Scrapping Atos: Interview with 10,000 Cuts and Counting

10,000 Cuts: Dean of St Paul's led act of remembrance for victims of cuts

The Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, David Ison, has lead prayers at a multifaith act of remembrance for people who have died or suffered as a result of UK government cuts. 

It took place at noon on Saturday 28 September 2013 in Parliament Square, London.

The event, entitled 10,000 Cuts and Counting, has been organised by Occupy London and Disabled People Against Cuts, with support from groups including Christianity Uncut, a network of Christians campaigning against the government’s cuts agenda.

The gathering demanded an end to the Work Capability Assessment, widely seen as a mechanism for removing disabled people’s benefits.

Official figures show that 10,600 people died in 2011 within six weeks of going through the assessment. Many speakers at the event have first-hand experience of the pain and suffering inflicted by government cuts.
People of many religions and none took part in the act of remembrance. Other speakers included Muslim commentator Mohammed Ansar and Labour MP Michael Meacher.

Christianity Uncut has applauded the Dean of St Paul’s for taking this public stand, despite their past disagreements. Five Christianity Uncut members were removed from the cathedral steps by police while praying during the eviction of Occupy London Stock Exchange in 2012.

“We are really pleased to be working alongside David Ison to hold this act of remembrance and solidarity," said Siobhan Grimes, one of those removed from the steps last year, who has been involved in organising this event.

She added, "Together we are focusing on the reality of government policies that are snatching away the livelihoods of thousands of disabled people and punishing the poor for the sins of the rich."

Grimes urged other church leaders to "follow the Dean’s example by speaking out publicly about the death and destruction that the cuts are bringing.”

More information about the act of remembrance can be found at http://www.10kcuts.org.

Source 

NHS faces 'gravest crisis in its history'

Speaking today (Sunday 29 September 2013) at the Save Our NHS rally in Manchester, TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady will tell marchers that the NHS faces the gravest crisis since it was established.

The Save Our NHS event is being organised by the TUC's North West office. Marchers will begin forming up on Liverpool Road near the Museum of Science and Industry from 11am. At approximately 12.15pm the front of the march will set off via Deansgate and John Dalton Street before passing Manchester Central, the Conservative Party conference venue, and heading for Whitworth Park, where the rally will take place from around 2.15pm.

O'Grady, who will speak as the Tories meet for their annual conference in the city, will say: "The NHS faces the gravest crisis in its history. We are seeing privatisation on an unthinkable scale as core services are hived off to the lowest bidder, budgets are flat-lining, and huge efficiency savings are being demanded by ministers – all at a time of record patient demand.

"After promising there would be no top-down re-organisation, the government is wasting billions implementing reforms nobody wants and nobody voted for.

"GP commissioning groups are being forced to tender out new contracts to the private sector after being given assurances by ministers that they wouldn't have to.

"Companies like Circle Healthcare, which has donated £1.4 million to the Conservative Party, are being rewarded with billions in taxpayers' money to run key services.

"It is no surprise that the outgoing NHS chief executive warned this week that competition is harming efforts to improve patient care. This is what happens when hospitals and health professionals are stopped from working with each other and services become fragmented.

"But ministers don't seem interested in listening to the concerns of doctors and nurses because they would rather keep their friends in the private healthcare industry happy.

"Nor does the government seem interested in protecting frontline services. The Prime Minister said NHS spending would be protected, but we're seeing increased rationing of treatments, rising waiting lists, a growing number of closures and accident and emergency wards in disarray.

"In the last three months alone 21,000 NHS employees have lost their jobs, and those nurses, doctors and other health professionals that remain feel that no-one is listening to them and that they are being asked to achieve more with less. As a result morale is at rock bottom.

"This is no way to run our most important, most cherished national institution. Those who sacrificed so much during World War Two to build a better future for themselves and their families didn't want this.

"High-quality healthcare should be available for all according to need, not the ability to pay. Today is about joining together to deliver a clear message to the Conservative Party conference just down the road - our NHS is not for sale, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. We won't let this government destroy what has taken generations to build," the TUC General Secretary will conclude.

* Follow the 'Save our NHS' event on Twitter: @NHS299

Source

DPAC Report – Work Capability Assessment

While New Labour are urging the condemns to sack Atos, let’s not lose sight of the real issue-that is that the WCA is not fit for purpose and must be scrapped!

The report contains coverage from the UK media put together in one place. It has hundreds of entries over the years up to Sept 2013

See: http://www.scribd.com/doc/170710160/DPAC-Report-Work-Capability-Assessment-UK-Media-Coverage

To read/download the report- along with other DPAC research reports on ILF, WCA and IDS lies.

Gitmo Victim To Sue British Intelligence For War Crimes

‘Shaker Aamer, the last British detainee still being held at Guantanamo bay is set to sue British intelligence agencies for torture and unlawful detention over his imprisonment and treatment at the Cuban based detention facility.

According to his lawyers, Aamer also alleges that both the MI5 and MI6 made statements against him that led to his detention without trial. The case will be taken to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

Though the Saudi born Aamer has been cleared for release by both the Bush and Obama administrations, he has still been in detention for over 11 years now, a clear violation of his human rights.’

Read more: Gitmo Victim To Sue British Intelligence For War Crimes

Alan Moore on ‘V for Vendetta’

Reblogged from Beastrabban\'s Weblog:

Mike over on Vox Political is, if you hadn’t already guessed, a long term comics fan. He’s blogged several times on the very disturbing parallels between the current financial crisis and the authoritarian, exploitative Coalition government, and the Fascist Britain portrayed in his graphic novel, V for Vendetta. I found the video below on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX7ehbE1vc0. It was originally broadcast on either BBC 3 or 4 in their documentary series, Comics Britannia. Moore here talks about how it came out of his activities with Rock against Racism, and states that like a lot of Science Fiction it was really about what is happening now, not the future. He makes very plain his anarchism and antipathy to leaders. He also says that he wanted to explore the morality of violence and states that he did not want to write it so that because he, Moore, was an Anarchist, it was therefore all right for the Anarchist hero to use violence.

He also wanted to portray the Fascists in the novel as ordinary people, some of whom may even have been likable. The Nazis, he points out, were not monsters from space and did not suddenly arrive from the pit of hell. This is, unfortunately, entirely accurate. Hannah Arendt in her description of the trial of Adolf Eichmann talked about the ‘banality of evil’. Primo Levi, the noted Italian author and holocaust survivor, said of the concentration camp guards that they were no different from the rest of humanity. In his words, ‘they had our faces’. Moore points out that the Nazis included the butchers, teachers and street-sweepers, many whom simply went along with what was going on, or they believed in the ideology. It’s a point which needs to be made.

There’s a lot of complete rubbish written about Nazi Germany. Since the book The Morning of the Magicians appeared in the 1960s there has been a slew of books portraying Hitler as a literally demonic force, an evil black magician in touch with malign occult entities. He wasn’t. The Nazis were a product of the racial, geopolitical and eugenic theories then current in Europe and America at the time. There were brought to power by the financial collapse of 1929, the political disintegration and factionalism of the Weimar Republic, and the fear of global Communism and Soviet totalitarianism, although this last has been disputed by some historians. Hitler had read and taken some of his ideas about evolution from the pamphlets produced by the leaders of bizarre, Neo-pagan groups, like Lanz Von Liebenfels and Guido Von List. Their ultimate influence on Nazism was minimal and they were suppressed under Nazis. Some of their ideas survived in Himmler’s SS. For a proper understanding of this aspect of Nazism, see The Occult Roots of Nazism, by Nicholas Goodrick Clarke (London: I.B. Tauris & Co, 1992).

The most horrific aspect of the Nazis and other totalitarian butchers is that they were not literal demons or crazed alien machine creatures, like Dr. Who’s Daleks, but ordinary people. That needs to be accepted if we really wish to understand the immense evil they did as part of the dark side of the human psyche.

This is Alan Moore, talking about his work on V for Vendetta.

Capita, Serco, G4S, gov't & the rise of electronic tagging

Reblogged from Kate Belgrave:

"Does the government fancy a future where it can tag people who claim benefits – and sanction anyone who steps away from Jobmatch for ten minutes?"


I rarely use the words “fascinating” and “press release” in the same sentence, but:

This fascinating press release appeared on the Capita website recently:
 “Capita [is the] preferred bidder for electronic monitoring contract.”

So.

It seems that Capita has positioned itself (with three other companies) to take over the dire electronic tagging system run by Serco and G4S for the Ministry of Justice. By “dire,” I mean “very likely fraudulent”: Serco and G4S were recently slammed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers for charging the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds for people they claimed to have tagged, but who turned out to be dead or incarcerated. Serco will participate in an independent “forensic audit” as a result. G4S won’t: according to the MOJ, they told Grayling No and were referred to the SFO. G4S, amazingly, told Robert Peston that it opted to call in the SFO itself. I am not sure what the real situation is there. All I know is that we get to keep paying for it.

And paying for it. We now have Capita as preferred bidder for a large electronic monitoring contract. Unfortunately, it is a contract that sets many alarms off itself. Chief among these Capita’s plan to make £400m in its first six years of the contract and its reluctance to explain in detail (to me anyway) exactly how it proposes to do that. I hope that they have decided against targeting the dead. Of even greater concern, though, is the extent to which they apparently plan to target and tag the living. Their press release says that the £400m in those first six years will be generated on the basis of an “anticipated increase in the use of tags beyond the current numbers of monitored individuals.” Early days, I know, but £400m is a lot of money, so we’re surely talking a lot of monitored individuals.

I’m going back and forwards with the MOJ at the moment for more on who exactly the ministry proposes to tag and how long for when we’re talking offenders and/or ex-offenders: the press release they sent speaks, vaguely, of “tracking the movement of offenders in the community,” “delivering swifter justice,” “tracking offenders wherever they go 24 hours a day,” (in another call, the MOJ says that’s an advantage of the new technology it expects to be provided) and stopping “paedophiles hanging around” at school gates. Napo offers more details in its take: Napo said last year that as government dramatically increased the number of people it tagged, “it was envisaged that tagging would be a condition of all community orders. Currently around 35,000 offenders are tagged for up to 12 hours and for a maximum of six months, either as a condition of a community order, or early release from prison on Home Detention Curfew. This has risen hugely over a 15-year period from a few hundred individuals tagged per year to the current level of tens of thousands. Under the government scheme, the number tagged could rise 180,000 or even more, an increase therefore of six-fold.”

So there’s that.

I also wonder if several hundred million quid’s worth of tagging will go beyond the offenders and ex-offenders that Chris Grayling seems so obsessed with tagging and tracking long after they are released from jail (I don’t personally believe the tagging of people in those categories should be accepted as written, either – but more on that later. The MOJ says that the length of time on a tag will be decided by judges).

I think that it will. Capita certainly sees a market beyond so-called justice and the MOJ. Like Serco and G4S, Capita thinks big. Certainly, Capita thinks a lot bigger than Grayling. You could go as far to say that Capita sees the MOJ contract as a launching-pad for the real projectile – an enormous net to sling across the public sector and people who use it, and then, it would seem, the entire world. You wouldn’t have to be a wild conspiracy type to reach that conclusion, either. Just go back to that Capita press release. It’s fascinating, as I say. “Further significant growth is expected through the expansion of services to other government departments and agencies.” (my emphasis). “Capita will work with the MOJ to promote the intellectual property which underpins the service internationally, generating further growth.” “The service has been designed to enable other government bodies – for example, the probation services, the NHS and social care agencies, to procure related services.” (my emphasis).

I wonder about all of this, you know. Who are the people that the government and/or Capita (I’m not entirely sure which is which or who is who any more) really plan to tag as this golden future unfolds? Are they thousands of ex-offenders who have served their time, but who Grayling decides need a further kicking, for political gain at least? Are they the people who were once served by the probation service that Grayling is in the process of privatising and destroying? Where is this all meant to end?

And what does Capita mean when it talks about “enabling” social care agencies and the NHS and other government bodies with this sort of technology? Are they thinking, say, of replacing paid care staff with a tag? Will this tagged population include people who are in and out of hospital with serious mental health conditions, but whose services have been cut and who have nowhere to go and nobody to help if there are times when they become disoriented? And what about people who the government is already after? Will we see pre-emptive tagging of people who are known (and entitled, by the way) to attend anti-government protests, or who plan to disrupt, say, a royal wedding? What about people on the work programme, even? Does the government fancy a future where it can tag people who claim benefits – and sanction anyone who steps away from Jobmatch for ten minutes? I wonder about these things.

So I asked Capita for details. That went about as well as I expected it to. Capita said talk to the MOJ. The MOJ, needless to say, said talk to Capita. Then, the MOJ rang me thinking I was Capita. Trying to recover from this error, the MOJ told me to ring the Department of Health about people who might be tagged through the health system. I told the MOJ to ring Capita and tell Capita to tell me which groups of people it was basing its projections on. Am now waiting for Capita to ring and tell me to go back to the MOJ, the Department of Health, the DWP and every council out there that still has social services, to ask what Capita has in mind for their client groups. This will probably go on until I’m dead.

In the meantime, it’s worth having a think. I think, for example, of the woman I spoke to for this article who had a long-term schizophrenia diagnoses and alcoholism, and who’d been in and out of hospital, and who’d been able to live an independent life in a supported living hostel. The hostel was staffed around the clock. People who lived there came and went freely, but were able to contact staff if they got disoriented, or lost, or if abusers were following them, or trying to get into the building. That hostel was closed down though, as was another in the same borough. The woman I spoke to was terrified of being placed in low-support accommodation, or a B&B because she’d been abused in such places before. And she’d wandered before and often got lost and confused when she was drinking. She liked the hostel and had good relationships with staff. She certainly liked the arrangement better than the alternative – which was being cast adrift completely. Is she the sort of person who would be tagged in future – someone no longer thought worthy of decent services or decent accommodation, but to be kept track of in a basic way?

And what about other people who are losing services? I think about a story I did in Ealing earlier this year. I spent a lot of time talking to Ealing people with learning difficulties and their families about council plans to cut their training-to-work centre and the support staff who worked there. The people who used the centre would get nothing as a replacement: Ealing council no longer allocates funding to people with “moderate” needs. The thing was – safety was an issue. One mother of a 28-year-old man who attended that centre kept telling me that she appreciated the centre because she knew her son was safe there. Out on the streets on his own, he got picked on, robbed and, often, just lost. The thing was – he would be on his own if the centre was closed, because he’d be given little or nothing to replace it, or to pay for personal assistants or support. His mother could pay for a mentor to accompany him sometimes, but could only afford one day a week. So in future – will she and families of people with even more substantial needs whose care will undoubtedly be cut, be told their best and only option is a tag? Is the future of social care a world where, instead of proper funding for independent living, money is given to the likes of Capita to tag people and update their families with their basic positioning?

That issue that has long been debated, of course. There’s been much discussion, for example, about the ethics of tagging of people with dementia, who do sometimes become disoriented or lost: “of the 700,000 people in Britain with some form of dementia, up to 60% occasionally felt compelled to walk away from home without knowing how or where to return,” the Alzheimer’s Society told the Guardian some time ago in a debate on the topic. Some people welcomed the technology, saying it gave them greater freedom in the earlier stages of their conditions. But, as you can see from that story, there was and is concern that the technology infringed on human rights and that it would be used in place of high-quality care and personal assistants – a concern that must be even more pressing now as social care budgets disappear.

In my experience, too, people want human contact as well as technology. I’ll be written off as a wet hippie for saying that, but it really is true. People make that sort of point all the time when you talk with them. Another story: several years ago, Barnet council announced that it would remove onsite wardens from sheltered housing flats in the borough. One of the justifications for this plan (which was very unpopular with sheltered housing residents) was that the elderly people in those flats had alarms and electronic means of summonsing help if they needed it. But the elderly people who turned out at Hendon Town Hall to protest the cut did not have faith in those alarms. They said no button or alarm would compensate for having a real person onsite to check in with, or to alert when someone was feeling unwell.

No technology is entirely dependable. Tagging technology certainly isn’t. Napo, which is battling the privatisation of probation services as we speak, has long argued that tagging systems are unreliable and alone don’t impact on crime. Concerns listed in Napo’s 2012 paper on tagging include: faulty equipment, tags not working when people take baths or showers, people being recalled to custody unnecessarily, high-risk offenders not being monitored properly and instances where devices were never fitted. So – tagging companies are not always be brilliant at tracking and finding people who have been tagged. They are, however, brilliant at tracking and finding councillors and MPs who are willing to pay and pay for their technology. Even the Policy Exchange has raised concerns about this. As the Howard League’s Andrew Neilson reported here last year, the Policy Exchange said “that the use of electronic monitoring has been too expensive and dominated by the duopoly of Serco and G4S, leading to a lack of innovation and a use of technology that has changed little since it was first deployed in 1989.” Cost upset the Exchange: “the report estimates that electronic monitoring an individual costs £13.14 per day in England and Wales, while the equivalent in the United States was £1.22.”

So. Intriguing, as I say. Intriguing to imagine where all of this is going and who will end up tagging whom. Capita obviously thinks the sky is the limit. CE Paul Pindar freely admits in his press release that “when fully live, this is expected to be the largest, single and most advanced ‘tagging’ system in the world.”

He also says that the thing will be run “to the highest possible standards of governance and transparency.” That’s an intriguing claim as well. I’m guessing that Paul doesn’t realising that he’s the CE of the company that recently put the translation service in meltdown, or brought us the black hole that is Service Birmingham (where transparency is such a problem that a sub-committee was recently set up for councillors who publicly admitted they did not know how much money the council was paying Capita via Service Birmingham), and the Sefton council debacle (Sefton is cutting short a £65m contract with Capita, because it has failed to deliver savings). There are times when I think that the only people round here who really need tagging are the ones from these companies who keep visiting council and government buildings and leaving with blank cheques.


Update September 17:

In other news, the Lib Dems announced today a policy to provide free school lunches. Only last week, Capita announced that it was now in school lunches. I simply observe that I will watch with interest to see who provides lunches.

Also, Capita had said that it would be all right for me to attend this workfare conference, but yesterday wrote to say that there would be no press pass allowance at the event after all.

Councils using zero hours, casual staff and the work programme

Reblogged from Kate Belgrave:


This post lists the results of an FOI I recently sent to councils to get a rough idea of how many people councils employed on zero hours contracts or zero hours-type working arrangements and how many councils were using the work programme. 

When I was writing several years ago about workfare in the US, I found that Rudy Guiliani had replaced paid and unionised public sector workers with people on New York’s workfare programme to cut wage budgets. It’s worth keeping an eye on trends here as large numbers of paid staff are cut from the public sector. I’m also interested in the number of casual staff that councils use.

The numbers in this post are basic and I post them as a rough guide. Other people may want to use them as a starting-point for asking for more questions about employment arrangements at their local authorities and in different services provided by their authorities. It’s definitely interesting to note the sorts of jobs that people must work on zero hour terms and/or as casual workers. This is a complex area: councils outsource a lot of services and workers, and employ a variety of people, including full-time employees, part-time permanent staff, short and long term contractors, agency staff (some of whom stay for significant periods) and a lot of casual staff (people who work when required). Some arrangements for casual staff aren’t really too different from zero hours working, but you’ll see councils below arguing that the difference is substantial because people working on casual arrangements aren’t on call as such and are free to pursue other work. In fact, there’s plenty of room for unscrupulous employer behaviour in both and there’s plenty of that around.

I do think it’s worth making the point that there are many working arrangements which are extremely detrimental to workers and can be as problematic and appalling for people as zero hours employment (and there certainly are appalling cases of that). Employers have a lot of blunt instruments at their disposal and they are using them at the moment. That’s one of the reasons why people are taking strike action at workplaces all over the country.

I’ve written a lot, for example, about careworkers whose wages and leave allowances, etc, were smashed when their jobs were outsourced to the private sector (that, as is often the case, was at least in part a story about the short-termism of TUPE and the ease with which employers are able to circumnavigate it).
I’ve also written recently about housing and residential supporter workers who will lose as much as £8k a year as their employers drive their wages to a market minimum. Their problem is that their organisations are competing for contracts in a cutthroat funding environment and wages and conditions aren’t protected during the tender process. (In one case, the problem also was that their senior managers were rewarding themselves handsomely while expecting staff to take pay cuts). Then there other problems: employers not paying carers for travel time between jobs for example, or outsourced workers not being paid agreed rates, or not being paid at all in some cases (people in cleaning work used to come into our union branch a lot for help with that).

People in these situations aren’t always on zero hours contracts – many are full-time or part-time permanent staff – but their incomes are still very tenuous and becoming more so, as incomes do in an employer’s market and when union membership is low (numbers are up, but still well below peak years). These people are being hung out to dry by unscrupulous bosses who are hellbent on driving down wages and returning maximum profits to shareholders and boards.

There’s an awful lot going on here – in addition to employer exploitation of people who are on zero hours arrangements – that Labour and unions should commit to targeting if they are really going to do anything. I have serious doubts. I suppose I need not mention that I saw a fair bit of outsourcing and consequent wage cuts and destruction of conditions on Labour’s watch back in the day. Unscrupulous employers who are looking to cut wages and bully a workforce have a lot of tools they can use and will have even more as this government slaughters employee rights.

Lot of people on zero hours, though, as you’ll see from the list.



Anyway – ten to start. More to upload as this will take a while (update – more than ten now):


Barking and Dagenham:

Zero hours:
504 people on zero hours contracts working in: Adult & Community Services 231, Chief Executive’s 137, Children & Young People 114, Finance & Resources, 12, Housing & Environment 10



Bedford:

Zero hours:
54 people, employed in Adult and Community Services and Children’s Services

Work programme:
6 people in Adult & Community Services. Provider: The former Sheltered Placement Programme. The council says it “also employed a significant number of individuals on the Future Job Fund Programme when that was running.”



Blackpool:

Zero hours/casuals:
315 “casuals” who are employed on an “as and when needed” basis. This figure does not include Schools
These people work in Adult Services, Childrens Services,,Built Environment, Democratic Services, Human Resources, Communication and Engagement, Leisure & Operational

Work programme:
“We are currently delivering the Work Programme under subcontract to A4e. None of our customers are on placement within Blackpool Council. However, there are 2 other Work Programme providers locally, A4e and Inspire2Independence. It is possible that they may have contacted departments directly and agreed to place            their customers into unpaid work placements.”



Brighton and Hove:

Says the council:
“No individual within Brighton & Hove City Council is considered to be employed on a zero-hours contract. However the council does have a wide variety of casual workers who work hours on an ad hoc basis across service areas where additional capacity or cover is needed for seasonal work or staff absence. There is no ‘mutuality of obligation’ with casual workers and consequently there is no expectation that the council would offer work or that individuals would accept it if work were offered.

Consequently, there is no ongoing contractual relationship. If we used zero hours contracts, there would be an on-going contractual relationship with these individuals even when they are not working.

However, in reality there is no real difference between the two and the terms “zero hours” and “casual” are used interchangeably in employment cases in tribunals. In view of this, we are providing you with information relating to casual workers who undertook work for the council during the three month period, May to July 2013.”

During this period, 1254 casual workers were engaged. This figure excludes casual workers who may have been engaged by schools.

The demand for casuals to perform various roles fluctuates but the main areas are:
Care (‘Care Crew’ is a bank of casual workers) (this intriugues me – what conditions do these people work in I wonder).
Administration (‘Admin All Areas’ is a bank of casual workers)
Brighton Centre & Royal Pavilion – security and setting up of events/shows
Contact Supervisors – they provide supervision for visits between children and parents
Libraries
Hostels & Supported Accommodation
Electoral Services – electoral roll, poll clerks etc
Seafront lifeguards



Cambridgeshire:

Zero hours: 
“at 31 March 2013, we had 1,138 people on a zero hour contract.”

Most of our zero hour workers are in social care carrying out roles such as youth support work, school crossing workers, support workers for older people and residential/night care support. Many also work in roles relating to teaching or training, eg teaching assistants, qualification assessors or supply teachers. Other types of staff on zero hours contracts include catering assistants, caretakers and cleaners, registration officers, and admin/general assistants.



Cheshire West and Chester:

Zero hours: 

28 people – 11 in Children’s Services, 3 in Growth and Prosperity, 13 in Localities and 1 person in Strategic Commissioning.

Update 16 September: a contributor observed in the comments on the FE post that this press article said 200 people at this council were on zero hours contracts. So I’m adding that.



Derby:

Zero hours:
In July 2013, the authority paid 564 workers on zero hour contracts, working in Adults Health & Housing, Chief Executives, Children & Young People’s Services, Neighbourhoods, Resources



Devon:

Zero hours:
73 people who “are a mixture of intervention workers, support workers, porters & care assistants.”



Doncaster:

Zero hours:
Says the council: “Doncaster Council does engage staff on contracts that do not guarantee a minimum quantity of work to the individual. These individuals apply to be placed on a relief/casual register. Please note that when work is offered to any of these individuals they are not compelled to accept it.”
300 people are engaged on this basis, predominantly in Cleaning, Caretaking, Transport, Libraries and Care.



Essex:

Zero hours:
From the council: “1,764 zero hours ‘as and when staff’ employed by ECC (as of 29 July 2013). ‘Zero based hours’ employees may work across all departments in ECC. Casual, zero based employees are normally sessional workers and ad hoc employees. This would include sessional tutors, casual bar employees, models for life classes, ad hoc seasonal staff (country parks), peak relief employees, registration/exam invigilators, instructors and learning support assistants.”

More details of job roles here (this list has included roles over the last few years like Administrative Assistant, Administrative Co-ordinator, Administrative/Clerical Assistant,
Adult Social Care Social Worker, Advanced Practitioner, Answers Direct Assistant,
Answers Direct Officer, Archive Assistant, Area & TASCC Youth Worker,
Area Youth Worker TYD):
http://webapps1.essexcc.gov.uk/FOIdotNET/view_doc.aspx?DocID=2044



Gateshead:

The council says that the numbers in this response from the council includes:

“a number of casual employees who are part of the council’s long-standing approach to resourcing one-off events, seasonal work, and absence and emergency cover. Some casual employees work for the council infrequently and have no obligation to accept work offered and the council is under no obligation to supply work. If they work for us more than once, each period worked is treated as a separate period of employment.

Others work on a more frequent basis but not enough to have an established pattern of work and are classed as zero hours casuals. They now have now been given continuous service recognised w.e.f. 1 June 2013, entitling them access to additional employee benefits, including the pension scheme.

Other employees who were previously engaged on casual contracts, but who were in fact working quite regularly, have been moved from their casual status and appointed to substantive posts on the establishment. As a result, the number of employees on zero hours contracts has reduced recently.”

So – zero hours/casual:1291 as at 6 September 2013

Working in: Access & Inclusion, for Adult Care providers, Children &Young People Service, Catering & Cleaning, Schools, Children and Families and Young Offenders, Communities & Neighbourhoods, Facilities Management, Libraries & Arts, Legal and Corporate Services, Raising Achievement, Libraries, Arts and Culture Register, Sport & Leisure, Transport Services/Strategy.



Gloucestershire:

Zero hours:
180  people: Celebrant/Registration Officers, Library Assistants, in Social Care, as Cycling Instructors, various other roles (not specified by the council).

Work programme: 
The council says that it employs “fewer than 5 individuals through this programme” and that it has “come to the decision that we cannot give you this information broken down any further. Due to the small numbers involved, this information is personal data and it would identify people.” The people on the work programme work in Enabling & Transition. The council works with the work programme provider Prospects.



Halton:

Zero hours:
Two staff on zero hour contracts “who were TUPE’d into the council in April 2013 and who are being offered permanent contracts.”

Work programme:
Four people working at the council as work programme placements. One person in Vehicle Maintenance and 3 working in Meals on Wheels. Work programme providers: Ingeus and A4E



North Tyneside:

Zero hours:
328 (the council is at pains to say that although these contracts are classified as “zero hours contracts”, “the nature of these contracts are that individuals may be called upon as and when required, without any mutuality of obligation on either party to either supply work or to accept work.”

They work in: Cultural Services – Leisure , Schools, Learning and Skills – Adult Learning Alliance, Law and Governance – Registrars, Electoral Services, Environmental Services – Waste Management, Preventative and Safeguarding Services – Early Help and Support, Youth Services



North Yorks:

Zero hours:
3590 staff on zero hours contracts who do not have a substantive contract. 2923 are schools supply staff, predominantly teachers, and 667 are non-schools.

Says the council: “the majority of zero hours contracts are supply teachers used by schools as and when needed. Other than this group NYCC has always had a number of staff on casual contracts but the majority are substantive employees with a permanent set hour contract. The staff are mostly care staff and  have an additional “zero hour” contract to enabled them to work at a different location as additional hours if they wish to…Many care staff, most who work part time, also have a zero hours contract and some have 2 or 3 so they can work across different teams on an “as and when” basis.”

Other staff on zero hours include: 50 drivers for social care services, approx 100 catering and cleaning staff. Libraries, says the council, have zero hours contracts “to cover staff absences” as does the registrars’ service.

So that’s: Schools – Teaching and Non-Teaching staff, Care Teams, Drivers for Social Care Services, Catering, Cleaning, Library Staff, Registrars



Oldham:

Zero hours:
The council says it has people on zero hours contracts, but can’t give more detail because “a review of zero hours contractual arrangements is being undertaken.” The people on those contracts work in Lifelong Learning.

Work programme:
Yes. “12 people have been on a traineeship or apprenticeship with Oldham Council. 8 which are still with us and 4 have left.” 11 worked or work in environmental services and 1 with First response.

The council’s work programme providers?
“we work with all the work programme providers, including Avanta, Remploy, PSO, Seetec, Work Solutions and G4S.”



Rochdale

Zero hours:
Nobody employed on zero hours contracts, says the council. There are casual workers working for the council who are only paid for the hours they work.



Rotheram:

Zero hours:
The council says that “In the 2012/13 tax year, 617 employees were paid on casual zero hour contracts to cover temporary short term staffing shortages.” These workers, says the council, “are used to cover temporary short term staff shortages predominantly in Catering, Cleaning, Social Care and Libraries. ”



St Helens

Zero hours:
No workers on zero hour contracts.

There are “casual” or “relief” employees who the council says work when:

“a. where service must be provided at set staffing levels and there is a need to cover permanent staff short terms absences, eg residential care services, leisure services, etc.

b. where the demand for the service fluctuates and there may be short term needs to cover increased demand, eg youth work, play schemes, sports/leisure facilities, adult learning services, etc.

The true definition of a zero-hours contract relates to the situation where a worker is not guaranteed work but has to be available for work at certain times and is obliged to work any hours that are offered. The council does not employ anyone on this basis.

This contrasts with the situation where a worker is not guaranteed a set number of hours, does not have to be available at specific times and can choose whether or not they wish to accept any hours offered. In this situation individuals are usually offered a place on a pool and there is no obligation on either the council to offer hours of work, or for the workers to accept any hours they are offered.

At St Helens we refer to this as casual or relief employment, but are aware that such arrangements are often confused with zero-hours contracts.”

The council had the following casual employees:
June 2013 502 of 7189 employees (6.98%)
March 2013 574 of 7257 employees (7.91%)
These figures include employees in schools.



Slough:

Says the council: “The council do not have any zero hours contracts. Where staff are required to work on an as and when basis, they are issued with a letter of engagement.  The letter of engagement clearly sets out that there is no mutual obligation, by both parties, to either offer work or undertake work.”

It’s easy to see how employers can remove themselves from zero hours criticism with this sort of arrangement. Such arrangements do not offer job security, or secure hours, or even any hours but they are not technically zero hours contracts.



Stockton on Tees:

Work programme:
6 people, all working in Cleansing. Work programme providers: Job Centre Plus, DISC, Shaw Trust, Probation Service.



South Tyneside:

Zero hours:
Says the council: “As at 1/4/2013 there were 284 assignments with zero hour contracts, excluding schools.” They work in roles across the council in each strategic group – Business and Area Management, Children, Adults and Families, and Economic Regeneration.”



Southwark:

Zero hours:
Says the council: “We engage Tutors on zero based contracts.  As at 31 March 2013 the number of Tutors on zero based contracts were 30; these were people who had been with the council for the whole financial year. Tutors work for the adult education service that sits in our environment & leisure department.”



Sunderland:

Zero hours: 
Says the council:
“The council does not employ people on zero hours contracts, rather we have Permanent Variable Hours (PVH) contracts in which the employee is a permanent employee with all the same terms and conditions of employment and benefits as everyone else, pro rata to the number of hours they actually work..”
My note: this sort of contract can be unstable: people don’t always know how many hours they’ll have or when they’ll have them each week. I’ve certainly spoken with library workers who went from knowing which shifts they’d have each week to being told that they largely had to be available for any, including evenings and weekends.

Work programme:
Sunderland council says: “yes we accommodate people from the Mandatory Work Programme on work experience. We have accommodated 26 people so far and continue to do so through a rolling programme.”

These people work in Responsive Local Services. The council’s work programme provider is Sunderland North Community Business Centre (SNCBC).



Telford and Wrekin:

Zero hours:
People employed on zero hours contracts/zero hours working arrangements: 40
Job titles of people on zero hours contracts: Adult & Community Learning Tutor, Classroom Music Teacher, Music Development Officer, Specialist Music Instructor



Trafford:

Work programme:
2 people working in ETO – Groundforce. Providers: Shaw Trust and United Response.


Warrington:

Zero hours:
People who work on zero hours contracts: 202 contracts currently.
Areas in which contracts are/have been used include: Assistant Chief Executive Directorate – Coroner Services, Registrars Of Births, Deaths, Marriages,
Children & Young People Directorate – Access & Assets (school
catering), Children in Care Division, Learning & Achievement Division
(home tutors), Environment & Regeneration Directorate – Public Protection Services,
Operations (which covers cleaning, street services, golf club), Transportation Service, Neighbourhood & Community Services Directorate – Adult Social Care Provision, Community Engagement Team, Intermediate Care (residential care and home support), Sport & Physical Activity Engagement



Windsor and Maidenhead

Zero hours:
The council says: “the borough does not have a policy regarding the employment of people on zero hours contracts. However, we do make use of casual staff to cover short term sickness, holiday periods or times of increased demand. Other than schools, all directorates use casuals to a greater or lesser extent, but in particular – leisure services, libraries, adult social care, electoral registration, safeguarding and specialist.

We have around 1000 people who are registered with us as casual workers.”

Work programme: 
44 people from July 2011-July 2012 and 53 from July 2012-July2013.

Working in: Customer Services, Business development, Grow our Own, Business & Community Partnerships, Adult day services, Libraries, Information management, Smarter working, ICT, Family Information Service, Ways into Work, Contracts & billing, Deputy Chief Executive office, Guildhall Museum, Windsor & Eton Town Centre Management, Planning support, Highways and Engineering, Human Resources.”

Providers: A4E and Maximus.

Sanction busting: appealing Work Programme sanctions

Martin Williams discusses the legal and practical issues involved in challenging decisions which impose a sanction on JSA for failure to participate in the Work Programme

The various private companies contracted to deliver the ‘Work Programme’ on behalf of the DWP collectively refer tens of thousands of cases each month to the decision maker so that imposing a sanction on their benefit can be considered. The statistical and anecdotal evidence available suggests that very few decisions to impose a sanction are appealed.

The remedy of an appeal is of course not really an adequate one to a claimant who has been sanctioned. Although if successful the claimant will receive payment of the jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) that was withheld, s/he will have had to try and survive without that money pending the appeal (unless s/he can obtain hardship payments). This lack of a mechanism to dispute the imposition of a sanction before it is applied means that many claimants comply with demands placed upon them by Work Programme providers regardless of whether they are lawfully allowed to make those demands.

These difficulties aside, however, some people do manage to bring appeals against sanction decisions and it is important that welfare benefit advisors are in a position to assist them with these cases.

When this article was in draft form, judgment was given in the High Court case of R (Reilly and Wilson) v SSWP [2012] EWHC 2292 (Admin). This case sheds some light on possible avenues of appeal at the First-tier Tribunal (although it should be noted that both sides are proposing to appeal aspects of the judgment). The claimants in Reilly and Wilson challenged the overall lawfulness of the Work Programme schemes. However, what the Court said about the notice requirements that must apply before sanctions can be applied is incorporated. As such, this article is intended to be of practical and immediate assistance to advisers assisting claimants with sanction disputes rather than summarising the Reilly and Wilson case. A write-up of that case will appear in next month’s Bulletin.

Child Poverty Action Group

Sanction busting – part 2

Thanks to claimant activists, it is now possible to provide some more explicit advice which may be of assistance to any JSA claimant who was sanctioned for failing to participate in the Work Programme. A freedom of information request has revealed the standard letters that were used to inform claimants that they must participate in the Work Programme. Copies of these letters are available on the CPAG website linked to this article. Slightly different letters have been used at various times. However, in explaining to JSA claimants the consequences of failing to take part in the Work Programme, all of them use the same wording:

If you fail to take part in the Work Programme without a good reason, your jobseeker’s allowance could stop for up to 26 weeks. You could also lose your national insurance credits.

For the reasons explained below, the current state of the law is that this wording is not adequate to allow a sanction to be imposed when a claimant subsequently fails to participate in the Work Programme. All claimants who have been sanctioned following receipt of such a letter should be advised to submit a (late) appeal if within the maximum time limit (13 months from date of sanction decision), or to seek an official error revision. It appears that tens of thousands of such claimants must have been sanctioned unlawfully: 46,650 sanctions were imposed for failure to participate in the period up to 30 April 2012.1

Child Poverty Action Group

Jobcentre meltdown and bans. What a mess.

Reblogged from Kate Belgrave:

It’s hardly surprising to hear that the tension is bad at jobcentres. Lengthy and ridiculous benefit sanctions, pointless courses and workfare placements that go nowhere – it’s no wonder that people are getting really, really angry.

Birmingham Against Cuts had a story recently about a man who smashed windows at the Sparkhill jobcentre after being sanctioned.

The Manchester Evening News has a story today about a man who set fire to phones in a jobcentre in the hope that he’d be arrested and given something to eat when in police custody.

And last week, I visited a few people in Bracknell who told me they and people they knew had been banned from their jobcentre for complaining about the centre and their workfare provider.

The jobcentre ban notices (which are not signed by a named officer) said they were banned for verbal and written abuse and behaviour “which was totally unacceptable” (no further details on that appear in the correspondence). The people in question denied the charges in the letters. More to the point – and this is the key point, whether we’re talking Bracknell, or wherever – they felt that they had little recourse. They said that they had nowhere to go to appeal those bans. They’d been issued with ban notices by London lawyers (I have copies of these) and then the jobcentre (I have those as well) and told to appear at another job centre for their fortnightly JSA interviews. That was the end of that.

Except that it’s not. Iain Duncan Smith has clearly decided to leave claimants and jobcentre staff to their hell together, to fight it out themselves. This can surely only get worse. As Birmingham Against The Cuts observes, people are dealing with increasingly lengthy sanctions and ridiculous reasons for them – absurd sanctions handed out by stressed staff who are under pressure to meet cruel targets. No wonder things kick off. What do people expect?

As for bans – heavy. And one-sided. I’ve got papers here which threaten Asbos and injunctions and costs if bans are broken. Wonder what happens if you disagree. Which you might. Of course jobcentre workers shouldn’t be abused – but there are always two sides to a story. These are tense times, as I’ve said. Isn’t it possible for frustration, anger and persistence to be interpreted as abuse? Can’t perspectives on a heated incident differ? Couldn’t jobcentres ban people who simply persist with a complaint and refuse to give up the fight for their money? Couldn’t bans be used to shut people up? (The DWP said, simply, that it banned people “who posed a threat” and that “we do not issue bans lightly.” I’d be interested to know if people think that’s the case. Certainly, the various people I’ve spoken to about this have issues with it).

Tories get free public transport during conference

All delegates at the Conservative party conference in Manchester will get free tram, train and bus travel throughout the region.

They will be allowed to travel for free on public transport for the duration of next week’s conference – despite most being based in hotels close to the Manchester Central venue.

The deal has been struck between transport bosses at ‘System One’ – the company which runs Greater Manchester’s travel card system – and Conservative party bosses.

Critics have slammed the offer as ‘outrageous’ because System One is partly owned by taxpayer funded Transport for Greater Manchester.

Transport bosses said Labour delegates were offered free travel when they held their conference in the city last year.

And they said the cost will be ‘low’ and paid for out of their marketing budget.

But Steve North, from the Salford branch of the Unison trade union, said: “I’m staggered that when the Tories have cut services in Greater Manchester we are welcoming them like this. And we’re paying for it. The argument it costs nothing is rubbish – why not give free travel to the students, pensioners and disabled people, and low-paid workers, none of whom use the tram because they can’t afford to?”

Peter Cranie from the Green Party slammed the offer as ‘outrageous’ and said the money should be spent on free travel for nurses or teachers instead.

Richard Soper, chair of Greater Manchester Travelcards Ltd, said: “System One has supported the annual political conferences of both Labour and the Conservatives when they have been held in the city for several years.

“We see it as an opportunity to get people who may not normally use public transport at home to try it while they are in our city. It also helps to reduce car traffic during the busy conference period, with positive effects for the city centre environment, and normal local traffic.

"The decision to support local events such as this is taken by the board of the company, most of whose members are directors of the local bus companies and is a regular part of our business, for example, in promoting public transport, we also work with greener journeys to provide thousands of free day travelcards to local community schemes, and to projects aimed at persuading car commuters across Greater Manchester to travel by public transport.”

A spokesman for TfGM said: “This is a major revenue generating event for Manchester – the Manchester Evening News reported the conference as giving a £24.6m boost to the local economy.

"We are happy to support the conference by showcasing our transport network to people who would not normally use it. System One has a track record of promotional free travel offers for different political party conferences and other events. The costs involved are administrative and are paid for by the private transport operators.”

Manchester Evening News

Scots faces humanitarian disaster due to rocketing prices, declining wages and brutal cuts

RECORD View says no place for poverty in modern Scotland.

POVERTY in Scotland has reached the level of a humanitarian disaster.

The desperation of food banks and pay day loans are the lot of thousands of Scots.

The Daily Record has repeatedly exposed the devastation caused by rocketing food and energy prices, declining wages and the Con-Dem Government’s brutal welfare cuts.

Now 30 organisations from across Scotland are banding together to declare war on this blight on society.

Groups including Save the Children, Oxfam, the Poverty Alliance and Child Action on Poverty will unite to call on politicians to take action before it is too late.

Their campaign is welcome and long overdue – but a terrible indictment on what we have allowed to happen in Scotland.

It is nothing short of shocking that in 2013 so many people still find it impossible to eat, heat their homes and clothe themselves.

Scotland is a wealthy country, blessed with vast natural resources, inventive people and a well established economy.

There is no reason why all of our citizens should not be adequately provided for.

Many of the charities involved in poverty week on October 30 usually spend their time dealing with dire situations in war-torn countries or other troubled regions.

That the situation in Scotland now merits their attention is terrifying. In his conference speech in Brighton last week, Ed Miliband repeatedly said that Britain can do better.

More than that, it must do better.

Daily Record

Leading charities unite to avert humanitarian crisis

The drastic move is usually reserved for international conflicts and natural disasters.

Children living in poverty stricken areas face a bleak future

LEADING charities have united in a desperate attempt to avert the humanitarian crisis of Scotland’s poverty.

Respected organisations including Oxfam, Save the Children, Shelter and Children 1st, have joined forces in a drastic step usually reserved for international conflicts and natural disasters.

The last time Scottish charities pulled together in such a move was to form a Disaster Emergency Committee for war-torn Syria.

The DEC usually call for donations but this time the appeal is for politicians to put poverty at the top of the agenda.

Next month, they will launch a Challenge Poverty Week, as the poor face the “perfect storm” of welfare cuts and rising costs.

Judith Robertson, head of Oxfam Scotland, said: “The fact that we’re coming together to raise the issue of poverty shows how serious we believe the situation is.

“Poverty is a scandal in rich, modern Scotland and Challenge Poverty Week is a chance to demand concrete action from our politicians and policy-makers.”

She said charities were calling for the provision of sustainable jobs, reliable incomes and fair taxation.

Oxfam’s Our Economy report claimed Scotland’s wealthiest households are 273 times richer than the poorest.

The charity say figures show work is not always a route to a better life in Scotland, as figures show 40 per cent of those living in poverty are in employment.

Robertson added: “The reality for too many Scots is a cocktail of high mortality, economic inactivity, mental and physical ill-health, poor educational attainment, and exclusion from the decisions that affect them.”

John Downie, director of public affairs for the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations said that poverty must be a priority.

He said: “Scotland is one of the most unequal places in the developed world, with the gap between the richest and poorest growing steadily.

“It’s shameful that in communities across the country, people are having to choose between heating their homes or putting food on the table.

“Children are going to bed hungry, and parents are struggling to afford to buy their children shoes for school. Surely we can do much better than this?”

The Scottish Government’s annual report for the Child Poverty Strategy for Scotland estimates that an additional 50,000 children will be living in poverty, north of the border by 2020, bringing the total to a quarter of a million.

Statistics suggest 720,000 people, 14 per cent of Scots, live in deprivation but campaigners believe it is nearer 850,000.

The Trussell Trust this year found the number of Scots using food banks rose by 150 per cent in 2012, from 5726 to 14,318.

Shelter Scotland director GraemeBrown said that more and more people were facing the real prospect of homelessness.

He added: “There’s a perfect storm on our doorsteps. Already people are being battered by welfare reforms, stagnant wages, rising utility bills, higher living costs and job insecurity.

“For many, the safety and security of home is under threat like never before.”

The Poverty Alliance are co-ordinating the action and urging people to push for change by lobbying their MSPs.

They have written to the party leaders at Holyrood to ask them to take part in challenge poverty meetings with activists fighting deprivation on the ground.

Peter Kelly of the Poverty Alliance said: “We want to have them meet with activists who will talk to them about what the main poverty challenges are for them, and to ask what the main priorities are for action by the party leaders.”

Kelly said the action was being taken before Scotland’s poor were locked further into a downward spiral of despair.

Factors such as the bedroom tax and rising food and utility costs are likely to reverse any positive trends of recent years.

Kelly added: “It is only going to get worse. All the predictions are that poverty, specifically child poverty, is going to go up again.”

John McKendrick, a senior lecturer at Caledonian University who co-wrote a report on tackling child poverty for Save the Children, said there had been much rhetoric but little effective action.

He said: “Lots of nice words have been said but there is no direct addressing of the problem.

“The hopelessness that is there will intensify. For those in poverty life is getting tougher.”

The Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland said that there was no chance of the Government hitting legal targets to eradicate child poverty by 2020.

John Dickie, head of the charity, said: “Child poverty in Scotland is going to increase massively.

“We are facing a child poverty crisis. Now is the time for politicians to turn their words into concrete action that will ensure that every child gets a fair start in life.”

Statistics from the Campaign To End Child Poverty show an average of one in three children in Glasgow live in poverty – the highest percentage in Scotland.

In the city’s Springburn, 51 per cent of youngsters live in poverty, while in Calton it is 49 per cent.

Save the Children’s Scottish leader Neil Mathers said: “Poverty is a scar on Scotland’s society.

“This is an exciting opportunity for us to come together and look at what we can all do to consign poverty to history and rid it from our shores once and for all.”

Daily Record

The land of do-as-you-please (if you're a Tory minister)

Reblogged from Vox Political:

The Tory Faraway Tree: By the power of very bad image editing, David Cameron, Iain (RTU) Smith and Grant Shapps have replaced the protagonists. Careful, Mr Shapps – your panties are showing! How unusual that they aren’t on fire!

Do any British readers remember what it was like to live in a country where the government respected the law, and accepted facts without making up silly little stories about them?

What an amazing place that must have been.

Sadly, we’re all trapped in Tory-Coalition purgatory for the next 19 months at least, and have to endure the relentless procession of nonsense associated with it.

Yesterday (Friday) we were provided with two glowing examples.

Firstly, the visit of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, was treated with extreme prejudice by the Tories and their poodles in the right-wing press, after she announced she would be filing an unfavourable report after investigating the effect of the bedroom tax on the British people.
Vox Political covered these events in some detail, so there’s no need to rehash them here.

Tory chairman and ‘Michael Green’ impersonator Grant Shapps then wrote to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to complain about the Special Rapporteur’s behaviour. A reply has now arrived and, rather than give it the due consideration it deserves, Shapps seems to have handed it straight to The Sun.

That newspaper reported that the UN had “slapped down” Ms Rolnik for her behaviour. Shapps himself told the paper: “People expect the UN to be neutral, yet on this occasion a former Workers Party politician came with a clear agenda” - a bizarre claim, when the letter itself creates a completely different view.
Guido Fawkes’ blog provides the text of the UN letter – along with a bit more right-wing spin which we’ll ignore as it is irrelevant.

It states: “Ms Raquel Rolnik is one of 72 independent experts appointed by the United nations Human Rights Council – the lead UN body responsible for human rights – on the basis of their expertise and independence, and following a competitive selection process. As in the case of all mandate holders, Ms Rolnik serves in an independent capacity and in accordance with a Code of Conduct adopted by the Council. She is not a staff member of the United Nations, is neither accountable to nor appointed by the Secretary-General, and does not receive any compensation beyond a daily allowance when engaged in mandated activities.

“Among other activities, Special Rapporteurs are mandated to undertake country visits to assess human rights enjoyment on the ground. The United Kingdom is one of 94 Member States which has extended a standing invitation to mandate holders thus indicating that it is open to the visit of any Special Rapporteur. Country visits are governed by rules and procedures set out in the Code of Conduct referred to above and the Manual of Operations adopted by Special Procedures. Ms Rolnik’s visit was planned and organised over many months in consultation with the Government in compliance with these rules and procedures.

“As in the case of all country visits, Ms Rolnik’s visit concluded with a press conference and a press statement, provided to the Government in advance, which indicate preliminary findings and recommendations. The final report on the visit will be submitted to the Council’s twenty-fifth session which will take place in March 2014 in Geneva.”

Reading between the lines, we can piece together the gist of Shapps’ correspondence – and it’s clear that he made a lot of mistaken assumptions. Firstly, it seems likely he wrote to Ban Ki-moon demanding that Ms Rolnik be fired from her position, in the belief that she is a hired hand and that the Secretary-General can hire and fire her as he pleases, the way Tories would like to run the UK. She’s just ‘the help’ in Shapps’s eyes. He must also have made a claim about her remuneration – possibly that she receives too much money from the UN or that, as a Socialist, she must be pulling pennies out of the public purse like there’s no tomorrow. Both claims get short shrift.

It seems Shapps then asserted that Ms Rolnik had not been invited to the UK and had no reason to be there. Wrong again, as the UN letter clarifies. A claim that she went beyond her remit is similarly batted away by reference to the governing rules which, we may conclude, were available to Mr Shapps before he wrote his letter. Oh yes, look, they’re available from the introduction page to the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (OHCHR) website, here!

Next, Shapps is likely to have reasserted his claim that “It is completely wrong and an abuse of the process for somebody to come over, to fail to meet with government ministers, to fail to meet with the department responsible.” The UN response is the same as Ms Rolnik’s own statement in her preliminary report.

And the final paragraph seems to be a response to his further claim that it was out of line “to produce a press release two weeks after coming, even though the report is not due out until next spring.”

Taken at face value, then, this is a letter that entirely supports Ms Rolnik, both in her position within the United Nations and the way she carried out her role in the UK.

But that wasn’t enough for the United Nations, whose higher echelons clearly wanted to ensure there can be no doubt about the way this – let’s face it - international  incident is being viewed.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the Huffington Post: “The Sun‘s take on it – that ‘The United Nations has slapped down’ Ms Rolnik – is pure spin. There was no such intention whatsoever.

“In the face of a blizzard of misinformation and personal abuse of Ms Rolnik, published in one or two other UK tabloids during and immediately after her visit, the letter to Mr Shapps simply corrects the factual errors that have been asserted about her status and her role as an independent UN expert, or ‘Special Rapporteur.’

“Ms Rolnik’s visit was planned and organized over many months in consultation with the UK Government in compliance with these rules and procedures.

“As in the case of all country visits, Ms Rolnik’s visit concluded with a press conference and a press statement, provided to the Government in advance, which indicate preliminary findings and recommendations.

“The final report on the visit will be submitted to the Human Rights Council’s session next March in Geneva.
“In short, there was nothing unusual or untoward about Ms Rolnik’s visit – apart from some of the reactions to it.”

No doubt Mr Colville will have drawn his own conclusions about the current UK administration from that Sun article – conclusions that, one hopes, will be included in that final report next March.

The New Statesman reckons the Tories have an “antipathy for evidence” and presents a theory regarding why this should be so: “If all the facts are against you, your best tactic is to make stuff up and hope you can shout the other person down (changing your mind obviously not being an option).”

Alternatively, we return to V for Vendetta territory. The graphic novel’s writer, Alan Moore, referenced Enid Blyton’s novel The Magic Faraway Tree several times. For an anarchist like the story’s protagonist, the Land of Do-as-you-please would be very attractive – but here in reality, it seems the Tories think they’ve taken the ladder to that land and can do and say whatever they want – and facts don’t matter.

For more evidence of this, let’s turn to our second example: The Department for Work and Pensions and its reaction to a benefit tribunal in Scotland, who ruled against Fife Council, saying that a room of less than 70 square feet should not be considered a bedroom for the purpose of the bedroom tax. This led the council to call the tax “unworkable” and demand its reversal. Since then, a disabled gentleman has won a ruling against Westminster Council, after he claimed that a room used to store equipment that helps him manage his disability was not, and never has been, a bedroom.

In his decision notice, the judge wrote: “The term ‘bedroom’ is nowhere defined [in the relevant regulations]. I apply the ordinary English meaning. The room in question cannot be so defined.”

In response to the first ruling, the DWP has issued an ‘Urgent Bulletin’ in which an attempt is made to retroactively define a bedroom, for the purposes of administering the tax.

Perhaps we are to assume Iain Returned-To-Unit Smith believes that, having achieved one retrospective law via the normal legislative route, he can now ordain such rulings willy-nilly. He’s wrong.

His Department’s demand that “when applying the size criteria and determining whether or not a property is under-occupied, the only consideration should be the composition of the household and the number of bedrooms as designated by the landlord, but not by measuring rooms” is worthless.

If he wanted that to be the case, he should have written it into his silly little Bedroom Tax Bill (or whatever it was called).

For the moment, Shapps and RTU can get away with their bizarre pronouncements – although they can’t expect to be believed – because the Conservatives are in office.

But they won’t be in office forever.

In the meantime, let’s all keep supporting the opposers, wherever they turn up. If you are being subjected to the Bedroom Tax – appeal. And write to the UN, supporting Ms Rolnik and her findings against the tax.
You have a chance to prove that the Land of Do-as-you-please is a very small place.

And, as in the book, the return to normality involves a very, very long descent.

A4E Fraud Charges as Work Programme Collapses

Reblogged from Ipswich Unemployed Action:


The Crown Prosecution Service announces,

Sue Patten, Head of Fraud at the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Following an investigation by the Thames Valley Police Economic Crime Unit, the CPS has authorised charges against six women and three men in connection with alleged fraudulent activity at Action 4 Employment (A4E), a social purpose company contracted by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to deliver the ‘Inspire to Aspire’ employment and training scheme. 

“It is alleged that between February 2009 and February 2013 nine A4E employees including one contract manager, seven recruiters and an administrator, employed across three A4E offices in the South East of England, committed numerous offences of fraud. It is alleged that they forged documentation to support fraudulent claims to the DWP for reward payments which, under the terms of the contract, were paid out when the scheme successfully placed individuals in employment. It is alleged that many of the reward payments related either to people who never attended A4E or to clients whom A4E had not successfully placed in employment. The contract was to deliver motivation and training and to assist people to find employment. 

“The nine individuals are charged with a total of 60 offences, including conspiracy to defraud, multiple counts of forgery, and making and possessing articles for use in fraud. 

“This decision to prosecute was taken in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors. We have determined that there is a realistic prospect of conviction and that a prosecution is in the public interest. 

“All individuals will appear before Slough Magistrates’ Court on 14 October 2013. 

“All individuals are now the subject of criminal proceedings and have the right to a fair trial. It is extremely important that nothing should be reported which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”

When will they get round to Emma?  we ask.

Meanwhile the Work Programme is disarray.

The government has put a brave face on its failures by saying,

More than 168,000 jobseekers have escaped long-term unemployment and found lasting work – normally at least 6 months – through the Work Programme, an increase of 37,000 in three months, new figures show. 

Minister for Employment Mark Hoban said: “Previous schemes didn’t provide the right support for the long-term unemployed and offered poor value for money for the taxpayer. We launched the Work Programme to tackle this so people got the help they needed to find a job and, crucially, given support to stay in work.”

Johnny Void says,

Statistics released by the DWP today show that the performance of the Work Programme – which was already achieving less than doing nothing at all – is steadily getting worse. 

By June 2013 a lower percentage of people who had been on the scheme for one full year had found a job which lasted at least 6 months  – known as a sustained job outcome – than in the previous two months.  In April 2013 14% of claimants who had been on the scheme for one year had found sustained jobs, by June this had dropped to 13%. 

Following intervention by the UK Statistics Agency, the latest Work Programme figures now focus on the numbers of people finding work after spending one year on the scheme.  This change has been introduced to reflect that the longer someone has been on the two year Work Programme, the more likely they are to find a job.  This means that the number of job outcome payments, paid to welfare-to-work companies when someone has been in work for six months (or 3 months for the ‘hardest to help’), will rise over time.  This has nothing to do with the Work Programme becoming more successful – it simply means that as more people are referred onto the programme, and more people have been on the scheme longer, then there will be more job outcomes.

The Morning Star points out that this is no success,

Employment Minister Mark Hoban can manipulate his figures for as long as he wants to portray his Work Programme as a glowing success, but he’s wasting his and our time. 

A programme that delivers a proper job to a measly 4 per cent of participants after a year on the scheme is a failure and does not merit ministerial praise as “significantly improving.” 

The Work Programme has in year two of the scheme found sustained employment for just 17 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds even though the Department for Work and Pensions estimated that, left to their own devices, 30 per cent would be able to do so. 

Similar negative results apply for workers aged 25 and over, those coming off employment support allowance and, worst of all, disabled workers. 

The cruel, short-sighted policy of shutting down Remploy factories – imposed by both Con-Dem and new Labour governments – has prevented growing numbers of disabled people from earning their own living. 

Further, the disproportionate effect of the bedroom tax on the disabled exposes the bogus claims made during last year’s successful Paralympic games in London. 

By any standards, the government’s flagship employment policy is a failure in terms of finding people proper jobs.

In the meantime people coming off the Work Programme are beginning to be shunted onto yet more ‘schemes’ run by the usual ‘providers’.

A little birdie tells us that a “big shake up” in planned for us at the start of December.

This does not sound promising. 

10,000 cuts and counting by Linda Burnip

Just less than 3 years ago disabled people marched at the Tory party conference to protest against austerity cuts using the slogan CUTS KILL. Even though it was obvious that the plans outlined by millionaire George Osborne in the June 2010 Spending Review would not be good for disabled people even we did not envisage just how fast our welfare state would be destroyed by the Condems or how many disabled people would be pushed to suicide or death through the malicious Condem cuts.

We could not have imagined that 3 years later we’d be getting daily emails from disabled people and pregnant disabled people who were actually starving and being left without food, money or access to any hardship payments. We knew but couldn’t have possibly imagined that disabled people would have their benefits stopped for weeks and in some cases months without any means to support themselves other than possible prostitution, drug dealing or theft. What do you do when you are already living on the breadline with no savings and your only income is taken away? We never imagined we’d read about children, disabled and non-disabled being left without food.

It’s hard to believe it’s the UK we’re talking about yet this is what life has become for many in the 21^st century in the 7^th richest nation in the world. We never imagined that we’d go so far backwards that all of the gains made for disabled people’s rights over the last 30 years would effectively just be swept away as disabled people are vilified as shirkers and scroungers.

10,000 Cuts and Counting is a single issue protest against the now discredited computerised Work Capability Assessment executed by ATOS. It has pushed so many disabled people to suicide or death through fear and stress that DWP have now stopped collecting any statistics on the death count but between January 2011 and November 2011, some 10,600 claims ended and a date of death was recorded within six weeks of the claim end. DPAC and other campaigners are proud to have destroyed the ATOS brand name but there is no point in just replacing ATOS with another corporate monster and the WCA must be scrapped in its entirity. Why should any private firm rake in millions and millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to provide a totally flawed service which could be provided by civil servants for a fraction of the cost as has been the case until recently? The WCA was put in place to cut the number of claimants by 1 million either through miracle cures or death it seems.

One of the next major battles disabled people face is the scrapping of Disability Living Allowance put in place to meet the extra costs of being disabled. This too has been designed with only one aim in mind to cut costs and remove 20% of disabled people from entitlement. Many disabled people rely on this income to enable them to work and will no longer be able to if it is lost to them. Even more will be left trapped in their homes with no means to go out.

For anyone who thinks this doesn’t matter to them 6 out of 7 disabled people have an acquired impairment through long term illness or an accident. Most of you will also get older and so how older disabled people are treated should be of great concern to you – it’s your future. Let’s not be polite older disabled people are often treated worse than animals in the UK getting 4 x 15 minutes ‘pop ins’ if they’re lucky and imprisoned in their homes and some left soaking wet the rest of the time.

This is the fate now awaiting younger disabled people from 2015 when without any vote in parliament the Independent Living Fund will be closed leaving local councils to try to replace this funding with ever shrinking budgets and different eligibility criteria.

At the same time they say they want disabled people to work but without this vital support even if found fit for work they are unable to. The Remploy factories have been decimated in the Condem attacks against disabled people supported by some organisations who purport to campaign for us. At last count only about 3% of those made redundant had secured mainstream employment but given the barriers to gaining and keeping employment that disabled people face this was always likely. To this we need to add the benefit cap which is in effect a futher cut.

The Bedroom Tax so loudly condemned by the UN rapporteur Raquel Rolnik existed in the private rented sector since 2008 and Labour who introduced this have singularly forgotten to mention that they originally also planned to roll it out in April 2010 to the social housing sector. None of us should forget that most of these horrors now affecting both disabled and other people were in many cases introduced by Labour and it is time for all of us all to start to tell them what they must do if they want to have a chance of being elected.

It is also way past time for the larger unions to stop pussy-footing around, stop unconditionally supporting a neo-liberal Labour party and force them to act as an effective opposition and outline their real policies. The unions and TUC should have already called a general strike but need to do so now urgently. It is time to add industrial power to community activism if any vestiges of our welfare state are to be salvaged for our children.

Disabled people and others also face a further raft of cuts and attacks to the NHS and in particular mental health services, to health and safety at work legislation, to Access to Work funding, to secure employment and not zero hours contracts, to accessible transport, to accessible housing, a right to mainstream education, cuts to council tax benefit, all coupled with cuts to CAB services, legal aid cuts and lastly the introduction of the Lobbying Bill which regardless of it’s eventual outcome will not silence us in any way. We are now many thousands and we will be heard.

This piece is also due to be published in the Morning Star

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