Archive for the ‘Welfare State’ Category
Legacy Benefits Case Continues in Court.
Case Continues.
Were it not for some of our eagle-eyed contributors this case would be ignored even on this site.
It is an injustice, not just for disabled people but for those on ” Income-based Jobseekers Allowance, Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Housing Benefit, Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit.”
Those claimants did not get the uplift when people on Universal Credit got the extra £20 a week.
There was an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons, (February 2021)
That this House recognises the financial effect that the covid-19 outbreak has had on disabled people; further recognises that research from the Disability Benefits Consortium found that over six in 10 disabled people in the survey had gone without essentials such as food, heating or medication since the pandemic began; is concerned that no uplift was provided to people on legacy benefits such as employment and support allowance, jobseeker’s allowance and income support; calls on the Government to implement a £20 uplift for legacy benefits to reflect the additional costs disabled people have faced; and further calls on the Government to commission research to assess the adequacy of benefits for disabled people.
And a debate in the House of Commons, on the 15h of September 2021 which mentioned this injustice,
Opposition Day Debate: Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits
On Wednesday 15 September there will be an Opposition Day Debate on the motion ‘That this House calls on the Government to cancel its planned cut to Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit which from the end of September 2021 will reduce support for many hardworking families by £1,040 a year.’
This uplift, however, did not apply to any other benefits, such as contributory benefits or extra-costs disability benefits such as Personal Independence Payment (PIP). It also did not extend to means-tested benefits which are being replaced by Universal Credit, but are still being claimed by many low-income families of working age. These are known as ‘legacy’ benefits and include: income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), and Income Support.
There were some protests and a petition protesting against this injustice.
Government responded
This response was given on 11 March 2021
The Government has now confirmed the temporary £20 per week increase to Universal Credit remains in place for a further six months. There are no plans to extend a benefit increase to legacy benefits.
But the only avenue left now seems to be this important court case.
A disabled man from Milton Keynes is to make history with a judicial review in the High Court that could help two million other benefit claimants in the UK win a backdated amount of cash.
Ian Barrow is one of four people nationally to challenge the decision of the government not to give legacy benefit claimants an extra £20 to help them during the Covid pandemic.
All Universal Credit claimants were given the weekly ‘uplift’ but those on legacy benefits received nothing extra.
Legacy benefits are Income-based Jobseekers Allowance, Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Housing Benefit, Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit.
He is in receipt of Jobseekers Allowance and has been assessed as having limited capability for work-related activity (LCWRA).
At the beginning of the pandemic the Chancellor announced the £20 per week increase to the standard allowance of Universal Credit, but this increase was never extended to those on legacy benefits, the majority of whom are disabled, sick or carers.
A spokesman for Osbornes said the legal argument is that this action is discriminatory and unjustified. The High Court has agreed it is arguably unlawful and will decide the case later this year. The claimants have asked for the trial to be heard before the end of July 2021.
Claimants return to court for third battle with DWP in fight for universal credit justice
The high court has this week heard the latest stage in a long-running battle to secure justice for thousands of disabled benefit claimants who lost out financially after being forced onto universal credit.
The hearing, due to end today (Thursday), concerns policies that left many claimants worse off when their circumstances changed and they had to move from legacy benefits like employment and support allowance onto universal credit (UC).
Two of the three claimants taking the case – known as TP and AR for legal reasons – have already twice defeated the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in the court of appeal in connected cases.
Their first legal case challenged rules that meant they lost out on about £180 a month in the move to UC, because they were no longer receiving severe disability premium (SDP) and enhanced disability premium (EDP).
DWP responded by temporarily stopping other claimants in similar positions from migrating onto UC and introducing payments of about £80 month for those already affected.
TP and AR then had to take another legal case – which they also won – because this payment failed to bridge the gap between what they were now receiving and what they would have been receiving if they were still claiming ESA.
Despite the two victories, they were forced to take a third legal action after DWP announced that the level of compensation for disabled people who had been receiving EDP and SDP and had moved onto UC before 16 January 2019 – when another set of regulations came into force to protect other claimants in similar situations – would be set at a lower rate than the £180 a month they had secured through the second case.
They have been joined in the third case by another disabled claimant, AB, who has a partner and a child, and has lost out by even more.
TP and AR are currently losing out by £60 a month and AB and her partner by nearly £400 a month.
TP said last month: “It has been entirely frustrating and exhausting having to exist on an overall unreasonable cut in financial assistance brought about by a move forced upon me into universal credit, whilst at the same time battling debilitating illness during a most challenging period of increased expenditure during this pandemic.
“The principle of a fair transition into universal credit has already been upheld by the courts on numerous occasions now, yet the government has been dragging its feet for a prolonged period of time to my detriment in abiding by these rulings both in letter and spirit.”
AR added: “Yet again I am having to go to court and fight for what is fair.
“Over the last years I should have had much needed support in place to help me get through the challenges I face on a daily basis as a result of my disabilities, but instead I have had to put time and energy into fighting for that support.
“I hope this is the last time we have to fight the secretary of state for support that is so obviously needed.”
Their solicitor, Tessa Gregory, a partner at Leigh Day, said last month that it was “difficult to believe that our clients have been forced to bring a third set of legal proceedings against the government in order to ensure they and thousands of other severely disabled persons are not unlawfully discriminated against following their move on to universal credit”.
Benefits Shake up proposed: DWP considers ‘new single benefit’ for Ill and Disabled People.
New Shake Up.
Yesterday the story about a new single benefit for sick and disabled people came up.
Trev commented,
The proposed merger between UC and PIP seems to be all about preventing people from getting PIP, I reckon that’s what it’s all about.
The story has now developed.
DWP considers ‘new single benefit’ for sick and disabled people. Welfare Weekly, today).
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is exploring the idea of a single benefit for sick and disabled people, it has been reported.
Some 1.4million claim Disability Living Allowance (DLA) or its replacement Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – paid to help people with the costs of being disabled. Others claim ESA (Employment and Support Allowance), which UC is replacing.
The DWP says keeping all these different benefits and having just one assessment wouldn’t work. A brand new scheme would be a way to make the whole system simpler, it says.
The proposal is included in the DWP’s recent report ‘Shaping Future Support: The Health and Disability Green Paper.’
NOTE; The Green Paper was published on the 20th of July and the consultation ended on the 11th of October.
As the Mirror points out today, “A little-reported Green Paper over the summer said a ‘new single benefit’ could combine payments – with Tory welfare chief Therese Coffey saying ‘everything is on the table'”
The Welfare Weekly article continues,
“Responding to the proposal of creating a new benefit or merging ESA, DLA & PIP with Universal Credit, Disability Rights UK (DRUK) said: “We are very suspicious of the Green Paper suggestion that Ministers could create a “new single benefit” so as to simplify the application and assessment process..
“Given the stress, worry, fear and distrust work capability assessments and PIP assessments cause Disabled people, the prospect of only having one assessment and not two is only superficially attractive at best.
“Given the repeated stress the Green Paper gives to “affordability” we believe the DWP is being disingenuous and the actual reason for the single benefit suggestion is likely to be reducing expenditure.”
Gail Ward, from the Hand2Mouth Project, said: “Those on Legacy Benefits will be Migrated to UC in 2023/24 and the merging of ESA,DLA/PIP will be a disaster for claimants and potentially means that PIP will become means tested.
“The form descriptors while having different criteria are already closely aligned and the DWP were calling PIP ‘a functional benefit’ in an evidence session before the Work and Pensions Committee recently.
……
The warning is very clearly when Therese Coffey suggested that severe disability group could be nudged into some type of work or training programme is a loud and clear message to all claimants that they want to cut overall costs and cut claimant numbers.”
Or as the Mirror notes of the DWP Minister,
Ms Coffey also suggested she was concerned by the number of people claiming PIP for mental health difficulties, saying she wanted to “target that even more so to people who really need that support”.
She added: “PIP has certainly grown in a way that was not anticipated when it was introduced.
“To give you an example, three out of four young people who claim PIP have their primary reason being mental ill health.
“That in itself is 189,000 young people who currently receive benefit focused on that. There may be other benefits they receive as well.
This seems, as our contributors have commented, part of a wider strategy to merge all benefits. The problem is, as Universal Credit has already shown, this can create bureaucratic and information technology nightmares. As well as, as he above comment about ‘affordability’ indicates, being an excuse for cutting benefit levels.
This is the Minister in Charge of the Green Paper:
Food Banks and Benefits.
Up till the new millenium it was rare – I had never even heard of them – to see Foodbanks in the UK. There were a few night-time soup kitchens in London, famously one run by the Salvation Army near the Embankment Tube station. They were for the homeless, a small number of people, often called “tramps” and “down and outs”.
These were times when you could still get a bath (left over from the time that not everybody had proper washing facilities at home) in a municipal facility (there was one in Ipswich round the corner, still here not that long ago). When the heating on our flat in Kentish Town broke down and working not far away, I used one, near to a hostel for the homeless in Holborn. In the same place, development on what is the Oasis Swimming Pool there, 1983 “Skeletons were found in the workhouse earth basements of the former workhouse inmates, which stopped work for a while”.
There is still a soup kitchen in the area by the Thames, Soup Runs.” St James’s Spanish Place: Operates Tuesday and Friday evenings at Lincoln Inn Fields and Embankment, Central London.”
So how have we got used to Food Banks?
Food banks developed in America where there is no real social security system, and those at the end of their tether are forced to rely on he good will and grace of others – Charity. Instead of rights you get dependence on the minimum needed to survive.
It is not accident that it was during the Regan years, when those who claim to believe that “god helps those who help themselves” grew, “According to a comprehensive government survey completed in 2002, over 90% of food banks were established in the US after 1981.” After initial criticism, “in the decades that followed, food banks have become an accepted part of America’s response to hunger.”
Something similar has happened here with those who would do away with social security and replace it with private insurance if they good in charge of the government since the 1980s, and New Labour unwilling to put benefit payments at a decent level, or to reform the punitive sanction system.
Foodbanks were rarely seen in the UK in the second half of the twentieth century, their use has started to grow, especially in the 2000s, and have since dramatically expanded. The increase in the dependency on food banks has been blamed on the 2008 recession and the Conservative government’s austerity policies. These policies included cuts to the welfare state and caps on the total amount of welfare support that a family can claim. The OECD found that people answering yes to the question ‘Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?’ decreased from 9.8% in 2007 to 8.1% in 2012, leading some to say that the rise was due to both more awareness of food banks, and Jobcentres referring people to food banks when they were hungry.
Now, with Boris Johnson is charge, a man generously described as a “fabricator and a cheat” whose office as Prime Minister is a “triumph of political lying” (The Assault on Truth. Peter Osborne. 2021), Foodbanks are treated as essential institutuons.
Which they are. As the Trussell Trust has pointed out,
“The rapid growth in the number of charitable food banks had particularly captured public attention, as had the quantity of emergency food parcels they were distributing. Food banks in the Trussell Trust’s network distributed 61,000 emergency food parcels in2010/11, rising to 2.5 million in 2020/21.”
“Rather than acting as a service to ensure people do not face destitution, the evidence suggests that for people on the very lowest incomes … the poor functioning of universal credit can actually push people into a tide of bills, debts and, ultimately, lead them to a food bank. People are falling through the cracks in a system not made to hold them. What little support available is primarily offered by the third sector, whose work is laudable, but cannot be a substitute for a real, nationwide safety net.”
“According to an all-party parliamentary report released in December 2014, key reasons for the increased demand for UK foodbanks are delays in paying benefits, welfare sanctions, and the recent reversal of the post-WWII trend for poor people’s incomes to rise above or in line with increased costs for housing, utility bills and food.”
Just to underline the point and bring it up to date.,
The Trust also says,
It’s time for change – and that will only be possible as we raise our voices together to call for an end to the need for food banks.
We need your help. We’re calling on government at all levels to commit to ending the need for food banks and developing a plan to do so, and we need you to get involved.
Here is what is happening.
A couple of days ago the BBC ran this story.
Food banks struggle for donations as demand rises
A food bank said it is running low on donations as demand is rising due to the pandemic and people’s financial worries.
Worcester food bank said it gave food parcels to 987 people in September, a rise of 46% on the same month in 2020.
Goff O’Dowd, from the charity, said they were running short on 40 items including pasta and tinned fruit.
He said some people were desperate for help with not enough money to pay their energy bills.
The charity estimates they need 50 tonnes of food to get through until Christmas and are currently receiving about eight tonnes a month.
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries,”Nobody” to be Pushed into Poverty by Slashing Universal Credit.
“Universal Credit cut will not drag a single person into poverty.”
With the rise in the cost of gas and the expected increase in food prices most people on low incomes and benefits are worried. Slashing Universal Credit will not help, to say the least.
Hearing about this from people I wondered if this will help everybody, “Support with essential costs. You can contact your local council to see if they can give you any extra help from a hardship fund, including food or essential things like clothes. Check your local council on GOV.UK.”
Just guessing, but apart from those in dire straits and, above all, families, it is hard to see that applying to our contributors.
I imagine this may well offer something, judging from the queue of homeless people outside the nearby 7th Day Adventist Church on a Sunday waiting for food distribution:
Food bank vouchers. If you can’t afford the food you can ask for a referral from Citizens Advice or an organisation that’s already supporting you – for example, a charity, school or children’s centre – for a food bank voucher.
The Government itself says that everybody will be helped by getting work, with some push up from various schemes, like the “life-time skills guarantee.”
One Minister who could do with skills training in how to communicate with ordinary people has had her say on the Universal Credit cut.
Tory Nadine Dorries claims Universal Credit cut won’t push ANYONE into poverty.
Mirror.
Tory minister has been accused of not living in the real world after she claimed the Universal Credit cut will not drag a single person into poverty.
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries boasted “nobody” will be driven below the poverty line when a £20-a-week Covid uplift in place since March 2020 is withdrawn from this week.
That is despite think tanks putting the worst-case estimate at around 500,000 to 800,000 people.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has said the cut risks moving 500,000 people including 200,000 children below the poverty line.
While the Legatum Institute think tank, led by Tory UC architect Baroness Stroud, says the change will hit 840,000 Brits who are currently just above the poverty line – including 290,000 children.
But ministers have no official figure for how many people will be thrown into poverty because they’ve refused to do a formal impact assessment.
And questioned by left-wing journalist Owen Jones at the Tory conference, Ms Dorries said: “Nobody. Nobody is.
Because what we’re doing, what we’re doing is giving people a step out.
“By lifetime skills guarantee, by all the money being invested in the…” – she then walked away with an aide.
****
Some people think that Nadine Dorries is one of Boris Johnson’s famously unfunny jokes and probably only exists as a hologram borrowed from GB News…
But the scheme is a very real.
Bootcamps for Skills:
“An estimated 11 million adults now have the opportunity to gain a new qualification for free, designed to help them to gain in-demand skills and secure great jobs.
Almost 400 qualifications are available to take from today (1 April) – backed by £95 million in government funding in 2021/22 – as part of the government’s Lifetime Skills Guarantee.
The qualifications on offer range from engineering to social care to conservation and are available to any adult who has not already achieved a qualification at Level 3 (equivalent to A-levels).
The roll out marks a major milestone in the delivery of the landmark Lifetime Skills Guarantee – announced by the Prime Minister in September 2020. The Guarantee aims to transform the skills system so everyone, no matter where they live or their background, can gain the skills they need to progress in work at any stage of their lives. It will also ensure employers have access to the skilled workforce they need, and more people are trained for the skills gaps that exist now, and in the future.
Adults who take up the free courses have the potential to boost career prospects, wages and help fill skills gaps, while supporting the economy and building back better.
For example, with a Diploma in Engineering Technology adults can progress to roles in Maintenance or Manufacturing Engineering. A Level 3 Diploma in Electrical Installation or a qualification in Adult Care can also provide a gateway to sectors offering rewarding careers and where there are multiple job opportunities.
So more unemployed people can take full advantage of these courses, the government will pilot an extension to the length of time they can receive Universal Credit while undertaking work-focused study.
They will now be able to train full time for up to 12 weeks, or up to 16 weeks on a full time skills bootcamp in England, while receiving Universal Credit to support their living costs This will allow access to more training options and provide a better chance of finding work, while continuing to receive the support they need.”
Let us know if you have experience of this “bootcamp”.
After Universal Credit Cut Rising Energy and Food Prices To Hit Claimants.
New Guide Out Today.
Yesterday I got notice of my coming Gas and Electricity Direct Debit. It is due at the start of October. I would say it’s already gone up by over £20 a month, and no doubt further rises are to come. People who use prepayment meters are said to spend more.
Those on benefits do not pay Council Tax, people on Council Tax Support/Reduction got an amnesty when the pandemic began. This will no doubt end in May next year. In Ipswich we are do not pay a huge amount but in some areas even those on Legacy Benefits, Universal Credit and Pension Credit, pay amounts that are enough to eat into their small amount of money.
The Independent reports today,
Families across the country will see their income drop over the next six month as rising prices and falling support combine to shave precious pounds off their available cash.
From this week, the energy price cap – the limit set on household energy costs – will increase, followed by a further projected 19 per cent increase next April, according to warnings from think tank the Resolution Foundation over the weekend.
Meanwhile, the consumer prices index (CPI) measure of inflation is widely anticipated to hit 4 per cent, its highest rate in more than a decade over the winter.
……
Karl Handscomb, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: “Britain is about to enter a tight cost of living squeeze over the next six months as high inflation and rising energy bills collide with the Government’s decision to cut benefits and raise taxes.
“Low-and-middle-income families will face the tightest squeeze. Many drivers of high inflation should be short-lived, but that will be of little comfort to families struggling over the coming weeks and months.”
He states,
“The combined impact of all this could mean that from 1 October, millions of families are likely to be more than £100 worse off every month, data from Royal London suggests.
That includes around 15 million households that will be hit by the impact of energy costs, rising to a typical £1,277 for households on a default dual fuel tariff or £1,309 for the country’s 4 million prepayment customers.”
Universal Credit: ‘No snazzy meals and no posh shops for me’.
BBC.
It’s like giving somebody hope that they can manage… and then snatching the rug from underneath them.”
Tracey Rheged-Armer says she does not go to “the posh shops” or eat “snazzy meals”. Hers is instead a life of yellow-stickered, reduced price food, charity shop clothing and constantly worrying about money.
The 57-year-old care worker is one of more than 5.8 million people claiming Universal Credit who will see her temporary £20 weekly benefit boost – put in place at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic – removed from 6 October.
Tracey, from Carnforth in Lancashire, lives with her retired postman husband and a growing amount of debt.
In August, her fuel bills rocketed after her supplier put up its prices, and she now has to deal with a debt management company.
Tracey says that since she has always worked, she never expected to be in this situation.
Losing the extra £20 a week, which “goes on petrol”, will have a devastating effect on her life, she says.
“I’ll have to figure a way of putting petrol in my car, because I need [it],” she tells BBC North West Tonight.
“I can’t get to work without it, because I work awkward shifts and there’s no bus services back when I finish, so that £20 keeps me in work.”
Those of us who have lived in JSA could say that the very idea of going to expensive shops, eating out, or buying ‘snazzy meals’ would not have crossed out minds..
Today the BBC has carried out a story about this, which looks interesting:
Universal credit claimants create guide to benefit.
Universal Credit – A Claimants guide
Researchers and a group of universal credit claimants in Northern Ireland have teamed up to create a guide to the benefit.
Ulster University, which worked with the University of York, said it was the UK’s first claimant-led guide to universal credit.
The experiences of the claimants are detailed in the online document.
One of the claimants said she hoped the “go-to” would stop people getting as stressed as she did.
The guide has been officially launched just as furlough – which protected millions of jobs during the pandemic – and a £20 boost to universal credit are about to end.
It also comes amid a backdrop of rising energy and food prices.
Ipswich Unemployed Action. 
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