The Hook

I have a prediction concerning the Labour leadership election. 

I'm actually watching from the side-lines, having joined the Greens a couple of months ago.  I've avoided getting involved in the debate (apart from sharing a Facebook meme of Jeremy Corbyn as Obi Wan Kenobi) or trying to blag a vote via my union, despite hoping that Corbyn will prevail and wanting to help his cause.  

It is becoming increasingly apparent that rattled Labour Party insiders are looking for any straw that could be grasped in the event of a JC win to declare the contest null and void.  Sadly, I don't believe they will need to do this, and this is why.  A month ago, I visited the refurbished Everyman theatre in Liverpool to see 'The Hook', a stage adaptation of an Arthur Miller screenplay set in the docks of post war New York.  If you haven't seen it and don't want to know how it ends, stop reading this post now, as it's the plot of this play which I fear foreshadows the result for Labour. 

In the drama, a plucky longshoreman dares to challenge for the union representative's post, taking on a corrupt minor mobster who spends most of the year in Florida and the dockyard management with whom he colludes.  This hero's mates and many more workers promise to back him but, on the day of the vote, the count happens in secret and the incumbent is declared the winner.  We know that the villain has tried to rig the ballot by adding extra papers in his support and actually made up the numbers rather than counting, as he fears being defeated nonetheless.  Our hero and his buddies storm the office and, after a tense stand-off, are allowed to count the votes for themselves.  It soon becomes apparent that, even without the forged ballots, the establishment candidate was in fact victorious, and by a huge margin.  The longshoreman turns on his supposed supporters; each in turn confesses, shame-faced, that he chickened out and opted for the status quo when it came to the crunch. 

At the end of the performance, I couldn't help thinking of the impending Labour leadership vote.  I wonder how many people currently typing 'Jez we can!' on social media will be unnerved when the time comes to make their mark by the steady drip of anti-Corbyn 'principles are no use without power' rhetoric.  (Power without principles appears to be just fine to the party machine - why else ask Tony Blair's opinion?).  It will take more courage than Miller's longshoremen possessed for supporters to hold their nerve and vote for 'Jezza', regardless of these siren voices and those that will be added to them in the next few days.  It won't take many waverers to wreck the ship either, as only a clear first round win will do for Corbyn: there will be few supporters of the Gang of Three picking him as their no 2.

I hope I'm wrong, but I predict the outcome as a win, on second preferences, for Yvette Cooper.  However, I'm unsure what to make of today's bizarre pact between her and Liz Kendall.  It may help rather than hinder the Corbynite cause, with Cooper's attempts to appeal to the left wing perhaps fatally undermined by a deal with Red Tory Liz, although I suspect what they're actually after is for Kendall's supporters to back Cooper as no 1, while Kendall effectively withdraws from the race without saying as much.   


As I said, I could be wrong.  I hope I'm wrong.  I would love to see the Labour Party revived as a genuinely left-wing, democratic entity and one day part of a broader left alliance Government with Green and other anti-austerity parties.  But if you are planning to be brave and vote for Jeremy Corbyn, you might do well to stuff your ears with wax for the last stage of this voyage and stop reading the Guardian until you're safely back to port.

Why the cap doesn't fit.

Considering that I could not bring myself to vote for Labour in this year's General Election because of its weakness in attacking the Tories' 'welfare reforms', and particularly its enthusiasm for leaving EEA migrants and their families in destitution - for they are often women with dependent children - I found it staggering when Harriet Harman lamented 'Labour was seen as supporting “people on benefits” but not those who “work hard.”' 

Labour may have been portrayed as doing so in a hostile press, just as they are always portrayed as 'soft' on immigration, defence and public spending, but to those of us in the business of benefit advice, there was no such impression.  We were crying out for them to stop singing the Tories' tune on austerity.  Tomorrow, when the Government's latest 'welfare reform' bill reaches the Commons, they have another opportunity.

Sadly, I suspect Labour are prepared to throw benefit claimants under the metaphorical bus of Osborne's £12bn cuts, rather than have a principled debate about Social Security.  Already, there is a cross-party acceptance of the Benefit Cap and a willingness to see it lowered, despite the fact that a £23,000 cap cuts into the income of even one and two child families in London, and a £20,000 cap inflicts similar hardship right across the country.  Many of the families affected may be unable to seek work due to sickness, caring responsibilities or bereavement, as neither assessment rate or 'WRAG' level ESA, Carer's Allowance nor bereavement benefits are disregarded.  Those who can seek work are unlikely to find it easier when they are spending more time haggling for Foodbank vouchers.


The 'benefit cap' concept isn't just twisted ideology - in many cases, it's bad economics too.  It has the perverse effect of keeping parents with children apart, who might otherwise live together in a shared household.  Even in cheap-to-rent Stoke-on-Trent, two lone parents, each with two children, will get about £350 per week each in benefits to support themselves and their children, and to cover their rent and council tax.  Letting them live together as a couple saves the state, and the claimants themselves, one set of housing costs and a further £30 from combining the adults' personal allowances, reducing the £700 'benefits bill' to the taxpayer by around £180 per week.  Impose a cap of £385 on their joint benefit income - which is what happens with a £20,000 limit - and you're effectively asking one adult to support the other and two additional children on just £25 more per week. 


That simply isn't possible and, as a consequence, they are likely to remain apart.  Impose the same cap on an existing four child family, and you can anticipate family breakdown under financial pressure, and thus a higher benefit bill, without starting to look at the long term financial consequences, or the human cost.  The cruelty of reducing benefits because a family has 'too many' children - children who may well have been conceived in better times, but almost never as a cynical calculation to increase benefit income - should see Labour shaming the Government and holding their own heads high regarding their past record of reducing child poverty, not running scared of it. 


The false narrative of the 'benefit cap' has been allowed to disguise a long-standing truth: there has always been a 'benefit cap'; fixed allowances for adults and children in particular circumstances, set at the minimum 'amount the government says you need to live on' and, even before Labour brought in Local Housing Allowance, there was provision to limit housing benefit to a level judged 'reasonable' by a rent officer.  The key principle was that no family's income should fall below that basic subsistence level. 


What of the argument that it 'isn't fair' for a 'hard-working family' to have a lower income than a 'family on benefits'?  This plainly ignores the point that if a claimant has a higher income than a worker, it is because the family of the first have greater needs.  Just because the 'average' worker earns less than some families receive in benefits, that does not prove benefit rates are too high.  A family with three children needs a higher income to sustain a decent standard of living than one with no kids, just as a family where someone is sick or disabled is likely to have higher costs than one where everyone is in good health.  That is not 'unfair'.  Indeed, once you count in the Tax Credits and Housing Benefit allowed for a working family - at least for now - it is almost impossible to contrive a situation where a family in work isn't better off - even pre-cap - than their unemployed equivalent.


Perhaps the Government know this to be a 'straw man' of an argument, as the proposed new legislation removes the connection between average earnings and the 'Benefit Cap' completely.  So much, then, for the apparent morality behind this policy, which now expects a family with, three, four, five or six children to raise them on the minimum income level for two and displaces families from their homes and neighbourhoods because these have become gentrified and unaffordable.


Is it to much to hope for serious and committed Opposition?

Family Planning

In another post, I lamented the Labour leadership candidates' apparent willingness to throw benefit claimants affected by the Benefit Cap 'under the bus', rather than challenge this despicable policy and the negative stereotypes wheeled out to justify it.  It now seems that, in Harriet Harman's Labour Party, future Tax Credit claimants with more than two children can go under her sickly pink battle bus too. 

Looking at the Benefit Cap, Channel 4 News helpfully showed us what these people look like, interviewing a single mother of eight and chiding her for her irresponsibility.  What they failed to explain was that a family with twice the number of parents and half the number of children face an identical cut in benefits.  Perhaps it is this style of reporting that convinces Harman and co that they cannot win an argument against benefit cuts, though I would argue that in truth, they have never tried to have that argument.

Let's consider the 'two child' limit.  It's popular because, when you talk about large families on benefits, people picture the single jobless mum with eight kids.  Show them instead a picture of a second-time-around suburban married couple, with three children between them from their previous relationships and the bouncing baby they had together before dad unexpectedly lost his well-paid job due to sickness, and all the talk of 'fairness to the taxpayer' starts to sound much more hollow. 

Then show them the woman fleeing a violent partner with the four children she had little choice about conceiving, or perhaps the divorced youth worker, happily keeping her three children without Tax Credits - until Council budget cuts meant her hours and take-home were slashed too?  The divorced and remarried father raising a family with his new wife, again with no state support, until a crisis meant the children from his first marriage had to come to live with dad?  From 2017, these would all be 'new' claims, either for Tax Credits or Universal Credit, with the two child limit applied.  Who's going to stay together?  Who's going to have to split up?  It would make compelling reality TV, wouldn't it?

And here's a classic 'poverty trap'.  A family currently getting Tax Credits for four children have the offer of much better paid work, which will lift them out of benefit entitlement altogether - while it lasts.  But it's a one year, fixed-term contract; at the end, if they need to claim CTC or UC again, they would be making a 'new' claim so will get no support for two of their children. 

It seems to me that Harman and her ilk continue to fall into the trap of dividing the population into 'workers' and 'claimants', failing to understand that very many of us, our friends and our families, will migrate between these states, whether we like it or not.   It isn't 'welfare' for 'them' - it's Social Security, for us all.     

A shock for the self-employed?

Whatever the outcome of Thursday's General Election, and whatever deals have to be done to form a Government, there is a very good chance that the unemployment figures will start to increase soon afterwards.

Unnoticed by the main-stream media, who have worn their Benefits Street goggles throughout the campaign, and even by most serious Social Security commentators, a change to the Tax Credit regulations took effect earlier this month that poses a major threat to the livelihood of those aspiring entrepreneurs - or brow-beaten job-seekers - who have opted to set up as self-employed, turning their hobbies and dreams into a 'businesses' at the prompting of their Work Coach, and with the safety-net of Working Tax Credit.

There has been too little analysis of the headline figures regarding the growth of self-employment, though a note of caution over the steep fall in average earnings for self-employed people should have indicated that many 'small businesses' are unsustainable without a significant benefit subsidy. Having served their purpose to the Coalition in masking the true level of unemployment and under-employment in the UK, these people are about to have the rug pulled out from under them.

I looked at how Universal Credit threatens one group of self-employed people in the second half of this post but for many existing claimants, UC is still a long way from being reality.  Changes are coming their way nonetheless - unluckily for those whose irregular or inconsequential profits are supplemented by Working Tax Credit, HMRC have now adopted ideas enshrined in UC's treatment of the self-employed, and already used to deny benefits to migrants.

HMRC are now reviewing existing Working Tax Credit claims to check that the claimant's work is 'genuine and effective'.  This concept first appeared as a safeguard against alleged 'benefit tourism' by EEA citizens and initially applied a common-sense test; does this person's 'job' actually involve doing something that should command a wage?  No earnings limit or number of hours were specified, but a judgement was to be made on whether there was bona fide work in progress.  More recently, this has shifted to asking 'does this person earn at least the equivalent of the minimum wage for a full-time job?'  Where the answer is 'yes', their work is 'genuine and effective.'  Where it is not, a doubt arises.

This principle is now to be applied to all Working Tax Credit claims, not simply those from Johnnie (or Joni) Foreigner.  The starting point will be the number of hours you have to work to qualify for WTC - 16, 24 or 30, depending on your circumstances.  If you earn the equivalent of that number of hours at the minimum wage for your age, your work should automatically be accepted as 'genuine and effective.'  Some leeway should be allowed when starting a business.  But if HMRC decide you are not, your WTC will stop and you are likely to be left with an overpayment.

As well as being bad news for the creatives I considered in the Universal Credit post in the above.link, this could be disastrous for many taxi drivers, who can wait on ranks for hours at a time and for care workers, receiving mileage but no wage for traveling time.  

Those Work Coaches still urging job-seekers to turn hopes and hobbies into jobs may be unaware of this; a colleague reported hearing an interview on a local radio station last week with a lad who had gone 'self-employed' as a busker with the encouragement of his local Job Centre.  If he's hoping to top up the contents of his hat up from Working Tax Credit, he may be in for a shock.
 

Unearned income

My previous post looked at the stealth cuts in Social Security support to unemployed people approaching an ever-receding retirement age, and how this is halving the income of many 'sixty-somethings' and leaving many to contend with issues we tend to think apply to a younger age-group, such as the Bedroom Tax and JSA sanctions.

This post takes a closer look at how the introduction of Universal Credit impinges on people who might have had to end their career before formal retirement age through ill-health, as all the talk from IDS and his minions about how UC will 'make work pay' has conveniently avoided looking too hard at the consequences of bringing in this benefit for people who aren't working, especially those towards the end of their working lives.

If you are 'medically retired', when your Statutory Sick Pay runs out you often qualify for contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance, the benefit which replaced Incapacity Benefit from 2008.  It's a 'non means-tested' benefit, so is unaffected by savings or a partner's earnings but, if you have a private pension, contributory ESA is reduced by 50% of the value over £85 per week.

Until the Coalition came to power, it was paid for as long as you were ill enough to qualify for it.  In 2011, the present Government shifted the already tight medical goalposts closer together, making it more difficult to score the 15 points needed to have 'Limited Capability for Work' and be eligible for ESA.  Then they time-limited contributory ESA for claimants not allocated to the most severely incapacitated 'Support Group' to one year, even if your condition had no chance of improvement and you had no real prospect of working again, saving the hard-working tax-payer around £101 per week per affected claimant - who would themselves have been a hard-working tax-payer had misfortune not intervened, since entitlement contributory ESA relies on an adequate record of NI contributions.

Then we come to Universal Credit.  Here's an example of how that impacts someone who has taken 'early retirement':

Ahmed gets an occupational pension of £65 per week, and is also entitled to contribution-based ESA of £101.15* per week, a total of £166.15.  Ahmed has to pay £70 per week rent so makes a claim for Housing Benefit. This is calculated by comparing his actual income with what he would get on income-based ESA. Ahmed’s income is £65 per week higher than this. Housing Benefit rules say he should pay at least 65% of that ‘excess income’ (£42.25) towards his rent, but he should get the other £27.75 as Housing Benefit.

If Ahmed has to claim Universal Credit instead his housing costs are included in the amount the Government say he needs to live on - £742.86* per month, including his housing costs. His income from ESA and pension is £719.99 per month.  Unlike Housing Benefit, the 65% ‘taper’ only applies to ‘earned income’ - any other income is counted in full. Ahmed might argue that he had ‘earned’ his contribution-based benefit and work pension, but the UC regulations do not see it that way; both are treated as ‘unearned income’ and taken into account in full.  Ahmed would get the equivalent of just £5.28 per week Universal Credit, £22.47 per week less help with his rent than he would get claiming Housing Benefit.

Once again, someone who does not conform to any of the 'scrounger' stereotypes we are shown in the media takes a substantial cut in income due to 'Welfare Reform' and, unless you are that person, you probably know nothing about it.

.  
*2014/15 figures 

No Country for Old Men?

It was reported earlier this week that the thousand richest individuals in the UK are now worth £547 billion, and that this amount had doubled during the last ten years.  To put that in perspective, it's enough to fund the entire Social Security budget including pensions, tax credits and disability benefits - an estimated £220 billion - for two entire years.  

In contrast, one group of people have seen their income halved, or often more than halved - and no-one is reporting their plight.  

'Welfare' has at last become an issue in the General Election campaign, with Danny Alexander's revelations about the Tories' alleged plans for Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit, and there is political capital to be made from the potential losses to 'hard-working families' of means-testing Child Benefit, ending it at 16 regardless of a young person staying on in education, or restricting it to the first two children.  That's all reprehensible, but so is much that has already happened and, with the exception of the 'Bedroom Tax', the main parties have no plans to reverse any of it.

That's bad news for people like Jeff (obviously not his real name).  Jeff is 61 and, after decades as one of those lauded 'hard-working people', he's out of work.  Jeff's previous jobs - the last of which he held down for over ten years - have been semi-skilled or unskilled and demanded a level of physical fitness which he does his best to maintain (cycling about eight miles twice a week to do voluntary work), but which few employers looking for labourers would anticipate finding in a man of his age.  As a result, he's been out of work for over a year.

Before the state pension age for women started to rise, after the 2010 election, men like Jeff could claim Pension Credit from 60, rather than Jobseeker's Allowance.  Pension Credit is available to both men and women without any work-seeking conditions, even if they have not formally retired.  That doesn't stop them seeking work if they wish - it probably wouldn't have prevented Jeff from doing so.  Pension Credit for a single adult is now £151.20 per week and recipients are exempt from the 'Bedroom Tax' and entitled to maximum Council Tax Support.  

Unfortunately, the age at which you can receive it is now 62 1/2 and rising by increments, which means Jeff won't reach it until sometime in 2016.  In the meantime, he has to claim Jobseeker's Allowance of £73.10 per week, less than half the Pension Credit rate for a single person, and pay 30% of his Council Tax (about £6 per week) and a 'Bedroom Tax' of £11 from this.

While our 'fat cats' have twice the wealth they had ten years ago, Jeff has less than half of what his entitlement would have been at his age in 2005. 

It gets worse.  Jeff has been sanctioned.  I cannot say why without a potential breach of confidentiality, but can say the root of the problem lies with the Universal Jobsmatch computer system and that, as Jeff is no IT whizkid, he has come unstuck with this system before.  We've asked for the DWP's decision to be looked at again and will appeal if it isn't, but while this happens, Jeff gets no money at all for the first two weeks and hardship payments of less than £44 per week after that - for three months.  If he falls behind with his Council Tax payments there will be Court costs and possible bailiff action; if he doesn't pay his Bedroom Tax, there will be Court costs and potential possession proceedings.  If he doesn't continue to 'actively seek work' while trying to cope with this, he'll lose his hardship payments. At least it's spring, so heating can more safely take second place to eating.

The next time you hear about the 'triple lock' to protect pensioners, pause to remember that cuts to 'working age benefits' now impact on people well into their sixties and that, by the end of the next Parliament, that category will include benefits for people up to the age of sixty-six. 

More of the cuts to the Social Security budget are coming from poorer 'baby boomers' than we are led to believe but, as older people are more likely to vote, no wonder the politicians are keeping quiet about it.

*Update: the DWP refused to overturn Jeff's sanction, despite independent evidence that he had done everything reasonable to seek work during the weeks he was accused of failing to do so.  Fortunately, he stuck to his guns and, with the help of one of my colleagues, took his case to an independent tribunal and won it after a very short hearing.

A Bad Review

“We are not the party of people on benefits. We don’t want to be seen, and we’re not, the party to represent those who are out of work.  Labour are a party of working people, formed for and by working people.” 

Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Rachel Reeves, 

quoted in The Guardian on March 17th 2015

On 11 October 2013 I sent a letter - and a copy of Severe Discomfort, my novel about a disabled couple unjustly accused of benefit fraud - to the newly appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions... 

Dear Ms Reeves, 

Congratulations on your appointment to the Shadow Cabinet.

I’m sure you are already inundated with learned papers on Social Security policy, but I fear that claimants’ voices might struggle to be heard in all the economic and ideological arguments. I am therefore sending you something looking at the issues from a different perspective, which I hope you will find a good read.  Both ‘Lyn’ and ‘Hilary’ would have high hopes from the appointment of a woman to the role of shadow Work and Pensions Secretary!

I really hope you will be able to change the whole tone of the debate around ‘Welfare Reform’ and take the shame out of claiming Social Security.  In my long experience, there are very few ‘skivers’ out there, just ‘strivers’ who have fallen ill, been made redundant or taken on the hardest work of all - that of being a carer.  Workers claiming benefits are not to blame for rates of pay too low to support their families and rents unaffordable on the minimum wage, and those without work did not ‘choose’ to live in a recession.  Making people work for benefits will destroy real jobs and make employment a punishment.

But I am sure this Government concentrates its barbed rhetoric on the unemployed to distract attention from the fact that many more claimants, and those hardest hit by their cuts, are actually sick and disabled people.  What could be crueler than telling someone they are ‘fit for work’ when no job exists that they are well enough to do?  And for all the talk that Universal Credit will ‘make work pay’, disabled workers are often less well-supported by it than under the present Tax Credit system.
 
In fact, there are so many flaws with the plans for Universal Credit that to explain them all, I would probably need to write another book to explain them!
I wish you well.

I received no acknowledgment - not even a compliments slip from an intern - and I guess she never found time to read the book...

The Benefits of Boating

I've been following the discussions in various narrowboaters' forums on plans by the Canal and River Trust to take a more robust approach to 'continuous cruisers' (liveaboard boaters without a home mooring) who are travelling less than the C&RT's stipulated guidance for that status.  Those supporting the C&RT argue that it is unfair for 'bogus' CCs to dodge the additional costs of a mooring, and point to how it can be hard to find short-term moorings at safe and popular spots in towns where supposed CCs scuttle regularly between a few regular spots.  

The beleaguered CCs point out that C&RT can be hard-nosed in situations where common-sense should allow leniency - for example in the event of illness, mechanical/ maintenance issues and bad weather (I have recently heard from a very diligent and law-abiding CC served with a notice for overstaying, despite being iced in!), and that safe, affordable moorings can be impossible to find in some areas, particularly around London.

I'm not going to referee that fight here, but to draw attention to something that may seriously complicate the life of the less prosperous CC and increase the risk that they will fall foul of C&RT's 'get tough' policy; the new 'Universal Credit' benefit.

Let's look first at an unemployed boater.  S/he is already going to struggle to continuously cruise.  A few years ago it would have been relatively easy to combine a claim for Jobseeker's Allowance and the conditions of a job-seekers agreement with doing so.  You would need to 'sign on' fortnightly at your chosen Jobcentre, but could easily actively seek work on-line in the evening and at points along your travels.  

Today, such an unconventional way of life could make you a target for weekly or daily 'signing on' or a 'Work Programme' placement - unpaid, but requiring you to stay put close to the Jobcentre or training centre.  JSA claimants also complain of very short notice to attend unscheduled extra appointments.  Find yourself too far from public transport, and you can expect a sanction for missing one of those, with benefit suspended for at least four weeks, thirteen for a second 'failure' and up to 156 (three years) for a more serious glitch.  Hardship payments are just 60% of the usual basic benefit rate and aren't usually paid for the first couple of weeks.  No money = no fuel, so even if you aren't having to hover handy to the foodbank in order to keep body and soul together, you're going to have to limit your mileage.

It's not much better for boaters with long-term health problems.  Employment and Support Allowance for the 'work-related activity group' of claimants - theoretically expected to recover enough to return to work in due course - also requires attendance at regular Jobcentre interviews and, increasingly, Work Programme referrals - once again limiting the CC claimant's ability to move.

It isn't just non-working CCs who need to look closely at the Universal Credit regulations.  If you are in work and earning enough for most of the bills in a good month, but topping this up with a claim for Working Tax Credit or some Housing Benefit towards your boat licence, things are going to get more complicated too.  At present, as long as you devote sufficient hours to your work, your Tax Credit award is safe and Housing Benefit cares only that your income is too little to pay your accommodation costs.  

But both Working Tax Credit and Housing Benefit are due to be incorporated into Universal Credit.  Universal Credit takes a different approach; if your work earns you less than the minimum wage for 35 hours, you run into 'in-work conditionality' - a requirement to be 'available for' and 'actively seeking' work rather as a jobless claimant would.  Self-employed people face another catch - after allowing a setting up period of 12 months, regardless of your actual earnings from self-employment, you will be assumed to be earning the equivalent of the national minimum wage for 35 hours work per week, and your benefit calculated accordingly - even if you haven't earned a penny that month or the previous. 

In practice, this will mean some people with part-time, seasonal or low-profit self-employment having to 'sign on' (and stay put to do so), and others receiving much less support than they actually need to live on during lean months, restricting mobility by limiting funds for fuel.  If C&RT don't take a lenient approach to people caught by these conditions, many small traders, artists and craftspeople will face great personal and financial hardship, and may lose their homes and livelihoods.  If they are forced onto permanent moorings, the cost to the 'public purse' stands to rise, as their mooring fees then also have to be claimed as housing costs for Universal Credit.  If they are forced ashore, the costs of housing them on land are likely to be far higher than a small subsidy towards a boat licence.

I also wonder how much in the way of additional resources C&RT intend to spend on enforcement officers and action, and how much new money they realistically expect to bring in as a result?  Perhaps they should look at how local authorities have struggled, post April 2013, to collect Council Tax from residents forced to make a payment for the first time from falling or static wages and benefits.

It hasn't been going well...  

 

Minority Report

This week, a report was released by Citizens Advice entitled 'Responsive Welfare', setting out what 'we' think is needed to reform 'welfare' in the UK.  There's a link here:

http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/press_20150128

This report has not been well-received at my workplace.  It appears to be founded on a false premise - that what makes 'welfare' unpopular with the public isn't the relentless output of 'Poverty Porn' on TV and 'cheating scrounger' stories in the press, but the real problems people encounter when they seek to claim benefits.   

This ignores the fact that most of the population don’t claim benefits and rely on the media to tell them what it involves, giving estimates that are far too high of what they believe benefit rates to be and exaggerating the percentage of benefits lost to fraud by a factor of 386 when asked to guess that.  Because the media tells them lies about scroungers, advisers regularly see clients who believe that it’s right to ‘crack down on the cheats’ - though 'genuine' people (like them) should be left alone.  It also excuses Citizens Advice from any duty to engage in 'myth-busting'; this is alleged to be 'counter-productive, so presumably we also stop challenging racism and other forms of discrimination?

The three prongs of Citizens Advice's reform are greater localisation, more scope for discretion in benefits administration and better use of information technology - resulting in a state where 'welfare' stops being a 'political football' and becomes something we can all take pride in again.

The idea that ‘welfare’ stops being a ‘political football’ by being localised is demonstrably wrong.  Stoke-on-Trent’s decision to opt for a 30% minimum Council Tax payment from working age people was highly political (whether the motive was to highlight Government cuts, discourage poor people from moving here or another) with the result that the people CitA believe are best placed to make sound decisions for the benefit of their locality have seen over 21,000 liability orders made for Council Tax arrears in the last 12 months; many of the people concerned are entirely unable to pay.  

Without substantial additional funding, local government will continue to blame national government for any failings, even those (as above) it brings upon itself.  There is no mechanism to improve accountability, as the groups most likely to see cuts or tougher conditionality often don’t vote and don’t have any major party nationally or locally defending their rights.  While you can say the same of national government, at least there are national charities and interest groups who can and do challenge bad policy - several charities focused on mental health have been outspoken in their criticism of ESA.

 

The pace at which the game of 'political football' is played in the 'League One' of local government is often faster than in the 'Premiership' of national politics too.  National governments change every 5 years – local councils in some areas might shift the balance of power annually.  Therefore the risk of having stop-start social security policies is actually much higher through decentralisation.  I suspect the authors of this report never stopped to imagine what a benefits system decentralised to a UKIP-controlled or dominated council might look like.  Perhaps they fondly imagine councils will ask their local CAB to devise and manage their 'welfare' scheme?  In which case, to whom would a claimant look if they wished to challenge a decision?  And how brave a 'critical friend' can a CAB be to a council making bad benefits policy, without fearing for its funding?

Another illogical feature of localisation is the ‘postcode lottery’, which could leave people in identical circumstances living either side of a council boundary entitled to entirely different support, as we see with the piecemeal roll-out of Universal Credit.  We might very well see a ‘race to the bottom’ in hard-pressed regions.  No council would bring in policies which might be a ‘magnet’ to benefit claimants; this (real or imagined) risk would make it easy for local politicians to play the same game as national politicians regarding EEA migrants’ benefit rights - if 'they' come here because our benefits are too generous, then we must cut benefits!  There might be attempts to introduce residence conditions, which would restrict opportunities to move to find better job opportunities or other life chances.  

That whole argument around 'welfare' and job creation simply perpetuates the myth that people 'choose' benefits rather than work and that cuts to benefits are needed to make low-paid work more attractive.  Better pay and working conditions make jobs attractive - if £72.40 a week looks better than a job offer, there is something very wrong indeed with that job!  If 'welfare' policy existed to shore up economic policies, as this report encourages, why would you offer generous benefits for sick or disabled people?  Councillors and officers would be careful not to speak it aloud, but why encourage people to live in your area who might add to your social care costs?

The report claims to oppose cuts, but allowing local benefit rates to reflect wages and work opportunities gives the excuse for them and one example explicitly endorses them:

Greater Manchester would have a simple statutory responsibility for using this funding to promote core social objectives.  Within a fixed budget they could use the framework of existing benefits, or they could adjust the design of those benefits. They could reduce unemployment benefits for young people, for example, in order to strengthen incentives to work or stay in education, as part of a wider skills and labour market strategy. (p 17)

The last time I looked, ‘unemployment benefits’ for young people were inhumanely low already; it’s shameful for CitA, of all organisations, to suggest it might be legitimate to cut still further.  But perhaps I should not be surprised after their suggestion that the taper for Universal Credit should be steeper and that low-paid childless people should pick up the tab for a slightly improved allowance for working parents, rather improve this benefit for all and shift the burden higher up the income scale?

Improving digital services is a laudable aim, if it really does free staff for better face-to-face interaction, but what is happening within the DWP, HMRC and local government is digital systems (and under-skilled call-centre staff) are used to cut staff and costs, resulting in a poorer quality service.   This document dodges the real issue regarding poor ‘welfare’ customer service – falling numbers of skilled, experienced staff and an exodus of those not in step with IDS's tune.  

An example quoted concerning the ‘severe disability premium’, which supposedly illustrated the need for better digital services, actually shows the need for interaction with real people, as it is doubtful that this client would have been able to navigate a computer-based system unaided any better than a couple of forms.  The examples quoted around sanctions, supposedly demonstrating the benefits of greater discretion and independence, actual prove the opposite.  Clients, support workers, library staff and others have all raised issues around particular members of JC+ staff being keener to hand down sanctions than others.  'Discretion' is a two-edged sword – it can very easily become discrimination and it is almost impossible to challenge effectively.

In fact one of my biggest fears with all this is the authors’ alarming keenness to move away from a rights-based system.  Whatever the faults and failing of the current Social Security system, claimants do have enforceable rights, and these are the same throughout the country.  This enables organisations like CAB, CPAG, Disability Rights and others to provide training and resources, enabling professional advisers, volunteers and claimants themselves to find out about their rights and access them.  Bad law and regulation can and is challenged through the tribunal and upper tribunal system.  If this is working less well now than a while back, the cause is lack of funding for specialist advice and tribunal representation – not a need for more unaccountable ‘discretion’. 

That would be impossible with numerous localised systems subject to constant change.  Advice workers could realistically only really know one or two local schemes well, and could not swap strategies and ideas with their counterparts elsewhere.  National information and training organisations would struggle to provide effective support, national campaigning organisations would lose power and influence.  The online forums that enable isolated victims of 'welfare reform' to share their stories and swap information would be far less help to their users if Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Newcastle-under-Lyme had different qualifying conditions for quite different sickness benefits.  Where do claimants seek redress in the event of an incorrect local decision?  Housing Benefit appeals were brought within the Tribunals Service and away from councillors for the sake of independence and transparency.

If I were a government looking to rip the guts out of the campaigning side of the voluntary sector and keep claimants isolated and ignorant, I would indeed be missing a trick not to take up these ideas.