I unexpectedly found myself wearing my 'tribunal suit' yesterday,
appropriately (if accidentally) accessorised with a ladder up the left
leg of my tights much as my fictional alter ego Sally Archer. I don't rep for the CAB
in my current role and it must be at least five years since I was last
at our local venue; I was stepping into the breach as a favour for
another organisation and, to be totally honest, grabbing an opportunity
to see a PIP appeal in action. Confidentiality demands that I share no
more details and anyway, I don't know the result, though I'm cautiously
optimistic.
I had wondered whether there might be a
Presenting Officer in attendance, since the rep who had asked me to help
out with this case had encountered one at another recent PIP appeal.
This was unusual as POs tend only to appear for especially contentious
cases, although there was a recent DWP announcement of extra funding to
provide them specifically for PIP appeals. Understandably, reaction
from the broader welfare rights lobby was hostile - this article from the excellent Dr Frances Ryan encapsulating the general sense of unfairness.
I'm
inclined to share this concern although, if these new Presenting
Officers adopted the ethos once prevalent in the role, they could be
more of a help than a hindrance to unrepresented appellants, denied
properly-trained advocates by cuts to Legal Aid and advice service
budgets. Although it suits my fictional stories to (minor spoiler) cast PO Tom
Appleby as one of the DWP 'good guys', it involved no great leap of the
imagination to do so. When I first started representing at
appeals in the later 1980s, POs weren't simply the DWP's man (or woman)
at the table. Their role was to be a 'friend of the Tribunal' and they
could - and often did - speak up for the appellant's case, or at least concede their own gracefully.
In
response to a comment I made on Dr Ryan's article that POs could be a
force for good but I feared the new intake might be cut from rather
different cloth than their predecessors, I was pleased to see the
following:
"I was a PO in the 80s and my training stressed that the role was one of amicus curiae.
I would review the papers for every case and if I was confident the law
had been applied incorrectly to the facts I would tell the tribunal so,
referring them to the appropriate law, including case law if necessary.
If there was time I would speak to the original decision maker and ask
them to revise their decision to save time. That's what POs were
supposed to do. I'd probably be sacked for it these days."
The writer's nom de plume xck33l gives
no clue as to his/her home town or gender but I couldn't help imagining
that these might be the words of a softly-spoken Yorkshireman with a flare for interior decoration.
If the new breed
of POs are to bring consistency and fairness to PIP hearings, it is
vital that they be allowed to exercise the freedom and integrity of the
old guard of POs and not be fettered by targets for tribunal 'wins'. On
those terms, it would actually be rather a good job for some of the
many benefits specialists thrown out of work by the loss of Legal Aid
- as long as they could stay one step ahead of the Social Justice
Ambassadors, of course!
Saturday, 21 May 2016
Monday, 11 April 2016
Still Taking the PIP
It looks as if Channel 4 might be taking a step towards redemption, after inflicting Benefits Street upon us, with a piece of investigative journalism into the quality and ethics of medical assessments for the controversial Personal Independence Payments.
I've blogged previously about some of the failings with PIP although at that stage, the main complaint about assessments was that they weren't happening quickly enough. The C4 Dispatches programme highlights another problem - that they aren't being conducted properly. I doubt if there is a welfare rights adviser in the country who won't greet that news with the words 'No shit, Sherlock!' or similar. We've been struggling with slapdash so-called medicals for years, dating back way before Capita, long before Johnny-come-lately Maximus and even before Atos set to work.
It's also been an open secret for years that some people carrying out these medical assessments give not a jot for the people they see or their obligation to do a proper assessment for the sake of fairness to the broader society, but rush through them because, in doing so, they can make a shed-load of cash.
When people who were unfit for work still claimed Incapacity Benefit or Income Support and, before Atos took over the contract and introduced an IT system to make getting it all wrong even easier, we dealt with scores of appeals against 'fit for work' decisions at my CAB. We noticed that certain doctors' names turned up on the reports more than others. At this time, all the assessments were done by doctors, not miscellaneous 'HCPs'. Several had an apparently high rate of overturned decisions but one name stood out for both an extraordinarily high 'appeal allowed' rate and the number of people challenging his decisions. We'll call him Dr Branton, because that's his name.
In the beginning, the IB85 medical reports were hand-written, which was an extra challenge for advisers as the doctor's handwriting needed deciphering before the report could be assessed for accuracy and consistency. With Dr Branton, this took a little less time than usual because he rarely wrote much and almost all of his reports began in exactly the same way. The claimant was observed to be "a tidy man. Standing, walking and sitting normally. Talking in a clear voice with good eye-contact."
The odd exception arose when he had to describe "a tidy woman".
We lost this signature start when the IB85 was computerised though we gained a new piece of information at that stage - the duration of the assessment. The range was considerable, from well over an hour down to under ten minutes. For some years, Dr B held the record for both the fastest assessment and the fastest average overall. It was only after an acrimonious split from Atos, when he sold his side of the story to the Daily Mail (again, "No shit, Sherlock!"), that we appreciated that time was money - and vast amounts of it. He bragged about being able to make £450 per day - and that was eight years ago. Full-time skilled workers are still lucky to make that much a week around here. It's astonishing that the Dispatches report suggests the same level of profiteering is still going on and that it wasn't rooted out long ago.
Despite his perception of being an honest man in a cowardly culture, what my colleagues and I observed suggested quite the reverse about Dr Branton. We had started to keep a tally for each doctor, recording how many people came to us to challenge their decisions and what percentage of those we took to appeal we won. Branton's results were easily the worst, though many of the others hardly covered themselves in glory. At the Tribunals Service, 'Dr B' became widely recognised as a dubious authority. If you lost a case where the IB85 was Branton's work, you felt you should return to the office only to clear your desk. We shared our stats with the DWP, who took our concerns seriously enough to send an officer out to hear more evidence, though by then Dr Branton was already on his way out.
I hope, therefore, that tonight's documentary doesn't focus on Capita as the root of the problem. It's deeper than that and by no means unique to PIP. After all, Dr Branton's "tidy man" reports pre-dated Atos. Sadly, because the companies carrying out these contracts recruit people whose skills are in demand elsewhere, the relatively generous salary and bonus packages they offer can attract the crafty, greedy and lazy, as well as those genuinely struggling to get by on some NHS salaries. This story is a case in point.
Finally, I hope the programme points out the consequences for claimants and their families of getting the wrong decision on a disability benefit. Not everyone understands that they have the right to appeal and, of those that do, not all will be able to access support. Even those who win will have had to cope for months without vital funds, often contributing to a deterioration in both their physical and mental health. Many will have debts as a result, and seen family and other relationships put under additional pressure. We know that some people feel so worthless after having their health problems dismissed out of hand that they give up the struggle to go on living. Perhaps the prospect of corporate manslaughter charges is what's needed to ensure that those carrying out ESA and PIP assessments, and those responsible for them, work to the highest possible standards of fairness and accuracy, every single time.
I've blogged previously about some of the failings with PIP although at that stage, the main complaint about assessments was that they weren't happening quickly enough. The C4 Dispatches programme highlights another problem - that they aren't being conducted properly. I doubt if there is a welfare rights adviser in the country who won't greet that news with the words 'No shit, Sherlock!' or similar. We've been struggling with slapdash so-called medicals for years, dating back way before Capita, long before Johnny-come-lately Maximus and even before Atos set to work.
It's also been an open secret for years that some people carrying out these medical assessments give not a jot for the people they see or their obligation to do a proper assessment for the sake of fairness to the broader society, but rush through them because, in doing so, they can make a shed-load of cash.
When people who were unfit for work still claimed Incapacity Benefit or Income Support and, before Atos took over the contract and introduced an IT system to make getting it all wrong even easier, we dealt with scores of appeals against 'fit for work' decisions at my CAB. We noticed that certain doctors' names turned up on the reports more than others. At this time, all the assessments were done by doctors, not miscellaneous 'HCPs'. Several had an apparently high rate of overturned decisions but one name stood out for both an extraordinarily high 'appeal allowed' rate and the number of people challenging his decisions. We'll call him Dr Branton, because that's his name.
In the beginning, the IB85 medical reports were hand-written, which was an extra challenge for advisers as the doctor's handwriting needed deciphering before the report could be assessed for accuracy and consistency. With Dr Branton, this took a little less time than usual because he rarely wrote much and almost all of his reports began in exactly the same way. The claimant was observed to be "a tidy man. Standing, walking and sitting normally. Talking in a clear voice with good eye-contact."
The odd exception arose when he had to describe "a tidy woman".
We lost this signature start when the IB85 was computerised though we gained a new piece of information at that stage - the duration of the assessment. The range was considerable, from well over an hour down to under ten minutes. For some years, Dr B held the record for both the fastest assessment and the fastest average overall. It was only after an acrimonious split from Atos, when he sold his side of the story to the Daily Mail (again, "No shit, Sherlock!"), that we appreciated that time was money - and vast amounts of it. He bragged about being able to make £450 per day - and that was eight years ago. Full-time skilled workers are still lucky to make that much a week around here. It's astonishing that the Dispatches report suggests the same level of profiteering is still going on and that it wasn't rooted out long ago.
Despite his perception of being an honest man in a cowardly culture, what my colleagues and I observed suggested quite the reverse about Dr Branton. We had started to keep a tally for each doctor, recording how many people came to us to challenge their decisions and what percentage of those we took to appeal we won. Branton's results were easily the worst, though many of the others hardly covered themselves in glory. At the Tribunals Service, 'Dr B' became widely recognised as a dubious authority. If you lost a case where the IB85 was Branton's work, you felt you should return to the office only to clear your desk. We shared our stats with the DWP, who took our concerns seriously enough to send an officer out to hear more evidence, though by then Dr Branton was already on his way out.
I hope, therefore, that tonight's documentary doesn't focus on Capita as the root of the problem. It's deeper than that and by no means unique to PIP. After all, Dr Branton's "tidy man" reports pre-dated Atos. Sadly, because the companies carrying out these contracts recruit people whose skills are in demand elsewhere, the relatively generous salary and bonus packages they offer can attract the crafty, greedy and lazy, as well as those genuinely struggling to get by on some NHS salaries. This story is a case in point.
Finally, I hope the programme points out the consequences for claimants and their families of getting the wrong decision on a disability benefit. Not everyone understands that they have the right to appeal and, of those that do, not all will be able to access support. Even those who win will have had to cope for months without vital funds, often contributing to a deterioration in both their physical and mental health. Many will have debts as a result, and seen family and other relationships put under additional pressure. We know that some people feel so worthless after having their health problems dismissed out of hand that they give up the struggle to go on living. Perhaps the prospect of corporate manslaughter charges is what's needed to ensure that those carrying out ESA and PIP assessments, and those responsible for them, work to the highest possible standards of fairness and accuracy, every single time.
Thursday, 14 January 2016
A Striking Similarity
Until he retired, my father worked as a train driver.
A heart attack in about 1992 took him off the main line and into the
'depot' for the last few years of his employment, which had seen
both the advent and the demise of British Rail.
Even before the heart attack, Dad's work had brought him into fairly regular contact with the NHS. There were frequent trips to the old Southampton Eye Hospital in the early years of diesel propulsion, as the new locomotives chucked out tiny fragments of metal in their exhaust, which then required specialist removal if they got into your eyeball and rusted. That the same machines made such an unholy racket now means regular fitting and tweaking of hearing aids and, on several occasions in the last few years, he's been back in the Coronary Care Unit - most recently for the fitting of his second Implantable Cardioverter Defibulator.
Dad's working life and that of the doctors who've kept repairing him have always had one thing in common - a necessity to work unsocial hours. Recently, however, I've noticed another.
It was The Sun's stories about "Moet Medics" that triggered the deja vu moment. Of course I hadn't seen them in the actual paper - I wouldn't so much as wipe my backside on that rag - but I had laughed at the Junior Doctors' clever Instagram/Facebook parodies mocking allegations that they led the high life on inflated salaries. One of the joys of Social Media is that you can instantly strike back against the media establishment if you are misrepresented. In 1982, that wasn't so easy.
I mention 1982, because that was the year that Dad and his colleagues got the "Moet Medics" treatment from The Sun. There was a dispute in progress between BR and the drivers over something called 'flexible rostering'. Most people outside the industry thought this must be something quite positive, like 'flexitime' for office workers. For the drivers, it was a fundamental attack on their terms and conditions of employment since their work patterns were already pretty 'flexible', with the starting time of a shift able to be moved up to two hours between one day and the next. So a week of 2am shifts might start at that time on day one but at 00.01 the next night, back to 02.00 after that and then 03.50, depending on requirements, with the next shift's start time advised at booking off from the one before. If he was on nights, Dad would leave my mum a note when he came home and before he went to bed, to say what time he was due at work the following night and, on that basis, when he was likely to be up and about and what they could therefore do during the day.
The pay-off for that flexibility was, if the right guy was 'running foreman', a degree of goodwill in letting staff go home early if there wasn't work for the latter part of their shift and there was a bit of emergency cover. During the summer holidays we might get an odd day at the beach on the basis that Dad had been allowed to 'slide off' and so got a longer early morning sleep than usual. The same was true when booked on 'spare' - to cover for unexpected absences and emergencies - when some of the crews might get to 'slide off' early if everything was quiet. That goodwill was repaid by the drivers with great enthusiasm for their job and commitment to their industry, despite the diabolical hours and conditions - for example, many diesel locomotives' cabs were so poorly insulated that old newspapers had to be rolled up and stuffed into the gaps and cracks to stop the draughts. No fun at 100mph on a cold winter's night!
'Flexible rostering' meant further uncertainty, allowing the basic hours of a shift to last between 7 and 9 hours of standard time, rather than the basic 8. Operationally, you can see the sense of this; few shifts could be devised which neatly used eight hours work. However, with drivers' income heavily dependent on an arcane system of overtime and anti-social hours payments ('time-and-five-eighths' being one rate - train drivers were impressive mental mathematicians on payday), 'flexible rostering' threatened both their income and that last little bit of predictability in their working lives - a guaranteed eight hour day. That disputes like this were lost is arguably where the road to the 'zero-hours contract' begins.
In 1982, the train drivers - and their 'militant' union ASLEF - were very much a part of the 'Enemy Within' to the Tory establishment and it was therefore necessary to undermine their cause as thoroughly as possible. So when two young 'second men' from Dad's own depot were prepared to sell their story - of 'sliding off' to go to the disco in work time - to none other than The Sun, it did the drivers' cause no good at all. At no stage did any of the mainstream media properly explain the dispute and even the left-leaning Not the Nine o'clock News sketch-show couldn't resist a reference to the 'disco' story. By no means a communist, the only paper Dad said gave the drivers' case a fair airing was the Morning Star. (We had quite an eclectic mix of newspapers in the house when I was growing up, depending on what Dad found left behind by that day's commuters).
All this was going on when I was in my last year at sixth-form college and had a massive impact on my political outlook, not least through trying to explain the reality to fellow students who thought it was funny to ask if they should look out for my Dad at the disco that night. I saw how difficult it was to get fair coverage for your case and how quick politicians and the media were to condemn the 'selfishness' of workers supposedly 'holding the country to ransom' over something as trivial as fair pay and decent working conditions.
Today, I'd like to think it would be easier to fight back, with send-up Instagram pics of train drivers on the picket lines in their flares, open-necked satin shirts and medallions, and 'I'm in work, Peter'* Facebook posts. In some ways, though, looking at how meekly much of the media take the Government line on the current Junior Doctors' dispute, I fear it would be much the same. I can't help noticing that it's always "The Doctors' Union, The BMA" from our newsreaders these days (because Unions are a bad thing, of course, and God forbid that the general public mistake the BMA for anything legit), though we're never introduced to think-tank spokespeople as, for example, "Jack Slyme from The Centre for Social Justice, founded by Iain Duncan Smith to promote his personal agenda on Welfare."
At least in their dispute over pay and conditions the Junior Doctors do still have overwhelming public support - not least because a lot of people, like me, owe their lives or the lives of people they love to their dedication. I think most people understand that intelligent professionals don't take action lightly and that if they say this deal is bad for both their profession and their patients, they're more likely than a politician to know. Sadly, the opposite assumption tends to be made of blue-collar workers who, when they aren't simply being 'selfish', are still rarely portrayed as better than the dull-witted dupes of their unscrupulous, politically-motivated 'Union Bosses'. If you'd ever seen a train driver checking the sums on his payslip in his head, before quibbling with the pay clerk over whether he'd got time-and-five-eighths rather than time-and-three for the overtime last Sunday, you would never dare assume that blue-collar workers are easily bamboozled.
*Sir Peter Parker was Chairman of the British Railways Board in 1982.
Even before the heart attack, Dad's work had brought him into fairly regular contact with the NHS. There were frequent trips to the old Southampton Eye Hospital in the early years of diesel propulsion, as the new locomotives chucked out tiny fragments of metal in their exhaust, which then required specialist removal if they got into your eyeball and rusted. That the same machines made such an unholy racket now means regular fitting and tweaking of hearing aids and, on several occasions in the last few years, he's been back in the Coronary Care Unit - most recently for the fitting of his second Implantable Cardioverter Defibulator.
Dad's working life and that of the doctors who've kept repairing him have always had one thing in common - a necessity to work unsocial hours. Recently, however, I've noticed another.
It was The Sun's stories about "Moet Medics" that triggered the deja vu moment. Of course I hadn't seen them in the actual paper - I wouldn't so much as wipe my backside on that rag - but I had laughed at the Junior Doctors' clever Instagram/Facebook parodies mocking allegations that they led the high life on inflated salaries. One of the joys of Social Media is that you can instantly strike back against the media establishment if you are misrepresented. In 1982, that wasn't so easy.
I mention 1982, because that was the year that Dad and his colleagues got the "Moet Medics" treatment from The Sun. There was a dispute in progress between BR and the drivers over something called 'flexible rostering'. Most people outside the industry thought this must be something quite positive, like 'flexitime' for office workers. For the drivers, it was a fundamental attack on their terms and conditions of employment since their work patterns were already pretty 'flexible', with the starting time of a shift able to be moved up to two hours between one day and the next. So a week of 2am shifts might start at that time on day one but at 00.01 the next night, back to 02.00 after that and then 03.50, depending on requirements, with the next shift's start time advised at booking off from the one before. If he was on nights, Dad would leave my mum a note when he came home and before he went to bed, to say what time he was due at work the following night and, on that basis, when he was likely to be up and about and what they could therefore do during the day.
The pay-off for that flexibility was, if the right guy was 'running foreman', a degree of goodwill in letting staff go home early if there wasn't work for the latter part of their shift and there was a bit of emergency cover. During the summer holidays we might get an odd day at the beach on the basis that Dad had been allowed to 'slide off' and so got a longer early morning sleep than usual. The same was true when booked on 'spare' - to cover for unexpected absences and emergencies - when some of the crews might get to 'slide off' early if everything was quiet. That goodwill was repaid by the drivers with great enthusiasm for their job and commitment to their industry, despite the diabolical hours and conditions - for example, many diesel locomotives' cabs were so poorly insulated that old newspapers had to be rolled up and stuffed into the gaps and cracks to stop the draughts. No fun at 100mph on a cold winter's night!
'Flexible rostering' meant further uncertainty, allowing the basic hours of a shift to last between 7 and 9 hours of standard time, rather than the basic 8. Operationally, you can see the sense of this; few shifts could be devised which neatly used eight hours work. However, with drivers' income heavily dependent on an arcane system of overtime and anti-social hours payments ('time-and-five-eighths' being one rate - train drivers were impressive mental mathematicians on payday), 'flexible rostering' threatened both their income and that last little bit of predictability in their working lives - a guaranteed eight hour day. That disputes like this were lost is arguably where the road to the 'zero-hours contract' begins.
In 1982, the train drivers - and their 'militant' union ASLEF - were very much a part of the 'Enemy Within' to the Tory establishment and it was therefore necessary to undermine their cause as thoroughly as possible. So when two young 'second men' from Dad's own depot were prepared to sell their story - of 'sliding off' to go to the disco in work time - to none other than The Sun, it did the drivers' cause no good at all. At no stage did any of the mainstream media properly explain the dispute and even the left-leaning Not the Nine o'clock News sketch-show couldn't resist a reference to the 'disco' story. By no means a communist, the only paper Dad said gave the drivers' case a fair airing was the Morning Star. (We had quite an eclectic mix of newspapers in the house when I was growing up, depending on what Dad found left behind by that day's commuters).
All this was going on when I was in my last year at sixth-form college and had a massive impact on my political outlook, not least through trying to explain the reality to fellow students who thought it was funny to ask if they should look out for my Dad at the disco that night. I saw how difficult it was to get fair coverage for your case and how quick politicians and the media were to condemn the 'selfishness' of workers supposedly 'holding the country to ransom' over something as trivial as fair pay and decent working conditions.
Today, I'd like to think it would be easier to fight back, with send-up Instagram pics of train drivers on the picket lines in their flares, open-necked satin shirts and medallions, and 'I'm in work, Peter'* Facebook posts. In some ways, though, looking at how meekly much of the media take the Government line on the current Junior Doctors' dispute, I fear it would be much the same. I can't help noticing that it's always "The Doctors' Union, The BMA" from our newsreaders these days (because Unions are a bad thing, of course, and God forbid that the general public mistake the BMA for anything legit), though we're never introduced to think-tank spokespeople as, for example, "Jack Slyme from The Centre for Social Justice, founded by Iain Duncan Smith to promote his personal agenda on Welfare."
At least in their dispute over pay and conditions the Junior Doctors do still have overwhelming public support - not least because a lot of people, like me, owe their lives or the lives of people they love to their dedication. I think most people understand that intelligent professionals don't take action lightly and that if they say this deal is bad for both their profession and their patients, they're more likely than a politician to know. Sadly, the opposite assumption tends to be made of blue-collar workers who, when they aren't simply being 'selfish', are still rarely portrayed as better than the dull-witted dupes of their unscrupulous, politically-motivated 'Union Bosses'. If you'd ever seen a train driver checking the sums on his payslip in his head, before quibbling with the pay clerk over whether he'd got time-and-five-eighths rather than time-and-three for the overtime last Sunday, you would never dare assume that blue-collar workers are easily bamboozled.
*Sir Peter Parker was Chairman of the British Railways Board in 1982.
Friday, 14 August 2015
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.
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.
Sunday, 19 July 2015
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?
Monday, 13 July 2015
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.
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.
Sunday, 3 May 2015
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.
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.
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