We had Channel 4 in town this week. Some bright spark in their news team decided that, with the World Economic Summit in progress in Davos, Switzerland, it would be a nice conterpoint to report from Davos Drive, Biddulph, North Staffordshire, on how ordinary people were being affected by the current economic climate. The project that employs me was asked to help find them some...
I'm sure I've explained before that's always been difficult to get clients to step up for these things and share their private circumstances with the world, but it gets harder with each successive TV show supposedly addressing the 'reality' of life on benefits. You struggle even more when it's a 'we're filming tomorrow' situation.
Our paid workers don't count as 'ordinary people', of course. I'm the first to admit that the work they do and their commitment to it makes them a pretty extraordinary set of people, but they are affected by the same issues as everyone else - stagnant wages, rising fuel costs, unaffordable house prices and job insecurity in particular. The problem for a TV news programme is that we have a sound grasp of why all this is happening and which Government policies are contributing to the misery. But 'ordinary people' aren't there to comment on the bigger picture, unless they want some ill-informed remarks about immigration. News programmes bring in economists and think-tank people in suits to explain the serious stuff.
Our volunteers are borderline 'ordinary people', and at a pinch it seemed they would do. I had my fingers crossed that two in particular might go for it, but it was a lot to ask with the fall-out from 'Benefits Street' still very toxic. A very articulate woman with personal experience of the disability benefit lottery and the Bedroom Tax, who has been willing to talk to our local paper - not themselves always bastions of truth where Social Security matters are concerned - drew the line at any dealings with Channel 4 as a direct consequence of their involvment in that show, and genuine fear of a backlash. Understandably so, as the latest 'word on the street' is that some residents of James Turner Street have been rehoused for their own safety.
One man was prepared to put his head above the parapet. Channel 4 weren't sure at first that he counted as an 'ordinary person' as he was educated to degree level and beyond, but they went for it and a short interview was shown - apparently minus everything he had to say about Foodbanks, the Bedroom Tax and Council Tax, though he still made some strong points and the very fact that someone of his calibre is without work speaks volumes. It's also come to light that they filmed at the Biddulph depot of the Stoke-on-Trent Foodbank, but none of that was used at all. Perhaps if Justin Bieber hadn't crashed his Ferrari...?
The 'ordinary people' they spoke to included a young man in work but on a contract guaranteeing only 20 hours a week. He'd had much more over Christmas - which was just as well as he's due to become a father soon - but now things were quieter. No-one there made the point that contracts like this play havoc with entitlement to Tax Credits for low-waged workers - 'ordinary people' don't find this out until they try to claim or are tackling an overpayment, and economists and think-tank people don't deal with the micro-economics of these things, but a CAB worker or volunteer could have made the point.
I'm also cynical enough to wonder why the cameracrew or editor felt we needed a long, lingering look at the tattoos on the lad's arms hot on the heels of the despicable Edwina Curry's suggestion that Foodbank users waste their money on them rather than feeding their kids.
In short, the item felt like a missed opportunity. It's a crying shame, because I rate Channel 4 news as the best on the box and expect better - a few years ago they did a brilliant item about the failings of the Employment and Support Allowance system, working with our staff and clients for a sound, in-depth exploration of the issues. By contrast, this was a gimmick. You had to feel sorry for poor Jackie Long, standing in the North Staffordshire sleet while Faisal got the Davos ticket, though it could have been worse for her - she might have had that excruciating 'Go Compare' style tenor tacked on to her report!
Saturday 25 January 2014
Friday 17 January 2014
The Word on the Street
If a production team and camera crew followed you around for a year, what would the resulting documentary about your life look like? Here are a couple of possibilities for mine...
The first, portraying the delusional political activist, concentrates on shots of me hunched over my computer, trawling the national and local media for Social Security related news to share with my Facebook 'friends', doing battle with the 'trolls' on our local rag's website and writing desperately uncommercial 'Welfare Rights Lit' (ensure shots with alcoholic beverage on hand are utilised). A few shots of washing up waiting to be done, an overfull laundry basket and Himself cooking dinner convey failure to deal with proper feminine domestic chores. Cut to meetings with fellow activists in cluttered rooms bedecked with CND posters, a little sequence of us being ignored by passers-by when handing out anti-Bedroom Tax leaflets and some marching through the streets of London or Manchester against the cuts - again, splicing in some bored-looking members of the public to stress the irrelevance of it all. Any suggestion that I have non-leftie friends and non-political interests - in short, a Life - would go. And because the audience isn't supposed to approve of this idealistic and anachronistic politicking, they'd be a snarky voice-over and an ironic music score.
Another version follows the do-gooder adviser: it could be sympathetic, looking at the issues brought to the doors of advice centres in these tough times and showing how dealing with unremitting poverty and injustice can be demoralising, depressing and frustrating. A true picture would catch colleagues moved to anger and to tears. But why do that when you'd have enough shots of us gossiping with each other, eating biscuits and drinking tea behind the scenes to give the impression that precious little real work gets done without private sector commercial rigour? They might be lucky and catch some unguarded uncomplimentary comments about clients and funders to spice things up - indeed, if they had earned our confidence and become our friends, I'm sure they could elicit some with a couple of gently leading questions. So a thoroughly decent and highly committed team appears on screen as burnt-out, callous and lazy, and there's precious little public sympathy when a few 'characters' get their redundancy notices.
Of course I pose the question as 'Benefits Street' continues to make headlines. I have to be honest and admit that I haven't watched it, but I've caught a fair number of clips and trailers which appear intent on stirring up controversy by presenting deliberately negative images of James Turner Street, its residents and its piles of rubbish. As I've said before when discussing the 'On the Fiddle' type programmes, you never will get benefits reality in 'reality TV' as the most typical non-pensioner claimants are either too shy to step forward and face the perils of publicity, or their lives are too tedious to be entertaining. Television wants controversy and 'characters', not the quiet but dull life of the chronically sick middle-aged woman living in fear of the 'brown envelope' calling her for an Atos medical, and her year-long struggle on the minimum income for a fully-fit person while waiting for an appeal to put right the flawed assessment.
That's reality, but it's not television.
An aspect of all this that hit me today is that not only do these programme hurt benefit claimants, by making it politically popular to cut Social Security and political suicide to defend it, they also make cuts in funding for welfare rights projects and law centres more palatable. There are already local 'trolls' who hurl the accusation 'Traitors' at my own workplace for having the affrontery to advise asylum-seekers and migrant workers, but if our 'indigenous' clients are perceived as 'scroungers', who will speak out against Legal Aid cuts, the loss of grants for benefits casework and the annual salami-slicing of our Council grant?
And so the luckless claimant looses again. Found fit for work when you're seriously ill? Paying the 'Bedroom Tax' when you should be exempt? Accused of benefit fraud when you've made a genuine mistake? That's just too bad, because there's no place for Justice on Benefits Street.
The first, portraying the delusional political activist, concentrates on shots of me hunched over my computer, trawling the national and local media for Social Security related news to share with my Facebook 'friends', doing battle with the 'trolls' on our local rag's website and writing desperately uncommercial 'Welfare Rights Lit' (ensure shots with alcoholic beverage on hand are utilised). A few shots of washing up waiting to be done, an overfull laundry basket and Himself cooking dinner convey failure to deal with proper feminine domestic chores. Cut to meetings with fellow activists in cluttered rooms bedecked with CND posters, a little sequence of us being ignored by passers-by when handing out anti-Bedroom Tax leaflets and some marching through the streets of London or Manchester against the cuts - again, splicing in some bored-looking members of the public to stress the irrelevance of it all. Any suggestion that I have non-leftie friends and non-political interests - in short, a Life - would go. And because the audience isn't supposed to approve of this idealistic and anachronistic politicking, they'd be a snarky voice-over and an ironic music score.
Another version follows the do-gooder adviser: it could be sympathetic, looking at the issues brought to the doors of advice centres in these tough times and showing how dealing with unremitting poverty and injustice can be demoralising, depressing and frustrating. A true picture would catch colleagues moved to anger and to tears. But why do that when you'd have enough shots of us gossiping with each other, eating biscuits and drinking tea behind the scenes to give the impression that precious little real work gets done without private sector commercial rigour? They might be lucky and catch some unguarded uncomplimentary comments about clients and funders to spice things up - indeed, if they had earned our confidence and become our friends, I'm sure they could elicit some with a couple of gently leading questions. So a thoroughly decent and highly committed team appears on screen as burnt-out, callous and lazy, and there's precious little public sympathy when a few 'characters' get their redundancy notices.
Of course I pose the question as 'Benefits Street' continues to make headlines. I have to be honest and admit that I haven't watched it, but I've caught a fair number of clips and trailers which appear intent on stirring up controversy by presenting deliberately negative images of James Turner Street, its residents and its piles of rubbish. As I've said before when discussing the 'On the Fiddle' type programmes, you never will get benefits reality in 'reality TV' as the most typical non-pensioner claimants are either too shy to step forward and face the perils of publicity, or their lives are too tedious to be entertaining. Television wants controversy and 'characters', not the quiet but dull life of the chronically sick middle-aged woman living in fear of the 'brown envelope' calling her for an Atos medical, and her year-long struggle on the minimum income for a fully-fit person while waiting for an appeal to put right the flawed assessment.
That's reality, but it's not television.
An aspect of all this that hit me today is that not only do these programme hurt benefit claimants, by making it politically popular to cut Social Security and political suicide to defend it, they also make cuts in funding for welfare rights projects and law centres more palatable. There are already local 'trolls' who hurl the accusation 'Traitors' at my own workplace for having the affrontery to advise asylum-seekers and migrant workers, but if our 'indigenous' clients are perceived as 'scroungers', who will speak out against Legal Aid cuts, the loss of grants for benefits casework and the annual salami-slicing of our Council grant?
And so the luckless claimant looses again. Found fit for work when you're seriously ill? Paying the 'Bedroom Tax' when you should be exempt? Accused of benefit fraud when you've made a genuine mistake? That's just too bad, because there's no place for Justice on Benefits Street.
Friday 10 January 2014
Poverty Porn
While the excruciating 'Benefits Street' has been grabbing the headlines, a real Social Security scandal has stayed below the radar, lost in the middle-pages of the left-leaning press despite having all the ingredients to be a classic 'Daily Mail' article positively overflowing with salacious outrage.
The issue is recent guidance for the private firms delivering the Work Programme's Youth Contract, a scheme which pays employers up to £2,275 for each young person they employ on a 26 week placement. It's surely already a scandal that we subsidise the likes of Poundland for hiring a succession of unemployed youngsters as drudges - I'm old enough to remember job creation schemes for roles in youth centres, community projects, museums and country parks - but the DWP's latest guidance opens quite different doors for the workless young people of the UK: doors with words like 'Massage Parlour' or 'Sex Shop' lit up in neon lights over the lintel.
The actual guidance for 'providers' sourcing opportunities in the 'Adult Entertainment' industry is within this document.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/269379/wp-pg-chapter-20.pdf
The DWP are at pains to point that the work must be legal, and certain specific jobs cannot be sponsored through this scheme, helpfully providing a lengthy list which clearly and rightly forbids the young person being employed as any of the following:
'Acceptable' posts include:
If you're dismissed for 'misconduct' or leave of your own accord without 'good cause', it's a benefit sanction of at least 13 weeks. And you can be sanctioned for turning down one of these opportunities without 'good cause' too.
Is a job in 'Adult Entertainment' ever going to look good on the CV of someone who doesn't already aspire to that kind of work? Surely there are more potential jobs you can kiss goodbye after a junior technical post in a porn movie company, if only because the interview could be excruciatingly embarrassing for the potential employer ('So, tell me what you did in your last job!') and what unfair inferences might be drawn about the young woman who says she was the 'receptionist' at a massage parlour?
We've already seen escort agencies advertising on the Government's Universal Jobsmatch site - which is so badly policed that one witty prankster successfully placed ads for a pirate crew a little while ago - but while this apparently caused red faces and the advert's swift removal, there are clearly blurred lines at the DWP. Where work associated with sexual services is concerned, they should say 'no' and mean it, and with young people potentially caught between sex work and sanctions, it's not just Channel 4 who stand accused of promoting 'poverty porn'.
The DWP seriously needs to examine its conscience.
The issue is recent guidance for the private firms delivering the Work Programme's Youth Contract, a scheme which pays employers up to £2,275 for each young person they employ on a 26 week placement. It's surely already a scandal that we subsidise the likes of Poundland for hiring a succession of unemployed youngsters as drudges - I'm old enough to remember job creation schemes for roles in youth centres, community projects, museums and country parks - but the DWP's latest guidance opens quite different doors for the workless young people of the UK: doors with words like 'Massage Parlour' or 'Sex Shop' lit up in neon lights over the lintel.
The actual guidance for 'providers' sourcing opportunities in the 'Adult Entertainment' industry is within this document.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/269379/wp-pg-chapter-20.pdf
The DWP are at pains to point that the work must be legal, and certain specific jobs cannot be sponsored through this scheme, helpfully providing a lengthy list which clearly and rightly forbids the young person being employed as any of the following:
- Lap/pole/table/dancers
- Web-cam performers
- Male/Female Escorts
- Masseuse/masseur in saunas/massage parlours
- Strippers
- Porn actors/actresses
- Glamour models
- Presenters/hosts/dancers for adult channels on digital TV
- Sex chat-line operators
- Strippograms
- Kissograms
- Topless bar staff
- Topless cleaners
- Dominatrix
- Mud wrestlers/cat fighters
- Dance troupes (e.g. burlesque, Chippendale)
'Acceptable' posts include:
- those involved in the sale, manufacture, distribution and display of sex related products;
- auxiliary workers in lap/pole dancing clubs – e.g. bar staff, door staff, receptionists or cleaners;
- auxiliary workers in strip clubs – e.g. bar staff, door staff, receptionists or cleaners;
- auxiliary workers in saunas/massage parlours e.g. bar staff, door staff, receptionists or clearers;
- glamour mode photographers;
- web-cam operators;
- TV camera operators, sound technicians, producers/directors for adult channels on digital TV;
- TV camera operators, sound technicians, producers/directors for pornographic films.
If you're dismissed for 'misconduct' or leave of your own accord without 'good cause', it's a benefit sanction of at least 13 weeks. And you can be sanctioned for turning down one of these opportunities without 'good cause' too.
Is a job in 'Adult Entertainment' ever going to look good on the CV of someone who doesn't already aspire to that kind of work? Surely there are more potential jobs you can kiss goodbye after a junior technical post in a porn movie company, if only because the interview could be excruciatingly embarrassing for the potential employer ('So, tell me what you did in your last job!') and what unfair inferences might be drawn about the young woman who says she was the 'receptionist' at a massage parlour?
We've already seen escort agencies advertising on the Government's Universal Jobsmatch site - which is so badly policed that one witty prankster successfully placed ads for a pirate crew a little while ago - but while this apparently caused red faces and the advert's swift removal, there are clearly blurred lines at the DWP. Where work associated with sexual services is concerned, they should say 'no' and mean it, and with young people potentially caught between sex work and sanctions, it's not just Channel 4 who stand accused of promoting 'poverty porn'.
The DWP seriously needs to examine its conscience.
Sunday 5 January 2014
Taking the PIP
Where Social Security matters are concerned, you'd never know there had been a change of year, as there certainly hasn't been any attempt to change the record. Having filled the usual suspects on the newstands with scare stories of hordes of Romanians and Bulgarians on their way here (to claim our benefits!), they've switched neatly back to reminding us that too many of those benefits (paid from our taxes!) go to cheats, with the duplicious Lord Freud launching a new area-based campaign promising posters, door-to-door leafleting and Facebook alerts to encourage people to 'do the right thing' and report miscreants. Or disabled people with variable conditions who the neighbour jealous of the Motorbility car only sees out on their 'good days'...
Still, I've done that blog before. This one is about those disabled people who can't be reported as benefit cheats because they haven't actually got any benefits yet. Or 'PIP claimants', as we might call them.
PIP (Personal Independence Payment) replaced DLA (Disability Living Allowance) this year for all new claims. Initially trialled in the North-West, it rolled out nationally in June 2013. Without getting bogged down in bags of detail about the rules on assessment and qualification, essentially there are two rates (standard and enhanced) to address extra needs with 'Daily Living' tasks and two rates as above considering 'Mobility' needs. The vast majority of claimants will have a medical examination by either Atos Origin or Capita as part of the assessment process.
In November 2013, the cancer charity MacMillan rightly complained that claims for this new benefit for terminally ill people were taking very much longer to process than their 'special rules' equivalents under DLA - whereas DLA claims were often speeded through in under a fortnight, PIP claims were taking two months or more, and claimants were dying before seeing a penny. Minister Mick Penning ate some humble pie and promised to do better, since when it's all gone very quiet, so hopefully that atrocious situation has improved. But there still appear to be a very high proportion of claims dating back to the early days of the national roll out yet to be considered. I can only go on limited research from the CAB where I work and anecdotal evidence on Disability Rights websites, but if this is indeed the case, it is a national scandal.
Even if you don't have a terminal illness, if you're claiming PIP it's because you have a significant and lasting health problem. Let's imagine, for instance, a person of working age with lasting mobility, strength and co-ordination issues after an accident or perhaps a stroke. They've been discharged from hospital and need care for part of the day, so their partner has had to cut their working hours to provide that. Say the disabled person is entitled to PIP at the standard rate for daily living (£53pw) and enhanced rate for mobility (£55.25 pw), and their partner/carer now earns under £100 per week so could claim Carers Allowance (£59.75) to make up some of their losses, but only if their partner qualifies for PIP. That's £168 per week in total, £108.25 in PIP alone.
If they made their claims early in the 'new regime', by now they could be owed up to £5040. With entitlement to the enhanced rate for daily living, they would be owed £5824.50, and while this is close to a worst-possible scenario it isn't uncommon. Even someone entitled to just the standard rate for mobility of £21 per week could be owed £631.
Being classed as a severely disabled person living with a carer could also mean this couple qualify for additional assistance with Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support. PIP (like DLA) is 'disregarded' as income for these benefits so there isn't a swings/roundabouts situation for disabled people with housing costs to meet. This also goes unpaid until the PIP is awarded and while payment is made from the date of claim, there could easily be rent arrears, loan interest or even Court costs incurred by the claimant in the meantime. Presumably, unspent money in Government coffers accrues interest or saves the cost of borrowing...
Surely, the Labour Party should be on the Government's case about this on a daily basis because:
And no scuttling off this time and leaving it to your minions to deal with, Mr Duncam Smith!
Still, I've done that blog before. This one is about those disabled people who can't be reported as benefit cheats because they haven't actually got any benefits yet. Or 'PIP claimants', as we might call them.
PIP (Personal Independence Payment) replaced DLA (Disability Living Allowance) this year for all new claims. Initially trialled in the North-West, it rolled out nationally in June 2013. Without getting bogged down in bags of detail about the rules on assessment and qualification, essentially there are two rates (standard and enhanced) to address extra needs with 'Daily Living' tasks and two rates as above considering 'Mobility' needs. The vast majority of claimants will have a medical examination by either Atos Origin or Capita as part of the assessment process.
In November 2013, the cancer charity MacMillan rightly complained that claims for this new benefit for terminally ill people were taking very much longer to process than their 'special rules' equivalents under DLA - whereas DLA claims were often speeded through in under a fortnight, PIP claims were taking two months or more, and claimants were dying before seeing a penny. Minister Mick Penning ate some humble pie and promised to do better, since when it's all gone very quiet, so hopefully that atrocious situation has improved. But there still appear to be a very high proportion of claims dating back to the early days of the national roll out yet to be considered. I can only go on limited research from the CAB where I work and anecdotal evidence on Disability Rights websites, but if this is indeed the case, it is a national scandal.
Even if you don't have a terminal illness, if you're claiming PIP it's because you have a significant and lasting health problem. Let's imagine, for instance, a person of working age with lasting mobility, strength and co-ordination issues after an accident or perhaps a stroke. They've been discharged from hospital and need care for part of the day, so their partner has had to cut their working hours to provide that. Say the disabled person is entitled to PIP at the standard rate for daily living (£53pw) and enhanced rate for mobility (£55.25 pw), and their partner/carer now earns under £100 per week so could claim Carers Allowance (£59.75) to make up some of their losses, but only if their partner qualifies for PIP. That's £168 per week in total, £108.25 in PIP alone.
If they made their claims early in the 'new regime', by now they could be owed up to £5040. With entitlement to the enhanced rate for daily living, they would be owed £5824.50, and while this is close to a worst-possible scenario it isn't uncommon. Even someone entitled to just the standard rate for mobility of £21 per week could be owed £631.
Being classed as a severely disabled person living with a carer could also mean this couple qualify for additional assistance with Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support. PIP (like DLA) is 'disregarded' as income for these benefits so there isn't a swings/roundabouts situation for disabled people with housing costs to meet. This also goes unpaid until the PIP is awarded and while payment is made from the date of claim, there could easily be rent arrears, loan interest or even Court costs incurred by the claimant in the meantime. Presumably, unspent money in Government coffers accrues interest or saves the cost of borrowing...
Surely, the Labour Party should be on the Government's case about this on a daily basis because:
- The 'victims' are people with long-term disabilities, their families and carers, so self-evidently the 'deserving poor'. (Sadly, as Her Majesty's Opposition are a little weak at challenging the stereotypes these days, this is politically useful).
- PIP is a non-means-tested benefit and thus is quite legitimately claimed by 'taxpayers' with disabilities and their 'hard-working families', not just the feckless poor. In short, any voter could find themselves caught in this trap.
- Failure to decide PIP claims also affects local businesses, for example car dealerships who supply 'Motorbility' vehicles: disabled employees may be unable to access work because they cannot afford appropriate transport without their benefit and both social and private landlords will have disabled tenants struggling needlessly with rent arrears, when this benefit - and the enhancements it brings to others - would see them lifted out of financial difficulty.
- It's a prime example of one of IDS's flagship new benefits going spectacularly wrong, despite trials in 'pathfinder' areas, so we can expect a similar fiasco with Universal Credit, and another 'own goal' for Atos (though Labour might want to keep quiet about that since they let the wrong one in there...)
And no scuttling off this time and leaving it to your minions to deal with, Mr Duncam Smith!
Thursday 2 January 2014
The Long View
In a residential Southampton side-street, a few hundred yards from the east side of the Itchen Bridge and next to the Masonic Hall, there's a grand old Victorian building with 'Public Baths' inscribed high on its facade. The 'Old Slipper Baths', built and managed by the City Council when none of the terraced houses in this ship-building district had their own bathroom became a 'Labour Exchange' when public health policy and home improvement made the original use redundant and, when the Department of Employment moved to new premises, in the dark days of Thatcher's Tory Government the Labour-led Council let it to a group of Trade Unionists, who founded the Southampton and District Unemployed Centre.
The Unemployed Centre did advice with a difference. None of this 'impartiality' malarky - it was the Tories who were cutting benefits and driving up unemployment with their attacks on workers' rights and privatisations, and at the Centre you got practical assistance with claims and tribunals (Social Security and Industrial) with a generous side-order of left-wing politics. They didn't generally do 'confidentiality' either, as there weren't individual offices: clients were interviewed en masse in what had been the waiting area, sitting on the wooden pews around the front bay where shipyard workers might have sat clutching their towels waiting their turn for a wash and brush up a hundred years earlier. It fitted the ethos of the place to encourage people to share their misfortunes, listen to each others' stories and learn from the advice given to their fellow unemployed workers - to encourage solidarity. There was never any lack of that; with Southampton a marginal council politically and the Conservative group pledged to withdrawing funding and closing the place down within days if they got to form an administration, the workers' jobs seemed little less precarious than those of the people they were advising.
I joined the inspirational team at the Centre as a volunteer in 1985, becoming a paid worker in the Poll Tax era, before making a spectacularly ill-judged decision to become a Housing Officer for a neighbouring local authority. But I stayed in touch, doing a stint on the management committee and watching the place evolve into a slightly more conventional, less precarious and arguably more effective and professional advice organisation. I even got to work there again for a few months just before we moved north, refreshing my welfare benefits knowledge and tribunal skills and gaining a useful insight into Legal Services Commission standards and practices.
I went back just before Christmas to the organisation now known as the Southampton Advice and Representation Centre. The old interview area still has the wooden pews but is now the reception and waiting area and the workers have their own offices in which to interview their clients confidentially and do their work, but it still feels friendly and welcoming. The current staff team include a colleague from the 1980s (he did desert briefly, but couldn't stay away), but reminiscing we realised that fewer than twenty staff had worked there in over thirty years. The number employed fluctuates with funding but with an average of probably six or seven most of the time, it's an impressive indication of commitment. There's still the same mission - to help disadvantaged people get the advice and representation they are unable to afford from commercial legal advisers, and to as good if not a better standard - and the same small signs of appreciation help to mend the wounds when despite everything, justice is not done. While I was there, one of the workers who had apparently had a miserable outcome at an Employment Tribunal the day before had two grateful clients call in with Christmas treats for him and the team. You don't expect that when the people you work for have so little, but their kindness touches you deeply when it happens.
Sadly, one of our old comrades from the Thatcher era is currently terminally ill and while I had been shy of calling on him (both fearing to be a nuisance at a difficult time, and sefishly afraid to see an old friend so changed by ill health), the others encouraged me to do so. I was glad I had: he was still very much his old self, bright-eyed and full of fighting spirit both against his illness and the injustices he'd fought to combat all of his life. A former UCATT steward, he'd been our Industrial Tribunal champion in the early years with an impressive ability to think on his feet which made him a reassuring ally but a formidable adversary in the hearing room. If ever rebuked by a tribunal chair for a procedural faux pas he would turn on the Irish charm and ask for forgiveness on the basis that he was 'only a carpenter and joiner by trade' - if one who had apparently not just kissed the Blarney Stone, but made mad, passionate love to it!
What neither of us could have anticipated when we first worked together was how benign the Social Security regime of that era now appears. 'I never thought I'd say it,' said my former colleague, 'But this lot - they're worse than Thatcher!' I could only agree.
True, some changes came in with the introduction of Income Support in 1988 that set the tone for future cuts and a system that required little human intelligence to administer. Gone were judgments on whether a claimant was a 'householder' or 'non-householder', replaced by a clumsy 'under 25' or 'over 25' differentiation, and a system of flat-rate 'disregards' from earned income came in where previously actual work-related expenses, such as travelling costs, were taken into account. Crucially, under Thatcher's government, earnings-replacement benefits ceased to be uprated in line with earnings. Shamefully, the Blair/Brown governments didn't reverse this and the gulf between earnings and benefits continued to widen despite propaganda to the contrary.
Back then, Invalidity Benefit didn't rely on a points system and poor-quality pseudo-medical assessments - a person was fit for work only if a real job existed in the local 'travel to work area' which he or she was capable of doing. This was a decision made by a Decision Maker worthy of the name, who had to weigh up both medical evidence and the local labour market when coming to a decision. Contribution-based Unemployment Benefit was paid for a year, not the current six months and while sanctions existed, the maximum (for losing a job through misconduct, for instance) was a six week sanction - and we used to appeal these to chip a week or two off, even though a full year's entitlement might still be paid from the end of the sanction. Now it's a minimum of 13 weeks and up to 3 years for another 'failure' and for claimants of contributory JSA, any sanction is deducted from the mere six months' entitlement.
'Foodbanks! I never thought we'd see such a thing!'
No, we never did. Thirty years ago it would have been inconceivable that churches would be putting together food parcels for families in or out of work who simply could not afford to feed themselves, and that there would not be public outrage. The generation that defeated the Poll Tax surely wouldn't have accepted the sudden imposition of Council Tax on people living on subsistence benefits which were never calculated to allow for it. But there isn't the sympathy for the Unemployed that there was then. Perhaps the saddest thought of all is that it's hard to imagine many current Labour councils finding funding and premises for an organisation like the Southampton and District Unemployed Centre. They would say there wasn't a 'business case' for it.
It really did seem for a moment as if we'd been fighting a long defeat, but then my friend smiled. 'We never thought the Centre would still be going after thirty years though, did we?' he said.
We never did and yet it is. Here's to the next thirty!
The Unemployed Centre did advice with a difference. None of this 'impartiality' malarky - it was the Tories who were cutting benefits and driving up unemployment with their attacks on workers' rights and privatisations, and at the Centre you got practical assistance with claims and tribunals (Social Security and Industrial) with a generous side-order of left-wing politics. They didn't generally do 'confidentiality' either, as there weren't individual offices: clients were interviewed en masse in what had been the waiting area, sitting on the wooden pews around the front bay where shipyard workers might have sat clutching their towels waiting their turn for a wash and brush up a hundred years earlier. It fitted the ethos of the place to encourage people to share their misfortunes, listen to each others' stories and learn from the advice given to their fellow unemployed workers - to encourage solidarity. There was never any lack of that; with Southampton a marginal council politically and the Conservative group pledged to withdrawing funding and closing the place down within days if they got to form an administration, the workers' jobs seemed little less precarious than those of the people they were advising.
I joined the inspirational team at the Centre as a volunteer in 1985, becoming a paid worker in the Poll Tax era, before making a spectacularly ill-judged decision to become a Housing Officer for a neighbouring local authority. But I stayed in touch, doing a stint on the management committee and watching the place evolve into a slightly more conventional, less precarious and arguably more effective and professional advice organisation. I even got to work there again for a few months just before we moved north, refreshing my welfare benefits knowledge and tribunal skills and gaining a useful insight into Legal Services Commission standards and practices.
I went back just before Christmas to the organisation now known as the Southampton Advice and Representation Centre. The old interview area still has the wooden pews but is now the reception and waiting area and the workers have their own offices in which to interview their clients confidentially and do their work, but it still feels friendly and welcoming. The current staff team include a colleague from the 1980s (he did desert briefly, but couldn't stay away), but reminiscing we realised that fewer than twenty staff had worked there in over thirty years. The number employed fluctuates with funding but with an average of probably six or seven most of the time, it's an impressive indication of commitment. There's still the same mission - to help disadvantaged people get the advice and representation they are unable to afford from commercial legal advisers, and to as good if not a better standard - and the same small signs of appreciation help to mend the wounds when despite everything, justice is not done. While I was there, one of the workers who had apparently had a miserable outcome at an Employment Tribunal the day before had two grateful clients call in with Christmas treats for him and the team. You don't expect that when the people you work for have so little, but their kindness touches you deeply when it happens.
Sadly, one of our old comrades from the Thatcher era is currently terminally ill and while I had been shy of calling on him (both fearing to be a nuisance at a difficult time, and sefishly afraid to see an old friend so changed by ill health), the others encouraged me to do so. I was glad I had: he was still very much his old self, bright-eyed and full of fighting spirit both against his illness and the injustices he'd fought to combat all of his life. A former UCATT steward, he'd been our Industrial Tribunal champion in the early years with an impressive ability to think on his feet which made him a reassuring ally but a formidable adversary in the hearing room. If ever rebuked by a tribunal chair for a procedural faux pas he would turn on the Irish charm and ask for forgiveness on the basis that he was 'only a carpenter and joiner by trade' - if one who had apparently not just kissed the Blarney Stone, but made mad, passionate love to it!
What neither of us could have anticipated when we first worked together was how benign the Social Security regime of that era now appears. 'I never thought I'd say it,' said my former colleague, 'But this lot - they're worse than Thatcher!' I could only agree.
True, some changes came in with the introduction of Income Support in 1988 that set the tone for future cuts and a system that required little human intelligence to administer. Gone were judgments on whether a claimant was a 'householder' or 'non-householder', replaced by a clumsy 'under 25' or 'over 25' differentiation, and a system of flat-rate 'disregards' from earned income came in where previously actual work-related expenses, such as travelling costs, were taken into account. Crucially, under Thatcher's government, earnings-replacement benefits ceased to be uprated in line with earnings. Shamefully, the Blair/Brown governments didn't reverse this and the gulf between earnings and benefits continued to widen despite propaganda to the contrary.
Back then, Invalidity Benefit didn't rely on a points system and poor-quality pseudo-medical assessments - a person was fit for work only if a real job existed in the local 'travel to work area' which he or she was capable of doing. This was a decision made by a Decision Maker worthy of the name, who had to weigh up both medical evidence and the local labour market when coming to a decision. Contribution-based Unemployment Benefit was paid for a year, not the current six months and while sanctions existed, the maximum (for losing a job through misconduct, for instance) was a six week sanction - and we used to appeal these to chip a week or two off, even though a full year's entitlement might still be paid from the end of the sanction. Now it's a minimum of 13 weeks and up to 3 years for another 'failure' and for claimants of contributory JSA, any sanction is deducted from the mere six months' entitlement.
'Foodbanks! I never thought we'd see such a thing!'
No, we never did. Thirty years ago it would have been inconceivable that churches would be putting together food parcels for families in or out of work who simply could not afford to feed themselves, and that there would not be public outrage. The generation that defeated the Poll Tax surely wouldn't have accepted the sudden imposition of Council Tax on people living on subsistence benefits which were never calculated to allow for it. But there isn't the sympathy for the Unemployed that there was then. Perhaps the saddest thought of all is that it's hard to imagine many current Labour councils finding funding and premises for an organisation like the Southampton and District Unemployed Centre. They would say there wasn't a 'business case' for it.
It really did seem for a moment as if we'd been fighting a long defeat, but then my friend smiled. 'We never thought the Centre would still be going after thirty years though, did we?' he said.
We never did and yet it is. Here's to the next thirty!
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