Ed Miliband has stirred up some New Year’s controversy, not least amongst his own supporters, with the news that Labour is to speak out more strongly against the perils of so-called “benefit scroungers”. Labour are no doubt concerned at consistent polling evidence suggesting that opposition to benefit cuts are out of step with the views of the public.
In reality, there’s little difference between the positions of the different parties, nor much change in the position of any individual party over the last couple of decades.
Across the mainstream political spectrum, few disagree that handing out state benefits too freely causes two big problems. First, the easier it is to get benefits, the more people will abuse the system. In purely financial terms it may not add up to much against tax evasion, but politically it’s very visible and no-one likes to see their neighbours stealing from the State when they’re working every hour to support their family.
Secondly, having whole families – sometimes several generations – hooked on welfare to the extent that getting a job or a decent education just isn’t seen as an option worth considering is bad for those individuals as well as the state.
The answer, of course, is to change the criteria for benefits and the incentives to work so that it becomes harder and riskier to cheat the system and relatively more beneficial to get a job – along with some additional help for those who need it.
Except that no-one has figured out how to do that without it resulting in more people falling through the gaps.
Labour in Government decided to crack down on Incapacity Benefit, believing that many of the people claiming IB could and should be working (for their own benefit, as well as to reduce the bill to taxpayers). The result was that in the process of achieving that aim, many people seem to have been wrongly identified as fit to work and are losing out.
The key to understanding the problem faced by all governments is that this seems to be inevitable for any welfare reform – it’s too big, too complicated and people will always fall through the gaps.
Depending on the politics of the day, parties may choose to stress one aspect or the other in the quest we all have to win votes, but the reality of the challenge changes little.
The government of the day tries to get more people off benefits and attempts to figure out a way of doing it that somehow minimises the number of genuine claimants falling through the gaps, with varying degrees of success. The politicians tweak it depending on their priorities to end up with more of fewer people claiming the relevant benefit.
What politicians say and how they say it can matter – it can affect the national mood, for example. And we political activists will naturally interpret the actions of any government in line with our political views. But behind the words, variations on the same old policies face the same old challenges and problems.
Universal Credit is the latest way many see to square the circle – it looks encouraging but whether it turns out to be more successful than others remains to be seen.
* Iain Roberts is a Stockport councillor, LGA Peer and consultation, communications and public affairs consultant specialising in the built environment.
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44 Comments
Your second point is the better one.
Your first assumes that people know their neighbours well enough to know what they do or where they earn their money from. In modern urban Britain that is increasingly rare. If anything, those complaining often live in the areas where they are less likely to rub shoulders with the so-called ‘underclass’. Those in that boat tend to forgive their neighbours.
It is however clear that increasing numbers of taxpayers, including people who used to believe in a good solid safety net are disappointed at seeing their taxes spent on welfare for very recent immigrants they were promised would be an asset and also for the third or even fourth generation living on council estates, as well as being concerned at the deepening and increasing existence of a self-serving and almost parasitic middle class ‘payroll vote’ as local authorities of all stripes in the last thirty years or so have expanded their activities by a process of well-intended mission creep into areas best left to the voluntary or even commercial sectors.
We’re 18 months in and no sign of either Universal Credit or the automatic pension enrolemont. – I think both are good ideas and need to be prioritised.
You are right this is a small proportion of the deficit and is mostly about headlines and sounding right. Perhaps good politics but the wrong focus IMO – public sector pension changes will make far more of a difference to the deficit.
Benefits shmenifits – the overall aim of policy ought to be to try to get to a position where most people can live on their own means, however meagre and grow from there. Rigorous Liberalism would focus first on eradicating the rent and privilege which puts many things out of reach of the least well financially endowed rather than on how much to “steal” from one person or group to subsidise the insufficient incomes of others. And it would focus on eradicating any regulatory barriers to obtaining an income through self-employment.
Often this rent and privilege and the barriers to participation are state created – land and housing prices exacerbated by planning policy, costs of capital (i.e. borrowing to invest in one’s self) exacerbated by the state managed money and banking monopoly, health care costs exacerbated by radical monopoly, self-employment made more difficult by vast swathes of regulation.
It will be difficult to reduce the benefits bill whilst these unacceptable results of previous state action are still distorting the market. Whilst the state gives with one hand and takes, or simply prevents individuals’ development with the other hand, it will be unsustainable. In the long run, vested interests much be rooted out, privilege and rent eradicated, and then people will be able to live with little or no state support.
But, Iain, with all respect you say this:
Labour in Government decided to crack down on Incapacity Benefit, believing that many of the people claiming IB could and should be working (for their own benefit, as well as to reduce the bill to taxpayers). The result was that in the process of achieving that aim, many people seem to have been wrongly identified as fit to work and are losing out.
You fail to mention the Coalition’s reforms are simply an extension of Labour’s, only nastier and more draconian for sick and disabled people, as well as the genuinely unemployed. I’ve read stories about disabled people who have committed suicide due to Labour/Tory/LibDem reforms & ATOS/DWP incompetence and it shocked me that this isn’t a scandal already. All parties have been letting our most vulnerable down.
Now Ed M joins the Tories and LibDems in decrying so-called “scroungers” when there is little choice for millions now out of work (thanks to bankers and stupid politicians of all parties) to do nothing BUT exist on benefits or starve. And millions of unemployed people, many highly skilled and educated, will be “working for their benefit” at less than minimum wage stacking shelves or cleaning streets. I know this myself as my educated, intelligent wife faces “working” for Tesco at less than minimum wage in the next few weeks. The very prospect is making her depressed; she now wonders what the point was in going to Uni, working hard for the council in finding homes for abuse victims and now finds herself on the scrapheap where, up here, there are around 25+ people fighting for every vacancy. There simply is no hope for many of us; nothing to look forward to for years and years if austerity & unemployment continues like this
I also notice Ed M. suggesting those who have paid no tax will not receive any benefits under his proposed plans. Well, that is all well and good (it isn’t actually), but what of those born disabled? What of those who become disabled or very ill in their teens and find themselves unable to work due to this? What of those who worked for only a few years and then had a horrible illness or accident? It looks almost as if his plans would be worse than this government’s. And that, sadly, says a lot.
Yes, the system needs reform, but not like Labour did it and certainly not the way the Coalition is doing it. As a lapsed LibDem it gives me shame to see our party in government letting the Tories blame the sick and the jobless for the sins of the last gov’t and the bankers.
I agree with Simon on this.
All three parties have failed on this and have crossed two areas that should be red lines for us:
1) Jobseekers being forced to work for less than min wage.
This would be wrong at the best of times, but in a situation where many of these jobseekers are eager to work but can’t find a job due to the recession it’s ludicrous.
2) The harsh crackdown on sickness related benefits.
There’s a huge list of problems with the Atos system that Labour introduced and we’ve made harsher. The long and short is people who are vulnerable and sick are being hurt. When in opposition and when the Government first formed, Cameron promised that such people would be protected. This promise clearly isn’t being kept.
We’re basically seeing a nasty attack on the most vulnerable in society and we as a party need to take a lead in resolving these problems. George Potter managed to pass a motion last conference that addressed some of these problems but it’s not clear how far the parliamentary party has been successful in following it through.
To be honest, I think that all Nick would need to do is build up a report of what these people are having to face and then if he managed to get Cameron to read it, that would perhaps be enough for Cameron to decide to u-turn on these issues.
Louise: Not sure what you mean by “no sign” of automatic pension enrolment, given the autumn 2012 commencement date?
Many Labour politicians dismiss welfare reforms such as the universal benefit or pension, saying that the real problem is not incentives but the lack of jobs.
But they need to remember that the current system of means-testing benefits is a tax, often at a marginal rate in aggregate for all benefits of 100% or more, which massively increases the marginal cost of wages and therefore reduces the demand as well as the supply for labour.
The problem is not that we pay people who are disabled or old have children or need somewhere to live when they are able to work. The problem is that we pay them NOT to work.
Paul, I could understand how it reduces the supply of Labour (if a person is doing okay on benefits then they’re not going to be looking for work) but don’t get how benefits reduce the demand. If I understood it right, you were saying that it drives up wages, which means companies can only afford to employ less people.
If so, I disagree with your way of looking at it.
Yes we want to increase unemployment but should driving wages to be even lower be the solution? Inequality is bad enough as it is, with the lowest paid are already getting the smallest slice of the pie.
Can I do this in simple words…
Benefits and subsidies are merely sticking plasters to try and put right wrongs that have been created largely by the state in the form of privilege and rent: the corporatocracy.
Apart from those who directly benefit from this daylight robbery (e.g. land owners, bankers) these increased costs affect every last one of us negatively. And benefits further take more from every last one of us to help the poorest live in an artificially high cost economy.
Eradicating these privileges and rent, destroying the corporatocracy, would reduce the costs for every last one of us, and mean we would all pay less in benefits as more and more people could live without such assistance.
It’s a no brainer. Cut the costs of living for all of us and you can slash the benefits bill for ever.
You sound like you actually believe these two things are connected. They are not. “Scroungers” are precisely the set of people who do have a choice, but reject it. Lib Dems don’t have a lot of sympathy for those people, but have never suggested that those who genuinely cannot find work should not receive benefits.
(It is easy to be misled by the press here, because the Tories are pushing their “eat the poor” line, and Labour are going heavy on the “employ them to count paperclips” idea that they’ve been using for years)
penalising the people who need benefits and most are unable to fight for it because so ill.i am disabled..wheelchair..cannot work as much as i would like to…it is impossible.i received dla higher mobility middle care for 5 years..renewal came up..i was refused dla. atos (contracted by government to find ill people well for work even if they are not fit for work( contracted by governemnt for the sum of 500 million pounds.)i need a carer at all times …dla stopped..cant afford a carer..therefore cannot get out..not a self propelled whelchair and too ill to get out alone.i am now a prisoner in my home …however..i say my home ..it is rented.. i may be made homeless too now…i was also on income support with a disability premium..i was asked to go in to esa appointment … to migrate to this benefit..however i was denied this benefit and all benefits ceased asap.(i had to get taxi driver to take me in in wheelchair)..which also meant i lose housing benefit/council tax benefit.i had no money for 2 months no bills paid no electric in the meter and letters from my landlord..no food.luckily i had help from the church for a while and friends.alot of people who are disabled are contemplating suicide or actually attempting it and some sadly suceeding.i can see their point.while i understand they are weedling out the people that can work…they are targetting the most vulnerable too who are too ill to fight back therefore lose everything including their houses.the atos fit for work scrying system is wholly flawed…it is awful.questions they ask are one word answers which isnt possible to give a full accurate account of a persons disability.it isnt done by a medical professional as they say it is done by an atos worker who taps yes or no into a multiple choice computer.this is a sad and broken britain and will remain sad while the coalition is in power.this benefits system needs to be reformed again and not target those most vulnerable…it is discrimination and breaches our human rights to lead an independant life etc.
oh and i forgot to mention that dla appeal is minimum of waiting is 18 months due to increase in people being turned down.if appeal is won after that time people have still lost thier homes and thier dignity…no wonder disabled people commit suicide.also in regards to esa if u have to appeal then win which took me 2 months with no money…6 weeks after i won appeal for esa they have now sent me forms to fill in ..same forms..see if im fit for work..means more appointments which no doubt will see me without benefits and worrying about how im going to eat never mind pay bills and rent.so 3 months after winning my appeal i have to go back and do it all agian…with no carer..no money to get there..if im having a bad day i will not be able to go…either way my benefits will be stopped again.alot of us are genuinley disabled ..very poorly people…without having the extra worry of when next we will eat.yes it is this bad if any of you arent on benefits for illness.
The problem is the term ‘scroungers’ and ‘benefits’ has become almost indistinguishable in the press, and therefore in public perception .Labour’s Liam Byrne speaking in the Daily Mail stated “decent Labour voters” were sick of people lounging around on benefits while they worked all the hours God sends. This seems to suggest it is somehow indecent to understand people may be on benefits for a variety of reasons and not all disability is visible . Someone ranting on the doorstep about scroungers is likely to be as well informed about the issue as someone ranting about asylum seekers or the levels of illegal immigration. Most reasonable politcians seem to accept the near hysteria surrounding the issue of benefits bears no relation to the reality , yet ALL politicians remain silent in addressing the inaccuracies in case they are seen as soft on scroungers.
@Simon, Why are bankers responsible for unemployment? Is it because they started to say “no” to people’s desire to spend ever increasing amounts on their credit cards buying things made in China? I don’t know your economic paradigms, but if you believe that debt = growth then presumably bankers also get the credit for the long boom beforehand, and the economy hasn’t fallen to pre-boom levels.
The banks control the money supply. They shouldn’t because they’re unelected and so we the people don’t have any direct control over them. Briefly, when banks loan money, they actually create it. The money that appears in your account is brand new money, never existed before. This money enters our system with interest attached to it and it shouldn’t as the banks create this money under license from government which can and should be creating money into the economy for free or at a much reduced rate of interest which could itself then be fed back into the community as tax reductions for example. We could all have much higher quality of life as a consequence than we do, in short, but the banks and our political leaders prefer we remain ignorant of this. This is the information age though and word’s getting out. Anyhoo, returning to your question, if the banks are creating a lot of money then there’s enough for all, plenty of employment etc. but when they sit on it, we starve, simple as that. Really it’s government that are responsible as they should never have let banks have this authority in the first place and they should have the courage to take it back now. Instead, they collectively prefer to pick on the unemployed and the disabled.
I think you have bought into the propaganda that many families have never worked for several generations. I would suspect that the numbers where this has occured is if it exists very tiny. After all several generations ago the welfare state did not exist and even a few generations ago people with no income and no work either ended up in the workhouse or became criminals. When you consider the loathing people felt for the workhouse I am sure no one would seek to be without work. Instead of propagating this myth you should at least explore it and if it can be proved wrong use denounce it as such, as at the moment it is used as justification to beat the unemployed and disabled with a big stick.
@Simon Bamonte:
“my educated, intelligent wife faces “working” for Tesco at less than minimum wage in the next few weeks.”
So will you be reporting Tesco and your wife to the police/DWP for their criminal conspiracy?
@Joanna hayes:
“dla appeal is minimum of waiting is 18 months due to increase in people being turned down”
I have some statistics somewhere, gained a month or so ago, which show this appeal time as being more than 9 months but nothing like 18. Where do you get your figures from?
Anyone thinking that Benefit Reform and reduction of inaccurate benefit payments, as well as fraud, are irrelevant to either the economy or to good hard working low-paid people’s political perspective are not on this planet. There is no ‘either-or’ thing here in respect of other economic management measures. Britain is in such a mess right now that everything possible needs to be done – and pronto. Technocrat, above, is right to point out the way in which immigrants can be targeted by a resentful indigenous working class. What he fails to mention is that the prevalence of both benefit fraud and worklessness culture is far higher in the white working class estates among 3rd/4th generation ‘shameless’ households than in most immigrant communities in the UK.
Labelling groups of the public in order to demonise them still has the same old effect of dividing opinion into ‘them’ and ‘us’ camps, I see.
“Benefits and subsidies are merely sticking plasters” is a good comment, but I hardly think anyone could support the the inference that ripping up all plasters will prevent any future bleeding they are designed to stem.
Where you stand on the issue is more about if and whether you appreciate any assistance you’ve recieved rather than that you think somebody else somewhere else doesn’t. I’d like to speculate that very few people actually self-identify as ‘scroungers’, and those that do are significantly more likely to be non-voters, meaning it’s a dog whistle for self-satisfaction.
Whichever way you look at it Labour’s use of language is cynical and harmful to public debate. It plays to prejudice and fails to provide any proper or new information.
Miliband shows his sympathies are with selfish, self-righteous snobs. He shows he is less interested in meaningful policies and addressing unproductive and self-destructive behaviour than pandering for votes.
Notice: not one iota of sympathy (let alone empathy) for the poor lass struggling to exist! The only comment is to pick her up on an inaccuracy.
There are thousands of folk in a similar position to her. It seems LibDem members are deliberately ignoring the plight of folk who are passed around the benefits system: too ill to claim JSA, (allegedly) not ill enough for ESA; leaving them with NOTHING to exist upon. Folk are attempting and succeeding in suicide attempts. That means DEATH – and the only comment is to correct an inaccuracy which does not really change the point being made. SHAME on you all!
I’m lucky, I have a partner who does his best to look after me. He was so outraged at the LibDems lurch to neo-liberalism, that he has left the party. I have never been a member, but have been voting for you since SDP days. With one exception: when Nick took over from Menzies; I did not trust him then and I still do not. I gave you the benefit of the doubt at the last election. The LibDems will NOT be receiving my vote again. I am also aware of other folk who have been saying the exact same thing on facebook, including some of my friends. I should prefer for a third voice to survive in English politics: but at the moment there is only one – idealogically authoritarian and economically neo-liberal.
@Rose:
By coincidence my economics faculty head did a guest lecture a few weeks back on “NEETs” and it is clear that there is an issue with one generation losing the will to work feeding through to the next. Not “generations” I would agree, but certainly many of those currently on that “NEET” scrapheap come from households in which there is little history of employment. They may be relatively small in numbers (and exacerbated by cyclical factors at the moment too) but such dysfunctional cross generational unemployment is very expensive to “fix”.
There was a very worrying section near to the end of a recent documentary on welfare by John Humphris where he was at an apprenticeship class in, I think, Hackney, and when asked out of a room full of 20+ people on this program to better themselves only one had a parent in work. The encouraging thing was that these youngsters all had one motivation – not to have to live their lives like their parents.
I imagine the situation is worse, and could well span more than two generations, in those cities and regions devastated by having had their state industries propped up artificially by nationalisation in the seventies and then decimated when the 80s Tory government realised that this was an unsustainable, costly policy in the face of emerging global competition from new producer countries.
But there is clear evidence that long term unemployed parents are a huge factor in whether their children will be employed and, significantly, in this generation and its immediate predecessor there are groups who have never worked (not just been let down by circumstances and not found another job). This is a tendency that *must* be stopped somehow.
@Colin_Roy:
I have great sympathy. The level of bureaucracy and therefore the potential for government policy to change things (for better or for worse) is a function of the idea that benefits should be a universal entitlement at the same rate for an entire population set and administered centrally by disinterested bureaucrats. When things like sickness cover and unemployment cover were carried out by smaller scale institutions such as mutual and friendly societies (which covered more than 90% of the working population when “universalised” by the Asquith and Lloyd-George governments) support was decided more by people who would be more likely to know you and your abilities as individuals rather than as blips on a national computer system.
We should never have universalised benefits under government auspices, but found a way of enabling that remaining 10% of people not in mutual schemes and so on to participate in those. It’s often mentioned as one reason why we, as Liberals, lost the support of the Co-operative movement.
Note: I am not advocating local poor law commissioner type folk doling out public money, but a return to mutual, peer supported and managed welfare that is more able to take individual circumstances into account because they “know” their members. There’s much less likelihood of people being able to scam a system they know they and their neighbours have saved up to finance.
@oranjepan:
Then I think you miss the point. I am not advocating removing sticking plasters, but rendering them obsolete by preventing the injury in the first place. You can’t remove them without *first* being able to prevent the injury.
However many millions of people actually receive benefit to help them with artificially inflated costs of living, everyone else also pays those artificially high costs of living and then pays again to provide benefits for others to do likewise. Removing the privilege, barriers and rent-seeking that inflate those costs (usually a result of previous government action so the government’s job to eradicate) benefits both those who currently need help – who would require less, or no help – but also the rest of us impoverished both by those higher costs and by paying the benefit bill.
Implementation of such a radical change may well be difficult to comprehend, but the overall benefit to everyone (except the beneficiaries of privilege, protection and rent) should be obvious, and, as I say, a no-brainer.
joanna hayes
Would you like someone to send all you have written to the BBC or to some newspapers? I don’t know how that could be done, but active LibDems must have contacts that could be used if you felt that would be a good thing. It all sounds awful (written before lunch and Colin_Ray Hunter’s comments) and I am sure that anyone reading what you have said will feel very sympathetic and will wonder how things can be done better.
After that I hesitate to mention what I have in mind, because it will solve no problems for anyone over 25. But if you are going to change society, you have to start somewhere.
I am against Dynastic Capitalism – a hangover from feudalism – in which some inherit billions, often free of tax, and others inherit nothing. All I am saying is that it will help in the long run if we reform Inheritance Tax into two taxes in tandem – one low flat rate tax on giving capital deductible from a progressive tax on receiving capital starting at the same rate – in order to ensure that every young UK-born UK citizen has a basic minimum UK Universal Inheritance at the age of 25. It won’t help you, I am afraid, but it will help young people when they reach the age of 25 from now on if there is a Wealth Welfare State as well as an Income Welfare State, so that all have a financial buffer as young adults, to build upon or to spend as they choose. I wonder what you think of that. See http://www.universal-inheritance.org although I regret that it is not up to date.
In the meantime I wish you all the very best in sorting out your problems and in keeping up your courage and love of life. Would it be a good thing to write all that you have written here to your MP with a copy to your local paper?
joanne hayes
So sorry I got your first name wrong.
@Tony Dawson: “So will you be reporting Tesco and your wife to the police/DWP for their criminal conspiracy?”
Why would I do that? Working 35+ hours a week for one’s benefit, at less than minimum wage, is a legal policy brought in by the Coalition. I don’t like it, I think it is exploitative and does nothing for the morale of intelligent, previously well-employed people. It only benefits big chains like Tesco and Poundland, lets them receive some free labour (every little helps?) and potentially takes jobs away from unskilled people looking for work. I don’t have the power or money to challenge it legally, although there is a test case I saw a report on recently..
@Colin_Roy Hunter: I agree with you completely. I am ashamed, as an ex-LD, that our party supports policy that is pushing vulnerable people to their deaths. I’ve recently seen several reports of suicides due to the DWP, ATOS, and policy which we now support.
Before the Coalition, compassion seemed to be in great supply in our party. It seems to me, now, that most Coalition-supporting party members and MPs have had a compassion bypass. I never, ever thought I’d see the day when Lib Dems continue to support policy that is leading to avoidable human deaths, but there you go. It’s heartbreaking…to those of us with a heart and a lot of compassion for our fellow women and men.
@Dane Clouston
It’s been done before, people have written to newspapers about their experiences, the damage the system is causing and the damage that the government’s changes will cause has been pointed out again and again but disability issues aren’t “sexy” so the media doesn’t report on them. The best we’ve got so far is a handful of friendly articles in the Guardian. Everyone else just ignores it. I know someone who spoke to a journalist who was deeply concerned about it and wrote an article about it but whose editor then refused to run it.
The media don’t care about disabled people. They’re not photogenic. Anti-“scrounger” rhetoric, on the other hand, is right up their alley.
George W. Potter
A letter to the local MP, with clear copy to the local paper, might still acheive something, I would have thought, if that is what Joanne Hayes would like to do.
@Jock
“you can’t remove [sticking plasters] without *first* being able to prevent the injury.”
If you’ve already applied them then your efforts at prevention have failed, that is, unless you’re suggesting band aids are applied before injury, which is perverse.
If you want to state it is a chicken and egg problem, that’s a different matter. As it is you’re relying too much on theoretical reasoning.
I’m also unconvinced by your argument that mutually-managed welfare is necessarily more accountable, at least not without defined regulatory safeguards to prevent managers conspiring with their neighbours to defraud the system in much the same way as occurred with ration books.
@Colin_Roy Hunter et al.
expressions of empathy and sympathy are unhelpful to dispassionate discussion of the issues as they personalise issues and use emotive subjectivity to sway opinion.
An evidence-based approach to policy demands the assumption that all participants do empathise, even if they don’t sympathise. Otherwise we’d spend eternity seeking the most extreme examples in the style of Daily Mail headlines in ritualistic exaggerated bewailing.
Criticising a percieved callousness and an apparent lack of concern fails to appreciate the potential circumstances of all individuals. In other words the criticism implies it refers to the person making it.
@Dane Clouston
Universal Inheritance or Universal Credit is interesting but it is still only a sketchy idea – unless you can find out where significant additional value is created then it amounts to ripping up someone else’s shirt to hand out the buttons. That’s neither economic nor fair.
Until that point raising the tax threshold is a much more practical policy.
@Oranjepan: “expressions of empathy and sympathy are unhelpful to dispassionate discussion of the issues as they personalise issues and use emotive subjectivity to sway opinion.”
But these issues, which are leading to DEATHS, are indeed highly personalised already. In fact, if we as a party held up personal examples of those who have sadly committed suicide, maybe we’d get somewhere in breaking this story or getting more of the public onside. Many people are (rightly) critics of the Tories’ frequent callousness. They aren’t called the Nasty Party for naught. Do we really aspire to be nasty party number two, kicking the weakest while those at the top continue to get off scot-free? Apart from George Potter and some grassroots LDs, most Lib Dems don’t seem to care.
Do you, personally, care about those who committed suicide due to our actions in government? It sounds as if you don’t. Your technocratic words may be all well and good in the Westminster bubble, but most human beings are emotional creatures. If the public by and large knew of what is happening, there would be a scandal. But nobody, bar the Guardian and Channel 4 News, on a national scale, is reporting this.
Are you not ashamed we have MPs supporting policy that is pushing our most vulnerable to the brink and often over the edge? Is the survival of the coalition worth more than their deaths? Why are we doing this? I see no possible electoral benefit from pushing our weakest members of society, sick and disabled people, further into the dirt.
And if emotion is not to be used in politics, then why did our party spend so much time appealing to compassion, decency and a sense of fair play while in opposition (over Iraq, freezing pensioners and when Danny Alexander was a big campaigner against Labour’s welfare reforms and ATOS), only to go off and have a mass-compassion bypass once in power?
Mr. Alexander is a good example of our 180 on this issue. He was probably the biggest defender of the disabled before Coalition, calling for more fairness towards disabled people and for ATOS to be removed. Now? Well, now he supports everything IDS is doing, even though it goes further and is indeed harsher than Labour’s plans. How he sleeps at night, how his conscience changed so quickly, I’ve no idea.
Further, is there any party left who has compassion and decency at its very heart? Who will put the needs of the people before the needs of finance capital or the mega-rich? To me it no longer seems there is anywhere for compassionate people to turn. Especially when the financiers and bond holders want their money back. So long as they get their money, it seems, the disabled can sod off. That, at least, is the message the government seems to be sending out.
@oranjepan:
Sheesh – must I spell out every word – you can’t remove the sticking plasters *as one solution* until you find a way of stopping the bleeding *as a better solution* 🙂
It’s not a chicken and egg problem. We know that privilege came first to distort markets and increase costs. And we know that government is largely to blame for cow-towing to the rent-seekers (which is hardly surprising because they have a symbiotic relationship).
In what way would my suggestion render fraud and theft no longer a malum in se crime against the other contributors to the mutual? Of course with ration books as your example you are merely proving that government doesn’t appear to be able to do much to prevent abuse of its own programs. But actually “accountability” at least in the way I suspect you mean it here, was not really my claim. It was that localised knowledge of a relatively small group of people who are members and have a working relationship through the mutual (they were a lot more than pay in and forget systems) will better understand their needs than any French owned computerised universal system can hope to do.
When pensions were done at parish level, those who actually received them averaged around 75% of the local average wage. Nowadays they average, what, 16% (less even than the paltry provision made by Asquith/Lloyd-George).
If you want some very interesting history (albeit US-centric) there’s a great book on the subject.
Oh dear, now I’m getting confused. That should read:
Sheesh – must I spell out every word – you can’t remove the sticking plasters *as one solution* until you find a way of
stoppingpreventing the bleeding *as a better solution*@ Jock
If the DWP/ATOS cannot be consistent and fair, then it is most unlikely that we will obtain equity and equality of treatment with micro-local decision-making.
@Oranjepan
Being dispassionate is all well and good, but by ignoring the real impact that actions have on real people’s lives, you condemn more folk to despair and some to death. I totally disagree: the anecdotal can be used to reflect evidence. The Indy & Guardian use examples to back up reports. These are the stories that make policy real rather than abstract. But the ConDems are ignoring what is going on: the effects of your illiberal policies – and there is now evidence aplenty. At all points sympathy should be engaged to ensure that policies are rooted in humanity and not dogma or ideology.
The lack of understanding and compassion is quite shocking to me…
1) Jobseekers being forced to work for less than min wage.
This would be wrong at the best of times, but in a situation where many of these jobseekers are eager to work but can’t find a job due to the recession it’s ludicrous.
So there is work for people, as long as they are paid less than the minimum wage? So all those right-wingers who said the minimum wage would price some people out of the labour market were right?
All three parties have failed on this and have crossed two areas that should be red lines for us:
I think you should remember that most of the electorate thinks that current policy has, for a great many years, crossed a more important red line: that no one should be the recipient of an endless supply of free money in exchange for STAYING UNEMPLOYED.
If you want to persuade people that you are compassionate, you will never do so by proposing to spend other people’s money.
Simon,
compassion, decency and a sense of fair play are only valid when they are based on factual evidence. In the cases where LibDems have used these appeals in relation to the issues you cited I’d ask you, for example, where were the WMDs in Iraq? 40-minute threat? It must always be about accuracy.
So I have to say I find it strange that you say you assert for a fact that suicides can be directly ascribed to the actions of a government – if that were the case it would be murder, not suicide.
I’m far from being a defender of the tories, but to use the phrase ‘nasty party’ expresses how you are more easily influenced by perceptions than realities, and clearly you’re more influenced by perceptions forged in opposition.
You state “most Lib Dems don’t seem to care” and attempt to build up an argument which supports this conclusion. Not only is that a sweeping generalisation, but it also massively disrespecting of the huge underappreciated efforts of all in the party, grassroots and representatives alike – it’s not like anyone does it for the glory of having insults thrown at them or because they’re getting filthy rich off the back of participating in politics!
I’m suggesting if we want to take practical steps to tackle an issue we can’t waste inordinate amounts of time saying how much we care, you’re suggesting you can and that this is magically somehow enough: a hot cup of tea and a blanket round the shoulder never cured cancer.
It begs the question whether you ever actually make up your own mind or have dogma on drip-feed.
@Colin_Roy Hunter
exactly, by getting all emotional you can easily overlook the real impact that actions have on real people’s lives.
But equally by castigating the stoic exterior of people as uncaring, who you do not know what they are dealing with, you can drag others down into the despair which you wish to tackle.
As with all these things the proper LibDem response is to make sure these things are appropriate and in proportion – there is always a balance to be struck.
Ok, @Oranjepan, since you seem in this thread to be telling people only to think in terms of facts and not emotion, here’s some facts for you:
1. There have been at least 10 suicides attributable to the current reforms your party supports. The new WCA is also contributing to worsening health in many people going through the process who are strong enough not to have killed themselves.
2. There is at least one case of a man found “fit for work”, with a severe heart condition, and then dying days later. Also another man actually had a heart attack at the assessment centre but was still found “fit for work”.
3. Close to 40% of all appeals (for which there is a long, long waiting time) by sick/disabled people are successful, 70%+ when the claimant has a professional representing them. ATOS are not sanctioned when they mess up, but the claimaint is when they make genuine mistakes. This high appeals rate would be unacceptable in the private sector, but we keep pumping money into ATOS’ coffers instead.
4. The legal aid reforms as they stand will remove nearly all funding from people seeking appeals. I’m sure you know where that will end up.
5. Several groups who represent sick/disabled people (Macmillian, Scope, Mencap, etc.) have been saying, for years, that the whole system is not fit for purpose and that ATOS’ role in this is also not fit for purpose.
6. The LibDems in power have done little to nothing to challenge this cruel farce taking place. The grassroots have, but the leadership pays them no attention. In fact, as pointed out above, Mr. Danny Alexander now supports the harsher plans, though he was against Labour’s less-harsh plans. What a man of principle!
7. Sick and disabled people are genuinely living in fear, many for their lives. We’re wondering how we will eat, where we will live if we have all our support removed. If you do not believe me, there are many many blogs out there which state this truth in cold, hard, emotionless language which should be acceptable to you.
8. Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg promised “sick and disabled people have nothing to fear”. Cameron, a man worth £30M, who also claimed DLA for his sadly deceased son now refers to disabled people who cannot work, some with the same condition as his son, as “workshy”.
9. With millions of well and able-bodied looking for work, what chance do sick/disabled people have when most of us require workplace modifications and different duties from a normal person? In today’s climate, what company would spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds to adapt the workplace when they can just pick an able-bodied person?
10. If someone is found “fit for work”, had their ESA removed and then placed on JSA, they can have their JSA stopped if they state they cannot take any job, for any medical reason. So a sick man now found “fit for work” must lie about his medical condition or lose his JSA. Example: if a man with a serious mental illness is offered a customer facing job and is honest that his condition will prevent him from doing this job properly and then turns it down, his benefit is stopped. Of course the opinion of ATOS is what counts, not the opinion of the patient’s GP or consultant. This scenario, which is very real, is Kafkaesque and highly, highly illiberal.
11. And who is legally responsible if someone is found “fit for work” and injures themselves or others on the job? ATOS, the DWP? Because this scenario is, I assure you, very real. Especially with those who have illnesses like personality disorders and serious mental illness which now do not exempt them from work.
So, please tell me what you would like your party to do about all this, if anything? Or do you think sick and disabled people, who modern capitalism normally turns down, should be forced to live a second class life? If the government and the public don’t want to support us, pray tell, how shall we live?
Or is sick and disabled people dying, becoming homeless or living in even greater poverty acceptable to you and just another “tough decision” to take?
“Oranjepan”
You say
“Universal Inheritance or Universal Credit is interesting but it is still only a sketchy idea – unless you can find out where significant additional value is created then it amounts to ripping up someone else’s shirt to hand out the buttons. That’s neither economic nor fair.”
I am not sure what you mean by Universal Credit is, but I guess that you are thinking of a citizens’ income, which is a sketchy idea for which I am not arguing. Either it would be enough to live on, which would encourage idleness, or it would not, in which case those who would have to rely upon it would starve unless there were other measures. It is better to remove the imperfections from the existing Income Welfare State as it has evolved.
Universal Inheritance is not a sketchy idea. It is an Asset, or Wealth, Welfare State, not part of an Income Welfare State. It is a matter of redistributing the ownership of existing value transferred from each generation to the next. Those who would receive great unearned fortunes would pay tax so that those who would inherit little will inherit a basic minimum.
Wealth is not like a shirt with buttons. Wealth is divisible and redistributable at the point of transfer between each generation and the next.
There is an argument between those who favour a tax on giving capital, such as our misnamed “Inheritance Tax” and those who go for a tax on receiving capital. Both are wrong.
Dick Taverne’s Institute of Fiscal Studies published the comprehensive “An Accession Tax” in 1973. It has subsequently become clear to me that inter-generational transfers of capital are logically two separate transactions. They should, logically and practically, be taxed by two taxes in tandem, with one deductible from the other.
Intergenerational transfers are, firstly, luxury expenditures by those who give or leave capital. Currently, some of this is taxed at 40 per cent. The rest, including unlimited amounts of early lifetime gifts and agricultural, business and shareholding assets of the wealthy, are exempt and so taxable at 0 per cent. This is a scandal. Some pay too high a rate. Some pay too little – usually the rich. This does nothing to spread more widely giving and leaving.
Ordinary lifetime expenditure is taxed by a flat rate VAT. The luxury expenditure of giving and leaving should be taxed by an “Inheritance Tax” truthfully renamed Capital Donor Tax at a flat, say 10 per cent, rate without exemptions except between partners, spouses and cohabiting siblings.
Intergenerational transfers are, secondly, receipts of unearned capital by beneficiaries. They should be taxed by a cumulative Lifetime Unearned Capital Tax, at progressive rates from the same, say 10 per cent, rate upwards according to political taste, on lifetime total receipts. This wil tend to spread giving and leaving more widely.
The Capital Donor Tax should be deductible from the Lifetime Unearned Capital Tax so that recipients of lifetime totals within the 10 per cent starting band will have no more tax to pay than the 10 per cent already paid by donors and bequeathers. The Inland revenue would cross refer between the two taxes. Two taxes in tandem are less easy to evade or avoid than one flawed tax on its own.
The average wealth of every adult and child in the UK is of the order of £100,000. UK Universal Inheritance should be introduced gradually for UK-born UK citizens at the reasonably financially responsible age of 25, at £2,000 in the first year up to £10,000 in the fifth year and hopefully more, ideally up to at least three times annual university tuition fees. It would itself be clawed back from some in due course by being itself subject to the Lifetime Unearned Capital Tax.
All would need a bank account in which to receive UK Universal Inheritance. It would help reduce alienation, financial and social exclusion and young adult poverty. It would help increase entrepreneurial activity, home ownership and general opportunity, to be spent in whatever way individual young men and women decide is not a waste for them.
Now would of course be a good time to transfer spending power from the as yet undeserving rich to the deserving and the undeserving young throughout the UK in each new generation.
It is time to end Dynastic Capitalism – that feudal hangover – and replace it by a Liberal Popular or Democratic Capitalism. I would call it Universal Inheritance Capitalism. It is already, since 2005, the party policy of the Liberal Party. I dare say that in time someone will suggest calling it Liberal Democratic Capitalism!
That is, if the Tories or UKIP have not snaffled it first in order to continue the Property Owning Democracy brand, continuing where Margaret Thatcher left off after selling council houses and utilities, to spread more widely the private ownership of wealth in the market economy in each succeeding generation.
Labour, unfortunately, do not in principle like capitalism of any kind, although the Fabian Society did come out with the same proposal “A Capital Idea” – by Julian De Grand – in 2000, but it was smothered by New Labour’s fear of being labelled with the R word.
@Oranjepan
By not getting ’emotional’ you are still ignoring the real effects of policies on real lives. Ignoring the human element leads to extreme policies. The few seconds it takes to express one’s concerns is hardly going to prevent any intellectual debate. Stoic responses are not appropriate in the human world where humane responses are needed now. Medical professionals are taught to use the ‘human touch’, when dealing with ill folk, as well as their intellects. I suggest that the same is required of politicians and bureaucrats. Of the latter, for example, those that pass claimants from JSA to ESA and back again are failing in their humanity, with no-one willing to take responsibility and lead the claimant to where they need to be. This failure by those in Govt. is even worse for they are the ones who are meant to oversee the system. Where is the fairness, the equity, the equality of treatment in letting folk go hungry and lose their homes because of failures in the system? In the harrowing tale of the lady above, who has to wait months to have her appeal heard, what is she supposed to exist on? As far as I am aware billions is unclaimed each year according to Govt. stats.: if Govt. spent as much effort in ensuring it was correctly directed as it has in creating a huge myth around benefit fraud then perhaps I should not need to castigate those in power! Where is the righteous indignation, if not downright anger, at what is being done under the part-LibDem régime? What balance needs to be struck to save folk from killing themselves? Action is needed, and not after some intellectual debate. It is needed now. One’s emotions ought to be disturbed at the tales in the media and elsewhere and urge one on to look at the facts and do something about it. NOW.
Colin,
Action is needed, I agree, which is why we need fewer wet, woolly and warm words. Particularly online.
If you feel you want to be more active, then by all means contact a local campaign group or party office to offer your services.
Colin_Roy wrote:
I despair. So you think a universal one size fits all decided by an algorithm on a computer and a numpty with a clip board making a cursory visit and/or assessment works and member driven mutual welfare where there is at least a better chance that the people making a decision are going to be more aware of their members’ needs and history won’t? Do you think that state bureaucrats and their external contractors actually care? As much as dedicated member services personnel in relatively small organisations in touch with their members?
Also, welfare is about more than cash support. The great benefit of the mutuals and in the US the lodges was that they were “members clubs” that provided assistance with all sorts of life’s issues to people with a genuine “common bond”, formed the basis of local communities and activities.
Do you have any evidence that in this case small would not be more beautiful, or are you just enamoured of big state universal, impersonal bureaucracy?
Perhaps we should return National Insurance to its original purpose – limiting the amount an individual can take out in benefits, at least in terms of JSA, to the contributions that they have made into the pot while in work. At a stroke you’d end the option of a life of worklessness. Perhaps then individuals would value their free, state provided, education.
@Andrew Tennant
National Insurance isn’t insurance at all. The Employers Contribution is a tax on employment and should be abolished a.s.a.p. Employees and self-employed contributions should then be gradually merged into Income Tax.
On the wider points. There really are some scroungers out there and sorting the genuine from the fraudulent is always going to be a messy business. I’m told that one problem is that the Thatcher government favoured Incapacity Benefit as a means of massaging the unemployment figures. I’m also told that some people haven’t been re-assessed for years, not every original assessment was correct and not everyone who was unfit to work then is still unfit now.
That said, there really must be a fairer way of treating people who have fallen on hard times.
And as regards employers taking advantage, hours and hours and hours of unpaid overtime is now standard practice for many – thus adding to the dole queues and the burden for taxpaying employees (but not for certain major employers who have ways of avoiding tax).
@Old Codger Chris
Yes I know – I’d rather you didn’t patronise me in your comments in future…