109.62 per week, taking the total to £398.90, plus 70% of her Council Tax bill. But at no point does she have anything like £500 to spend on herself and her children.
If this person was instead in paid work and earning £26,000 gross per annum, she could still bring home more than her benefits after tax and NI, and qualify for £105.75 child tax credit every week and her child benefit, and in her first year back to work, it would be more than that. In Stoke-on-Trent, her rent would be too low for her to receive housing benefit and she would have her full Council Tax to pay. Until the present Government reduced the percentage to 70%, she would also have got 80% of any reasonable childcare costs covered by working tax credit. How cutting support for childcare costs is 'making work pay' escapes me, but in the Secretary of State's world I'm sure it makes perfect sense.
But I digress.
Let's run those sums again with some London rents. Harrow's Local Housing Allowance for a three bedroom house is exactly £300 per week, the sort of happy coincidence that usually only happens in made up examples, so without the 'benefit cap', our lone parent with three children would get £289.28 benefits for herself and her children, plus £300 housing benefit (all of which would go out in rent) - a total of £589.28.
The 'benefit cap' limits what she gets to £500 per week, but does so by reducing housing benefit payments - shifting the perceived blame for the measure to the councils who administer HB and keeping the anger at arms length from the Government in the process. So every week, her rent payments are £89.28 short. Or, to put it another way, if she pays her full rent, her weekly disposable income is almost a third less than 'the amount the Government says you need to live on.' It's more than the allowance she receives for keeping herself, as an adult, fed, clothed, clean and warm. That is unsustainable. It is 'inhumane'.
In work - again at £26,000 - our Londoner still gets her £105.75 tax credits and £47.60 child benefit, in addition to her wage, and she'll get housing benefit too. On £300 per week rent, it works out at about £189 HB per week. But at no point, either in Stoke or Harrow, is our 'worker' worse off than her counterpart on benefits. I'm not saying it isn't possible when you start to take work-based expenses into account, but you don't make the worker better off by cutting the claimant's income - you make the system fairer by allowing the real costs of transport, work clothes, childcare, union subs etc to be disregarded as income when assessing in-work benefits.
There is an argument that the worker isn't sufficiently better off, but taking money away from someone else does not actually make them a penny richer. It merely makes the workless person poorer and, as driving down benefits drives down wages, neither actually wins in the long run.
The immediate consequence of this policy for someone like Cecilia Bruce-Annan and her children isn't just to uproot them from a neighbourhood they know and send them 200 miles north to live among strangers, some of whom have already formed their hostile opinions based on a half-telling of her story in the local press. It also moves them away from a location where there are more job opportunities, and at a higher typical rate of pay, than there are in Stoke. In the long run, there is a strong possibility it will cost the state more in benefits, as Ms Bruce-Annan may well be jobless for longer here than in Harrow and whatever is 'saved' now on her housing costs will be lost in long-term tax credits to compensate for the local lousy wages. What price too the disruption to her children's education, the loss of the family's circle of friends? Talk about knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing!
Of course the sensible way to solve this isn't a 'benefit cap' but a 'rent cap', which would take the steam out of the Capital's run-away house price inflation (predicted today at a possible 26% this year) and help benefit claimants and non-claimants alike, though from the comments in the papers, you'd think the reintroduction of the Workhouse was the preferred option.
Does anyone else understand what the benefit cap is and why it's unfair? Actually, they do. Unsurprisingly, it took a local Green to write to the Sentinel with what we might once have hoped a local Labour politician would have the guts to say.
'The 'bedroom tax' and other reforms conducted in the name of austerity have created a gulf of inequality that may be impossible to bridge. They have hammered mercilessly the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, whilst large corporations and wealthy individuals are allowed to evade tax with impunity. Even though the sum lost to the Treasury as a result dwarfs spending on welfare.'
The full letter is here: http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Situation-makes-Stoke-Trent-inhumane-Cecilia/story-22831018-detail/story.html
After a barnstorming performance at a public meeting on the threatened privatisation of local cancer services, it really won't take much more from the Greens for my party membership fee to be in the post.
Saturday 9 August 2014
Bring back Atos...?
Few tears were shed when Atos Origen decided to take an early exit from their Employment and Support Allowance contract with HM Government. While we all knew that this didn't address the fundamental flaws of the Work Capability Assessment - the bizarrely strict test to determine who has 'limited capability for work' and who does not - it was still good to see the back of a spectacularly incompetent contractor. Atos are now effectively - or ineffectively - working out their notice and, while we wait for their successors to be appointed, the process of assessing and reassessing claimants grinds all the more slowly.
If you are an existing ESA recipient, already receiving benefit at the longer-term 'Work-Related Activity Group' (WRAG) rate or 'Support Group' rate, this may very well be - in 1066 and All That terms - a GOOD THING. For the time being, you are relatively safe. Ditto if you are part of the last cohort of Incapacity Benefit and Income Support recipients who might not pass the hated WCA and thus are better off where you are.
But the imminent demise of Atos isn't joyous news for all. It's certainly a mixed blessing for new claimants. Those likely to fall short of the magic 15 point threshold for ESA entitlement may be quite happy to settle for the 'assessment rate' indefinitely - in effect, getting Jobseeker's Allowance without the hassle of jobseeking and hazard of sanctions.
Less happy the claimant with a sound case for one of the higher rates. They'll be stuck on the assessment rate, £28 per week or more short of their proper entitlement long after the start of the 14th week of their claim, when they should have started to receive whichever additional component suits their circumstances. When they are eventually assessed they'll get their arrears but in the meanwhile, they might very well suffer severe financial hardship. Here in Stoke-on-Trent, they could incur Court costs and bailiffs fees being chased for 30% of their Council Tax, when a timely award of the WRAG rate would give them the money to pay it; an award at the Support Group rate would exempt them.
One group of new claimants may never receive their full entitlement. Consider this example:
Jack is a self-employed window-cleaner. He breaks a leg and wrist in an unlucky fall from his ladder one day; both are quite complex fractures and it will be some months before he's able to return to work. He makes a claim for ESA and starts to receive the 'assessment rate' of £72.40 per week. 13 weeks on, he's still in plaster. During this time he should have his face-to-face assessment and if this is done properly (humour me...) should comfortably score 15 points plus. His benefit should then increase by £28 per week, or possibly more.
Instead, there's no sign of an assessment by week 14, so he stays on the 'assessment rate' until he can be seen by a medical services (Atos) 'health care professional'. His appointment eventually comes through more than eight months into his claim. At this point Jack is out of plaster at last and, apart from a few follow-up physio appintments, is almost ready to climb his ladder again.
The HCP does an examination of the claimant as he presents on the day, as the law requires, and finds no descriptors apply. A Decision Maker at the DWP considers the report, awards no points and finds Jack fit for work. Jack's ESA ceases. As no account can be taken of the months when he was incapacitated, he misses out on several hundred pounds due to an administrative and procedural glitch completely beyond his control. Because most people don't understand these arcane bits of Social Security law, he probably doesn't even know he's missed out, so won't complain or take advice.
The same problem arises for anyone who recovers, or stops claiming ESA, for another reason between the end of week 14 and the date set for their face-to-face assessment. There is no mechanism to consider their health retrospectively because, when the regulations were drafted, there was every expectation that claimants would have their WCA well within the 13 week assessment period.
If this sounds like you or someone you know, perhaps now would be a good time to contact your MP and ask when this broken system is going to be fixed, because it will get worse before it gets better. I don't really think we'll be saying 'bring back Atos!', but at least you could appeal a bad decision based on a poor medical assessment. I don't know how we fix this.
If you are an existing ESA recipient, already receiving benefit at the longer-term 'Work-Related Activity Group' (WRAG) rate or 'Support Group' rate, this may very well be - in 1066 and All That terms - a GOOD THING. For the time being, you are relatively safe. Ditto if you are part of the last cohort of Incapacity Benefit and Income Support recipients who might not pass the hated WCA and thus are better off where you are.
But the imminent demise of Atos isn't joyous news for all. It's certainly a mixed blessing for new claimants. Those likely to fall short of the magic 15 point threshold for ESA entitlement may be quite happy to settle for the 'assessment rate' indefinitely - in effect, getting Jobseeker's Allowance without the hassle of jobseeking and hazard of sanctions.
Less happy the claimant with a sound case for one of the higher rates. They'll be stuck on the assessment rate, £28 per week or more short of their proper entitlement long after the start of the 14th week of their claim, when they should have started to receive whichever additional component suits their circumstances. When they are eventually assessed they'll get their arrears but in the meanwhile, they might very well suffer severe financial hardship. Here in Stoke-on-Trent, they could incur Court costs and bailiffs fees being chased for 30% of their Council Tax, when a timely award of the WRAG rate would give them the money to pay it; an award at the Support Group rate would exempt them.
One group of new claimants may never receive their full entitlement. Consider this example:
Jack is a self-employed window-cleaner. He breaks a leg and wrist in an unlucky fall from his ladder one day; both are quite complex fractures and it will be some months before he's able to return to work. He makes a claim for ESA and starts to receive the 'assessment rate' of £72.40 per week. 13 weeks on, he's still in plaster. During this time he should have his face-to-face assessment and if this is done properly (humour me...) should comfortably score 15 points plus. His benefit should then increase by £28 per week, or possibly more.
Instead, there's no sign of an assessment by week 14, so he stays on the 'assessment rate' until he can be seen by a medical services (Atos) 'health care professional'. His appointment eventually comes through more than eight months into his claim. At this point Jack is out of plaster at last and, apart from a few follow-up physio appintments, is almost ready to climb his ladder again.
The HCP does an examination of the claimant as he presents on the day, as the law requires, and finds no descriptors apply. A Decision Maker at the DWP considers the report, awards no points and finds Jack fit for work. Jack's ESA ceases. As no account can be taken of the months when he was incapacitated, he misses out on several hundred pounds due to an administrative and procedural glitch completely beyond his control. Because most people don't understand these arcane bits of Social Security law, he probably doesn't even know he's missed out, so won't complain or take advice.
The same problem arises for anyone who recovers, or stops claiming ESA, for another reason between the end of week 14 and the date set for their face-to-face assessment. There is no mechanism to consider their health retrospectively because, when the regulations were drafted, there was every expectation that claimants would have their WCA well within the 13 week assessment period.
If this sounds like you or someone you know, perhaps now would be a good time to contact your MP and ask when this broken system is going to be fixed, because it will get worse before it gets better. I don't really think we'll be saying 'bring back Atos!', but at least you could appeal a bad decision based on a poor medical assessment. I don't know how we fix this.
Saturday 26 July 2014
Manifesto
I was asked to address a local Labour Party branch meeting last week on the subject of the current Government's 'welfare reform' programme. I was delighted to find the meeting attended by genuine socialists, both keen to get the full ghastly picture of life as a benefit claimant in 2014 and to start a debate about what Labour should offer as an alternative, rather than whether Labour should offer an alternative.
So here's my 'to do' list.
Change the tone of the debate.
If you're announcing a new employment initiative for young people, leave out 'which they'll have to take or we'll stop their benefits'. If it's a good scheme with fair pay, no-one needs coercing into it.
Let's get the numbers for underclaimed benefit centre stage, along with the terrible true stories of what being 'tough' on claimants has meant to those who have lost their homes and even their lives.
Show up this Government for its incompetence. That a six month timelag for a decision on PIP - the benefit for our most disabled citizens - is now so standard the telephone helpline tells you not to bother them if you haven't been waiting that long yet is unforgivable. That 'benefit delay' is just about the most common reason for rising Foodbank use is a scandal. Tell some of the 'stupid sanctions' stories.
And start now.
So here's my 'to do' list.
- Labour have already pledged to scrap the bedroom tax, but to be fair to private sector tenants, they must at the least unpick the Coalition's tighter Local Housing Allowance rules - no more 'single room rate' for under 35s (or any age). Allowances should go back to being based on at least the median rent for the area, not the cheapest 30%. Plunging someone into rent arrears will not make it easier for them to find a job, making someone homeless if they become sick is disgraceful. In the longer term, building social housing and controlling rents in the private rented sector - and paying workers a living wage - is the only fair way to cut the cost of Housing Benefit.
- Let's be grown-ups at 18. Enough of these stupid 'under 25' rates of benefit for young unemployed people, young carers and young disabled people claiming means-tested benefits, plus young workers on Housing Benefit. It isn't cheaper to be 24 than 25 and I defy anyone to live on £57 a week. Even IDS.
- End the 'Benefit Cap' on claimants and repeal the 'Welfare Cap' on Government spending. Both are bad policy and lazy, cruel propaganda.
- Back to the drawing board with 'Universal Credit'. It's good to aim for one subsistence benefit instead of different ones for jobseekers, sick and disabled people, lone parents and carers, but UC's problem is that it isn't ambitious enough. If you want to be radical, make it a really Universal non-means-tested Citizen's Allowance. Short of that, bring the benefit 'taper' into line with tax rates, so the poorest workers keep at least the same percentage of their income as those above benefit level.
- Ultimately, devise a true unified tax and benefits system to make sure you don't give with one hand and take away with the other. Remember, when the Coalition talk about their tax cuts, working Universal Credit claimants will never fully benefit from tax cuts because it's worked out on their net income.
- The Work Capability Assessment must go, along with the current sharp edge between 'fit for work' and 'limited capability for work'. We all have some limitations on our capability for work. If there is one subsistence benefit for all, don't differentiate between jobseekers and others - allow additional benefit for anyone with a health problem or disability based on their additional needs and costs, whether jobseeker or not, paid at a sliding percentage rate rather than the current clumsy points-based system and assessed by the NHS.
- End the current punative sanctions system. Unemployed people haven't morphed into 'skivers' since the 1980s. If your benefit system really 'makes work pay', and employers aren't allowed to treat their staff like disposable components, those who can find work, will. Encourage genuine, voluntary volunteering and further education to help people improve their skills without losing their benefits and stop subsidising profit-making companies with cheap labour. Poundland can pay their own shelf-stackers, not expect the taxpayer to do it.
- Put and end to profit-making organisations and out-sourcing giants making a killing from DWP contracts. Most have been abject failures. Fund Councils and voluntary organisations to employ the staff they need at all levels to create real jobs, not schemes.
- Scrap 'PIP' now and reinstate DLA, as an interim measure, before consulting properly with those directly affected and introducing improved benefits for disabled people and carers, again with percentage allowances rather than the current all-or-nothing components.
- Reinstate free telephone numbers for all DWP and Tax Credit sections, and a free 'benefits enquiry line' for people to check their entitlement. That's an easy one.
Change the tone of the debate.
If you're announcing a new employment initiative for young people, leave out 'which they'll have to take or we'll stop their benefits'. If it's a good scheme with fair pay, no-one needs coercing into it.
Let's get the numbers for underclaimed benefit centre stage, along with the terrible true stories of what being 'tough' on claimants has meant to those who have lost their homes and even their lives.
Show up this Government for its incompetence. That a six month timelag for a decision on PIP - the benefit for our most disabled citizens - is now so standard the telephone helpline tells you not to bother them if you haven't been waiting that long yet is unforgivable. That 'benefit delay' is just about the most common reason for rising Foodbank use is a scandal. Tell some of the 'stupid sanctions' stories.
And start now.
Sunday 22 June 2014
Old News
I've been off on my travels for the last few weeks, and with so much national news breaking on the 'omnishambles' of ESA and PIP, it might seem a strange choice to resume this blog with a story from a very local paper on an issue I have tackled many times before - in fact, you could even say I wrote the book* on it.
The reason I want to examine this particular article is that it is an text-book example of all that is wrong with the reporting of benefit issues and particular the coverage of benefit fraud. The whole story is here:
http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/3-234-benefit-cheats-shopped-neighbours-Stoke/story-21164292-detail/story.html
Let's start with the source. I think we can fairly assume this is drawn heavily from a press release from the Local Authority, who are inordinately proud of their 'Know a Cheat on your Street' campaign. It's easy to slate the papers and broadcasters for their quality of reporting on Social Security issues, but the root cause of a bad report is often misinformation from the Government - and there are clear parallels here. Even if you agree that precious funds from a self-confessed 'cash-strapped' authority need spending on telling people benefit fraud is wrong when we have most of the main-stream media in full hue-and-cry against claimants as a whole (and I continue to maintain that many 'frauds' would be avoided if people knew the full extent of what they could legitimately claim), the way statistics are misused by the Council here suggests they have been taking figure-fiddling lessons from IDS and the DWP.
Whoever wrote the headline and that catchy opener "More than 3,000 benefit cheats have been shopped by their neighbours in just two years – after ripping off the cash-strapped city council to the tune of £1.8 million..." - the Council's press officer or the journalist - it's a disgraceful misrepresentation, as the very next line confirms:
* That's this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Severe-Discomfort-Social-Insecurity-Honeysett-ebook/dp/B00C69HMRM/ref=la_B00CGNAZXQ_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403427936&sr=1-5
The Kindle version is free to download today.
The reason I want to examine this particular article is that it is an text-book example of all that is wrong with the reporting of benefit issues and particular the coverage of benefit fraud. The whole story is here:
http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/3-234-benefit-cheats-shopped-neighbours-Stoke/story-21164292-detail/story.html
Let's start with the source. I think we can fairly assume this is drawn heavily from a press release from the Local Authority, who are inordinately proud of their 'Know a Cheat on your Street' campaign. It's easy to slate the papers and broadcasters for their quality of reporting on Social Security issues, but the root cause of a bad report is often misinformation from the Government - and there are clear parallels here. Even if you agree that precious funds from a self-confessed 'cash-strapped' authority need spending on telling people benefit fraud is wrong when we have most of the main-stream media in full hue-and-cry against claimants as a whole (and I continue to maintain that many 'frauds' would be avoided if people knew the full extent of what they could legitimately claim), the way statistics are misused by the Council here suggests they have been taking figure-fiddling lessons from IDS and the DWP.
Whoever wrote the headline and that catchy opener "More than 3,000 benefit cheats have been shopped by their neighbours in just two years – after ripping off the cash-strapped city council to the tune of £1.8 million..." - the Council's press officer or the journalist - it's a disgraceful misrepresentation, as the very next line confirms:
"Figures show Stoke-on-Trent City Council received 1,777 fraud tip-offs in 2012/13 and a further 1,457 in 2013/14." My italics, and I'm sure you can see why - our headline 'benefit cheats' are actually alleged cheats. This is akin to a police report which categorised everyone questioned over a period of time as a 'criminal'. We have no idea how many of these were disregarded at first contact as rubbish or were multiple reports relating to the same person. In short, these figures are completely meaningless - even as an indication of the prevalence of nosy, grudgy neighbours.
The report breaks these 'tips offs' down as:
"888 people who were investigated after failing to tell the authorities they were living with a partner;
"744 people suspected of tenancy fraud such as illegal sub-letting, lying about circumstances to claim accommodation, or leaving council homes empty;
"107 residents accused of not paying the correct amount of council tax;
"39 drivers allegedly wrongly using blue badges.
Only the first and a proportion of the third of these categories are matters of benefit fraud at all. Compare these figures for actual action taken from a little later in the same article:
"A total of 359 people's benefits were stopped immediately over the two years saving taxpayers £25,848.
"Twenty-nine cheats had their single person council tax discount cancelled saving £7,946.
"And finally, 139 fraudsters who wrongly claimed a council house were kicked out which is estimated to save £834,000 based on an average £1,000 rental income per month for six months.
So the number of people being overpaid benefits is a tenth of that headline figure - and we might reasonably assume too that not all of those were guilty of deliberate 'fraud'.
If you read on, you find that to be true. "Overall, in 2013/14, 76 people were prosecuted for fraud, 27 received administrative penalties and 68 were formally cautioned."
If you read on, you find that to be true. "Overall, in 2013/14, 76 people were prosecuted for fraud, 27 received administrative penalties and 68 were formally cautioned."
So we've gone from a headline of '3234 Benefit Cheats shopped...' to 171 people actually facing prosecution or a penalty suggestive of wrong-doing; admittedly, the second figure is for one year not two, but even if we assume as many waiting for their day in Court as dealt with, we find we're still only at 342 - and again, not all of these for benefit-related offences.
Three weeks earlier, the same paper ran an almost identical story with a similar headline looking at the 2013/14 campaign, but with slightly more nuanced statistics: it's here:
* That's this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Severe-Discomfort-Social-Insecurity-Honeysett-ebook/dp/B00C69HMRM/ref=la_B00CGNAZXQ_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403427936&sr=1-5
The Kindle version is free to download today.
Monday 12 May 2014
X marks the spot
I've got to decide shortly how to vote in the elections for the European Parliament, and I've made up my mind to vote Green.
I've always had greenish leanings, being a keen organic gardener and an enthusiast for renewable energy - especially micro-generation schemes like community wind and water projects. They've also been resolutely behind renationalisation of the railways and promotion of affordable, integrated public transport, another policy close to my heart. But it's the Greens' line on that devalued concept of 'social justice' that caught my eye for this election.
To quote their website:
We do not believe in blaming those on benefits, or in blaming migrants for our problems. Human rights are not a barrier to progress. Circumstances mean that some of us need more help than others and that help should be available to everyone who needs it. We will end the race to the bottom on welfare: we will not kick people when they are down.
The Green Party would:
I've always had greenish leanings, being a keen organic gardener and an enthusiast for renewable energy - especially micro-generation schemes like community wind and water projects. They've also been resolutely behind renationalisation of the railways and promotion of affordable, integrated public transport, another policy close to my heart. But it's the Greens' line on that devalued concept of 'social justice' that caught my eye for this election.
To quote their website:
We do not believe in blaming those on benefits, or in blaming migrants for our problems. Human rights are not a barrier to progress. Circumstances mean that some of us need more help than others and that help should be available to everyone who needs it. We will end the race to the bottom on welfare: we will not kick people when they are down.
The Green Party would:
- Oppose austerity. There is an alternative – investment in a low carbon economy, creating real jobs of the future.
- Turn the national minimum wage into a genuine living wage so that everyone can put food on the table and pay the bills.
- Build truly affordable housing, and stop demolishing existing homes.
- Scrap the welfare cap to ensure that we can truly help the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.
- Enforce a cap on bankers’ bonuses and reduce the pay gap between those at the top and those at the bottom.
Action is also needed to deal with the impact of immigration on the welfare system and public services. British people recognise that most people who come to Britain from the EU work hard and contribute more in taxes than they use in public services or claim in benefits. However, they also want the system to be fair. For example, they don’t believe that people newly arrived should have exactly the same rights as people who have contributed throughout their lives. So Labour would look at increasing the period for which people have to be present in the UK before they can claim unemployment benefits from three months to six months. And we would pursue reforms in Europe so that child tax credit and child benefit are no longer paid to families living abroad.
Tougher than the Tories? No thanks.
And if you've ever tried to find financial support for an EU worker unable to work due to illness, accident or pregnancy, you'll know that it never has been the case that 'newly arrived' migrants had 'exactly the same rights as people who have contributed throughout their lives'. That's the kind of misleading rhetoric that a truly progressive party should challenge, not deploy in its own cause.
I don't think the author of this policy wants you to think of the people who would be left destitute as families with children, women trapped in violent relationships or young people vulnerable to criminal and sexual exploitation - but they will be.
There is, of course, no point in reading the LibDem manifesto as we know from experience that no matter how nice it might be, it's all expendable. Indeed, I can't help thinking that the biggest boost to the assorted anti-EU camp was probably the sight of Nick Clegg leading the charge for the pro-European cause.
Anything Right of that is also unworthy of consideration, except for softness and absorbency in the unexpected absence of conventional toilet tissue. Sadly, that's what has been falling through the letterbox with monotonous regularity - UKIP (and a couple of similarly strident splinter groups) and the BNP managing glossy fliers which must have cost a fair sum to print and distribute, but are sadly quite unsuitable as a loo paper substitute. By the way, don't try this yourself at home - the UKIP one has staples!
I did allow myself a chuckle at the irony that UKIPs might very well have been funded by that ex-pat Greek donor of theirs with the very strange views about women's right to wear trousers, but the tragedy is that thousands of working and workless men and women will pick them as their 'protest' vote, because the media have done a splendid job of promoting UKIP as edgy and rebellious and anti-establishment, while the Greens struggle to get an equal platform, even when they're getting arrested fighting fracking.
You'd almost think it wasn't just UKIP's deranged donor who didn't like women wearing the trousers...
Sunday 13 April 2014
Discredited
I have been concerned since its inception that one of the most damaging side-effects of Universal Credit is the way it frames the whole debate around Social Security provision and, having received broad cross-bench support, is perceived as the only viable way forward - give or take a tweak or two.
Universal Credit is a depressingly narrow vision for a Social Security system, imposing increasingly rigorous work search requirements on both those without jobs and part-time workers, regardless of the availability of actual jobs for them to do. You will work full time and if not, the system will ensure you waste any that is left over, rather than allowing you spare time to volunteer, study or, God forbid, enjoy a little leisure.
But it is in truth far less radical than the difficulties in implementation might suggest. Strip away the vast number of extra claimants introduced to the joys of conditionality, the shift to monthly payments and the 'digital by default' talk, and it is essentially the same old 'assessible income v applicable amount' concept and application of tapers to 'excess income' as the current means-tested benefits. Furthermore, the taper for UC, at 65% of any earnings above a variable disregard, remains far steeper than the top tax rate, ensuring that the poorest workers still keep less per pound of their earnings than the super-rich or the 'squeezed middle'. And yet it claims to incentivise work.
If you allow for the loss of Council Tax Support at 20% of 'excess income', at some stages of the calculation 85p in the £1 is lost and, through failing to allow for real work expenses such as travel and childminding costs, it still fails to 'make work pay' for some claimants. We've known this since the draft regulations came out, but last week a report suggested a 'fix' for this.
www.citizensadvice.org.uk/pop_goes_the_payslip_report.pdf
My fears about the mindset of many organisations in respect of UC were confirmed by this set of proposals from Citizens Advice. The report is headlined with a case study showing that while their lone parent example would be £3 per week worse off if she worked for an additional eight hours under UC with its current regulations (due to rising childcare costs), with the CAB's suggested amendments, she would be £12 per week better off.
Hurrah?
I sincerely hope I am not the only one to be seriously unimpressed by that. The last time I looked, the minimum wage was somewhat in excess of £1.50 per hour - it has recently risen to £6.50 - so to suggest that the benefits system is working anything like effectively when a low-waged worker cannot gain more than £1.50 for an hour's work is shameful. Of course gain is better than a loss, but should anyone really be expected to do an hour's work for no more than £1.50, especially when they are opting to give up time with their young child to do so?
Worse still, to pay for the necessary changes to disregards and expenses for families with children, it was suggested that the 65% taper be changed - to 70%. I was literally at a loss for words when I first saw that. If an organisation with a brief to look after the interests of disadvantaged citizens thinks it acceptable to put forward a plan slightly improving the lot of underpaid workers with children by picking the pockets of those without, we are in trouble. It cannot be our role to balance the books for IDS, surely?
How about being properly radical and proposing a tax and benefits system allowing everyone in work to keep at least the equivalent of the minimum wage, for each hour of work up to (say) 35 per week? Or that in-work benefit entitlements put workers on the equivalent at least of the 'living wage'? That earnings above the minimum wage at 35 hours reduce benefit entitlement by the same percentage as the basic rate of Income Tax, and no more, but discourage excess overtime with steeper tapers on income from hours worked in excess of 40 per week?
Some of these might be feasible, some might not, but shouldn't our aim be more than simply to 'make work pay' a few pence an hour more than 'the dole', and not by making that inhumanely low and hard to come by? About not merely 'making work pay', but making it pay fairly?
If IDS's 'UniCred' needs more money to do even the little it promises, then we should be unafraid to say so. If there isn't the money to make it do so, then let us scrap it now and cut our losses, because if 'UC' is introduced countrywide under this Government (or the next), we will be stuck with it for at least a generation, and we all deserve better.
As an aside, is it too much to ask that the next time IDS appears promising his reforms will 'make work pay', whoever is interviewing him runs through the cuts his Government have made to Tax Credits for working families (thus making this harder) and asks him what exactly the aim of these cuts was, if not merely to make UC look better?
Universal Credit is a depressingly narrow vision for a Social Security system, imposing increasingly rigorous work search requirements on both those without jobs and part-time workers, regardless of the availability of actual jobs for them to do. You will work full time and if not, the system will ensure you waste any that is left over, rather than allowing you spare time to volunteer, study or, God forbid, enjoy a little leisure.
But it is in truth far less radical than the difficulties in implementation might suggest. Strip away the vast number of extra claimants introduced to the joys of conditionality, the shift to monthly payments and the 'digital by default' talk, and it is essentially the same old 'assessible income v applicable amount' concept and application of tapers to 'excess income' as the current means-tested benefits. Furthermore, the taper for UC, at 65% of any earnings above a variable disregard, remains far steeper than the top tax rate, ensuring that the poorest workers still keep less per pound of their earnings than the super-rich or the 'squeezed middle'. And yet it claims to incentivise work.
If you allow for the loss of Council Tax Support at 20% of 'excess income', at some stages of the calculation 85p in the £1 is lost and, through failing to allow for real work expenses such as travel and childminding costs, it still fails to 'make work pay' for some claimants. We've known this since the draft regulations came out, but last week a report suggested a 'fix' for this.
www.citizensadvice.org.uk/pop_goes_the_payslip_report.pdf
My fears about the mindset of many organisations in respect of UC were confirmed by this set of proposals from Citizens Advice. The report is headlined with a case study showing that while their lone parent example would be £3 per week worse off if she worked for an additional eight hours under UC with its current regulations (due to rising childcare costs), with the CAB's suggested amendments, she would be £12 per week better off.
Hurrah?
I sincerely hope I am not the only one to be seriously unimpressed by that. The last time I looked, the minimum wage was somewhat in excess of £1.50 per hour - it has recently risen to £6.50 - so to suggest that the benefits system is working anything like effectively when a low-waged worker cannot gain more than £1.50 for an hour's work is shameful. Of course gain is better than a loss, but should anyone really be expected to do an hour's work for no more than £1.50, especially when they are opting to give up time with their young child to do so?
Worse still, to pay for the necessary changes to disregards and expenses for families with children, it was suggested that the 65% taper be changed - to 70%. I was literally at a loss for words when I first saw that. If an organisation with a brief to look after the interests of disadvantaged citizens thinks it acceptable to put forward a plan slightly improving the lot of underpaid workers with children by picking the pockets of those without, we are in trouble. It cannot be our role to balance the books for IDS, surely?
How about being properly radical and proposing a tax and benefits system allowing everyone in work to keep at least the equivalent of the minimum wage, for each hour of work up to (say) 35 per week? Or that in-work benefit entitlements put workers on the equivalent at least of the 'living wage'? That earnings above the minimum wage at 35 hours reduce benefit entitlement by the same percentage as the basic rate of Income Tax, and no more, but discourage excess overtime with steeper tapers on income from hours worked in excess of 40 per week?
Some of these might be feasible, some might not, but shouldn't our aim be more than simply to 'make work pay' a few pence an hour more than 'the dole', and not by making that inhumanely low and hard to come by? About not merely 'making work pay', but making it pay fairly?
If IDS's 'UniCred' needs more money to do even the little it promises, then we should be unafraid to say so. If there isn't the money to make it do so, then let us scrap it now and cut our losses, because if 'UC' is introduced countrywide under this Government (or the next), we will be stuck with it for at least a generation, and we all deserve better.
As an aside, is it too much to ask that the next time IDS appears promising his reforms will 'make work pay', whoever is interviewing him runs through the cuts his Government have made to Tax Credits for working families (thus making this harder) and asks him what exactly the aim of these cuts was, if not merely to make UC look better?
Thursday 27 March 2014
Something we've disregarded...
We're used to politicians excusing their swingeing cuts to Social Security with the line that they're reforming the system and 'making work pay' and understandably the arguments about this tend to focus on the 'tapers' used to diminish benefits as 'excess income' increases. For all their promises of reform, the present Government's tinkerings have actually made the tapers steeper for Tax Credit claimants, taking more earned income away faster and thus making work less likely to 'pay', but that isn't what I want to look at now.
One of the big claims for Universal Credit is that it 'makes work pay' by offering generous disregards on earned income - a 'disregard' being the sum you can earn before benefit is affected, for the uninitiated - than are currently allowed, so helping to 'make work pay'.
At present, earnings in excess of £5 per week are lost penny for penny, pound for pound if you are a single person receiving any of the means-tested subsistence benefits such as Income Support or income-based Jobseekers Allowance, and at 65p in the £1 for housing benefit. This rises to £10 per week for a couple, with a range of slightly more generous disregards for lone parents and disabled workers, plus a miscellaneous collection of share fishermen, part-time fire-fighters and other worthy souls.
One of the overlooked iniquities of the current system is that most of these disregards have remained unchanged since Income Support was introduced in 1988. At that time, the 'applicable amount' for a single person over 25 was £33.40, with a £5 disregard on any net earnings. Someone in the same position now would have an applicable amount of £71.70, but still a £5 disregard on their net earnings. While benefit rates have increased by 215%, the main disregards haven't moved at all. Had they risen in line with benefits, the basic disregards would now be £10.75 for a single person, £21.50 for a couple - more than twice the actual rate.
Which brings us on to consider whether the reform to end all reforms, the much-hyped but largely hopeless Universal Credit, offers more than the so-called 'legacy system' with which we're familiar.
Doing a very simple comparison with the current disregards, in most cases the 'work allowance' for UniCred (as it will be known when Newspeak becomes our official language) is substantially higher even than the old disregards increased in line with benefits. It's a close-run thing, though, for the childless couple - an equivalent calendar monthly disregard of £93.16 compared with £111 work allowance. Not that this guarantees anyone will really be better-off in work - Citizens Advice and others did lobby successfully for fairer allowances for childcare costs, but these still don't meet the full cost, and travelling expenses are not disregarded - even though Jobseekers will be expected to take up work with a 90 minute one-way travelling time. But in fairness, the current system also fails to allow fully for childcare and travel.
But before we give grudging thanks to IDS et al for these work allowances, a note of caution. There is no regulation to increase them year on year, just as there wasn't with the old 'disregards'. So while it might look fabulously generous that a 'hardworking family' might earn £500 or more a month without their benefits being reduced (if they don't need help with housing costs, that is), we should ask ourselves if that figure will look as benevolent in 2040.
After all, they might actually have introduced Universal Credit for all by then...
One of the big claims for Universal Credit is that it 'makes work pay' by offering generous disregards on earned income - a 'disregard' being the sum you can earn before benefit is affected, for the uninitiated - than are currently allowed, so helping to 'make work pay'.
At present, earnings in excess of £5 per week are lost penny for penny, pound for pound if you are a single person receiving any of the means-tested subsistence benefits such as Income Support or income-based Jobseekers Allowance, and at 65p in the £1 for housing benefit. This rises to £10 per week for a couple, with a range of slightly more generous disregards for lone parents and disabled workers, plus a miscellaneous collection of share fishermen, part-time fire-fighters and other worthy souls.
One of the overlooked iniquities of the current system is that most of these disregards have remained unchanged since Income Support was introduced in 1988. At that time, the 'applicable amount' for a single person over 25 was £33.40, with a £5 disregard on any net earnings. Someone in the same position now would have an applicable amount of £71.70, but still a £5 disregard on their net earnings. While benefit rates have increased by 215%, the main disregards haven't moved at all. Had they risen in line with benefits, the basic disregards would now be £10.75 for a single person, £21.50 for a couple - more than twice the actual rate.
Which brings us on to consider whether the reform to end all reforms, the much-hyped but largely hopeless Universal Credit, offers more than the so-called 'legacy system' with which we're familiar.
Doing a very simple comparison with the current disregards, in most cases the 'work allowance' for UniCred (as it will be known when Newspeak becomes our official language) is substantially higher even than the old disregards increased in line with benefits. It's a close-run thing, though, for the childless couple - an equivalent calendar monthly disregard of £93.16 compared with £111 work allowance. Not that this guarantees anyone will really be better-off in work - Citizens Advice and others did lobby successfully for fairer allowances for childcare costs, but these still don't meet the full cost, and travelling expenses are not disregarded - even though Jobseekers will be expected to take up work with a 90 minute one-way travelling time. But in fairness, the current system also fails to allow fully for childcare and travel.
But before we give grudging thanks to IDS et al for these work allowances, a note of caution. There is no regulation to increase them year on year, just as there wasn't with the old 'disregards'. So while it might look fabulously generous that a 'hardworking family' might earn £500 or more a month without their benefits being reduced (if they don't need help with housing costs, that is), we should ask ourselves if that figure will look as benevolent in 2040.
After all, they might actually have introduced Universal Credit for all by then...
Wednesday 26 March 2014
To Cap It All
I'm no longer disappointed when the so-called Opposition fail to oppose the Government on 'Welfare Reform' measures, as I've long since given up hope of seeing any but the few regular rebels try to counter the myth of the over-generous benefits system.
The 'Welfare Cap' as a concept causes no end of confusion amongst commentators. On this morning's Radio 4 news, there was a rambling reference to the 'cap' of £350 for a single person or £500 for a family, which is actually the 'wrong' cap entirely. The issue before Parliament today proposed a limit on overall Social Security Spending - excluding Retirement Pensions and Jobseekers Allowance.
The 'other' cap supposedly ensures that non-working households cannot be better off than someone on 'average' earnings. This may sound fair, until you allow for the fact that where housing costs are high, wages are low or the working family is a large one, Housing Benefit and Tax Credits will still be available to help, meaning that the 'hardworking family' with £26,000 in earnings can conceivably receive as much again in state help with their rent and living expenses. In practice, this measure throws people with children but without jobs out of London and the south-east - arguably the areas in which they are most likely to find a job - and forces them to move north, to areas of cheaper housing and fewer employment opportunities.
The last time Labour expressed an opinion on this cruel policy, the suggestion was made that the cap needed regional variation. At which point the prospects of me rejoining the party retreated just that little bit further over the horizon...
Of course, since they like to disguise attacks on our poorest and most vulnerable citizens as something benign, the Government didn't introduce this as 'The Welfare Cap'. They called it the 'Charter for Budget Responsibility'. So if this is about 'budget responsibility', where are the spending limits on other measures?
The 'cap' today excludes Retirement Pension, presumably because everyone accepts that the number of pensioners is rising steadily, people are living longer, pensioners are by definition 'deserving poor' and God forbid that we frighten the 'grey vote. Any pensioner reassured by this have overlooked that other benefits they might need - Attendance Allowance and Housing Benefit to name but the most obvious - are within the 'cap'. So severely disabled pensioners and those in rented homes could be affected, as presumably could the poorest who claim Pension Credit.
Excluding Jobseekers Allowance was an odd one - perhaps, for all the talk of recovery, the Government aren't confident that they can increase employment rates at all? It seems odd to exclude this working age benefit when all others stay in the cash-limited group. So if the Government accept they cannot prevent people growing older or losing their jobs, what do they expect to control?
Sickness and disability, apparently, since Employment and Support Allowance and the various disability benefits are within the cap. If that seems logical, imagine for a moment that the Government proposed an 'NHS cap' and pledged to limit spending on all hospital procedures, regardless of demand, except heart by-pass and chemotherapy. There would be an outcry if they challenged the opposition to accept a fixed limit on the cost of repairing broken bones or treating Alzheimer's disease.
Housing benefit is in there too - without any pledge to control rents or discourage over-inflationary house prices. On the contrary, we have 'help to buy' pushing up demand and prices and on-going, uncapped financial support for the banking industry.
Tax credits also fall within the cap - paid to low-waged workers and parents with children. Is there any moral case to restrict benefits for these people without also pushing up the minimum wage? And what else - bereavement benefits, industrial injuries payments, carers allowance. Anyone seriously think those are paid to 'scroungers'?
All credit to the thirteen Labour MPs who rebelled - arguably, the last 13 real Labour MPs left in the modern House of Commons. Or the only Labour members who could see through the lazy propaganda about 'skivers' and 'dependency' this measure was wrapped in.
So I'm not disappointed that there wasn't more of a rebellion. But that doesn't mean I'm not angry.
The 'Welfare Cap' as a concept causes no end of confusion amongst commentators. On this morning's Radio 4 news, there was a rambling reference to the 'cap' of £350 for a single person or £500 for a family, which is actually the 'wrong' cap entirely. The issue before Parliament today proposed a limit on overall Social Security Spending - excluding Retirement Pensions and Jobseekers Allowance.
The 'other' cap supposedly ensures that non-working households cannot be better off than someone on 'average' earnings. This may sound fair, until you allow for the fact that where housing costs are high, wages are low or the working family is a large one, Housing Benefit and Tax Credits will still be available to help, meaning that the 'hardworking family' with £26,000 in earnings can conceivably receive as much again in state help with their rent and living expenses. In practice, this measure throws people with children but without jobs out of London and the south-east - arguably the areas in which they are most likely to find a job - and forces them to move north, to areas of cheaper housing and fewer employment opportunities.
The last time Labour expressed an opinion on this cruel policy, the suggestion was made that the cap needed regional variation. At which point the prospects of me rejoining the party retreated just that little bit further over the horizon...
Of course, since they like to disguise attacks on our poorest and most vulnerable citizens as something benign, the Government didn't introduce this as 'The Welfare Cap'. They called it the 'Charter for Budget Responsibility'. So if this is about 'budget responsibility', where are the spending limits on other measures?
The 'cap' today excludes Retirement Pension, presumably because everyone accepts that the number of pensioners is rising steadily, people are living longer, pensioners are by definition 'deserving poor' and God forbid that we frighten the 'grey vote. Any pensioner reassured by this have overlooked that other benefits they might need - Attendance Allowance and Housing Benefit to name but the most obvious - are within the 'cap'. So severely disabled pensioners and those in rented homes could be affected, as presumably could the poorest who claim Pension Credit.
Excluding Jobseekers Allowance was an odd one - perhaps, for all the talk of recovery, the Government aren't confident that they can increase employment rates at all? It seems odd to exclude this working age benefit when all others stay in the cash-limited group. So if the Government accept they cannot prevent people growing older or losing their jobs, what do they expect to control?
Sickness and disability, apparently, since Employment and Support Allowance and the various disability benefits are within the cap. If that seems logical, imagine for a moment that the Government proposed an 'NHS cap' and pledged to limit spending on all hospital procedures, regardless of demand, except heart by-pass and chemotherapy. There would be an outcry if they challenged the opposition to accept a fixed limit on the cost of repairing broken bones or treating Alzheimer's disease.
Housing benefit is in there too - without any pledge to control rents or discourage over-inflationary house prices. On the contrary, we have 'help to buy' pushing up demand and prices and on-going, uncapped financial support for the banking industry.
Tax credits also fall within the cap - paid to low-waged workers and parents with children. Is there any moral case to restrict benefits for these people without also pushing up the minimum wage? And what else - bereavement benefits, industrial injuries payments, carers allowance. Anyone seriously think those are paid to 'scroungers'?
All credit to the thirteen Labour MPs who rebelled - arguably, the last 13 real Labour MPs left in the modern House of Commons. Or the only Labour members who could see through the lazy propaganda about 'skivers' and 'dependency' this measure was wrapped in.
So I'm not disappointed that there wasn't more of a rebellion. But that doesn't mean I'm not angry.
Tuesday 25 March 2014
Universally Challenged
Sometimes, I should pay more attention to my friends.
Soon after I started this blog, a former work colleague engaged in job-hunting contacted me to suggest I should write an article about Universal Jobsmatch, the Government-sponsored job-search website. My friend's concern was that it required the user to put a great deal of personal information by way of their CV into the public domain with apparently scant security, since there appeared to be few checks on who could use the site as an 'employer'.
Distracted by other more obvious issues, I failed to follow up this lead. It therefore fell to others to spot the flaws in this system, from the benign posting of humorous fake jobs to highlight the security glitches - MI6 hitmen, drugs mules and pirate crew to name but a few - the posting of real jobs for escorts (with the proviso 'must enjoy sex') and most recently Channel 4's expose of the scale of fake jobs set up simply to create web traffic for profit. Additionally, Frank Field MP has highlighted cases from his Merseyside constituency where job applicants using Universal Jobsmatch have been the victims of scams demanding up-front payments to secure jobs that never existed.
It does seem that anything involving a computer, Iain Duncan Smith and the word 'Universal' is likely to end in tears, a point nicely parodied here:
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2014/03/24/iain-duncan-smith-to-simplify-all-his-cock-ups-into-one-universal-cock-up/.
And indeed, the most recent leaks suggest that Universal Jobsmatch is being added to the long list of Government IT procurement products designated 'not fit for purpose' and is destined for the scrap heap. It's all a far cry from the claims the DWP made to 'stakeholders' last autumn about how this was becoming employers' method of choice for recruitment - in fact, many employers eschew it completely since they receive so many inappropriate applications from Jobseekers desperate to achieve their tally and avoid sanctions.
So you might think that Jobcentres would take a sympathetic view if claimants adopt a 'thanks, but no thanks' approach to this particular 'step' towards securing work, and stop handing down sanctions to people struggling with it or wary of it for entirely legitimate reasons. But training material recently received from the DWP on the 'claimant commitment' for Jobseekers Allowance contains a surprising revelation. As part of the concept of 'Day One Compliance', whereby jobseekers will have to prove themselves to be just that from the moment they make their claim, a precondition of making an on-line JSA claim will be that they already have a CV - and have registered with Universal Jobsmatch!
Rather than taking a step back from this fiasco, the DWP are in the process of embedding it still deeper into the JSA system. As a consequence, claims will be delayed or refused and claimants will be sanctioned for failing to use this discredited application. One can only hope that they will appeal in droves and that tribunals will support them, as the 'claimant commitment' should not be about forcing people to expose themselves to fraud and exploitation, nor to having their time wasted in a vain attempt to save the DWP's face.
Soon after I started this blog, a former work colleague engaged in job-hunting contacted me to suggest I should write an article about Universal Jobsmatch, the Government-sponsored job-search website. My friend's concern was that it required the user to put a great deal of personal information by way of their CV into the public domain with apparently scant security, since there appeared to be few checks on who could use the site as an 'employer'.
Distracted by other more obvious issues, I failed to follow up this lead. It therefore fell to others to spot the flaws in this system, from the benign posting of humorous fake jobs to highlight the security glitches - MI6 hitmen, drugs mules and pirate crew to name but a few - the posting of real jobs for escorts (with the proviso 'must enjoy sex') and most recently Channel 4's expose of the scale of fake jobs set up simply to create web traffic for profit. Additionally, Frank Field MP has highlighted cases from his Merseyside constituency where job applicants using Universal Jobsmatch have been the victims of scams demanding up-front payments to secure jobs that never existed.
It does seem that anything involving a computer, Iain Duncan Smith and the word 'Universal' is likely to end in tears, a point nicely parodied here:
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2014/03/24/iain-duncan-smith-to-simplify-all-his-cock-ups-into-one-universal-cock-up/.
And indeed, the most recent leaks suggest that Universal Jobsmatch is being added to the long list of Government IT procurement products designated 'not fit for purpose' and is destined for the scrap heap. It's all a far cry from the claims the DWP made to 'stakeholders' last autumn about how this was becoming employers' method of choice for recruitment - in fact, many employers eschew it completely since they receive so many inappropriate applications from Jobseekers desperate to achieve their tally and avoid sanctions.
So you might think that Jobcentres would take a sympathetic view if claimants adopt a 'thanks, but no thanks' approach to this particular 'step' towards securing work, and stop handing down sanctions to people struggling with it or wary of it for entirely legitimate reasons. But training material recently received from the DWP on the 'claimant commitment' for Jobseekers Allowance contains a surprising revelation. As part of the concept of 'Day One Compliance', whereby jobseekers will have to prove themselves to be just that from the moment they make their claim, a precondition of making an on-line JSA claim will be that they already have a CV - and have registered with Universal Jobsmatch!
Rather than taking a step back from this fiasco, the DWP are in the process of embedding it still deeper into the JSA system. As a consequence, claims will be delayed or refused and claimants will be sanctioned for failing to use this discredited application. One can only hope that they will appeal in droves and that tribunals will support them, as the 'claimant commitment' should not be about forcing people to expose themselves to fraud and exploitation, nor to having their time wasted in a vain attempt to save the DWP's face.
Friday 21 March 2014
Sanctions-busting and myth-busting
At work, I have been putting together an information leaflet about benefit sanctions for Jobseekers Allowance claimants. The plan was to produce a quick guide to what it means to be 'available for work' and 'actively seeking work', some pointers on what to expect from the new 'Claimant Commitment' and finally to explain a claimant's appeal rights and options for emergency support should sanctions befall them.
Too few people challenge sanction decisions, though it isn't to be wondered at. Firstly, from interviewing people who have been sanctioned, it's apparent that many are simply afraid to do so, in case they are perceived as a trouble-maker and sanctioned again the next time a feeble pretext to do so arises. One woman didn't even want to be seen talking to Citizens Advice Bureau workers in front of other Work Club attendees.
Even if you have the nerve to fight back, there are practical problems. Most people receive only a letter stating that there are doubts about their compliance with their Jobseekers Agreement before their money stops, and by the time they receive a formal decision to sanction them, at least for an initial 4 week sanction, the time has passed and benefit is in payment again. Having struggled through that month and with benefit reinstated, the tendency is not to rock the boat at that stage.
Those who press on through what is now a two-stage appeal process, with the dithering of 'mandatory reconsideration' before an appeal can be lodged, can expect a wait of anything up to a year or more for their day in front of a tribunal. In the meantime many will find work or be sent to the Work Programme; others will opt for a hearing 'on the papers' without being able to access legal support to put a witness statement together or, if they opted for an oral hearing, their nerve may fail at the thought of facing a 'tribunal judge'.
But it is worth the fight. More than half of sanctions decisions appealed have been overturned and a decision issued in the claimant's favour. This is higher even than the 40% success rate for ESA appeals, often held up as damning evidence of failures within Atos and the DWP. More people should appeal; it's a 'nothing to lose' scenario. With fixed period sanctions, a tribunal cannot impose a greater penalty even if they side with the DWP. Success not only gets you your lost JSA money back, it also means that if you are penalised again within a 52 week period of the first, you don't face a harsher 13 week penalty.
Of course the Government are at pains to insist sanctions are a 'last resort'. In theory, as long as you can demonstrate you are 'available for' and 'actively seeking' work, sanctions should not be an issue. But the evidence suggests otherwise. In addition to blogs and forums sharing stories of stupid sanctions, there are reports from reputable agencies - advice centres, foodbanks, local authorities - full of instances where sanctions appear to have been applied heavy-handedly, randomly, irrationally.
Locally, professionals advising jobseekers talk of a 'climate of fear' and that people are 'terrified' of sanctions, of people turning up day after day at library and community Work Clubs to trawl the infamous Universal Jobsmatch site to prove they are actively seeking work, even though few new jobs appear from one day to the next and they might be better employed looking elsewhere. They too sense that sanctions are applied arbitrarily and without common sense or compassion - when a claimant has been rushed to hospital (even when they can provide evidence that was the case) or even for missing their 'signing on' time attending a job interview. One client who sold a mobile phone for food during a four week sanction was subsequently sanctioned for 13 weeks - for not being contactable by the Jobcentre.
So what is actually going on?
There appears no doubt that Jobcentre staff are under pressure to hand down more sanctions - the numbers have jumped dramatically and a steady drip of whistle-blower revelations have demolished the official denials that any targets exist. And those most likely to be hit are young people under 25 - who make up approximately a quarter of JSA claimants, but were the recipients of approximately half of all sanctions.
A colleague has concluded that if all Jobcentre staff are indeed under pressure to sanction a set number of people each week, the decent majority are most likely to attempt to achieve this by imposing short 'first offence' sanctions on the claimants most likely to cope - younger people, often living with families who can support them temporarily, or single people without children. That may be true, but there also seems to be some picking on vulnerable people - such as those struggling due to literacy problems and learning difficulties - by setting them up to fail with impossible tasks included in their Jobseekers Agreement.
Yet bizarrely, in the face of mounting evidence that even people making entirely reasonable efforts to find work are being sanctioned. we still hear politicians talking about the need for greater conditionality and measures to stop people choosing to live on benefits as a 'lifestyle choice'
And the mass of 'hard-working' people cheer along - at least until it's their turn to make a claim.
Too few people challenge sanction decisions, though it isn't to be wondered at. Firstly, from interviewing people who have been sanctioned, it's apparent that many are simply afraid to do so, in case they are perceived as a trouble-maker and sanctioned again the next time a feeble pretext to do so arises. One woman didn't even want to be seen talking to Citizens Advice Bureau workers in front of other Work Club attendees.
Even if you have the nerve to fight back, there are practical problems. Most people receive only a letter stating that there are doubts about their compliance with their Jobseekers Agreement before their money stops, and by the time they receive a formal decision to sanction them, at least for an initial 4 week sanction, the time has passed and benefit is in payment again. Having struggled through that month and with benefit reinstated, the tendency is not to rock the boat at that stage.
Those who press on through what is now a two-stage appeal process, with the dithering of 'mandatory reconsideration' before an appeal can be lodged, can expect a wait of anything up to a year or more for their day in front of a tribunal. In the meantime many will find work or be sent to the Work Programme; others will opt for a hearing 'on the papers' without being able to access legal support to put a witness statement together or, if they opted for an oral hearing, their nerve may fail at the thought of facing a 'tribunal judge'.
But it is worth the fight. More than half of sanctions decisions appealed have been overturned and a decision issued in the claimant's favour. This is higher even than the 40% success rate for ESA appeals, often held up as damning evidence of failures within Atos and the DWP. More people should appeal; it's a 'nothing to lose' scenario. With fixed period sanctions, a tribunal cannot impose a greater penalty even if they side with the DWP. Success not only gets you your lost JSA money back, it also means that if you are penalised again within a 52 week period of the first, you don't face a harsher 13 week penalty.
Of course the Government are at pains to insist sanctions are a 'last resort'. In theory, as long as you can demonstrate you are 'available for' and 'actively seeking' work, sanctions should not be an issue. But the evidence suggests otherwise. In addition to blogs and forums sharing stories of stupid sanctions, there are reports from reputable agencies - advice centres, foodbanks, local authorities - full of instances where sanctions appear to have been applied heavy-handedly, randomly, irrationally.
Locally, professionals advising jobseekers talk of a 'climate of fear' and that people are 'terrified' of sanctions, of people turning up day after day at library and community Work Clubs to trawl the infamous Universal Jobsmatch site to prove they are actively seeking work, even though few new jobs appear from one day to the next and they might be better employed looking elsewhere. They too sense that sanctions are applied arbitrarily and without common sense or compassion - when a claimant has been rushed to hospital (even when they can provide evidence that was the case) or even for missing their 'signing on' time attending a job interview. One client who sold a mobile phone for food during a four week sanction was subsequently sanctioned for 13 weeks - for not being contactable by the Jobcentre.
So what is actually going on?
There appears no doubt that Jobcentre staff are under pressure to hand down more sanctions - the numbers have jumped dramatically and a steady drip of whistle-blower revelations have demolished the official denials that any targets exist. And those most likely to be hit are young people under 25 - who make up approximately a quarter of JSA claimants, but were the recipients of approximately half of all sanctions.
A colleague has concluded that if all Jobcentre staff are indeed under pressure to sanction a set number of people each week, the decent majority are most likely to attempt to achieve this by imposing short 'first offence' sanctions on the claimants most likely to cope - younger people, often living with families who can support them temporarily, or single people without children. That may be true, but there also seems to be some picking on vulnerable people - such as those struggling due to literacy problems and learning difficulties - by setting them up to fail with impossible tasks included in their Jobseekers Agreement.
Yet bizarrely, in the face of mounting evidence that even people making entirely reasonable efforts to find work are being sanctioned. we still hear politicians talking about the need for greater conditionality and measures to stop people choosing to live on benefits as a 'lifestyle choice'
And the mass of 'hard-working' people cheer along - at least until it's their turn to make a claim.
Thursday 6 March 2014
Hunger
I don't know what I found most shocking - the inquest verdict finding that a man with mental ill-health issues called Mark Wood had died of starvation in prosperous rural Oxfordshire - after his ESA was wrongly stopped following yet another botched Atos medical - or the fact that the story only made page 11 of Saturday's Guardian.
Have we really reached a point where a man can starve to death in a first world country, due in large account to failings of our Social Security system, and it doesn't warrant more prominence and greater soul-searching in a major left-leaning newspaper than this?
It's fair enough that the deepening crisis in Ukraine made the front page headline, but below it there was room for a poverty-focussed story - the proliferation of fixed-odds gaming machines in betting shops, especially in the most economically depressed districts. But while we well-meaning, soft-hearted Guardian readers will have no problem seeing this as cynical corporations exploiting people with no other hope of riches, how many others will get no further than seeing the headline on the newspaper stand and interpret it as further evidence that the idle scroungers must have more than enough benefit if they can afford to gamble? It's much harder to reason away the needless death of a desperately ill man, especially when it's a coroner not a campaigner making the analysis.
Too many have died falling through the holes in what was once a much sounder safety net. Searching using the keywords 'benefits' 'cuts' and 'suicide' turned up the following headlines on the first page alone:
'Poverty safari': words fail me.
Meanwhile, I'm planning some benefits training for a group of volunteers who didn't exist thirty years ago when I started doing benefits advice. They run this city's network of Foodbanks.
Sometimes it's almost impossible to believe it's 2014.
Have we really reached a point where a man can starve to death in a first world country, due in large account to failings of our Social Security system, and it doesn't warrant more prominence and greater soul-searching in a major left-leaning newspaper than this?
It's fair enough that the deepening crisis in Ukraine made the front page headline, but below it there was room for a poverty-focussed story - the proliferation of fixed-odds gaming machines in betting shops, especially in the most economically depressed districts. But while we well-meaning, soft-hearted Guardian readers will have no problem seeing this as cynical corporations exploiting people with no other hope of riches, how many others will get no further than seeing the headline on the newspaper stand and interpret it as further evidence that the idle scroungers must have more than enough benefit if they can afford to gamble? It's much harder to reason away the needless death of a desperately ill man, especially when it's a coroner not a campaigner making the analysis.
Too many have died falling through the holes in what was once a much sounder safety net. Searching using the keywords 'benefits' 'cuts' and 'suicide' turned up the following headlines on the first page alone:
- Benefit cuts blind man committed suicide after Atos ruled him fit to work (Daily Mirror December 2013)
- Grandad shoots himself after finding out his benefits were being stopped (Daily Mirror January 2014)
- Sick nurse killed herself after disability benefits were cut (Daily Mirror November 2013)
- Dad of two killed himself because he was losing his disability benefits (Daily Mirror April 2013)
- Dad committed suicide after housing benefit cut (Wandsworth Guardian April 2011)
'Poverty safari': words fail me.
Meanwhile, I'm planning some benefits training for a group of volunteers who didn't exist thirty years ago when I started doing benefits advice. They run this city's network of Foodbanks.
Sometimes it's almost impossible to believe it's 2014.
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