Ipswich Unemployed Action.

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Archive for the ‘Conservative Party’ Category

Boris Johnson Plans to Tackle Food Poverty.

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Image result for Boris johnson sin tax

Benefit Poverty to be Solved by Cheap Sugary Drinks.

Benefits have not risen – and have stayed at a declining pittance – for so long that barely a living soul can recall when you could buy a pints of Wallop, a twist of shag, and a mid-day plateful of liver and onions with your dole with enough over for a fish supper.

But while not talking about Universal Credit, or benefits, or unemployment, during his leadership contest Boris Johnson has our feeding and drinking interests at heart.

Tory leadership: Boris Johnson promises review of ‘unhealthy food taxes’

Boris Johnson has said he wants to examine whether levies on foods high in salt, fat and sugar are effective, and has vowed not to introduce any new ones until the review is complete.

The “sugar tax” on drinks came into force in April 2018, and a wider levy on all unhealthy foods is being considered to help tackle obesity.

Mr Johnson says he is concerned they unfairly target the less well-off.

Many a cynic will suggest that his plans include a special Brexit US chlorinated chicken, dunkin’ donuts, and cactus cooler diet as the base for DWP calculation on the food claimants’ need to eat (in the old days they produced a calculation on such things as part of ‘what you need to live on’).

Back in the world of tears we hear today.

Since Universal Credit came in the food bank has been packed: My Wigan Pier Story

Mirror.

As part of our Road to Wigan Pier project, eight decades after the publication of George Orwell’s essay, Coventry Food Bank project manager Hugh McNeill, explains how visitor numbers have soared since the introduction of Universal Credit.

And, also today:

And

 

Not to mention this:

 

Amber is active as well!

 

Written by Andrew Coates

July 3, 2019 at 4:21 pm

Posted in Amber Rudd, Conservative Party, DWP, Tories, Universal Jobmatch, Welfare Reform, Welfare State

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DWP Sending Universal Credit into Meltdown.

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Image result for universal credit DWP campaign binned

DWP has Money for this….

Didn’t she do well?

Anybody with a sighting of any surviving Tory leadership figure talking about Universal Credit, from Johnson to Hunt, or one of their minions, please write in comments.

So far not a dicky bird….

Yet it continues to make it into the media.

This is a good article.

The DWP’s muddled maths is sending universal credit deeper into meltdown

The Independent.

By the estimable May Bulman Social Affairs Correspondent

It may come as a surprise, then, that nine years on, the government’s spending watchdog has revealed that fraud and error in the welfare bill are at their highest levels since 2006 – with much of the rise down to the introduction of universal credit.

To go into the numbers, the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed on Thursday that benefit claimants and pensioners lost out on £2bn that they were entitled last year to because officials short-changed them. Another £1.1bn was wrongly handed out to claimants because they failed to give the right details about their income – through the complex online portal system – on time.

What appears on the surface like a fairly bland report, filled with numbers and percentages, sheds light on the scale of devastation being inflicted on people across the country. Families are being denied the support they rely on to live on because of careless errors. People are finding their monthly allowance fluctuating from a liveable amount to near to nothing, with no prior notice, as the government tries to claw previous overpayments back.

And the real stories are out there. Last month, a seriously ill father-of-two told me he was living “hand to mouth” because the DWP was withdrawing more than £90 from his allowance each month – half of which was deducted for previous debts and historic overpayments.

…

A  key feature of the sweeping reform was that payments would taper off as the recipient moved into work, not suddenly stop, thus avoiding a “cliff edge” that was said to “trap” people in unemployment. If jumping from £312 one month to £5.32 the next isn’t a cliff edge, I don’t know what is.

Also at play here is the DWP’s often arbitrarily punitive sanctions regime, which penalises benefit claimants who miss job centre appointments – with often little consideration of the many variables in people’s lives. Charities have told of cases where parents have had hundreds docked after having to miss meetings with job coaches due to childcare issues.

If universal credit was designed to help people manage their own finances and make the benefits system simpler, why are we are seeing vulnerable individuals and families being swung from pillar to post, more at the mercy of the state than ever?

More on the finances:

Record fraud and errors in DWP payments

Dominic Brady Public Finances.

28th of June.

Fraud and errors related to payments made by the Department for Work and Pensions have reached record highs and are set to grow due to universal credit.

Meanwhile….

Written by Andrew Coates

June 28, 2019 at 3:34 pm

Posted in Amber Rudd, Conservative Party, Food Banks, Fraud, Tories, Universal Credit, Welfare Reform

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UN Report on Poverty in Britain: Welfare to Workhouses.

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Image result for alston report poverty Jaywick

Special UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty Philip Alston in Jaywick, Essex.

A couple of days ago I heard a group of lads talking about Universal Credit.

They’d all got caught up in its clutches and they had many a merry tale to tell.

It does not take imagination to see that poverty, they mentioned the waits for money, the on-line gibberish, and Coachy.

The DWP, our Newshawks say, always responds with stout denial to any criticism.

This must have stung sharper than a serpent’s tooth..

The report begins,

The social safety net has been badly damaged by drastic cuts to local authorities’ budgets, which have eliminated many social services, reduced policing services, closed libraries in record numbers, shrunk community and youth centres and sold off public spaces and buildings. The bottom line is that much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos. A booming economy, high employment and a budget surplus have not reversed austerity, a policy pursued more as an ideological than an economic agenda.

The Guardian covered the story as following:

UN report compares Tory welfare policies to creation of workhouses

A leading United Nations poverty expert has compared Conservative welfare policies to the creation of 19th-century workhouses and warned that unless austerity is ended, the UK’s poorest people face lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

Ministers in denial about impact of austerity since 2010, says poverty expert

The far-right Mail publishes the bleats and denials of the DWP and Amber Rudd.

Amber Rudd is to lodge a formal complaint over UN’s ‘barely believable’ poverty report accusing Britain of violating human rights obligations by creating ‘Dickensian’ conditions for the poor

  • UN report claims Britain is returning to ‘Dickensian’ conditions, where citizens lives are, quoting Hobbes, ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’
  • But government points out that UN research published just two months ago ranked Britain as the 15th happiest country to live in
  • DWP says Rapporteur paints ‘completely inaccurate picture’ after his whistle-stop two-week human rights fact-finding visit last November

Poverty in the UK is ‘systematic’ and ‘tragic’, says UN special rapporteur

The UK’s social safety net has been “deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos”, a report commissioned by the UN has said.

Special rapporteur on extreme poverty Philip Alston said “ideological” cuts to public services since 2010 have led to “tragic consequences”.

The report comes after Prof Alston visited UK towns and cities and made preliminary findings last November.

The government said his final report was “barely believable”.

The £95bn spent on welfare and the maintenance of the state pension showed the government took tackling poverty “extremely seriously”, a spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said.

Prof Alston is an independent expert in human rights law and was appointed to the unpaid role by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2014. He spent nearly two weeks travelling in Britain and Northern Ireland and received more than 300 written submissions for his report.

He went on to observe

Some observers might conclude that the DWP had been tasked with “designing a digital and sanitised version of the 19th Century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens”, he said.

The report cites independent experts saying that 14 million people in the UK – a fifth of the population – live in poverty, according to a new measure that takes into account costs such as housing and childcare.

In 2017, 1.5 million people experienced destitution, meaning they had less than £10 a day after housing costs, or they had to go without at least two essentials such as shelter, food, heat, light, clothing or toiletries during a one-month period.

Despite official denials, Prof Alston said he had heard accounts of people choosing between heating their homes or eating, children turning up to school with empty stomachs, increased homelessness and food bank use, and “story after story” of people who had considered or attempted suicide.

Now I’ve got a bit of respect for Human Rights. One of the greatest British radicals, Tom Paine, wrote the Rights of Man (1791), which was a founding book for our labour movement and left. My dad said they were still reading it in Glasgow in the 1930s.

Comrade Paine wrote this,

In the closing chapters of Rights of Man, Paine addresses the condition of the poor and outlines a detailed social welfare proposal predicated upon the redirection of government expenditure. From the onset, Paine asserts all citizens have an inherent claim to welfare. Paine declares welfare is not charity, but an irrevocable right.

One of the great founders of modern socialism, the Frenchman Jean Jaurès, (1859 – 1914)., did not just stand up for welfare, he defended social and human rights. Jaurès campaigned for the innocence of Dreyfus against the anti-Semites of his day. He mixed together workers’ and welfare right with socialism. He was murdered in 1914 by one of national populists of the Farrage ilk for opposing the start of the First World War.

When I read people disrespecting Professor Alston I think they are insulting our glorious forebears.

Apart from that, the present social security system, Universal Credit and all, stinks to high heaven.

This is the Report’s conclusion:

The philosophy underpinning the British welfare system has changed radically since 2010. The initial rationales for reform were to reduce overall expenditures and to promote employment as the principal “cure” for poverty.

But when large-scale poverty persisted despite a booming economy and very high levels of employment, the Government chose not to adjust course. Instead, it doubled down on a parallel agenda to reduce benefits by every means available, including constant reductions in benefit levels, ever-more-demanding conditions, harsher penalties, depersonalization, stigmatization, and virtually eliminating the option of using the legal system to vindicate rights.

The basic message, delivered in the language of managerial efficiency and automation, is that almost any alternative will be more tolerable than seeking to obtain government benefits.

This is a very far cry from any notion of a social contract, Beveridge model or otherwise, let alone of social human rights. As Thomas Hobbes observed long ago, such an approach condemns the least well off to lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. As the British social contract slowly evaporates, Hobbes’ prediction risks becoming the new reality.

 

Written by Andrew Coates

May 23, 2019 at 10:45 am

Posted in Amber Rudd, Conservative Party, Cuts, DWP, Food Banks, Sanctions, Tories, Unemployment, Universal Jobmatch, Welfare Reform, Welfare State

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Job Centres to Open in the Evening and on Saturday.

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Job Centre Opening Hours to Expand in line with “banks and GP surgeries”. 

This has been of concern for many people who do not live near a job centre.

What It’s Like To Lose Your Local Job Centre

Between 2016 and 2018, more than 100 job centres – about 15% of the network – were closed for good.

Huffington Post (2019)

Why are Britain’s jobcentres disappearing? The Conversation.

Britain’s national network of jobcentres is currently undergoing radical change as the government implements multiple welfare reforms and cuts as part of its continued austerity drive. Between 2016 and 2018, over 100 jobcentres – about 15 per cent of the network – will have closed.

Support for the long-term unemployed and disabled jobseekers has also been cut. A new Work and Health Programme will assist less than a quarter of the participants of the programmes it replaced. Across the country, hundreds of specialist organisations working with jobseekers have lost contracts, and thousands of experienced employment advisers have lost their jobs.

Anybody who lives in places like Suffolk, outside the towns like Ipswich, knows the struggle it is to use public transport to get anywhere, let alone to attend a meeting with Coachy in the Job Centre at the constantly changing times of appointments to sign on.

Yet things are taken a new turn.

A few days ago the far-right Daily Mail published this story, which their friend Amber Rudd publicised,

Job centres to stay open later into the evenings and at the weekend to help older workers change careers

  • Amber Rudd wants to help employees search for new job or get retraining tips
  • Work and Pensions Secretary said change would bring centres into line with banks and GP surgeries
  • Miss Rudd said new opening hours would help people better themselves in work

By JOHN STEVENS FOR THE DAILY MAIL

Job centres will stay open in the evenings and at weekends to help older workers change career. Amber Rudd said she wanted to make it easier for employees to search for a new job or get advice on how to retrain

‘However it’s not just important to get people into work, it’s vital we help people get even better work earning even more money,’ she said.

‘So opening up job centres in the evening and on Saturday will help people who are busy working, by making our services more available at convenient times.

‘Because the job centre is not just a place for benefits.’

Job centres in seven areas – Chester, Dudley, Oldham, Poplar, Todmorden, Wick and York – will open in the evening and on Saturdays as part of a trial before ministers decide on whether to extend the system to all 600 across the country.

‘Work coaches’ will also offer advice to clients outside regular working hours.

Miss Rudd said the new opening hours would help people better themselves in work, access higher pay and protect themselves from technological changes, such as automation.

‘I want everyone, no matter their background, to progress in the workplace and outperform their and society’s, expectations,’ she said.

‘From stay-at-home parents, particularly women, to older workers wanting a new career, offering more job centre availability could make a massive difference, and I’ll be watching this trial closely.’

‘As the Prime Minister said in Parliament this week, this is a Government which raises people up.

The Work and Pensions Secretary said the shake-up would bring job centres into line with the banks and GP surgeries that have extended their hours of operation.

Rudd got some stick on her Tweet:

 And from here:

It sounds to many people like an extension of surveillance.

Imagine if you live in one of those areas, without trains or the tube, where the old Job Centre is closed and you have to rely on public transport to get you somewhere in the evening on Saturday when there are even fewer buses.

Written by Andrew Coates

May 21, 2019 at 10:45 am

Posted in Conservative Party, Universal Credit, Welfare Reform, Welfare State

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Fourth Anniversary of the Benefit Freeze Plunges More and More People into Deep Poverty.

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Image result for benefits freeze

George Osborne Introduced Benefit Freeze (2015 Budget).

The 2015 Budget introduced a four-year freeze on most working-age benefits and tax credits. This meant that in 2016 and onwards their value remained as it had been in 2015 rather than rising with inflation.

Everybody knows the Benefits Freeze its biting.

On this issue the Government is not split between those who’d like to make Britain a US-style free-market economy, allied with Trump, and with a minimal post-Brexit Welfare state, and those who want to a decent standard of living for all, including those on benefits.

The free-market chancers in the Hard Brexit camp may be the worst in the long term, but each side at the moment is keep the disaster that is Universal Credit, and the linked Benefit Freeze going.

Just how mad and detached from reality they are can be seen from – potential leadership candidate, and present DWP Minister Amber Rudd’s recent tweet:

It’s good to know that the Currant Bun has gone back to the Tory fold, and has dropped its grating efforts to be the Universal Credit claimants best mate.

Perhaps they’ll run this “story”,

Cheery old Woolfy!

The cockles of your heart warmed you can turn to this:

Families likely to be ‘pulled into poverty’ by benefits freeze continuing for another year

The freeze – introduced in 2016 by the then chancellor George Osborne – entered into its fourth year on Monday.

Florence Snead continues in todays ‘I’

More families are likely to be “pulled into poverty” because of the benefits freeze continuing for another year, it has been claimed.

The decision to continue with the cap on working-age benefits and tax credits is “unjustifiable” and will leave families living in poverty on average £560 worse off over the next year, according to a charity.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) said this was equivalent to three months of food shopping for an average low-income family.

In the midst of huge political and economic uncertainty, families who have already seen their support eroded know that the coming year will be hard to get through,” said the JRF chief executive, Campbell Robb.

“It’s not right that more parents will face impossible situations – trying to decide which essential bills to pay and what they can cut back on to make it through each week.

“Keeping benefits and tax credits frozen is unjustifiable: 4.1 million children are locked in poverty, nearly three-quarters of whom are in a working household.”

The organisation said ending the freeze would help working families to stay afloat.

“As the Government approaches its spending review, it needs to look at how best to protect people from harm who are otherwise left without an anchor in uncertain times,” Mr Robb added.

The JRF was among nine charities which wrote to the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, in February urging him to end the freeze this year.

It said continuing the freeze until April 2020 would result in 200,000 more people being locked into poverty.

Nigel Grey MP MP wrote on Monday on Politics Home:

Today marks the beginning of the fourth year of the benefit freeze. Like many of the UK government’s failures – the Windrush Scandal, the shambolic implementation and rollout of Universal Credit, the appalling neglect child refugees – if Brexit wasn’t happening, the disastrous impact of the benefit freeze would be plastered across the front-pages on an almost daily basis.

The benefit freeze was introduced by the Welfare Reform and Work Act in 2016, and freezes most working-age benefits at the same value as in 2015/16. In practice, what this means is that while Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 6.5% since the freeze was brought in, the benefits that many working-age people rely on have not increased at all.

This Tory government has implemented a massive real-terms cut to people’s income, and it’s having a catastrophic impact on people’s lives. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have said the benefit freeze will have affected more than 27 million people across the UK and will have pushed 400,000 people into poverty by 2020.

On top of this, with Brexit pushing up inflation, the benefit freeze will cut another £4.4 billion this year – nearly a billion more than intended out of the pockets of those least able to bear it.

Moral outrage

The freeze includes benefits for children, as well as support for disabled people looking for work. Targeting austerity at disadvantaged children and disabled people is nothing short of a moral outrage and this Tory government should hang their heads in shame.

Theresa May and her government have taken almost no action to boost support for people who rely on social security. In one year, the benefit freeze cut will more than wipe out the total investment in the Work Allowance boost up to 2022 that was announced in the 2018 Budget.

Advance payments of Universal Credit which are meant to help people during the five week wait are, in fact, just loans that have to be paid back to DWP. And the two-child cap on Child Tax Credit is taking thousands away from families with more than two children.

A tragedy and a farce

Moreover, the revolving office-door of the Secretary of State for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) is both a tragedy and a farce. The idea that the Department chiefly responsible for the wellbeing of poor, elderly and vulnerable people is being used as a platform from which Tory MPs can hop, skip or jump depending on which way the political wind blows is indicative of the contempt the UK government has for the disadvantaged and the marginalised.

The benefit freeze represents one of the biggest cuts to social security we have seen in recent times, yet Labour didn’t even bother to mention it in their last manifesto and the current DWP Secretary has shown nothing but apathy towards evidence of its terrible impact.

The cuts imposed by the UK government have and will further entrench poverty across the UK.

This is a political choice, not a necessity. One of the quickest ways this Government could put money back into people’s pockets would be to lift the freeze immediately and up-rate benefits with inflation.

 

Neil Gray is SNP MP for Airdrie and Shotts and the SNP Work and Pensions spokesperson.

Written by Andrew Coates

April 9, 2019 at 3:38 pm

Posted in Amber Rudd, Conservative Party, Cuts, DWP, Housing Benefit, Unemployment, Universal Credit, Welfare State

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The Moral Diseconomy of Universal Credit.

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Image result for moral economy of the crowd

How the Crowd Reacted to Injustice in the Past.

It is possible to detect in almost every eighteenth-century crowd action some legitimising notion. By the notion of legitimation I mean that the men and women in the crowd were informed by the belief that they were defending traditional rights or customs; and, in general, that they were supported by the wider consensus of the community. On occasion this popular consensus was endorsed by some measure of licence afforded by the authorities. More commonly, the consensus was so strong that it overrode motives of fear or deference.”

Libcom: The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century – E. P. Thompson

Last night I listed to this on the wireless (with a mug of Co-Op 99 Tea…): Polling Badly. Archive on 4.

“Bad policy or badly implemented? Sarah Smith explores what went wrong with the Poll Tax. Have lessons been learned or is Universal Credit a repeat of history?”

The first thing that struck me about the Poll Tax was that the “Community Charge” was so disliked, without going into the obvious details, what that is went against the “consensus” that by right the poor did not get taxed as much as the rich. The better off (who make their money from the rest) should pay their whack out of their accumulated dosh. The Duke and Dustman having to fork out the same cash to pay for local services ran up against everything that people traditionally thought.

The programme then went into the way the Poll Tax was implemented.

A lot simpler than Universal Credit (UC) you may say.

One mob, the Tory lot, thought it a grand idea, since who cared about the poor – not them! – and it would all mean less expense for their well off crowd.

That was not the view of local authorities who saw their revenues crash as people either (1) could not or (2) would not pay up. (3) Disappeared from the electoral register so they would not even get a payment demand.

As E.P.Thompson might have said, the “crowd”, that is, everybody affected badly, got so angry that people rioted against it.

When they got to UC the focus was all about the implementation, the principle, putting benefits all together, was apparently, fine.

They didn’t go into much detail but it was obvious, bleeding obvious, that a system based ‘on-line’ would first of all run into problems (1) The private chancers who designed the computer systems are not bright enough to design a way to make this work properly, and (2) Not everybody is ‘on line’, able to use computers, get access to them, and all the rest. (3) Putting Coachy in charge of the ‘journal’ you are meant to fill in, as a religious duty…..

Next comes the detail, the way that waiting for weeks before you get money, sanctions, and the way that rent cash in hand can easily be spent immediately on other things.

Then there is the thorny issue of “in work” benefits with “conditionality”. That means people having to prove they are looking for better wages, for more hours, and the famous ‘job search’.

We could continue, and our contributors have.

Poll Tax Defeat.

The Poll Tax, they said on Polling Badly, was defeated because everybody was concerned.

And non-payment cut its roots out.

Not everyone is snarled up in Universal Credit.

But a hell of a lot of us are.

We cannot refuse to get paid!

But there’s a crowd of us all the same.

Universal Credit goes against the “Moral economy” principle that people unable to work should be entitled to a decent minimum to survive on, and those in work who need benefits should get them without being spied on, made to fulfill demeaning job search requirements, and not getting the money they need to live on.

This does not look like the end of the misery.

But Lo!

The “independent liberal conservative think tank”, “the modernising wing of the Tory party”,  Bright Blue has the answers……

Universal Credit proposal for ‘helping hand’ payout to end nightmare wait for cash (Birmingham Live).

Thinktank also suggests launch of Universal Credit phone app and live chat option

Among the problems associated with the Government’s new Universal Credit system are the nightmare five-week wait for the first payment and the online access that’s required.

These issues could be resolved if a series of new proposals are adopted, says thinktank and pressure group Bright Blue.

More  from the same ThinkTank: (TeesideLive)

DWP should pay compensation for late Universal Credit payments, report recommends

A think-tank has identified a number of issues, which could have helped hundreds of thousands of people

“A majority of claimants are coping with and adapting to Universal Credit.

“There are positive experiences with work coaches. And there are positive attitudes too: especially towards the single payment model and the use of conditionality.

“However, as it has gone from idea to implementation, the initial widespread support Universal Credit enjoyed has dissipated.

“Despite welcome improvements made by the  Government in recent years, there are too many examples and too much evidence of significant hardship experienced by a sizable minority of those on Universal Credit.”

Here is the report:

Helping hand? Improving Universal Credit

Ryan Shorthouse, Sam Lampier and Anvar Sarygulov

Happily, the Government has demonstrated that it will make changes to UC, based on the evidence, as it is extended to more claimants in the years ahead. The 2018 Budget, for instance, increased the amount available in the existing two work allowances and decreased the maximum rate of reductions for advance payments. The new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP, has also made changes by not extending the two-child limit on UC for children born before March 2017, launching a system where landlords can be paid directly, and starting ‘managed migration’ with a smaller pilot to monitor the rollout. More potential reforms to UC are also being examined, especially in relation to childcare costs and the single household payment.249

Here are their recommendations:
  • all new claimants of UC should receive a one-off upfront ‘helping hand’ payment. (Is this extra money as such? the detail is the devil here.)
  • claimant commitments should be rewritten to include obligations of individuals and institutions that support UC claimants. If these obligations
    are not met, the Independent Case Examiners should determine whether compensation to claimants is paid in their next UC award. (Note, yet more complications….)
  • Introduce a new mobile phone app for people to access their UC online account (see comment above on people who do not have these devices and cannot use them).
  • Enable claimants, through their online accounts, to grant continuous explicit consent for their advocates and to opt-out and personalise the default frequency and destination of their future UC awards (WTF!!!!)
  • Introduce a live chat facility in the online UC account for claimants with queries and problems. (We all love chatting to Coachy..)
  • Cap the number of UC claimants all work coaches can be assigned…. (Pious wish)
  • Ensure there is a full-time disability and mental health specialist employment adviser in every Jobcentre Plus. (More Advisers butter no parsnips)
  • Introduce a disregard for the repayment of UC overpayments where DWP is responsible for the error (Welcome).
  • An ongoing out-of-work claimant,or claimant that still need to find further work, should be awarded a supplement on their future UC awards if they are consistently meeting the most demanding conditions around job seeking and preparation set by their work coach (Rewards for good girls and boys).
  • Enter all claimants who are consistently meeting the most demanding conditions around job seeking 275. Centre for Analysis of Social
    and preparation set by their work coach into a new biannual UC prize, where a handful of claimants win £1,000 (You are having a bleeding larf!)
  • Extend the 12-month exemption from the Minimum Income Floor (MIF) for self-employed UC claimants, so a further separate 12 months of exemption can be claimed at any point in their lifetime while an individual is on UC, after approval from a claimant’s work coach. (More devils hopping around the details, read the full text, it’s conditional….)

Nothing about ending the Benefit Freeze, getting rid of the sanctions regime, and the surveillance by Coachy.

Probably the only serious major point is the idea of restoring payment directly to landlords (in the initial summary), which they claim is underway.

As for their actual ideas…

Lots of bells and whistles says Ipswich Unemployed Action.

Written by Andrew Coates

March 17, 2019 at 11:25 am

Posted in Amber Rudd, Conservative Party, DWP, Sanctions, Universal Credit, Welfare Reform, Welfare State

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Government Rejects Benefit Sanctions Inquiry report call to change “inhuman” Sanctions Regime.

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Image result for benefit sanctions uk

 

Our contributors could have already have said the following: “Benefit sanctions found to be ineffective and damaging. Study concludes that punishing claimants triggers profoundly negative outcomes”. (Guardian May 2018)

In fact some people who write here  are in dire straits because of this regime.

But the Government is still turning its face against facts’

Today:

Margaret Greenwood MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, responding to the Work and Pensions Select Committee’s publication of the government’s response to its benefit sanctions inquiry, said:

“The government appears to be in complete denial about the impact of its sanctions regime on people’s lives. It is damaging people’s health and well-being and leaving many at risk of destitution.

“There is no evidence that sanctions lead to people finding work that lasts and lifts them out of poverty. This government is so extreme that it has rejected reducing the length of sanctions and is even prepared to consider making them longer.

“The real way to help people into work is through an industrial strategy to deliver jobs and growth and employment support tailored to each person’s needs. Labour will end this government’s cruel and counter-productive sanctions regime.”

11 February 2019 Work and Pensions Committee.

No respite for “victims of a sanctions regime that is at times so counter-productive it just seems pointlessly cruel” in Government’s response

The Committee is today publishing the Government’s response to its report on benefit sanctions. While the Government has finally agreed to evaluate one aspect of the impact of its reforms to conditionality and sanctions – the “only major welfare reform this decade to have never been evaluated”  – it is looking only at their effectiveness in getting people into work. While this is clearly key, as it is the supposed objective of the policy, the Government is still not even considering the impact of sanctions on claimants’ financial and personal wellbeing. The widely reported detrimental impact of sanctions on claimants’ welfare formed the basis of the Committee’s report, when the Chair noted “We have heard stories of terrible and unnecessary hardship from people who’ve been sanctioned. They were left bewildered and driven to despair at becoming, often with their children, the victims of a sanctions regime that is at times so counter-productive it just seems pointlessly cruel”.

Negative impact of sanctions worked against people getting into work

Even confined to the question of impact on employment, the Committee found that the negative impact of sanctions actually worked against people getting into work, to the extent that the Government’s approach appeared “arbitrarily punitive”. No evidence the Committee received was “more compelling than that against the imposition of conditionality and sanctions on people with a disability or health condition. It does not work. Worse, it is harmful and counterproductive.”

The Committee’s inquiry highlighted the distressing stories of claimants like Jen Fidai, a young disabled woman forced to sofa-surf and sleep in the Uni library for a year, and ultimately give up her studies, after she was sanctioned  – erroneously, as it turned out. It is these impacts on claimants’ lives, and the countless others which the Committee’s report and ongoing shocking news reports only scratch the surface of, which the Government is refusing to assess.

Forceful recommendation by Committee rejected

The Government rejected the recommendation that claimants already found to have limited capability for work should be exempt from sanctions, and also rejected the recommendation that claimants who are waiting for a Work Capability Assessment  – the medical assessments for disability benefits PIP and ESa which the Committee has previously denounced as “riddled with errors and omissions”, and also subject to lengthy delays  – should be exempt from sanctions if they had a “Fit Note” from a doctor saying they were unable to work. Government says it is looking into the possibility of a general policy that conditionality shouldn’t apply to those assessed as having limited work capability and people waiting for a WCA – although this decision would be in the hands of Work Coaches, ignoring the Committee’s wider concern that leaving too much to Work Coaches’ discretion in terms of sanctions more widely risked leading to inconsistent practice. The Government also rejected the recommendation to define “good reason” for failing to meet a requirement that led to a sanction – currently left to work coach discretion, leading to inconsistent practice – in legislation.

The Committee’s forceful recommendation – in the face of distressing evidence of the impact of sanctions on lone parents and their children – never to dock more than 20% of a lone parent’s benefit, was rejected, with the Government promising only to assess the employment impact of sanctions on this group as well. The Committee has reported elsewhere on the particular, deep difficulties lone parents are encountering under the major welfare reforms of the decade, including in its report on support for childcare costs under Universal Credit

Once again, the Government’s position on a key recommendation – that claimants is no longer subject to the requirement, the condition, that led to the sanction should also have the ongoing sanction lifted: the Government rejected this recommendation – is difficult to square with the supposed objective of the policy.  If sanctions are about incentivising, for example, looking for work, it is difficult to see the point of continuing to punish someone for not making sufficient efforts to find work when they are no longer in fact required to find work.

Chair’s Comment

Commenting on the response, Committee Chair Rt Hon Frank Field said:

“Our report laid bare the inhumanity of the Government’s sanctions regime, which it has pursued for years without ever stopping to check whether it works or what it is doing to the people it is meant to “support”.

In response, the Government has failed utterly to grasp the seriousness of the matter. It talks about reviews and “proof of concept”: it might want to take a look at the concept of not pushing disabled people and single parents—not to mention their children—into grinding poverty and hardship.”

Tories SNUB pleas to rein in ‘pointlessly cruel’ benefit sanctions

The Mirror.

New limits to the punishments were proposed in a damning report last year. But now DWP chiefs have rejected the plan – triggering a furious response.

Ministers have snubbed a series of recommendations designed to ease the burden of benefit sanctions on vulnerable claimants, it is revealed today.

A damning report from the Commons Work and Pensions Committee branded the system “pointlessly cruel” in November.

MPs warned the human cost of the sanctions regime was “simply too high” and called for new protections for single parents and people with disabilities and health conditions.

Committee chairman Frank Field today accuses ministers of “failing utterly to grasp the seriousness of the matter” after recommendations were rejected by Amber Rudd’s Department for Work and Pensions.

Under the current system, sanctions can be imposed for missing appointments or failure to show efforts to find work,.

Claimants face being stripped of up to 100% of their Jobseekers Allowance or Universal Credit standard allowance.

In some “higher level” cases – such as a failure to take up paid work – claimants can lose benefits for as long as three years.

The committee recommended that the maximum period for such sanctions should be limited to two months for the first failure to comply and four and six months for subsequent breaches.

But the DWP rejected the plan, along with recommendations to ensure lone parents with children aged under five are never subjected to the withdrawal of more than 20% of their welfare payments; limit sanctions on care-leavers below the age of 25 to 20% of their benefits; remove the threat of sanctions from claimants deemed to have “limited capability for work” and those with valid sickness notes from their doctors; and remove sanctions if a change in circumstances means the claimant is no longer subject to the requirement that led to benefits being withheld in the first place.

Written by Andrew Coates

February 11, 2019 at 11:31 am

Posted in Conservative Party, DWP, Food Banks, Sanctions, Universal Credit

Tagged with , ,

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