James Purnell now wants to help claimants with alcohol problems back into work. First it was people with drug addictions and now Purnell wants to provide:
…real help for people looking for work and support for all those who need it to get off benefits – whatever the barriers preventing them. We need to look through the eyes of the person defeated by an addiction that keeps them out of work and on the outside of the community and give them the help they need.
We have introduced a new policy that will mean heroin and crack addicts get treatment in return for benefits. We will actually help them rather than simply handing them money which ends up in pockets of drug dealers.
But we can’t abandon anyone to long periods on benefits without help to overcome problems. So that’s why we are going to look at the arrangements for alcoholics on benefits, just as we did for problem drug users, so that people get the help they need to get sober, to get their life back and get back to work.
The appalling Clause 9 of the Welfare Reform Bill reminds me of what Harry Fletcher from NAPO said at the PCS lobby of Parliament on the Welfare Reform Bill in early March of this year, drug users can lose their benefits if they don’t comply with drug treatment programmes. And what attacks the core of civil liberties is the potential sharing of information between the DWP and the criminal justice system. This utterly undermines and erodes the right to privacy especially having to declare whether you are a user (subject, as well, to invasive urine testing). This further stigmatises people who are already marginalised, it is about coercion and control by the state; ‘do what we say or you’ll your benefits’…. And people will fall off the benefits radar (which NL won’t give a damn about).
And you can bet something similar in the coercive stakes will be put forward for claimants with alcohol problems.
Purnell feels your pain, he does you know, as he has spoken to, you know, some people regarding recession, relationship breakdowns and unemployment. He may not experience it but doggone it he feels it….
James Purnell also talked to people about their experiences of the recession and the pressure unemployment can put on the family, saying:
I have listened to lots of people here today who have told me how they see their community. Some were getting by or doing well. Some are finding things really tough because they or someone in their family has lost their job in this downturn. Some were struggling long before this downturn arrived. But everyone I met wanted to do the right thing.
Just what is the right thing, Purnell?
Can we please confiscate bankers’ money on the basis it will only end up in drug dealers’ pockets, too?
Tim: Yeah…. LOL
Mr P seems to totally misunderstand (deliberate?)alcoholism and how it works in people’s lives. It is not something that can be just cured if someone is motivated enough via tough love through the benefit cuts. The strategy many people will use will be to use alcohol to deal with the stress of having benefit cuts instead of eating and paying fuel bills etc.The policy will just make a bigger mess of people’s lives.BTW will the money saved by the benefit cut be given back to the person when they have dried out? Thought not.
I’m wondering how long it will be before smokers or the obese face the same “conditionality” of their right to social security. Whatever next? Similar strings of “conditionality” (horrible word and one not in my browser’s dictionary! Why not replace it with the more accurate “coercion”) to our right to access the health service!
“Sorry Sir, but you’re too fat to be seen by the doctor.”
The government seems to think that if enough pressure is placed on the unemployed and their lives are made as miserable as possible they will magically be forced into gainful employment! It’s a bit like saying, “For ever unemployed person no matter how old, how disabled, how over qualified or under-qualified they are, whether they have their own transport or where they happen to live in the UK, well, we guarantee that at least one employer in the public or private sector would be willing to employ them. Therefore if anyone is long-term unemployed it must be because they are playing the system!
Bunkum! Where I live seven people are officially chasing every vacancy, most of which seem to be part-time (so no access to tax credits there then)!
The camp and limp-wristed James Purnell really is a completely hateful little man, isn’t he? Loathsome! He personifies everything that is wrong with the Labour Party and the reason it has no future.
“On lefty blogs lately the most reviled figure in the Labour Party has been James Purnell – because he suggested that those receiving disability benefits because of their alcoholism could have them cut unless they tried to clean up.
Now to most working people that’s a no-brainer. Why should an alkie or smackhead actually get greater benefits than someone who’s unemployed and trying to find work ? But to what passes for the left these days, it’s an outrage, attacking the most vulnerable in society etc. The party of the working class is now the party of the non-working class.”