Smoking Gun that shows the Tories lied about ALL their Welfare intentions [Sue Marsh]

Reblogged from Sue Marsh

And that's how it goes folks. Being me these days. Suddenly, out of the blue, someone sends me something so perfect, so shocking, so undeniable that my heart starts to beat faster.

So in an innocent little tweet from someone called Stephe Meloy sent me this wonderful, oh-so-detailed smoking gun.

http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2010/05/~/media/Files/Downloadable%20Files/Manifesto/Equalities-Manifesto.ashx 

Entitled "A Contract for Equalities" with (oh delicious irony) a foreword by Theresa May (Yes that's right, she IS the now Home Secretary who wants to abolish Human Rights) it is a detailed pre-election plan of what the Conservatives will and will not do if they win power in the 2010 election.

Best of all, as @mrsblogs points out on Twitter a link to launch the document urges "if we fail to make progress in these areas & do not deliver on our side of the bargain, then vote us out in five years time"

Theresa May assures us in her intro that

"Just as we are determined to fight poverty, so we are determined to fight prejudice and discrimination wherever it exists
No group, no minority, will be left behind on the road to a better future."

Which gives you the tone of pure fantasy of the rest of the document.

Initially, we are told, no-one too ill to work should be forced to. 

"Central to our plans is a clear distinction between people who can’t work and those who can. of course, there are some people who due the nature of their disability or illness will not be able to work. These people who cannot work because of a disability or illness should never be forced   to work."

So far, 22,620 Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimants in the 
WRAG  (Work Related Activity Group  - people found to be severely sick or disabled and unfit for immediate work) have been sanctioned - some onto the government's work programme - under threat of losing their income between 1st June 2010 and 31st May 2012 

"We are very much focused on
helping all who are capable of work, not just
those who are nearest to the job market."

Recent evidence to parliament's Work & Pensions committee shows providers ARE favouring those easiest to help


Here's where it get's really interesting. They WON'T be scrapping Disability Living Allowance (DLA)

"As disabled people themselves are best placed to judge how to meet their care needs, we will preserve Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance as cash benefits, which can be used to support family care and costs arising from their disability. "
Disability Living Allowance Mobility Component for blind people the current rules for people claiming the Higher Rate Mobility Component of Disability Living Allowance mean that it is only available to people who are physically unable to walk. This is unfair to visually impaired people as they too face mobility difficulties. While the law has now been altered to enable these rules to be changed, it is still not a reality for people with no useful sight for orientation purposes. We will implement this change to help support people with visual impairments to live more independently"

Expressing the desire to EXTEND a benefit, would certainly imply you had no intention of abolishing it the moment you came to power. The Conservatives announced a new benefit to replace it just weeks later

They go on to say they will "simplify the assessment process for accessing services" for disabled children,

they say they will "increase the number of health visitors by 4,200" and that they won't abolish Child Trust Funds or the top up payments for disabled children.

But here's the real killer punch at the end :


Under a section entitled Changing attitudes towards disabled people :

"A Conservative government will tackle the stigma and prejudice that still persists towards disabled people, particularly those with mental ill-health."

In fact, a misleading scrounger rhetoric, knowingly engineered and sustained by this government, has left millions of disabled people living in fear and allowed the single greatest attacks on disabled people in living memory. Note the HUGE spike in negative language about welfare claimants and the disabled from 2010 when this government came to power.

There are literally countless lies here, and I've only focussed on the very narrow subject of welfare reform and adult disability. Other groups are infinitely better qualified than me to discuss the many many other sections to this document. I'm sure they will want to when they see this utter fabrication from our current government.

PLEASE SHARE THIS : SHOW THE REST OF THE COUNTRY JUST HOW FAR THIS GOVERNMENT ARE PREPARED TO GO. 

Diary of a Benefit Scrounger

Liam Byrne : “Sanctions are vital to give back-to-work programmes their bite”

Yesterday in parliament Liam Byrne said to Iain Duncan-Smith “Sanctions are vital to give back-to-work programmes their bite”. Not only does Byrne believe in forced labour he thinks it should be enforced by withdrawal of benefits. Byrne has also used the strivers v shirkers rhetoric that sought to divide the poorest sectors of society and have them fighting one another.

Byrne is Labour’s  Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, their very own Iain Duncan-Smith.  Byrne “worked for the multi-national consulting firm, Accenture and merchant bankers, N M Rothschild & Sons, before co-founding a venture backed technology company, e-Government Solutions Group, in 2000 before entering parliament.”

It’s not clear what qualification and life experiences Byrne has that makes  him suitable to be head of Labours welfare department.  Baron Freud who is head of the present governments welfare reform also has an investment banking background. I wrote elsewhere that this was like putting the fox in charge of the chicken shack.

Neither Freud or Byrne have any idea at all of what they are doing to ordinary people: Money people who survey the wasteland they are creating from the ivory towers of ignorance  and ideology. Byrne likes to be interviewed beside photographs of Tony Blair. Maybe this indicates the share a common set of values and work within the same moral universe that turns black into white and deception becomes just another word for truth.

That the Labour Party has such a person in charge of its welfare policies shows that it is bust completely. In some way I dislike Iain Duncan-Smith less than Byrne because he is doing what you would expect from a party that represents money. Byrne is just another name to add the list that is headed “Blair” – the list of those who have betrayed ordinary people for mere money or power.

Welfare Sorrows

What was the real purpose of David Cameron's visit to India?

With little mention from the British media, Cameron is negotiating trade agreements that will open the UK jobs market to considerable inflows of Indian labour.

 
Vince Cable & David Cameron - Image: Prime Ministers Office

When David Cameron made a recent trip to India[i], with a huge business and media entourage, the main purpose of the trip remained hidden from the UK public despite the media presence.

The core purpose of the trip was to boost completion of the bilateral EU/India Free Trade Agreement by assuring India that its government’s sole demand in this agreement, for Indian companies to be able to supply cheap temporary labour into the EU but primarily into the UK, will be met. This is what UK media, including BBC staff, failed to report.

In statements he made while there, Cameron said there would be no limits on numbers of ‘students’, ‘workers’  - later changed to ‘graduates’ - and ‘businesspeople’ who would be welcome in the UK.
While the statement foregrounded ‘students’ coming to the UK and those who then stay and work in graduate jobs[ii], the clue to the trade agreement being the purpose of the visit is the reference to ‘workers'[iii].

Two pieces of information about the EU/India Free Trade Agreement are of enormous importance to the present and future resident UK workforce. The first is that, although this agreement has been negotiated for the last 5 years by the EU Trade Commission as an EU deal, it is, according to key Trade Commission staff, essentially a UK/India deal, in which the UK ‘can expect 85% of the gain and 85% of the pain’[iv].

The second is that the single demand India is making in this deal is for any Indian company to be able to supply temporary skilled labour into the EU[v] – but, with reference to the first point, primarily into the UK[vi].

In ‘tradespeak’, this part of ‘trade’ that is about bringing or sending workers across borders is called ‘Mode 4’. Mode 4 openings are effectively permanent commitments to open up and stay open to cross border labour supply.

Despite its generally secretive way of operating, Trade Commission negotiators have admitted throughout the negotiating period that there will be no EU/India Free Trade Agreement without Mode 4 concessions[vii], underscoring the fact that Mode 4 concessions are the single demand from the Indian side.

Thus an effectively irreversible international trade agreement is resting on the UK opening its borders to an unlimited supply of temporary, cheap, skilled labour - just what David Cameron offered to India on this trip.
UK jobs are being traded primarily for the liberalised access to Indian financial services such as banking and insurance[viii] that London-based transnational financial corporations are seeking. Cameron repeatedly emphasised the need for India to make these reciprocal liberalisations on his trip.

These concessions would be the ‘gains’ - 85 % to the UK, although actually to transnational financial services based in the City of London.

The ‘pain’ – 85% to the UK – will be the Mode 4 opening in response to Indian demands which must inevitably mean broad scale job displacements and the driving down of hard-won working conditions in the UK. Although financial service investment opportunities overseas may involve UK pension funds, they will not produce UK jobs.

Because trade agreement commitments are effectively permanent - to provide ‘investor security’ - these labour effects will be continuing, affecting future generations of UK resident workers too.

Apart from effects on individuals and the work force overall, broad scale temporary labour immigration can also have negative effects on the national economy, on economic recovery and the economic future.
As temporary migrant workers displace UK resident workers, the unemployment bill increases here while wages are repatriated overseas. Thus the earn/spend cycle needed for economic recovery is undermined. No tax or National Insurance is collected.

The skills base is eroded for the future so that ‘skills shortage’ becomes self-fulfilling, as is happening now in the vital and cross-cutting computing sector[ix].  Individuals are deterred from investing in their own skills development when it means being in competition with unlimited cheap labour, not just from work being sent overseas but also through the importation of workers prepared to work for low wages.

Big business gains not only from the trade agreement trade-off, but also from the very profitable supply and use of cross-border labour, capitalising on the wage differential between lower and higher wage countries, and from the overall reduction in labour costs from the resulting downward pressure on wages in general.
Wages levels and other labour standards, as well as any balance between capital and labour, are achieved and maintained through the interrelated factors of limits to labour supply and the establishment of industrial agreements.

With EU Mode 4 trade concessions, Member States set their own limiting or delimiting regulatory framework. EU Mode 4 concessions for skilled worker entry potentially delimit labour supply and the UK government appears to be choosing to go all the way with this. At the same time, the pro-business European Court of Justice has established that only nationally-legislated industrial standards have legal standing[x] thus only the minimum wage counts. This puts UK skilled workers potentially in competition for the minimum wage with unlimited imported labour.

The Mode 4 categories that India is requesting in this trade deal are Contractual Service Suppliers (CSS), workers supplied by any Indian firm that is not transnationally established, and Independent Professionals (IPs) -  thus the skilled workers  or ‘graduates’ to which Cameron referred.

The UK has existing commitments for another Mode 4 category[xi], Intra-corporate Transferees’ (ICTs). These are workers brought across borders by transnationally-established companies.

As an indication for future Mode 4 commitments, it is informative to consider how this existing commitment is being regulated by the UK government and utilised by transnational corporations. Although the UK’s actual ‘Intra-corporate Transferees’ commitment is only for senior managers and specialists, the government is allowing trans-national companies (TNCs) to bring in a much broader band of workers.

The Tier 2 ICT category of the UK Points Based System (PBS) has no numerical limits and is now the biggest labour migration category in the Points Based System[xii].

Although the Coalition government has an ‘immigration cap’[xiii], the government has excluded temporary workers from the cap. This exemption is contradictory as effects on the resident workforce were a rationale for having a cap, and temporary workers, unable to organise, potentially have a significant negative effect.
The government is allowing ICTs who come for less than a year, which is the majority of them, to be paid just the minimum wage[xiv], made up to a low industry norm with tax-free expenses. The higher wage requirement which Vince Cable, Secretary of State for the department of business[xv], tends to emphasise is for the smaller number of workers that come for more than a year.

‘Temporary’ is not defined in trade rules. According to the TUC, the government stipulates that this can now be 9-10 years[xvi]  in the UK.

In fact the majority of the ‘ICTs’ brought in by transnational corporations are actually being supplied into other firms on a day rate. This allows transnational corporations to cream off profits from their ability to utilise the UK’s Mode 4 ICT (labour transfer) commitment while client firms are able to offload employer responsibilities. ‘Intra-corporate Transferees’ workers are reliant on the transnational company for their visa: UK workers are displaced or not hired.

The UK Points Based System was recently specifically prepared for Contractual Service Suppliers[xvii] within the ‘international agreements’ category in Tier 5, before the EU/India deal is finalised and shortly before David Cameron’s visit. Like the Tier 2 ICT category, this category has no numerical limit. Unlike the ICT category, which has a minimum salary requirement, albeit low, there is no salary floor for Contractual Service Suppliers. The other Tier 5 categories are sportspersons and religious workers and Tier 5 receives little attention.

There is now an intense barrage of propaganda and ‘news’ items promoting India in the UK, as well as on-going propaganda about the need for migrant workers. TheCityUK, the lobbying and propaganda organisation for the City of London Corporation and the transnational businesses that comprise the City, is well resourced to produce propaganda from the bequests made over centuries for the City to administer to the poor.

When David Cameron’s spin team changed ‘workers’ to ‘graduates’ during the India trip, it created ambiguity as to whether this meant those who come to study and then work in graduate jobs in the UK or those from Indian educational institutions who come as workers. The media posse, it seems, accepted the former meaning, but, as the Prime Minister was talking about entry, this clearly meant the entry of skilled workers who have graduated overseas[xviii].

The existing commitments for Intracorporate Transferees and Business Visitors combined with currently negotiated openings for Contractual Service Suppliers and Independent Professionals means that the UK will be open to skilled workers brought in under any employment circumstances, without numerical limits.
In response to enquiries, Number 10 and the Home Office will only make reference to existing trade commitments, current rules and Tier 2 ICT provision and not to the Free Trade Agreement trade-off covertly promised in the Prime Minister’s statements.

But we need to know the implications of commitments that are being made on our behalf before they become irreversible.

No 10 does now admit that Cameron discussed the Free Trade Agreement with the Indian Prime Minister during his trip, though it seems not to have been reported at the time.

Ultimately, Number 10 can hide behind the EU Trade Commission’s insistence that its trade negotiations are secret until they are completed. Yet as negotiators and business lobbyists[xix] on both sides of the negotiating able know what is on offer, it is only the public - which will bear the brunt of the commitments - that is kept in the dark by this ‘confidentiality’.

David Cameron made a prior trade trip to India in 2010, directly after the election, with Vince Cable. They then failed to mention the EU/India Free Trade Agreement, the central role of the UK in that agreement, the pivotal importance of India’s Mode 4 demands or what they will mean for people in the UK.

On this trip, while again keeping it all effectively secret from the UK public, David Cameron promised everything the Indian government has been demanding in the Free Trade Agreement. It all begs the questions of why top UK politicians are so underhand with the people they supposedly work for, and on whose behalf are they working? The British public are being kept in the dark about trade agreements that could have significant impact on their livelihoods.


Notes

[i] Dates of visit 18-20th February 2013
[ii] In his speech at Unilever, the PM said that for Indian students coming to the UK to study ‘there’s no real limit on the length of time you can stay and work in the United Kingdom’ http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/david-camerons-speech-at-unilever-offices-in-mumbai/ while the Home office has indicated that those who come and graduate here and stay and work will only have to be paid in the 10th percentile of the industry norm wage http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/immigration/soi-cop-skilled-workers?view=Binary p5 
[iii] Joint statement on the India-United Kingdom summit 2013 at Hyderabad House, Delhi 19 February. http://ukinindia.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=PressR&id=858563882
 Point 8 affirms the joint commitment to completion of the EU/India Free Trade Agreement. Point 48 ‘welcomes all legitimate ...qualified workers’
[iv] Personal interview with the EU Trade Commission’s Mode 4 specialist
[v] Email response from the EU Trade Commission’s senior trade lawyer
[vi] An EU document leaked by the union organisation of another Member State showed the UK prepared to take the lion’s share of the EU’s commitment on the entry temporary migrant labour supplied by Indian firms. In fact the purpose of this document, shared by other Member State governments with their union organisations, was to reassure them that their commitments would be very small and thus secure their support for the agreement. The figures for the UK, even at a much higher level, cannot be taken as an upper limit. The UK government did not share the document.
[vii] A chief EU Trade Commission negotiator Ignacio Garcia Bercero has stated this in several of the Trade Commission’s Civil Society Dialogue sessions
[viii] Other ‘EU’ demands are for profit-sharing for ‘Big Pharma’[1][viii]  in India’s generic medicines industry[1][viii], access for mixed retail giants such as Tesco and Carrefour[1][viii] and for subsidised EU dairy products into India. The EU also wants reduced tariffs on goods imported into India, especially cars. These corporate-demand liberalisations, including of financial services, have been protested in India because of the anticipated negative effects there.
[ix] http://www.cphc.ac.uk/docs/cphc-computinggraduates-june08.pdf http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inside-outsourcing/2013/01/restrict-it-offshoring-and-prevent-immanent-skills-shortage.html
[x] Notably the Viking, Laval and Ruffert cases.
[xi] These 1995 commitments from the Uruguay Round of trade talks from which the World Trade Organisation was set up, and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) initiated. Mode 4 is part of services and the EU made GATS Mode 4 ICT commitments at that time.
[xii] http://m.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/feb/28/companies-bypassing-immigration-cap
[xiii] The Migration advisory Committee previously recommended capping ICT numbers, but the UK government did not cap this category.
[xiv] Previously ICTs could be paid less than the Minimum Wage until the illegality of this was raised in parliamentary questions
[xv] The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)
[xvi] Owen Tudor, head of the TUC’s international Department in BBC radio 4 Today Program discussion November 2012
[xvii] Contractual Service Suppliers are within ‘international agreements’ in Tier 5 of the PBS. See the UK Border Agency’s November 2012 document showing changes to accommodate this Mode 4 CSS category in Tier 5 of the UK Points Based System (pp75-76, points 7.27-7.29) at this webpage http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/policyandlaw/statementsofchanges/
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wms/?id=2012-11-22a.40WS.0
[xviii] Graduates or graduate equivalent’ is the trade stipulation that the EU makes for Mode 4 entry
[xix] Non-Government Organisation Corporate European Observatory is currently pursuing legal action against the EU Trade Commission in regard to the access that business has been given to negotiating positions on the EU/India Free Trade Agreement which has been denied to civil society.

Open Democracy