An open meeting at Burnley football club held by the work and pensions select committee to hear the experiences of people moved from incapacity benefit to the new employment and support allowance. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Some sobering summer reading came my way on Monday: not The Social Animal or any of the voguish paperbacks being thumbed in Tuscany and elsewhere, but a report from the select committee on work and pensions (officially published on Tuesday). Bear with me: if you've got visions of a headache-inducing text full of tedium and officialspeak, nothing could be further from the truth. It is incisive, fact-packed, smattered with moving first-person testimony, and downloadable for free. Anyone with any interest in where Britain is heading ought to read it.
The report's focus is on welfare reform – more specifically, the reassessment of 1.5 million people who have been on incapacity benefit, via the so-called work capability assessments, or WCAs. It sets out a story that includes plenty of the most fundamental aspects of life in modern Britain: the tabloid shrieking about the supposedly workshy that exerts such a grip on our politicians; the stupidly cushy terms on which whole chunks of the welfare state are being handed over to private companies; and above all, an underlying sense that the pain and panic that result from all this have precious little chance of gaining any political traction.
As of October 2008, incapacity benefit began to be replaced by the employment and support allowance – and anyone putting in a new claim faced the WCA, which places people in one of three categories: judged "fit for work" and introduced to the stringent regime based around jobseekers' allowance; in effect deemed incapable of employment and put in a "support group"; or held to be somewhere between the two and thus destined for "work-related activity". The monopoly provider of WCAs is Atos Healthcare, a division of a French IT firm, which had signed up for £100m of DWP business three years before.
Last October the reassessment of those 1.5 million people began, and the kind of alarming stories that crop up in the select committee report started to pile up. Ministers apparently claim that two official reviews have blunted the process's worst shortcomings, but still: evidence from Citizens Advice Scotland says that the assessments, delivered by Atos's doctors and nurses, "can last just 20 minutes", and that "the yes/no format of the assessment is too narrow". One page later you find a mind-boggling handful of paragraphs about the company's "Logic Integrated Medical Assessment" (or Lima) computer system, which has often seemed to reduce complex cases to the stuff of binary idiocy.
The results of all this are obvious enough. Thousands of people have been fallaciously deemed fit for work. Even if your condition is sufficiently serious to avoid that fate – as the Mental Health charity Rethink puts it, "if a claimant can set an alarm clock, feed themselves and manage life without daily aggression or needing almost constant supervision" – you can still be pushed into "work-related activity" – which, under the terms of the government's welfare bill, could see your employment and support allowance stopped after a year.
On Monday I heard from a man in the West Midlands; a diagnosed depressive and agoraphobic who was deemed fit for work, only to successfully appeal. "I have no confidence in the Atos way of assessment," he told me, "as I feel it's geared more to them ticking boxes and gaining brownie points … than the actual physical and mental wellbeing of each person." He is now on to his third assessment, feeling "very apprehensive", and in fear of "ending up on a mental health wing".
From Rethink I received the story of a man suffering from bipolar disorder who had also been put through the assessment grinder. His account chimed with recent reports of WCA-related suicide attempts: "As a direct result of the way I have been treated by the DWP and Atos I considered taking my own life on and off for a period of months. My GP even wrote a letter to them to spell out the severity of my illness and how the situation was putting me in danger."
He won an appeal last February, and will now receive his backdated benefits. (At the last count the rate of successful appeals was running at about 40%. The projected annual cost of appeals has been put as high as £50m – although Atos incurs no penalty for getting things so wrong.)
All of this is scandalous, yet it goes on – seemingly of no concern to the supposed everyman, nor to the politicians who fixate on him. This raises two issues: first, the treatment being meted out to thousands of people should be a moral offence to all of us; and second, our flexible labour market and increasingly brutal welfare system are now so constructed that even if you are doing well, it is perfectly possible that you could fall ill, and then find yourself just as terrified as the thousands who are currently being herded through the WCA process.
In the modern benefits system, trapdoors abound: if you fail to get the employment and support allowance and find yourself on jobseeker's allowance, for example, you will not only suffer a 14% drop in income but may very well fall foul of the latter's demands and find yourself "sanctioned", with no benefits at all. The next stop is that miserable demi-monde that defines more lives than a lot of people would like to think: crisis loans, food banks, the very real prospect of ending up destitute.
In other words, the old aspirational tagline of the national lottery now applies to some of the most iniquitous aspects of the benefits system. Really: it could be you.
Workfare, the government’s forced labour scheme, could be the latest policy to unravel as encouraging momentum builds against the proposed reform of the welfare system.
The most damning indictment however slipped out almost unnoticed in April. The Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) provides impartial advice to the UK government on social security proposals. Reports are presented to Parliament alongside any proposed legislation and the Government is expected to respond to any recommendations the body makes.
The SSAC were asked to report on the mandatory work programme (PDF) which will see some benefit claimants forced to carry out 30 hours a week of unpaid work for four weeks or face losing benefits. A whole host of corporate parasites and even charities have been licking their lips at the prospect of free labour provided by the unemployed.
The report reveals a staggering lack of foresight into how the proposals may work in practice. Like so many other areas of welfare policy, it appears that Iain Duncan Smith hasn’t thought things through again.
The most concerning aspect of the report reveals that referral to mandatory work activity (workfare) will be made by Jobcentre Advisors largely on a whim. If they don’t like your face, then off you go to work in Primark for no pay for a month. This could potentially even happen on the first day of a benefit claim if the advisor decides you aren’t trying hard enough to find work. Once the workfare is over, then it seems you could be immediately re-referred.
Previously there were things like rules and regulations about what is expected of benefit claimants. But now the goalposts are shifting and any old twat with a clipboard and a grudge down the Jobcentre will have the power to fuck up claimant’s lives. As the committee notes: “Claimants can be fully engaged with the (benefit) conditionality requirements but in effect a claimant can still be mandated to do more.”
The implications of this could be devastating. With thousands of people with health problems, many of them vulnerable, some with mental health conditions, it’s not a huge leap to have concerns that many of this group may face discrimination.
As the Committee also points out: “4.17 Evidence from the Department’s Equality Impact Assessment and DWP research shows that ethnic minority claimants and those with a learning difficulty tend to be disproportionately sanctioned for not actively seeking employment. This, alongside other societal factors, could lead to these groups being disproportionately referred to this scheme and, as a consequence, at even greater risk of sanction.”
The initial benefit sanction will be raised from 2 weeks to 13 weeks. We therefore see a very real possibilities that those, already stripped of health benefits by the sharks at Atos Origin, may be forced off benefits all together. Job seeking commitments, which could be arbitrarily made up by Jobcentre advisors, could see thousands facing the very real poverty created by benefit sanctions.
Already cancer patients, people with MS and other serious medical conditions have been forced onto Job Seekers Allowance. Under these rules they could now be forced into full time, unpaid employment or face starvation. The recent spate of suicides due to adverse benefit decisions is likely to rocket if these proposals go ahead. This is no longer scare-mongering, but proposed government policy. It is little wonder that some have compared the plans for welfare reform to euthanasia programmes.
But it not all doom and gloom. Workfare is good for you claims the DWP. The SSAC doesn’t agree noting: “We also wonder why, given that the Department views mandatory work activity as a beneficial change, people will not be permitted to volunteer to take part. This seems to us to signal that being mandated to mandatory work activity is regarded as a punishment rather than an opportunity to learn and develop new behaviours and skills. Employers are unlikely to value references that come from forced work schemes, as they will not perceive such a reference as evidence that the participant has the skills to undertake an actual job and are more likely to see mandatory participation as a negative sign of participants’ work readiness and willingness to work.”
Concerns are also raised in the report about the impact of workfare on people’s ability to be able to effectively seek work. Participants in workfare schemes could be expected to travel up to three hours a day to placements, on top of the 30 hours a week unpaid work. This will leave little chance for ‘actively seeking work’ especially for those with children or health problems.
So far the DWP has offered no details of what may happen if a claimants has to attend a hospital appointment, or their child is taken ill. Noted only in passing by the committee is the vast array of other commitments that particularly vulnerable claimants may have such as meetings with Social Services, interviews and appointments for social or emergency housing, probation appointments or counselling. It seems that no-one at the DWP has even considered what happens when a client is due to sign on, which will still be expected of them whilst on workfare. In practice it may be impossible for workfare victims to disappear from the workfare placement and attend the job centre once a fortnight. But no-one seems to have thought about that.
There also appears to have been no thought given to what might happen if a claimant is successful in gaining a job interview during there Workfare provision. Under current plans they may face benefit sanctions if they miss their placement and attend. Finally, and also missed by the committee, but familiar to many who’ve already faced the joys of the New Deal and other similar schemes, is activities the claimant may already be carrying out to help them find work. Many Job Seeker’s Allowance claimants are at college part time, volunteering, researching setting up a business or even currently on other ‘job search’ provisions. In the past it has not been uncommon for claimants to be forced to leave courses without achieving the final qualification to attend some bollocks scheme at A4e where they do little more than sit around in an office for 30 hours a week. Money grabbing providers of job search and other schemes have even been known to fight over claimants with no thought at all as to what is best for the individual concerned.
Concerns are also being raised about the quality and even availability of workplace placements. Whilst some businesses may be salivating at the prospect of unpaid labour, the reality is that many providers up until now have found it difficult to find suitable work placements, especially for those who may be vulnerable, have drug or alcohol problems, mental health conditions, criminal records or are homeless. These are exactly the type of people likely to be referred for the initial phase of workfare.
It is highly likely that only the most exploitative employers will be interested in recruiting workfare staff. As the SSAC notes: “We are also concerned that there seems to be no process in place to monitor employers or to end their involvement should they be found to be exploiting participants or requiring them to undertake inappropriate work (or work experience.”
One former employee of workfare provider A4e told us of one claimant whose placement provider had boasted about how they’d been able to sack the cleaners since being able to hire workfare staff.
The SSAC also raises concerns about how any expenses the claimant may incur will be recouped, noting that the DWP will not be responsible for travel expenses, which they expect to be provided by placement providers, however there is no compulsion on them to do so. Childcare expenses will not be met by anyone, leaving parents at risk of being unable to afford to attend workfare, and thus facing benefit sanctions. The poorer you are, the more likely it is you will be made poorer.
The 13 week sanction period is also condemned by the SSAC, warning that the length of time is disproportionate and also warns that: “there is no incentive for a sanctioned person to re-engage with the programme as the department states that any sanction will remain in force even if a person returns to the placement.”
The report concludes that they: “recommend that Mandatory Work Activity does not proceed.” Whether they will be listened to is anyone’s guess. What is clear is that the combination of sanctions, health testing, housing benefit cuts and other benefit changes is that the poorest and the most vulnerable in society are likely to be even further pushed into deprivation and poverty if the changes go ahead.
Of course workfare is nothing new and the poor and destitute shouldn’t expect any help from the Labour Party. The difference is that past workfare style provision at least paid lip service to ideas of providing quality training and skills, even if in reality that was rarely the case. When the last Government kicked you it was ‘for your own good’. This bunch of toffs just appear intent on kicking people when they’re down, presumably to make sure they stay there.
One interesting fact which does emerge from the report is that the DWP are currently only planning to recruit 10,000 people onto workfare per year. It is a rarely mentioned fact that workfare, even in the current training and support free model proposed, is expensive. Claimants need to be monitored, policed, insured and managed. Agencies providing workfare schemes need to advertise, recruit, design programmes, find placements and train staff. The new god-like powers now being given to Jobcentre advisors signify a vastly increased workload at a time when the DWP is facing mass redundancies.
There appear to be two possibilities emerging. There are currently around a million people who have been claiming Job Seeker’s Allowance over a year. If the figures of 10,000 workfare placements a year remains the same then someone on long term benefits only has a one in a hundred chance of being referred onto workfare in the next year. Whilst that small percentage may represent the most vulnerable benefit claimants, this is unlikely to be of any concern to tory filth.
Unemployment, according to the Tories, was once a price worth paying. It is not inconceivable that this highly publicised drive to get tough on ‘benefit scroungers’ is little more than a sop to fool the angry people who write letters to the Daily Mail. Under Thatcher three million unemployed were left to rot. It was cheaper that way, and still is.
Another, sadly more likely, possibility is that this is being used as a trial run. Businesses are well aware of the implications of the creation of a vast army of unpaid labour. Already concerns have been raised about workfare staff being used to undercut wages or even being forced into becoming scab labour. This is a matter that may yet become a far more pressing concern for the unions, who with the exception of the PCS, (who are well aware of what a shambles these changes are likely to cause) have paid little attention to the plight of benefit claimants.
One thing’s for sure. This is not about training people, reducing unemployment or even saving money. There is no evidence that workfare in fact works. According to one report:“In Quebec, PQ Income Security Minister Jeanne Blackburn has publicly admitted that workfare there has been a dismal failure. In the first five years of the program, the number of Quebecers on welfare rose by a staggering 42% to 776,541 persons in 464,500 households. Of the 80% of welfare recipients considered “employable,” only about 15% are now actually enrolled in workfare programs. And of those who have participated in such programs since 1989, fewer than 12% of them have been able to find stable jobs.”
The good news is that claimant’s are fighting back in an unprecedented way. Atos Origin, the French IT firm responsible for the Work Capability Assessment have seen scores of demos, pickets and occupations outside (and inside) their premises across the UK. Workfare providing organisations such as the odious A4e have also seen protests and offices invaded. Charities and businesses set to recruit workfare staff are likely to face protests and direct action. Connections are being made, plans formed, strategies developed and new groups seem to be springing up almost daily.
This government expects disabled people and claimants to die quietly. Many (but not all) claimants are unemployed and so are unable to strike. Many have disabilities, health problems, and a whole host of other shit going on in our lives. We have fuck all money and so are unable pursue mainstream methods of campaigning. But we are millions strong. And we have very little left to lose.
COUNSELS OPINION – WORK-FOR-BENEFIT SCHEMES UNLAWFUL AS FORCED OR COMPULSORY LABOUR, CONTRARY TO ECHR ARTICLE 4
1. Submitted, the implementation of a work-for-benefit scheme is a violation of the right not to be subjected to forced or compulsory labour. “Forced or compulsory labour” is defined in the ILO Forced Labour Convention 1930 as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”.
2. Work-for-benefit is exacted under the menace of benefit sanction, which falls within the autonomous Convention definition of “criminal charge” in that it has a manifestly deterrent purpose, with indication of a penal purpose.1 The House of Lords in Secretary of State for the Home Department v MB [2008] 1 All ER 673 reviewed the case law as distinguishing between measures merely preventative in purpose and those which “have a more punitive, retributive or deterrent object” (per Lord Bingham [19] to [24]).
3. If C refuses a direction to participate in a work scheme save on the condition that he charges his stipulated rate and that there is a contract for services, he will almost certainly be sanctioned. Submitted, such direction and sanction would be unlawful, because it would purport to suppress his capacity to contract and to take the benefit thereof, in violation of
Protocol 1 Article 1 of the ECHR (right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions), further without statutory authorisation. It would also violate Article 4 of the ECHR by forcing him to work outside the limits of his consent.
4. Even if it were held that C offered himself voluntarily, the fact that he gave his prior consent to participation in work-for-benefit was held in Van der Mussele v Belgium (1983) 6 EHRR 163 to be inconclusive. It was held at paragraph 40 that, in the case of prior consent, there must be a “considerable and unreasonable imbalance between the aim pursued (entry to the legal profession) and the obligations accepted as a condition of achieving that aim for there to be forced labour. The burden must be so excessive or disproportionate to the advantages attached to the future exercise of the profession that the service cannot be treated as having been voluntarily accepted. (at paragraph 37).
5. Further to #4 the ECtHR took account of the fact that:
(a) the required service was not unconnected with the profession in question (particular employment test);
(b) in return for unpaid service the person received certain advantages, including the exclusive right of audience in court (privilege test);
(c) the work contributed to professional training (training test);
(d) the requirement related to the delivery of a Convention right of others to free legal assistance (rights of others test);
(e) the service was similar to the “normal civic obligation” exception (Article 4(3)(d)) (civic obligation test);
(f) the burden imposed (involving unpaid work) was not such as to leave the person without sufficient time for paid work (hours test).
6. It was held in Talmon v Netherlands (1977) ECtHR that Article 4 does not stand in the way of a requirement that an unemployed person take suitable employment. The case involved a claimant who lost on the merits having insisted that he was willing to work only as an independent scientist and social critic and was on grounds of conscience unwilling to take any other work.
7. A work-for-benefit scheme does not comply with Article 4 because it does not meet all -in particular it meets none – of the criteria in #5:
8. (a) there is in the terms of participation no indication of a promise or cause of legitimate expectation of regular employment on completion of service;
(b) the stated aim of the scheme is merely to restore competitive parity on the labour market which C is likely to have lost in consequence of long-term unemployment, and does not include the aim of procuring access to a privileged occupation;
(c) there is no element of training of any kind, let alone any with recognised credentials;
(d) the work does not involve the delivery of a Convention right to others;
(e) the service is, for reasons stated in #9, not similar to a normal civic obligation;
(f) the service is exacted on a full-time basis to the exclusion of any significant time to seek or undertake paid work, and for a duration far in excess of what is necessary to effect labour market rehabilitation.
9. Further to #7(e) work-for-benefit arrangements are not similar to a civic obligation. The terms on which service is exacted are consistent with the condition of servility, but not with the freedoms, property rights and public service expectations (eg. military or jury service) characteristic of citizenship.2 They derogate from the right of a free man to work for a wage or a fee under a contract of service or for services and to draw the benefit of the contract, namely his living from work he freely chooses or accepts (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) Article 6).
10. Submitted, the premiss of work-for-benefit is that it is legitimate to exact labour services in consideration for benefits paid during such service or a previous period of unemployment. This premiss is misconceived. Save that Strasbourg jurisprudence assimilates social security benefits to private property, international human rights law otherwise knows social security and social insurance to be the object of a right, but not as a commodity which must be paid for except by taxes and social insurance contributions.
3 (Cf. ICESCR Article 9; ECHR Protocol 1 Article 1 paragraph 3). It follows that the only way to exact tribute from a person consistently with respect for the status of citizenship is to engage the person under a regular contract and then lawfully to impose taxes on his remuneration.
2 Cf. Aristotle, The Politics, Book I Chapters 4-7; Book III Chapter 5
3 R (on the application of RJM) (FC) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2008] UKHL 63;
Stec & Ors v United Kingdom (App. Nos: 65731/01 & 65900/01), Decision on Admissibility 06-07-2005 (ECtHR)
11. Submitted, even if the obligation of work-for-benefit were “civic” in nature, it is not “normal”. A “normal” civic obligation is one which is designed to fall equitably upon everyone within the general class of citizens by reason of citizenship without more.
Alternatively, it may on principle be designed to fall equitably upon everyone within a subclass of citizens by reason of citizenship together with some legal or factual position of privilege, dominance or eminence.
12. Further to #11, work-for-benefit schemes are not designed to affect all citizens generally, neither are they addressed to a privileged class. On the contrary, they are addressed to a sub-class of citizens who are disadvantaged by reason of long-term unemployment and who by definition have already become victims of a violation of their right to work, in that the United Kingdom has failed to perform international obligations arising from the ICESCR.
13. Further to #6 it is submitted that Talmon is distinguishable and can be disapplied because the claimant in that case had put restrictions on his availability for work which are, in any circumstances, fanciful. Employment is not “suitable” if its terms and conditions derogate from the ICESCR, in particular Article 7.
14. In so far as the public interest is opposable to any of the rights asserted in this submission, it was held in de Freitas v Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Lands and Housing [1999] 1 AC 69, 80, the Privy Council, drawing on South African, Canadian and Zimbabwean authority, defined the questions generally to be asked in deciding whether a measure is proportionate: “whether: (i) the legislative objective is sufficiently important to justify limiting a fundamental right; (ii) the measures designed to meet the legislative objective are rationally connected to it; and (iii) the means used to impair the right or freedom are no more than is necessary to accomplish the objective.”
By a recent modification of the “De Freitas” principle, public authorities must strike a fair balance between the rights of the individual and the interests of the community, taking care to assess the severity and consequences of a measure. (Huang v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] UKHL 11 at [19]).
The unemployed face losing benefits if they refuse jobs or won’t do unpaid community work.
By Tom Devine
Four leading commentators offer their reactions, beginning with a reminder that we’ve been here before.
The operation was led by the grandiosely titled Central Board of Management for Highland Relief, which consisted mainly of businessmen, lawyers and accountants drawn from Edinburgh and Glasgow. They were determined to exact a price from the Gaels in return for meals. The provision of relief-free aid was an anathema and allowing dependence on charity, even given the dire circumstances of the people, was a moral outrage.
Instead it was an unshakeable principle that work had to be given in return for the distribution of the meagre doles deemed just sufficient to prevent starvation. A visitor to the Highlands in 1847 would have witnessed innumerable gangs of men, women and children digging ditches, building roads and constructing piers, many of which either lay uncompleted or were never put to any practical use. Today, crumbling piers and “destitution roads” of the famine period can be found scattered throughout the region: physical symbols not only of the hungry 1840s but also of the attempt to impose an alien ideology on a population weakened by food shortage and the gathering pace of clearance and destitution.
Worse, however, was still to come. As the crisis dragged on year after year, influential voices on the Central Board began to blame the people themselves for the continuing destitution. They had brought the famine upon themselves, it was argued, through their own innate indolence and lack of work ethic. Therefore the recovery of the Highlands could only depend in the final analysis on the moral reformation of the Gael. If self-help and a commitment to labour did not exist they would have to be taught by those responsible for the administration of support.
Thus was imposed the destitution test, a whole day’s work in return for one pound of meal. The theory was that only those who were actually facing starvation would be willing to accept relief on such terms. As one leading official put it, “the pound of meal and the task of at least eight hours hard work is the best regime for their moral disease”.
An elaborate bureaucracy of inspectors, relief officers and overseers was set up to enforce the test. Most of them were retired naval officers well-experienced in the imposition of stringent discipline. In their correspondence these men were fond of quoting from the Bible such aphorisms as “in the sweat of thy face shalt though eat bread”, while another favourite line was from St Paul: “If any would not work, neither should he eat.”
Providing the meal allowance to the poor only once a fortnight rather than on a daily basis was designed to develop habits of prudence and saving among them. The labour books which recorded in great detail hours of work done also included comments on the perceived moral weaknesses of those in receipt of the dole. At the same time, several newspapers in the southern cities launched a series of vitriolic racist attacks on the Gaels who had for too long been dependent on the charitable generosity of industrious Lowlanders. Now, they were receiving their just deserts through the imposition of a harsh regime which would remove their moral failings once and for all.
It was an extraordinary outcome. One of the greatest philanthropic schemes in Scottish history had been subverted by a small group of ideologues who believed the Highlanders were poor through their own fault and not because of any environmental or economic constraints affecting the region where they lived.
Nor had any they any comprehension of the work cycles of a subsistence-based peasant society, so profoundly different from those of the world of industrial capitalism, or of the inherited skills needed to survive in such an inhospitable land. Predictably, this deeply flawed experiment in social engineering soon came to naught. Gaeldom did recover but only when the potato crop improved and prices for cattle and fish started to rise again. The customs and traditions of the people proved to be more resilient than the policies of those who possessed the power to interfere in their lives.
Are there any parallels between some of the Government’s welfare reforms and this dark episode in Scottish history? Readers will decide for themselves.
Professor Tom Devine is Scotland’s leading historian and author of numerous books including Scotland And The Union: 1707 To 2007
By Bob Holman
In 2002, Iain Duncan Smith, then leader of the Conservative Party, visited Easterhouse. People at our project, Family Action in Rogerfield & Easterhouse, were willing to show him what life was like at the hard end. He was amazed at the depth of poverty and impressed by the efforts of unemployed residents to improve local life. He wrote later: “I came away a changed man.”
His sincerity was shown when, on losing the leadership, he formed the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). “It must not be a distant think tank,” he stated. “It will have staff who are practically involved with poor people.”
This former Thatcherite changed to become an untypical Tory. The CSJ gave awards to locally-run community groups in deprived areas and I served as one of the judges. It also had a committee to investigate asylum seekers, and its radical proposals included one which stated that all should have access to legal advice and be allowed to work. In 2005, Iain Duncan Smith drew attention to the maldistribution of assets and, when a study found that the gap between rich and poor was widening, he declared that this was frightening.
Today, Iain Duncan Smith is Minister for Work and Pensions. The Coalition Government has made it more difficult for asylum seekers to get legal aid. It has lowered housing benefit with the deliberate intent of pushing those on low incomes into inferior accommodation. IDS has gone along with these policies. He has also failed to keep his promise for legislation to ensure grants for small voluntary groups.
Now he is launching the Universal Credit. To be sure, it will make the complex welfare system more straightforward and he has pushed through his proposal that, when the unemployed move into a low-paid job, they can retain some benefits for a period. These are real achievements.
But there are two areas which seem contrary to his previous position. First, unemployed people who refuse job offers are to be compelled to do unpaid tasks like sweeping the streets and could eventually lose benefits for up to three years. This is at odds with the Iain Duncan Smith who previously showed respect for the unemployed. Children in people’s families would face abject poverty of the kind which horrified him in 2002.
Second, he no longer criticises inequality. Benefit cuts will make the poor poorer. Meanwhile, no effective action is taken against the huge tax evasion and avoidance of the rich. At the last Tory conference, VIPs were given a dinner at £400 per head with champagne costing £1500 a bottle. There were no protests from Iain Duncan Smith.
I still believe Iain Duncan Smith is a good man. But there are two Iain Duncan Smiths. There is the one who mixed regularly with people at the hard end, listened to them and gave priority to their interests.
There is the other one who certainly promotes welfare reform but also identifies closely with the very politicians he once called the governing elite.
The danger is that the Iain Duncan Smith who I have known for eight years may now be overcome by the class-ridden practices of Cameron and Osborne. I hope not and wish him well.
Bob Holman is the author of Keir Hardie: Labour’s Greatest Hero? (Lion Hudson, £10.99)
By Claire Fox
In the furore about the Government’s plans for job-seekers to undertake a month of community work, it’s become clear that too many of my peers on the left regard welfarism as a sacred cow that brooks no challenge. I am sceptical of the details of Iain Duncan Smith’s reforms: compelling the jobless to do “voluntary work”, instead of offering real jobs, is barmy. But surely all of us should welcome any shake-up of the debilitating grip of welfare dependency.
The idea that encouraging the long-term unemployed to get back to work is a malevolent right-wing plot shows how far welfarism has redefined what it means to be unemployed. Unemployment -- as a political phenomenon -- used to be about demanding decent jobs for all (remember those “right to work” marchers). How sad that today it’s considered radical to do no more than defend the right to long-term benefits. This fatalistically accepts unemployment as a natural state of affairs, a version of “the poor will always be with us”.
Where once unemployment was understood as a temporary interlude during which the “safety net” of state assistance was useful while you looked for a new job, it has become a long-term state of being: not because people have become lazy, but as a consequence of exactly the sort of pernicious welfarism we should oppose.
Take the way incapacity benefit incites individuals to declare themselves as unfit to work. The exponential rise since the 1980s of those classified by the state as incapacitated (although it’s inconceivable that so many millions have become so gravely ill) has helped institutionalise joblessness as an individual terminal problem rather than a social phenomenon.
Having to constantly prove yourself as incapable saps morale and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It has also framed the assumption that being unemployed is interchangeable with being vulnerable. Even the new “workfare” scheme is posited as about increasing claimants’ self-esteem, as though joblessness were a psychological weakness.
It is telling that anyone who criticises the welfare status quo is dubbed anti-poor and accused of scapegoating the weak. Welfarism views benefit claimants as pathetic objects of pity, unable to cope without official support. Defenders of the status quo portray the unemployed as a special untouchable caste, less capable of taking control of their own destiny than the rest of us.
If you fell on hard times, sleeping on your mate’s sofa, borrowing money from friends and relatives, your sense of pride would lead you to urgently seek a job, any job, to start paying back debts and get your own place, however difficult the challenge. If you sank into a depressive state of inertia, those who respected you would intervene, shake you out of it, even give you an ultimatum, and you would know it was for the best.
If instead your nearest and dearest simply indulged you in a state of semi-permanent dependence on their sofa, you would know they thought you were a hopeless case and be either insulted or demoralised at their lack of faith in your potential. It is for this reason that historically, working-class people would often do anything to avoid becoming a “doley”, viewing state hand-outs as demeaning, at best a necessary evil. It’s this spirit of independence and self-reliance we need more of, not more welfare.
Claire Fox is director of the Institute of Ideas
By John Christie
St Luke’s Gospel records that Jesus went to the synagogue in Nazareth, and read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah: “God’s Spirit is on me: he’s chosen me to preach the message of good news to the poor.”
How are we to square Jesus’s words with what is proposed regarding benefits in return for work? The benefits system was born from a sense of justice which has a clear basis in Christian teaching, recognising that we all have a duty of care for the wellbeing of those who are living in poverty. There is a burden of care laid upon us to care for the weakest in our societies.
Punitive measures targeted at poor people are not the answer to economic problems. Dependency is not a sin that requires sanctions to overcome it. Rather interdependency is a fact of life, for us all; we depend on each other, rich or poor. Perpetuating the myth that only those in receipt of benefits are dependent -- and using that as the basis for policy -- is divisive and undermines the social cohesion which the Government seeks to foster. Indeed it is the experience of the Church that many people on benefits are already performing a considerable service of care to others in our communities -- a service for which they deserve our gratitude, not our condemnation.
Recognising that compassionate care is a virtue, how are we to express this at a time when the country faces hard decisions? How do we reconcile the aim of employment with the simple reality that for many there are no jobs available? A key matter is ensuring people maintain their dignity. This means that any new arrangement in the welfare system must not create a false distinction between the “haves” and the “have-nots”.
If, as a society, we demand something in return for welfare benefits then we are putting a price on both compassion and grace. Here, I think, we have the crux of the issue. How can we ensure that people have enough on the one hand while on the other we encourage those who are unemployed and able to seek work to do so, assuming that jobs are available?
There will be little argument that one of the key goals in benefit reform must be to make it easier for people to move from unemployment to paid work. To have any realistic chance of achieving this the Government should concentrate on training, job creation and support for new enterprises, including start-up assistance for small, businesses.
It is important to invest in projects that encourage and enable people to find work -- education, training, apprenticeships and so on. The Church of Scotland is exploring the potential for micro-credits to kick-start enterprise in poor communities. Micro-credits are small loans to help people who would normally find it hard to borrow to be able to develop a business. They avoid the need for loan sharks and create a mutual relationship between lender and the borrower, thereby building bridges between the affluent and the poor.
Such innovative start-up assistance would represent not only good news for those people currently struggling against poverty, but good news for us all.
Right Rev John Christie is Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
