Visited Wetlands in Barnes today. Loads of snoozing wildfowl and birds. Good wander I had and saw two maybe three herons. And lots of other interesting species.
Daily Archives: June 19, 2011
Brian Haw: loss of an anti-war comrade
The realities of welfare reform legislation
Here’s an article which will be in the next edition of Labour Briefing written by Tony Benson on the realities of the welfare reform legislation.
The Government’s changes to the benefit system centred on the the Welfare Reform Bill are massive and extremely complex. There are 141 clauses and 14 schedules consisting of one nasty after another. These are answers to some of the more obvious questions about what is being done.
Will the proposed Universal Credit make it easier to get back to work?
No. It will be more difficult to afford and to find childcare. The rates of benefit withdrawal will be steeper so being in work is likely to make you poorer returning to work than you would be now. There will still be no account taken of travel to work costs, often in practice the deal-breaker for people looking at minimum wage jobs. If your pay goes up and down and this is not reported back to the DWP you are more likely to get a penalty or botched benefit calculation.
Much has been made of families in which several generations are “workless”. How will the Governments changes help such people?
The changes will not help. They are actually making things worse for such families. The rate at which a parent on Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit has that benefit withdrawn if their adult son or daughter returns to work has increased. This makes things more difficult for people in poor communities where young adults are forced by the housing shortage to continue to live with Mum and Dad.
The benefit system is complex and difficult to understand. The Government said that simplifying the system will help people understand how much better off they will be working. How is the complexity of the system being changed? It is being made more difficult and understand and to navigate your way through. The complexity of the benefits system comes from means-testing. Universal Credit will increase means-testing. In addition the increase in hoops that you need to jump through, sanctions for not doing/doing something have increased and the extra things such as the benefit cap all add complexity. They will do so in the most spirit crushing ways.
How will the various changes affect people’s ability to stay in their homes?
There are already a series of changes involving the calculation of Housing Benefit that will make it more difficult for people to stay in their homes once they are forced into living off benefits. Clause 11 of the Bill only provides a brief outline of the way housing costs will be addressed. The detail of what will be an area of huge complexity is being largely left to the Secretary of State to fill in when writing the regulations that will be made under the Bill when it becomes law. It can be safely assumed that the Government will want to take on board the various interests of the mortgage firms, housing associations, private landlords and to a lesser extent local councils before writing out the regulations governing who be helped and who will not be helped to stay in their homes. The net result though is likely to be worse housing for all poor people along with ethnic minorities and people in London and other expensive cities.
How will these changes make it easier to get back to work?
The changes will make it less easy to get back to work. There will be an increase in the use of bureaucratic hoops such as “work-focussed interviews” for an unemployed jobseeker to jump through. There will be more sanctions to muck up your life if the DWP or outsourcing company in charge of peoples’ returning to work (it will not be the unemployed person in charge of this. As a de facto second class citizen they are not to be trusted with such a thing). Someone who loses their job can expect more fairy jobmother style bullying.
There has been a lot of anger expressed by people with disabilities about the changes to the benefit system. Are these people right to be angry or are the Government trying to help?
People are right to be angry. The main benefit for people with disabilities is Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is itself complex and difficult to get awarded. The replacement is called the Personal Independence Payment (PIP). This new benefit will be more restrictive. The Government does not believe that there are that many people with disabilities. People with hidden disabilities such as mental health problems, arthritis or chronic fatigue are going to lose out in particular. The underlying attitude of the Government seems to be that if you cannot see a disability easily the person must be swinging the lead. Disability Living Allowance is based on the help that someone needs to lead as near as possible an everyday live. The Personal Independence Payment is restricted to the help that someone needs to carry out their basic human functioning. Anyone with a disability (which is a most people sooner or later) is to be forced into being a second class citizen.
This is quite apart from the biased and oppressive system of deciding if people are fit for work or not. This really is part of the benefit system that could do with a root and branch overall. Instead things are being made more difficult for people right at the time in their lives at which they need help while they get better. Various mental health organisations have pointed out how destructive this part of the system is for people with mental distress. Needless to say this part of the social security system is here to stay and is being made tougher on people.
Who will benefit from the changes to the benefit system?
Slum landlords, exploitative bosses and yuppies looking for an inner city home to do up. Most of all though the various outsourcing companies that will be on a real taxpayer funded gravy train while they bully the unemployed under the pretext of helping them overcome their attitude to working for a living: the only barrier that the Government will readily acknowledge even though it is an imaginary barrier that stops few people if anyone from working and having a decent standard of living.
