First they hired Atos, the French IT firm, to hack down the recipients of Incapacity Benefit by up to 70% – regardless of the human consequences for those with serious disability. Then Jobcentre staff confirmed that it is widespread practice to set targets for removing benefits, though the DWP spin uses the much more delicate language of ‘benchmarks’ or ‘expectations for the number of sanctions levied’. League tables are in operation to chivvy reluctant jobcentres into achieving a higher number of ‘hits’ against the unemployed – a leaked email showed that Walthamstow was doing very badly, 95th out of only 109 jobcentres in London and the Home Counties in the sanctions hierarchy against the jobless. Now the disabled, 3.2 million of them, are being shunted off DLA into an alternative system called ‘personal independence payments’ (PIP), the stated aim of which is to cut the cost of the benefit by 20% by 2015-6 – again regardless of the impact on the disabled. They are being put through the DWP wringer at the rate of 11,000 a week which can only mean that the assessments will be cursory and in many cases wrong. The government has already decided what the result will be because they have already announced that by 2018 about 607,000 fewer people will be getting DLA or PIPs.
What this very precise figure giving the conclusion of all these assessments clearly reveals is that the government have already decided at the outset what the end results will be. These are not examinations on their merits. The assessments are already pre-determined, pre-packaged, with strict codes and roles set down by DWP in order to obtain a pre-ordained result. Human concerns and sensitivities hardly get a look in, as can be seen from the arbitrary reduction in the test for walking capability from 50 metres to 20 metres in order to hone back further the threshold for disability.
What is so awful about this whole procedure is that it is not about seriously getting people into work, it’s purely about drastic reductions in the number of benefit recipients and thus in DWP expenditure. If it were really about getting people back into employment, it requires major changes in policy:
1 Above all an economic policy is needed which will promote jobs and growth, not the reduction in jobs and growth which semi-permanent stagnation entails – and as it happens, the former would be far more effective in cutting the budget deficit as well.
2 People who have been out of work for a long period of time need training and social support to prepare them for employment, not a sudden removal of all benefits which simply exacerbates deep fear and anxiety. Introduction to potential employers is also needed since 85% of all UK jobs are not advertised.
3 Cutting benefits is in fact a perverse way of getting people into work since Landman Economics has show that over £4 in every £5 of benefit cuts are hitting working households.
