In the current political climate, welfare entitlement has long been regarded as an unacceptable drain on corporate profitability.
Even so, welfare minister Jim Murphy’s recent message that the welfare state is always going to leave significant numbers of people in poverty comes as the clearest statement yet of New Labour’s take on the issue. Here’s what the former NUS apparatchik - pictured grinning inanely - told a conference on welfare reform yesterday:
‘"Benefits do not lift people out of poverty in this country, and it has never been the case that they do.
‘"Work is the only way out of poverty. It may not yet be a guarantee out of poverty - though it should be - but it is the only route out."
‘The benefit system, he said, "will never pay, of itself" the £220 or more a week needed to lift a lone parent with two young children above the government’s official poverty line of 60 per cent of median earnings, "and I don’t think it should".
‘The minister conceded his words might "sound callous and heartless". But, said Mr Murphy, the welfare state had never been designed to deliver that level of benefit and the UK did not want to go down the road that Germany, for example, had been abandoning in recent times, that of providing such levels of support.’
Of course welfare policy will always be a balancing act. It is legitimate to expect people who are capable of contributing to society to do so. From each according to his ability, just like the main man said.
But millions of people do just that without entering into wage labour. Single parents and carers are obvious examples. A workmate of mine left well-paid employment to look after his wife as she died of cancer, for instance.
I don’t know what Nick’s financial arrangements were. But I don’t think anyone prepared to do what he did – thereby saving the state the huge cost of providing social care in the circumstances – should be forced to live in poverty.
There are plenty of examples where people are genuinely unable to work, through no fault of their own. Incapacity – whether physical or mental - is clear example.
In a society that sees fit to award top bankers with take-home pay of £22m a year, why inflict financial privation on the disabled?
Even the normal workings of the business cycle can dump millions of people on the dole queue in very short order. You see, my experience of long-term youth unemployment in the recession of the early eighties is first hand.
I’ll leave the last word on Murphy’s comments to Ruth Lister, professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University and former director of the Child Poverty Action Group. It's good to see she's still in circulation:
‘"I have never heard a Conservative minister - let alone a Labour one - say that, even at the height of Thatcherism."’
Comments (19)
Great to see the left at last talking about welfare, imo, it has been the shame of the left that such measures as the Job Seekers Allowance and the New Deal went through without much of a fight. it was looking increasingly likely that the Welfare Reform Bill was similarly going without any outrage for the same quarters.Though some of the unemployed centres have done stirling work.
The Coalition against The Welfare Reform Bill,(cawrb) Sheffield Welfare Action Network(SWAN), Welfare Reform UK,Disabled Action Network and others have organised lobbies, demos, inc one outside the LP conference and initiated conferences as well. Disabled people, the unemployed and single parents have basically been left to fight by themselves, a very unequal fight
When Tony Blair came to power, he asked the iconoclastic Labour MP and Minister For Welfare Reform, Frank Field to ‘think the unthinkable’ on welfare reform: although the welfare regime has certainly got much harder/brutal for claimants and more stressful for DWP workers, his plans largely came to nothing . However, The Freud Review commissioned by Tony Blair and endorsed by Gordon Brown has put the unthinkable right back on the agenda.
Just as privatisation of the NHS was once ‘unthinkable’ and so far out of mainstream political thinking and is now proceeding apace: now welfare reform is to undergo the same process. Policies that would have been fiercely resisted by opposition parties if carried out by the Thatcher Govt are now routinely passed by parliament. There would appear to be a consensus across the main political parties that drastic welfare reform is needed.
Combined with the draconian Welfare Reform Bill its clear now that we are seeing the biggest structural changes in welfare since the 1940’s; indeed, there are now clear similarities between the Freud Review proposals and President Clinton's seminal 1996 welfare reforms which have been such a disaster for the poor in the U.S.
What lies behind all this as well as saving money to pay for the pensions crisis is the Nl obsession with work and its neo-liberal ideology of the 'active citizen' only when one is actively working, looking for work, or undergoing training is a person deemed 'a good citizen'.A very Victorian notion
There is so much more to all this, the corruption:
links between private insurance companies such as Unum Provident and the DWP, third sectors companies such as --- making millions from public sector contracts, I could go on
welfare is a issue, a crusade for the left
please take it up!
btw
there is a very good report on Union Futures
about the TUC confernce on welfare reform held on Monday.
http://www.unionfutures.blogspot.com/
There's also a good article on Guardian CIF challenging the NL mantra, that 'Work is the only way out of poverty, maybe one can also look to the US with its millions of working poor.
Solving the poverty riddle
As today's figures on child poverty show, repeating the same mantra will not salvage Labour's boldest pledge.
Peter Kenway
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March 27, 2007 5:00 PM | Printable version
Today's official numbers on child poverty are the most depressing since Labour came to office. For the first time since Tony Blair's historic pledge in 1999 to end child poverty within a generation, the number of children living in poverty in the UK went up in the latest year for which data is available, for the period April 2005 to March 2006.
Now of course it is important not to read too much into one year's data. And if the government had previously been more or less on track to reach its targets, one year's "rogue" data would be simply a cause for concern rather than a sign that something fundamental may be going wrong.
But even before today's figures, it was clear that the government was well off track. Between 2004 and 2005, child poverty was supposed to have fallen by 1 million compared with the government's 1998/99 baseline. Instead, the number of children in poverty actually fell by only 700,000.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/peter_kenway/2007/03/todays_official_numbers_on_chi.html
Thanks Frenetic06 re: post on Union Futures. Yes, and about time this appeared on the Left's radar.
One of the most interesting things at the TUC conference yesterday on the Welfare Reform Bill/Freud etc. was the level of anger shown by trade unionists at this draconian Bill. There was a speaker from CPAG who had attended the conference organised by John Hutton in the morning and he admitted to us that he was "thoroughly depressed" by what had come out of it.
New Labour commits itself, laughably, to tackling child poverty yet the Welfare Reform Bill with its emphasis on conditionality and sanctions will push people who are already in poverty into further poverty......If a claimant fails to give "good cause" about why they can't attend a work-focussed interview then their benefit is reduced by 25%!
The level of benefits have not risen in real terms and will continue to remain stagnant.
Nobody knows what the new benefit rates will be under this new benefit in place of Incapacity Benefit. And under the Freud Review there are proposals of contracting out Job Centre Plus i.e. privatisation and forcing lone parents back into the workplace.
Study after study has shown the employers' will not employ people with disabilities. So where are these "jobs" going to come from? Yet employers' will not face sanctions or be penalised for discrimination.
What came out of yesterday's meeting was a commitment of some sort to work with the PCS, welfare rights advisers and disability rights activists in fighting against these proposals. So I would urge comrades who are against these attacks to join us.
Jim Murphy bangs on about "rights and responsibilities" of the "citizen" and we should stop this "culture of dependency". And I think that's at the core of New Labour's ideological attack on welfare is this horrendous idea of "culture of dependency" and the "feckless poor" and the continued marketisation of public services.
Louisefeminista,
Would your proposals more closely resemble the Scandinavian system?
George: My proposals would be tightening up the anti-discrimination laws, free childcare provision, increase in benefits in line with earnings, supporting people back into work on their own terms, free and better education and so on.
Whether they resemble the Scandinavian system is neither here nor there but these are things that will in the long term start to improve livelihoods and tackle poverty.
At the moment New Labour wants to punish and penalise people for being poor and disabled.
"supporting people back into work on their own terms"
can you be more precise?
This is what SWAN says about the Welfare Reform BIll
SWAN supports the principle of offering good quality support to claimants who feel ready to accept it. To us, the central issue is one of control. The proposals in the Welfare Reform Bill will mean that the state, and not the individual, will decide whether a person is ready to think about a return to work. We cannot emphasise strongly enough the importance that many, many claimants attach to having pressure-free time in which to make a recovery, and the extreme stress and anxiety which they experience when this is threatened.
SWAN believes that disabled people themselves are the best-placed people to decide on suitable programmes and work-related activities, to be undertaken at their own pace and at the right time. SWAN would like assurances that there will be no sanctions against those who do not take part in such programmes, and that there will be no compulsion to take part in healthcare treatments.
We would prefer a humane benefits system where the current mistrust and fear of the DWP is replaced by a genuine feeling of being supported. This will require some considerable work on the DWP’s part, and will certainly not be helped by the threat of sanctions. We believe that claimants will gladly accept good-quality support to return to work if they feel ready, and if this support is offered by agencies that they have no need to fear, and that this will entirely negate the “need” for sanctions.
What is SWAN
http://www.swansheffield.org.uk/whoswan.php
George: Much of what I support is in SWAN statement above.
What i mean by people being supported back into work on their own terms is precisely that. Claimants are best placed to say when they want to return to work instead of the state dictating the terms as this causes untold misery and distress. Compulsion and bullying is the not the answer.
Also what about responsibilies of employers' who have a lousy track record of taking on people with disabilites? What happens if you do want to get a job and every sodding employer turns you down because of your mental health history! And also throw in the stigma and negative stereotypes.
"We would prefer a humane benefits system where the current mistrust and fear of the DWP is replaced by a genuine feeling of being supported"
SWAN is absolutely spot-on with the above as, for example, from research done Job Centre Plus staff have very little understanding of mental distress and learning difficulties. So gawd knows what the attitudes will be like once privatised!
I think the number of comments here compared to ones about tiny left groups for instance speaks volumes about the lack of interest on the left about welfare and indeed the nature of todays shrunken left.
then again, they are only 'the lumpen', aren't they?
Frenetic06: I agree with your above comment.
The Welfare Reform Bill will be getting royal assent very very soon and it will have bloody horrible consequences on all concerned. And the Left should be concerned.
As well as these attacks on Welfare there have been proposals to attack legal aid (civil and criminal). This includes "fixed fees" and therefore shrinking and squeezing out advice agencies. Good free legal advice will probably be a thing of the past come October. The people who will be screwed by the Welfare Reform Bill will have severe problems accessing good advice.
There is the Access to Justice Alliance campaign.
The Department of Constitutional Affairs (Vera Baird)has promised the Treasury a 5% cut.
But hardly a dickie bird from the Left over this.
I agree with the above. There's far too much attention paid on the left to issues in the Middle East, and when one left organisation states that 'Islamophobia' is the main problem in our society then it shows that they really are ignoring the socio-economic problems we face.
We definitely need to defend welfare against adverse changes, but I'd like to see more left thinking on how to change the welfare system to reduce dependency on a state that demeans claimants, reducing entitlements and openly stigmatising them as 'scroungers'.
"We definitely need to defend welfare against adverse changes, but I'd like to see more left thinking on how to change the welfare system to reduce dependency on a state that demeans claimants, reducing entitlements and openly stigmatising them as 'scroungers'."
You mean you want to find a way to chuck 'claimants' off welfare so that they aren't stigmatised and demeaned because they are on welfare.
One way of changing the welfare system might be...ohh.. I don't know... maybe a Labour Party committed to full employment. I know it sounds silly doesn't it.
No, I don't mean that at all. Do you think the present system is perfect then? In some ways the Welfare State has weakened the power and independence of organized labour. Do you acknowledge that?
As for full employment, what about those who can't work, the low paid, pensioners etc?
"In some ways the Welfare State has weakened the power and independence of organized labour. Do you acknowledge that?"
No, I don't. What are you on about? Organised labour supported the setting up of a welfare state. There is a debate about means-testing v universalism of course and in general I am against means-testing but I don't see how The Welfare State post-1945 in itself weakened organised labour.
"Do you think the present system is perfect then?"
Of course not. I know from personal experience how bureaucratic it is and how remote it seems.
"In some ways the Welfare State has weakened the power and independence of organized labour. Do you acknowledge that?"
Like Matthew, no I don't think that. I certainly know that the Welfare State, for all its failings is far preferable to what the US has (and what Nu Lab seem to want us to get) and of course far preferable to what existed here pre-1945.
Knocking welfare is a very dangerous game for the Left to engage in. After all, the people who hate it most are the Right and, of course, business. It's business trying to maximise profit (through the promotion of 'flexible' labour and so on) that is driving the present war of attrition against the WS.
"As for full employment, what about those who can't work, the low paid, pensioners etc?"
Do you honestly think that those who favour and call for 'full employment' haven't thought of that? Are you honestly unaware that those who favour full employment (which quite obviously doesn't apply to pensioners - neither does it apply to children, the sick or the terminally ill by the way in case you didn't know) also tend to favour generous provision for those who for reasons cannot work?
By the way, the low paid are, by definition, employed.
"pictured grinning inanely"... It obviously helps to criticise someone's appearance when making a political point. Well done, Dave.
I think it is good to see a politician being completely clear and transparent about what he's trying to do. He is saying that the benefits system won't take people out of poverty. Ruth Lister may never have heard a minister say this, but she must know it's true.
Now I think it's true too, but I also think that the policy is wrong. Carers like your friend Nick ought to be paid for their time under circumstances. But it's a job and carers need to be paid a wage, not a benefit.
I think the policy of moving from the present 75% employment for working age people to 80% employment is worth pursuing. Given the politics of our country it will be the only way to make progress towards the targets of halving child poverty from 1997 levels by 2010 and "abolishing" it by 2020. I don't think even the first target can be achieved by 2010 but more has to be done to get there by the time of the next Labour government.
Maybe John McDonnell will have a different approach when he's PM, or even parliamentary under sectetary at DEFRA. But just in case he doesn't make it, I think Jim Murphy is being clear and honest in fulfilling his role. He is a serious working class Labour politician with considerable talent. He deserves to be challenged politically, he doesn't deserve childish abuse.
Even if he is freakishly skinny.
I think some of the comments above are typical of the conservatism of sections of the left. I suggest that the welfare system could be improved and made more participatory, and immediately people are virtually comparing me to Keith Joseph. If I can remind people, there is an anti-state body of thought on the LEFT as well you know.
Well, in response to Jemima. Whether Jim Murphy's inane cheshire cat grin scares children and small dogs is neither here nor there (though it would be useful research).
The point is that Murphy is the very opposite of honest. He has signed up along with John Hutton to malign people on benefits and to attack the benefits system overall.
The whole point of the benefits system is that the unpleasant side of life can strike at any time. Dave's friend Nick could be any of us. A phone call could come through at any time that something terrible has happned to someone close to you and if you need to care for them your finances are going to be wrecked.
Carers Allowance is £56 each week. If you qualify for Income Support this would be topped up by about another £28. If you have a mortgage you will be in serious trouble and you could end up having to sell your home.
This happens to people all the time. This is why people are on long term benefits. It is not because of their shortcomings or the utterly stupid notion of, "culture of dependency" but because people are forced into the postion they are in. That's the reality and not the bloody nonsense spouted by Murphy. And Murphy "a serious working class Labour politican"? Do me a favour...
He is a Blairite opportunist and if he did have some serious class politics then he wouldn't be backing the hideous welfare reforms etc.
Has Jim Murphy ever had a 'real' job? I mean, does been top knob at the NUS ever been to anything,apart from being a 'filler' before getting a Labour parliamentary seat?
I went to university at the age of 31, and I can recall the dubious pleasure of hearing Murphy drone on 'bout the Tories' in Kennington, Sarf London,in 1995.
I have returned to 'uni'as a postgraduate, and avoid the NUS, and student 'politics', like the plague. A Complete waste of time and effort.