“In search of the scrounger” Plus ca change…

A couple of days ago I got the book ‘In search of the scrounger’ by Alan Deacon out of the library and thought I would share a few of the paragraphs from the Introduction and Conclusions chapters. The book covers the inter-ward period and, more specificially, the 1920′s. Despite the near 100 year difference, the concerns of politicians and administrators in relation to social security sound all too familiar to current discussions around Jobcentre Plus targets, sanctions, tightened  conditionality and, of course, ‘scroungers’. All emphases are mine

“Throughout the 1920s discussion of unemployment insurance in Britain became increasingly dominated by the question of abuse. In particular, there developed a bitter controversy over the administration of a series of regulations which were collectively known as the genuinely seeking work test … Between March 1921 and March 1930 nearly three million claims for benefit were refused because the claimant had failed to meet this condition. By 1927, one claim in ten was being disallowed on the grounds that the claimant was not genuinely seeking work, and in some areas the proportion was over one third. At no time in these years did any prominent politician or government official seriously suggest that the work they were supposed to be genuinely seeking actually existed.” (p1)

” … the focus of attention must primarily be upon those who were directly responsible for the formulation of policy in this area: the Ministers and senior officials of the relevant government departments. It was they who demanded that the unemployed repeatedly demonstrate their willingness to work in a period of mass unemployment, and it is their perceptions which have to be understood and their decisions which have to be explained. Those explanations, of course, must be sought in terms of their wider economic and political aims, and the role which they perceived that the test could play in the realisation of those objectives.” (p1)

“Any assessment of the seeking work test must begin by acknowledging that its abolition in March 1930 did enable some claimants to draw benefit even though they were not looking for work at the time of their claim. It is argued, however, that such abuse was largely confined to married women and that even amongst this group the extent of the practice was considerably exaggerated by contemporaries. Certainly, there was no need to impose the test on all groups of claimants, and the campaign to ‘tighten-up’ the administration between 1925 and 1929 was totally unnecessary. The question remains, however, whether that campaign was the result of folly, malice, or both.” (p87)

“In short, the test was a sledgehammer to crack a relatiely small – and often exaggerated – nut. The use of this sledgehammer, moreover, had profound consequences for the administration of benefit, and affords a classic illustration of the impact of departmental pressure upon the ways in which local officers utilise their discretionary powers.” (p88)

“In the case of the test, the Ministry of Labour left its officers in no doubt as to what was expected of them. Their task was to detect and penalise malingering, and the accomplishment of this purpose was to override all other considerations. Olive Stevenson has recently observed that the “very existence” of powers to restrict the supplementary benefits paid to unemployed men or separated wives “tends to arouse suspicion in the minds of officers or to suggest to them that higher authority wants them to be suspicious”. In the 1920s that suspicion was deliberately fostered, and by the end of the decade the staffs of the Echanges were obsessed with the aspectre of abuse.” (pp88-89)

“(A report by John Hilton) found the interviewing officers convinced of their ability to spot a scounger – ‘a groundless and dnagerous faith’ – and often neglecting their duty to help claimants secure work. This, he believed, was a direct result of the pressures put upon them from above.” (p89)

“The seeking work test was as pernicious as it was unnecessary. It led to hundreds of thousands of unemployed men and women being arbitrarily deprived of benefits which they desperately needed, and forced many more to make repeated journeys in search of jobs they knew did not exist.” (p89)

“If the seeking work test was not prompted by malice, it was ‘tightened-up’ with a callous disregard of the hardships and injustices which resulted.” (p91)

We have previously blogged about the increase in ‘in-work conditionality’ here and the role of the DWP in arousing suspicion of benefit fraud with their ‘Benefit thieves’ campaign here

Best wishes,

Steve

“Erring on the side of kindness…”

Yesterday, along with Sara Bryson from Children North East, I presented at a FUSE / ASO conference on school meals, inequality and obesity. The event was called ‘Could I have some more please, sir?’ and the focus of our presentation, which can be found by clicking the image below, was on the administration of Free School Meals (FSM) within the school environment.

The main part of the presentation focused on Sara’s work with children and young people, staff and parents from four schools in the North East as part of the ‘poverty proofing the school day’ project they are currently carrying out, with support from the North East Child Poverty Commission. This work has highlighted how children are generally very easily able to identify who receives FSM as a result of the way in which they are administered: some schools administer cash-less systems but when these break down, children receiving FSM are identified by being given a different coloured ticket to their friends who pay for their meals; some schools still collect dinner money with register at the start of the week (those receiving FSM stay in their seats while those that pay give their money to the teacher); and some schools have separate tills for FSM pupils despite having cash-less systems.

The presentation focused on the stigmatizing effect that this has on the children. These are, after all, the children of ‘scroungers’ or ‘shirkers’, the children whose parents are probably still in bed by the time school starts, still ‘sleeping off a life on benefits’. Children in receipt of FSM are easily identifiable as a result of a stigmatizing, discriminatory and divisive national policy which is often implemented in a stigmatizing, discriminatory and divisive fashion at the school level. Sara’s findings highlight the role of street-level bureaucrats as the ‘ultimate policy makers’. The work with children, involving them in the design and the carrying out of the research, has also highlighted how children are able to negotiate and resist nutritional standards in schools through the provision of alternatives, with a thriving ‘black market’ in ‘non-permitted items’ a consistent feature in secondary schools.

What is unsurprising is that this stigma is nothing new. Other presenters highlighted that the provision of FSM to certain sections of the school population pre-dates the turn of the last century and one of the slides we used in the presentation contained a quote from a study carried out by John Veit-Wilson in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1971:

‘There is no doubt that this stigma is both ascribed by widespread public values and experienced by recipients. It is bad enough to have to admit that one cannot feed one’s own children by one’s own labour – but that indignity can be kept within the family. It is worse to have to apply for public assistance in feeding them – but that indignity could perhaps be kept a secret between the family and the Local Education Authority. However, the greatest indignity is when one’s children are publicly displayed in the classroom or dining room as the children of a financial incompetent – one who cannot even earn enough to pay for their food’

And stigmatisation within public programmes has consequences. Professor Mike Miller, writing in the introduction to a book on Richard Titmuss writes:

‘Stigma threatens the person stimgatized, the programme, and the society which condones stigmatization. The stigmatized person experiences the fact of being separated from the rest of society, of being treated as someone different, marginalized, as less than others, as not worthy of the everyday exchanges and transactions that make up the community. This experience often produces a ‘spoiled identity’, a self-image which is damaged and diminished, impeding the autonomous actions of the individual.’

He goes on to argue that ‘programmes aimed at stigmatized people tend to be of low quality’ and that funding is often inadequate. We know this to be the case for FSM as many children who are living in poverty (including some who, by the DWP’s own estimates, are in the ‘deepest’ poverty) are prevented from receiving FSM as a result of the criteria which largely excludes children who have a working parent in the household. Miller argues that, in cases such as this, ‘Inhumanity becomes a social policy because it keeps the costs down.’ (p16) One might think, as Titmuss himself argued, that ‘the primary purpose of the system and the method of discrimination was, therefore deterrence (it was also an effective rationing device)’ (p153).

We ended the presentation by suggesting that the best way of addressing this situation was by providing Universal Free School Meals and Universal Breakfast Clubs. Campaigns such as the current Children’s Society ‘Fair and Square’  which aim to extend FSM to all children living in poverty run the risk of simply giving all poor children the opportunity to be singled out and stigmatized at school. Universal Free School Meal pilot projects, started by the last government, in Durham and Cornwall (with an extended FSM programme running in Newham) have suggested that the provision resulted in an increase in uptake of school meals across the board. Evidence from the qualitative case studies indicated that ‘this may be because universal provision decreases the stigma attached to taking free school meals’ (p11). There was also an increase in attainment across the board, with the largest increases being seen by children who would were previously eligible for FSM. The Impact report for the pilot project suggested that, as attendance at the schools had not been affected, ‘the increases in attainment evident in the universal pilot areas must arise as a result of improvements in productivity whilst at school’ (p9) which highlights the crucial role of food in ensuring that children are ready and able to learn.

Titmuss argued that there could be ’no answer to the problems of poverty, ethic integration, and social and educational inequalities without an infrastructure of universalist services. These are the essential foundations’ (p139) Of course, universal FSM provision would also benefit the ‘hard working families’ that the government is fond of talking about and it may also help the ‘welfare system’, which currently divides, become more binding, something which David Cameron has (sort of) expressed concern about in recent days. Universal services may also be the most efficient and cost-effective way of targeting services at those most in need. In a book entitled ‘Not Only the Poor: The Middle Classes and the Welfare State’, Goodin & Le Grand make the point that:

‘If our concern is primarily with reducing poverty and making sure everyone achieves certain minimum standards, then targeting might simply not be worth the cost. From that perspective, there would be nothing fundamentally wrong with ‘erring on the side of kindness’ and paying benefits to some people who do not strictly need them, if that is the least cost way of guaranteeing that they reach everyone who does need them.’ (pp217-218)

The philosophy of welfare : selected writings of Richard M. Titmuss, London: Allen & Unwin

Goodin, R.E. & LeGrand, J. (1987) Not Only the Poor: The Middle Classes and The Welfare State, London: Unwin Hyman

Those of you on Twitter can see some of the audience comments by searching for clicking here or searching, on Twitter, for #schoolfoodchat

We will provide a link to the FUSE website were all of the presentations can be found once they are uploaded.

We’ll also provide a link to the digital story that one of the young people involved in the project produced, exploring the entreprenurial side of food of schools.

“The first line of defence…..”

“Local government (is) in essence the first line of defence thrown up by the community against our common enemies – poverty, sickness, ignorance, isolation, mental derangement and social maladjustment”

I sometimes use the above quote from Winifred Holtby in presentations to local authorities. One local authority director appreciated the quote but stated that, at the present time, it felt like they were fighting with one arm tied behind their back. He obviously wasn’t feeling the ‘freedoms’ that central government have promised to local authorities in the name of localism and de-centralisation.

Last week, we saw evidence of what this ‘first line of defence’ could look like in the region when the Leader of Darlington Borough Council, Bill Dixon, declared that there would be no evictions in Darlington as a result of the bedroom tax’ and he warned that the tax – or spare room subsidy – was ‘in danger of destroying families’. Other local authorities across the country, including Islington and Brighton and Hove have made similar commitments and a campaign group called No Bedroom Tax NE are calling for other local authorities in the region to make similar pledges.

This may appear to be a political (or moral?) position but one could also mount a fairly strong case for adopting this position on financial grounds as well. Evicting people for arrears, especially families, is rarely a progressive or helpful stage in their lives, it isn’t cheap and it can be a fairly lengthy process, with few benefits for anyone. If the tenants evicted are made homeless, the local authority still has certain responsibilities and (re)housing people in temporary accommodation is a lot more expensive each week than the cost of an unpaid ‘spare room subsidy’. Pledging not to evict people because of arrears relating to the ‘bedroom tax’ could even be construed as an ‘efficiency saving’…..

 

 

“People where I live want to work….”

A couple of weeks ago we highlighted the discussions that had taken place in the House of Lords concerning the benefits up-rating bill and the strength of feeling around it. Yesterday, in discussions about the Jobseekers (Back to work schemes) Bill – more commonly understood as being about the ‘Poundland case’ - it was the turn of the MPs. The discussion based around the government’s proposal to introduce emergency legislation which would mean that they would not have to re-pay £130,000,000 that had been withheld  from people whose benefits had been sanctioned illegally.

Two of the strongest interventions came from MPs from the North East – Ian Lavery of Wansbeck and Grahame Morris from Easington. Below are some of the comments that they made in opposing the bill, which went against the wishes and official position of the Labour leadership. Politicians often get a hard time in our country at the present time and are often accused of being ‘out of touch’ with what is happening in ‘real life’. The comments below suggest that this might well be an unfair accusation in some cases. I appreciate that I could be accused of regional – or indeed political – bias in highlighting these contributions to the debate. I fully accept the regional bias charge and would also remind readers that the official Labour position was to abstain from the bill. (For info, 6 North East MPs voted against the bill – the two below, Ian Mearns, Dave Anderson, Mary Glindon & Nick Brown, three voted for the Bill – Guy Opperman, James Wharton and Ian Swales – but I couldn’t find contributions form them. The rest didn’t vote, from what I can gather). However, in order to redress the potential political bias somewhat, I have given the final word to Iain Duncan Smith, and have emphasised some of his comments  as they may be of particular interest….

Ian Lavery

The Bill is being introduced to save the taxpayer up to £130 million, yet it deprives the most vulnerable people who have been on workfare and are looking to better themselves in employment. It has been introduced to deny £130 million compensation to 300,000 people who would like decent employment with decent wages, terms and conditions. The Government have introduced emergency legislation to prevent those people from getting only what the Court of Appeal says they deserve. That is an absolute outrage.

I am certain that the 300,000 people the Court says have a claim because of the illegal actions of the Minister’s Department should receive it—there is no doubt about it. The Bill is being introduced by the DWP and the Government to deprive many hard-working people, and many people who want to be hard-working, of any finance whatever. Is that in the best interests of the economy? It is an absolute disgrace. Those people will spend money in the economy. They might get £50, £100 or £72 a week, but they will spend it, because it is the only money they have. The Minister should not seek to deprive those people and leave them with no finances whatever.

The Bill turns my stomach. The impact assessment states: “A retrospective transfer of public money to this group of claimants would represent poor value to the taxpayer”.

What a disgrace to say such a thing in Government documents with reference to the people I have mentioned 10, 15 or 20 times previously. That will not give them self-esteem. They are doing their very best.

Members of Parliament discuss with constituents, and often people away from the constituency, the merits and otherwise of policies. I often meet people with a very different view from the people the hon. Gentleman has met. That is not to say that that has not been said, but the people I meet want decent jobs. They want the opportunity to get up in the morning and  go to work for a decent wage. They would accept the minimum wage even though, at this point in time, it is not high enough. Where I live, 25 people are after every single job in the jobcentre. That means that 24 are not getting employment for every single opportunity. People want to work for the best intentions and the right reasons. They want self-esteem and finances. People where I live want to work—I am sure that extends throughout the country.

Saying that paying claimants the money that the Court says they should be paid—the result of the ruling means that the £130 million can be paid—does not represent good value for the taxpayer is an absolute disgrace. It is not the type of language we would expect from any Government. It is not right to talk about people as, “This group of claimants.” They are ordinary people with feelings, and many of them want to get on in life.

The impact assessment states: “If the Department cannot make these retrospective changes, then further reductions in benefits might be required in order to find the money to repay the sanctions.”

That is blackmail of the highest order—I make no apology for the strength of my feeling on that. If people are due finances, they should get them, particularly following a court ruling, but the Government are saying, “If we pay these people, we might have to cut benefits for other people as a result because that is where we have to find the money.” That is emotional blackmail. It is totally and utterly bang out of order. They are trying to set people who are looking for work and on benefits against each other. That is absolutely unacceptable.

Some 300,000 people will be denied their legal rights if the Bill is passed. This is just another ideological attack on the unemployed and the less well-off, despite a High Court judgment. Why does the Minister not just accept the court of law? Give these people what they are entitled to. It is the Minister’s mess. Why should they suffer?

Grahame Morris

Members on both sides of the House by saying that, if the funds are not recovered from those who were incorrectly sanctioned, they will have to be recovered from elsewhere in the welfare budget. That is outrageous blackmail; I am sorry if that is not parliamentary language, but I find that deeply offensive. It goes against every grain of fairness in Members on both sides of the House. The view I am expressing is the view that has been unanimously expressed to me. I have received numerous e-mails and messages from my constituents over the past 48 hours, all of them asking me to vote against this Bill as it is unfair and unjust.

The Government, and especially Government Back Benchers, have characterised jobseekers who have been sanctioned as workshy and feckless—the sentiment expressed was “Are you really suggesting these people shouldn’t be sanctioned?” Let us have a look at the Work programme, however. It has gone from chaos to farce. We talk about “workshy”, but what about wage-shy employers who exploit the unemployed, with the connivance, approval and funding of the Government?

I oppose the concept of two nations, as does my party, but what will the consequences of these measures be? The Government are creating two nations. They are seeking to penalise and punish the poor for the mistakes of the rich and powerful, in part of a continuing series of policies that are badged as “austerity”. Those policies are pushing the poorest in society further into poverty.

We need to look at the situation we are in now. This is the wrong thing to do: it is unjust and unfair to give millionaires a £2,000 a week tax cut, at the same time as the right hon. Gentleman’s Government propose to deprive some of the poorest people, who have been illegally sanctioned, of large chunks of their income. It is outrageous, and it is rank hypocrisy for anyone to talk about rights with the emphasis on responsibility when it comes to workfare. If they are willing to undermine the judiciary and the rule of law, and vote for retrospective legislation to cover up the mistakes and failings of the Minister, who is asking that we legislate to place him above the law, that is a dangerous precedent to establish.

I cannot, in all conscience, support this desperate Bill, put forward by a desperate Government who have broken their own laws and now wish to forgo their legal obligations and withhold social security payments of £130 million to some of the poorest people in the country. Why do we not apply that method across the board? If the national emergency is such that it is right to deny access to social security to those who are entitled to it in order to safeguard the national economy, why do we not chase the tax exiles—those powerful individuals who own newspapers and luxury hotels, who pay no corporation tax and who have laid siege to a small Channel Island?

We are in the sorry situation of the Minister blackmailing hon. Members by threatening a collective punishment for all those in receipt of social security and welfare benefits if these changes do not go through, because the Department might have to find the money through further reductions elsewhere in its budget. I thought that it was the Secretary of State for Education and his advisers who were the bullies. It is now obvious that the Department for Work and Pensions has decided to sink to those standards by threatening Members of the House in this way, which is below what we would expect of a responsible Government and a responsible Minister.

 I did not come into Parliament to penalise and punish the vulnerable and the poor for the mistakes of the Government. The Department for Work and Pensions seems to be in a state of chaos. It is trying to save money by issuing unlawful sanctions for a Work programme that is not fit for purpose. It is making arbitrary cuts to disability living allowance and employment and support allowance, and is seeking to reduce the case load by 20%. Through the bedroom tax, it is cutting the incomes of disabled people and families with children. The welfare state under this coalition Government in 2013 is failing at every turn.

What we are seeing today is an abuse of power. This is an appalling Bill. I urge the Minister to take responsibility for his actions, even at this late stage, to put a stop to the Bill and to pay those who were unlawfully sanctioned because of his failings. I will vote against the Bill and I urge other hon. Members to do the same.

Iain Duncan Smith

I am listening carefully to what my right hon. Friend has to say. As the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), has made clear and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will make clear, all of these things are kept constantly under review. We want to improve them and that is what jobcentre staff do. They are brilliant at that, by the way, and they get better and better. My point on mandatory work activity is that it is not just work experience. It is also about changing culture: finding out whether someone is working and not declaring it; and getting people used to the idea of getting out of bed in the morning and attending somewhere where they do what they have been asked to do, because they have so got out of the habit of doing that, that even attending an interview has become a problem for them. This is not just about training; it is about getting people culturally back in line so that they can then be dealt with by advisers.

Universal Credit – computer says no?

There has been some uncertainty surrounding the development of the IT system to support Universal Credit last week and over the weekend. The Guardian reported that the system was ‘in meltdown’ and Computer Weekly reported that Stephen Timm, Labour MP for East Ham was adamant that ‘IT contractors have been told to stop work’ on the project, although this has been denied, in part, by Mark Hoban, Minister for Work and Pensions.

Another blog suggested that Hilary Reynolds had been replaced as ‘Universal Credit Programme Director’ after only 3 months in the job and following her revelation ‘that the technology for Universal Credit will not be ready in April, and that the roll-out from October will be much slower than previously expected’. Her letter to local authority chief executives from 3 December 2012 can be found here and a recent Guardian article suggested that local authorities should ‘prepare for the unexpected’.

All of this should be suprising given that DWP spokespeople and David Cameron have both suggested in recent times that ‘Universal Credit is on time and on budget’ in recent months. Perhaps this is the biggest welfare myth of our time….

***Update 13/03/2013 – Paul Spicker posted another interesting piece of news about the Universal Credit pilot on his blog and identified an interesting solution that the government may have come up with***

We’ve been framed….

It has been suggested that we need to ‘re-frame the debate’ around child poverty and I came across an interesting article a couple of weeks ago in Evidence & Policy by Frank Mols called ‘What makes a frame persuasive? Lessons from social identity theory’. In the article, Mols argues that ‘politicians and other influential leaders appeal to our social identity by emphasising common in-group membership (‘us’)’ and that they ‘harness social identity by exagerrating intra-group homogeneity and intergroup differences’. Mols goes on to suggest that:

such exaggerations have the potential to shape public perceptions, especially if there are prejudices about the group being targeted, and it is in this way that leaders can create a public opinion wave, and subsequently surf the wave they themselves created. (my emphasis)

I thought about this article when I read a couple of commentsmade by David Cameron on the Andrew Marr show yesterday and when I heard George Osborne’s speech today at the Conservative conference. The comments are below.

Cameron – “We have to find these spending reductions and if we want to avoid cuts in things like hospitals and schools, services that we all rely on, we have to look at things like the welfare budget,”

Osborne – “Where is the fairness, we ask, for the shift-worker, leaving home in the dark hours of the early morning, who looks up at the closed blinds of their next door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits?”

“We modern Conservatives represent all those who aspire, all who work, save and hope, all who feel a responsibility to put in, not just take out.”

“How can we justify a system where people in work have to consider the full financial costs of having another child, whilst those who are out of work don’t?”

Cameron thus manages to cleverly frame the welfare budget as very separate from health and education and something that not all of us rely on. People who rely on the welfare state are thus ‘othered’ and portrayed as being different from the rest of ‘us’, the ‘non-poor’. This frame is achieved by talking about universal benefits for pensioners as though they are something completely separate from the rest of the welfare state.

Osborne manages to frame benefits as generous and a lifestyle choice of those who ‘just take out’, carefully closing off the truth that many working families rely on benefits and tax credits to make ends meet. The next door neighbour ‘sleeping off a life on benefits’ and the carefree, promiscuous out of work families who have children ‘knowing’ the state is there to write a blank cheque for them (prejudices perhaps?) are contrasted with ‘us’, ‘those who aspire, work, save and hope.’ The potential to move between the two categories of ‘employed’ and ‘unemployed’ doesn’t appear to be an option, with both categories being ‘framed’ as static and absolute.

Returning to Mols, he suggests that a ‘frame is expected to be strong when it (a) successfully evokes an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ categorisation’, (b) explicitly portrays the issue as a choice for or against ‘our values’, and (c) implicitly portrays those who disagree as hostile to their own group.

Still, it’s reassuring to know that the government do use ‘evidence’ of some sort when designing their policies, especially, as Professor Alex Stevens has suggested, if it fits with the story already being told

Regards,

Steve

Understanding welfare differently

Last week, Paul Spicker gave a presentation at Newcastle University Business School, offering an alternative view of the role of welfare and the ‘need’ for some of the reforms that are currently taking place. I’m not going to try and summarize Paul’s presentation, mainly because I wouldn’t do it justice but suffice to say that he showed, using DWP data, that the suggestion that welfare somehow trapped people or led to long term ‘benefit dependency’ was unsupported by any evidence.

Paul began his presentation by highlighting that his work was very unfashionable and that people had largely stopped working on the issue of ‘social security’. One of the things I’d like to highlight here, is just why Paul’s work and those of others like him (Declan Gaffney, for example) is so important and I’ll try and do this by offering up a couple of other useful resources which help to counter the dominant narrative about the unaffordability of our benefits system and the abuse of it by individuals and families who receive benefits. Firstly, Paul’s blog deserves a plug and you can sign up for it here.

Before I do this, however, an example of the ‘dominant narrative’ was waiting for me when I returned to work in the afternoon - the Centre for Social Justice had sent an email newsletter which opened with the following statement:

Universal Credit – designed by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) – will rejuvenate Britain’s ruptured welfare system and give millions of people the tools to escape poverty

Paul pointed out during his presentation that Universal Credit actually manages to include almost every single recent failure in the benefits system, including: requirements to work for those who can’t; medical reassessment; penalties not linked to knowledge; and complex assessments with multiple dimensions. So this would suggest that UC might not do everything that the CSJ are proposing it will.

John Veit-Wilson who also attended the session forwarded me a couple of articles in the Scotsman following Iain Duncan Smith’s visit to Glasgow to speak at a conference. One noted that:

Iain Duncan Smith … is a decent man, or so people say, who is on a crusade to reform the benefits system. Unfortunately, he is also presiding over the biggest assault on the poorest people in living memory and causing untold misery to families the length and breadth of the country. While the Work and Pensions Secretary and his aides talk about scroungers and cheats, huge cuts to the living standards of people already on the edge are being masqueraded as reform

The other link was to the letters page of the Scotsman and it included a letter from Adrian Sinfield which included the following comment:

The coalition government needs to tackle the regressive unfairness of the overall tax system where the poorest fifth contributes more of its income than the richest fifth – 38.2 per cent as opposed to 33.6 per cent, according to the government’s own 
figures.

This linked to one of John’s comments at the event about the need to remember that there are two welfare states – one for the rich and one for the poor. Kevin Farnsworth from the University of Sheffield has also identified a third form of welfare – corporate welfare and he estimates that British corporations save more in tax breaks and loopholes than they actually pay in tax. Kevin notes that

Just as social welfare protects citizens from the cradle to the grave, corporate welfare protects and benefits corporations throughout their life course. And
yet, in most countries, corporate welfare is hidden and underresearched.

Finally, a couple of pieces of further reading, if anyone is interested:

• False Economy, the campaigning group launched a briefing note highlighting ’5 things you need to know about welfare cuts and the economy’, which is, in my opinion, a very useful resource.
• One thing Paul didn’t touch on in his presentation was the level at which benefits are set and there have been three very interesting blogs on this recently – one by Chris Goulden from JRF looking at the heardening of attitdues towards ‘benefits scroungers’, one by Ben Baumberg on the Inequalities blog looking at whether or not people overestimate the level of benefits and one by Donald Hirsch, also on the JRF site, on the proposals to uprate benefits in line with earnings rather than prices – a situation he refers to as ‘Heads I win, tails you lose’
• And, the evening before Paul’s event, I read an article by Jay Wiggan called ‘Telling stories of 21st century welfare: The UK Coalition government and the neo-liberal discourse of worklessness and dependency’ which explores the language used in the both the Green and White papers linked to the current welfare reforms. Very interesting reading indeed…..

Best wishes,

Steve

Lacking the necessaries of life…..

A couple of weeks ago Jeremy Cripps, the Chief Executive of Children North East wrote a powerful blog about how funding cuts passed from central government to the local authority and then to his charity meant that they were unable to afford to provide a meal for some children in temporary accommodation over the summer holidays that they work with. Jeremy wrote:

here we have a Government without the humanity to care for very vulnerable people until they are deported by giving them even a minimal amount of money to feed their children; a local authority providing shelter for those families but forced to cut back on its spending by the Government; passing that cut on to a  charity which too has to economise; the buck passes to the charity’s staff who cannot stand by and do nothing while in daily contact with children in basic  need of food; so they take it upon themselves to make sure children do not go hungry. This is the reality of the so-called ‘Big Society’ in ‘austerity  Britain’.

This story was picked up by the Guardian Cuts Blog which ran it under the headline ‘who pays for lunch when the state does a runner?’ and another similar story was posted earlier today

Earlier this year, as part of a blogging day during Volunteers Week, Carrie Brookes of VONNE asked readers to ‘imagine if we all stopped volunteering tomorrow’, noting that the value of unpaid care in the UK had been calculated at around £87bn. She finished her blog thus:

The fact is that much of the work undertaken by volunteers and charities saves the state a huge amount of money.  Prevention of problems such as poor health, teenage pregnancies, helping people get back into the workplace, support for homeless people, advice and guidance, drug rehabilitation, they all save the state an awful lot of money.  A lot more than the £87bn mentioned above. We cannot afford to deal with the consequences to society if that support for volunteers and activity they support is stopped. (my emphasis)

The last line of Carrie’s blog provides a flip side to a couple of polemic paragraphs from one of my favourite books, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Robert Tressell, writing in the early 1900′s suggested it would be better if we all did stop volunteering tomorrow in a section which touches on a number of issues relevant to the situation above:

Meanwhile, in spite of this and kindred (charitable) organisations, the condition of the under-paid poverty stricken and unemployed workers remained the same. Although the people who got the grocery and coal orders, the ‘Nourishment’, and the cast-off clothes and boots, were glad to have them, yet these things did far more harm than good. They humiliated, degraded and pauperized those who received them, and the existence of the societies prevented the problem being grappled with in a sane and practical manner. The people lacked the necessaries of life: necessaries of life are produced by work: these people were willing to work, but were prevented from doing so by the idiotic system of society which these ‘charitable’ people are determined to do their best to perpetuate.

If the people who expect to be praised and glorified for being charitable were never to give another farthing it would be far better for the industrious poor, because then the community as a whole would be compelled to deal with the absurd and unnecessary state of affairs that exists today – millions of people living and dying in wretchedness and poverty in an age when science and machinery have made it possible to produce such an abundance of everything that everyone might enjoy plenty and comfort. If it were not for all this so called charity the starving unemployed men all over the country would demand to be allowed to work and produce the things they are perishing for want of, instead of being – as they are now – content to wear their masters’ cast-off clothing and to eat the crumbs that fall from his table’ (my emphases)

It is, of course, very obvious that the state can afford to provide funding for these families. Central government can also afford not to cut funding to local authorities. Local authorities can also afford not to cut their grant to charities by 10%. The fact is they choose not to do these things, choosing instead to spend money on other things or choosing not to increase the amount of money at their disposal, leaving Jeremy and his staff with little choice but to dip into their own pockets. John Veit-Wilson, in his ‘Horses for Discourses’ paper makes this point better than anyone:

Ensuring that all the members of society, residents in or citizens of a nation state, have enough money is a clear role which governments can adopt or reject, but they cannot deny they have the ultimate power over net income distribution.

I don’t necessarily agree with Tressell’s proposal or his representation of charitable organisations (which were very different when he was writing), but I do agree with his analysis of the system of society. How can we call ourselves civilized when we deliberately and knowingly let families live without, as Tressell puts it, ‘the necessaries of life’ when the world has never been richer? At what point will we stop and realise that we have accumulated enough ‘stuff’ and wealth’ and sit down and work out how to divide it up better?

Thoughts, as ever, are welcome……

Steve

ps – in the interest of full disclosure, I’m running the Great North Run this year and am raising money for Children North East. Feel free to donate here

Surviving or Thriving case study: Gateshead Community Network

Guest post by Amanda Hannen (VONNE)

Gateshead Community Network (GCN) supports local people to have a voice in the planning, delivery and decision making of all services for the public. It is open to all residents of Gateshead and to voluntary and community sector groups who want to have an influence on the decisions that affect them and their communities.

Following a 20% cut in funding from Gateshead Council, Gateshead Community Network is restricted in its ability to deliver the Junior Network, which engages children and young people in decision making.

In the past, the Junior Network has worked with primary schools throughout Gateshead, running conferences around themes linked to Gateshead Strategic Partnership’s Vision 2030 – The Sustainable Community Strategy for Gateshead. Through these conferences and events, young people get to learn about what the council and its partners are doing and to feed in their views. Mark Shilcock, a Community Development Officer at the Gateshead Community Network, said:

“One of our previous conferences focused on democracy. We held a ‘Question Time’ style debate where councillors addressed questions posed by the young people. Afterwards, the councillors said it was the hardest question and answer session they’d ever had!”

In the past, the Junior Network has influenced policy to reflect the needs of children and young people in Gateshead.

“We surveyed 5-11 year olds in primary schools on internet access. Within 7 days we received over 700 responses back.  These were used by the Local Authority in their Young People’s Plan.  Because we’ve got the connections and the regular contact with the schools it’s something we can do quickly and effectively.  Without a fully-functioning Junior Network, this will be much more difficult to achieve.”

The added value of the Junior Network is that the teachers who attend the conferences with the young people also gain from sharing experiences and knowledge with colleagues in other part so the borough.

Whilst Gateshead Community Network are exploring ways of providing a limited Junior Network over the coming months, they believe that further funding is needed to provide full opportunities for the young people to participate and to provide meaningful engagement in decision making locally.

Amanda Hannen

VONNE

CPAG Guest post: The death of the social fund?

Guest post by Rys Farthing

One of the many welfare reforms currently underway is the localisation of the social fund. Currently administered by the DWP, the discretionary elements of the social fund are being devolved to local authorities, who will each need to develop and implement their own localised replacement schemes by April 2013.

 However, the funding made available to each local authority to develop a localised replacement scheme represents a significant reduction in the funding that was previously provided to households in each region. Based on a sample of 12 Local Authorities who shared the details of their settlement with CPAG, the average reduction in funding for the social fund replacement schemes in 2013/14 compared to the funding for the nationally administered Social Fund in 2011/12 is 13.9%, rising to 15.6% in 2014/15.(1) However there was significant variation across regions, with some regions indicative settlements being 5.8% lower in 2011/12 than 2013/14, spanning up to a massive 20.4% lower.

The percentage reduction in “social fund scheme” spends between 2011/12 and 2013/14 and 2014/15 across 11 different Local Authorities.

These reductions continue a recent trend in reducing support available for the social fund. Reforms introduced in 2011 meant that Crisis Loans were no longer available for items such as beds and cookers (exceptions were allowable for disasters such as after a flood); the rate of living expenses was reduced from 75% to 60%, and a cap of three loans per year was introduced. These were significant changes in themselves and already represent a reduction in the support that was available to households for many years previous. If you compared the reductions indicated in the settlement letters with the amount of help available in each region in 2010/11 (before this first round of reforms were introduced), the localisation of the scheme represents an even more significant cut. For example in one local authority, comparing the indicative settlement for 2013/14 with the actual 2010/11 spend highlighted a 41.6% reduction (2). The social fund was already under pressure before its localisation.

 While Local Authorities received around 20% on top for administration (which simply reflected the costs of administering the scheme at a national level), many authorities CPAG spoke to were worried that this amount, combined with start up grants as low as £4,000, would not adequately cover the costs of developing and implementing an entirely new scheme by April 2013. Some felt that they would need to dip into programme funding during the first year to cover these costs – further increasing pressure on the funding available to develop a localised scheme.

 On top of these pressures on the scheme, settlements to authorities are not ring-fenced. At a time when councils are feeling the strain of overall budget cuts and attempting to localise council tax benefit cuts fairly, pressure on any localised scheme is going to be intense. So intense that many authorities we spoke to are worried that even referring to their schemes as “social fund replacement schemes” will set claimants expectations too high. One of the core messages authorities wanted to send to central government was to stop saying the social fund was localising and to start saying it was being abolished to help them manage expectations. As one local authority officer recently said to us, ‘The social fund is not being localised, the social fund is dead’.

 CPAG is opposed to the government’s plans to abolish the social fund and leave councils to fill the gap with fewer funds. The death of the social fund is risking the wellbeing of children and families and could potentially leave them with nowhere to go to meet exceptional needs, for example when they have no cooker to feed their children or bed for them to sleep in. Ministers will need to be ready to intervene in the eventuality that local authorities are unable to meet the need.

Rys Farthing

Senior Policy Officer, CPAG 

CPAG has produced two reports about the social fund:

How the social fund can be delivered at a local level in London and the Localisation of the social fund – and note for and from practitioners (England)

(1). Calculated by comparing the indicative settlement figures provided to Local Authorities by DWP to data about Social Fund spends in regions for April-Sept 2011/12 which have been doubled out, to estimate a full year spend. OBR CPI predictions used to keep calculations real to 2011/12 value.

(2). Compared to a 13.6% reduction between 2011/12 and 2013/14 in the same Local Authority.