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...
Thursday 27 March 2014
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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