Iain Duncan Smith and welfare reform: no change there, then
Posted on Thursday 27 May, 2010
Filed Under Welfare State
IAIN Duncan Smith wants ‘radical reform’ of the welfare system. On a rhetoric scale of one to ten, at least the work and pensions secretary has turned down the volume a couple of notches from the ‘full-scale shake-up of the welfare state’ promised by James Purnell in 2008 and David Blunkett in 2005.
Such evident moderation sounds innocuous enough. Why, the very word reform even carries connotations of improvement or beneficial change. Who could possibly set their face against that?
But never underestimate the determination of a quiet man. I suspect that once the IDS game plan is spelled out in detail, the content of his ideas will broadly resemble those of his predecessors. They will boil down to making it ever harder for claimants to get their hands on ever lower sums of money.
The truth is that politicians have been kicking around such ideas for decades, endlessly riffing on the self-same themes. So Duncan Smith tells us for the umpteenth time that there are to be sanctions against claimants who refuse jobs, as if this were some bold and original new policy breakthrough.
It isn’t. I’m going on memory here, but even in the pre-Thatcher 1970s, benefit was withdrawn for anybody who turned down three offers of employment.
Similarly, IDS highlights the secular growth in the numbers on incapacity benefit as if this was some kind of revelation, without mentioning that the trend commenced under Thatcherism, largely as a means of massaging headline unemployment figures downwards.
Anyone with even a glancing knowledge of social policy is aware of the ‘poverty trap’ phenomenon, which means that a switch from benefit to low-paid employment leaves many people worse off. The trouble is that New Labour and the Tories alike read that as a moral imperative to slash benefits rather than introduce a minimum wage that provides for a decent standard of living.
I am not naïve enough to argue that nobody out there is claiming money to which they are not entitled. Nobody on the left can have any trouble with the notion of rooting out systematic deliberate fraud through the creation of multiple bogus identities, for instance.
But if this situation is anywhere near as prevalent as the Daily Mail would have us believe, how come none of the huge range of initiatives over the last three decades has made a damn bit of difference?
The consensus viewpoint on the political right – and I include New Labour within that spectrum of opinion – seeks to portray the problem as one of dependency culture, without asking how that dependency culture has come to exist.
Much of it clearly arises from Thatcherism’s decision to deindustrialise Britain. Whole swathes of the country have been permanently in recession ever since the deliberately engineered downturn of the early 1980s.
It is all very well for middle-class politicians such as Caroline Flint to point an accusing finger at the generalised attitude of ‘no-one works around here’ that is said to grip some areas. The main reason that no-one works around here is that there are not enough jobs around here.
None of above is to argue that the status quo is as good as it gets. If Duncan Smith can truly devise concrete modifications to the rules that succeed in getting more people into employment, I will be the first to applaud.
But the sheer lack of originality and unadulterated repetitive quality of his analysis does not fill me with confidence that he can do so.
Factor in his membership of a government whose ideologically-driven economic policies are about to send the dole queue statistics sky high, and the prediction has to be that the numbers of benefit will substantially increase in years ahead.
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25 Responses to “Iain Duncan Smith and welfare reform: no change there, then”
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“Reforming benefits” is a little like “cutting waste”. It’s
1. Bloody obvious
2. Bloody difficult
Every government says it’ll get more efficient government services, and every government fails. As you say, every government promises to reform benefits and every government fails.
What worries me about IDF, though, is his Conservative moral outlook. This risks a move to that Victorian concept of the “deserving poor”. I’m worried that he does see his role as trying to “fix” a “morally broken” society. The old quip about it not being wise to be poor/sick/old could turn into a advice not to be single/atheist/gay.
“Similarly, IDS highlights the secular growth in the numbers on incapacity benefit as if this was some kind of revelation, without mentioning that the trend commenced under Thatcherism, largely as a means of massaging headline unemployment figures downwards.”
I’ve never seen an adequate explanation of this phenomenon. Presumably, one needs a medical note proving incapacity to claim incapacity benefit, right? So the whole medical profession was complicit in signing off perfectly health people as incapacitated. To say that this is highly unprofessional is not to say much at all. But it also means that there is absolutely no reason not to believe the Tory claim, backed up by the general acceptance that incapacity was a wheeze to massage the unemployment figures, that many people on incapacity benefit are not incapacitated at all.
I myself used to believe this, but have since been otherwise persuaded by Louise Whittle and a few others that incapacity these days counts drug addiction, alcoholism, those with certain mental disorders, etc, and so the numbers on incapacity benefit may be genuine. Nevertheless, given the history of using incapacity as a way of massaging unemployment figures, this may be quite a difficult point to put over, and it doesn’t explain how perfectly healthy people were medically judged to be incapacitated.
Having read a few documents on line today re. IDS welefare to work ideals, I wish they would explain the part about providing training for older people? I am in my sixties and am on Incapacity Benefit. However I would like to point out that before I became sick in 2008 I had been employed and in work since I was 13 years old. I have enough stamps to get my state pension, but because I am not yet pension age I cannot claim it. What do sick people like me do?
I would like to say that I spent about 30 years as a Scottish Trawl Fisherman, went into higher education and worked in local government for a further 11 or 12 years before I became sick.
If the goverment expect the fisherman (or anybody in a similar hard working trade) to work until they are 67 or 68 then they are living on cloud nine, because their working life style has been so hard (physically) that this will not happen. Maybe the goverment should consider taking the money from the people who have wasted their resources on substance misuse and not from really sick people.
The Tories did use the old invalidity benefit claimant as a means of excluding people from the dole figures. It was a bit silly of them to do this as it actually costed a fortune in additional payment especially as they were cutting back in spending. I am sure the claimant was happy to have additional cash to feed the family. Labour changed the system and cut the size of the payment to new claimants a few years ago. Existent claimants retained their benefit. My personnal view is if a GP or consulatant state a person is unfit then it should be accepted. They are after all highly paid professional people.
“The danger of providing benefits, which are both adequate in amount and indefinite in duration” is “that men as creatures who adapt to circumstances may settle down to them…….the correlation of the state’s undertaking to ensure adequate benefit for unavoidable interruption of earnings, however long, is enforcement of the citizen’s obligation to seek and to accept all reasonable opportunities of work, to cooperate in measures designed to save him from habituation to idleness…”
William Beveridge
I worked in various community based roles from age 16 up until the age of 48. I worked both in the private sector and public services – Local Government. I worked hard and long sometimes putting in more hours than I was paid for simply to get the job done and also because I wanted to make a difference to the people I was serving and helping through my job. I went on working even though I had serious effects/illnesses coming through my Lymphoedema which made more Arthritis in the lower half of my body, I worked for over 9 years even though towards the end I could hardly walk, do stairs and had to use lifts and through pain I had been deprived of sleep most of the time. In the finish I had to give up work, my doctor signed me off with chronic and severe leg conditions. I am prone to illness through infection and have been in hospital both as an in patient and an out patient. I have severe exhaustion through trying to get around and most of the time I am housebound. I am on various medication for both pain and skin conditions, I have to be very very careful in avoiding cellulite skin infections as this could be ultimately fatal as I have become allergic to many of the anti biotics. Therefore I have to try to lead a very simple and stress free life where possible, as my immunity is permanently low due to my Lymphatics condition. I get DLA and Incapacity Benefit at present, I had worked full time for nearly 33 years before I had to give up. I had never claimed anything in my life until the last 4 years. DLA makes a great difference to me and I am very grateful for it, I can pay people to get me bits and pieces from the shops and also as I cannot get on a bus due to my legs, I pay friends and neighbours to take me to medical appointments ie. Chiropody, Dentist, Hospital etc. I would not be able to go to these appointments if I had not got DLA or Incapacity Benefit. It just would not happen, my feet and legs get so swollen from the Lypmhoedema that sometimes I cannot get shoes or anything onto my feet, even when I wear Farrow wraps this does not allow me to be able to wear normal footwear, apart from that the wraps which in my case go from toe to mid thigh in 3 pieces do not allow me to move very far and very slowly, so public transport is out. How would I be able to travel to a job? How would I sustain a job when I pick up viruses/infections/bugs so easily – sickness and time off would ensue. No employer is going to put up with that on a regular basis. Plus every couple of hours I have to get my feet right up above my heart level, which also helps with the pain, I cannot use a normal toilet, use stairs or steps, have higher urine frequency and diarrhoea several times a week through Irritable Bowel Syndrome, again what employer is going to put up with all that? Plus the medication I have to take makes me very tired, especially if I have bad sleepless nights – I find it hard to cope at home let alone to try to hold a job down, basically it is a non starter, don’t get me wrong I have never been frightened to work but now I know I just cannot do it with my condition worsening all the time. Is there anyone else who has had this condition for over 14 years like I have?
In Derry, to take an extreme example, around a half of the working-age population is classed as economically inactive. Around half of those are in receipt of DLA. One of the most common reasons for being awarded DLA is alcoholism.
But as Dave says, it’s not as if DSN doesn’t know this. Look at all the ex-miners – many, it’s true, with genuine chronic health complaints – who were simply put on incapacity and left there. It’s a statistical fiddle that suits governments very well.
One would like to think, Jackie, that someone like you would not under under circumstances be expected to work. It is the ‘greyer’ cases that will be in the firing line, mental illness (especially depression), people who may not be able to swing a pick anymore but it will be argued could stack shelves. The main problem to me comes back to where will these jobs materialise from?
One thing to bear in mind is the new attitude to “work” by “medical professionals”. Occupational helath doctors and the incapacity lot have a civert agenda to deny people benefits by pushing them “back” to some rosily-viewed “work”. I think that there is a new breed here of hatchet-faced doctors who enjoy pronouncing on people they see as inferior. Having met my own Dr Mengele I got a better insight into the banality of evil than reading 100 books. These people are inhumane and are no more than paid lackeys who have lost any sense that their role should be to help those who are sick, not force them into the kind of “work” that often caused their illness anyway.
Don’t have a bad back, depression, ME, fibromyalgia, chronic pain. These scumbags will take great delight in telling you that “work” is the cure. I hope some of them are on the receiving end of their onw inhumanity.
Jimmy Glesga is an amazing chap; doctors who accede to their most obnoxious and demanding patients’ tiresome wishes are rewarded with – not gratitude, of course – sullen acceptance that the doctor or consultant had merely done his job.
We need not mention the equivalent con-tricks well-known to the savvy in the police service.
The tragic fact – which anyone but an idiot has known for thirty years – is that Western societies are no longer rich; ‘real’ industries have hollowed out or disappeared completely:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/05/27/were-too-broke-to-be-this-stupid/
I suppose everyone here knows that Iain Duncan Smith is of part-Japanese descent?
If he’s going to be everyone’s most-hated-person, it’ll be mentioned sooner or later.
Wait and see.
Look the system is a virtual hell for most of us. This will make it worse.
For informed remarks (31 comments on yesterday’s post):
http://intensiveactivity.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/welfare-reform-its-a-comin/
The ConDem plans are to increase the pool of slave labour available to businesses and even the Public sector. The advantages to business are obvious, lower costs, increased competitiveness etc etc. These people will act as a reserve army of the underemployed, being used to plug gaps here and gaps there. For all workers this is a dire state of affairs as it gives employers a huge bargaining advantage and it institutionalises slave labour. The economy becomes reliant on it, so it is a self fulfilling prophecy. Employers will use this slave labour as part of their planning, budgeting and goal setting. The social consequences of all this will be seen in the coming years.
“Arbeit macht frei”
Which, pre the Nazis usage, was also the slogan of the Weimar public works programme in the late 1920s.
There is indeed a happy lineage to these things…. The lovely James Purnell to delightful IDS anyone? Thank God the saintly Frank Fields is now on board eh?
Fear not, comrades! Frank Field will save the day!
On a gloomier and more realistic note, do – DO – click on the link which Andrew Coates provides.
It’s heartening to know that some – at least – of the whingers and demanders, the perennially aggrieved Claimants’ Union people, are being obliged to actually DO something useful to justify their months and years of idleness.
But why stop there? Surely we’ll hear calls for Eugenics to be taken seriously once more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
Can’t come too soon!
[In this context, it is interesting to note that Diane Abbott, when addressing the vexatious issue of mass Third World immigration, immediately assumes that the answer is to pave over the South Downs in order to provide adequate habitations for the Afghanis, Somalis, Ethiopians and persecuted African homosexuals she'd be delighted to welcome to Britain.]
Corr – You ARE Richard Littlejohn and I claim the star prize. Got any amusing (and timely) stories about murdered prostitutes? Too good for them?
Getting Incapacity Benefit is a right old hassle. To get it one needs to pass the Department of Work and Freedom’s medical: one has to be half dead to pass it. You then appeal, which is thrown out. You then go to a Tribunal, where, if you are really ill, you have a reasonable chance of getting your IB reinstated. This happens on an annual basis. All for 80 nicker a week.
I’m on IB as I am unable to work because of an illness, and it’s one that is not going away, so I can’t tell how long I’ll be in this condition. As if, after 27 years of work and seven years as a student, I’d happily chuck in a job I liked doing to sit around idle most of the time for 80 nicker a week — not to mention all the hassle in getting it paid.
People on IB are an easy target; rags like the Daily Wail think we’re all on the scrounge. But I’d much rather be working, or full-time studying, than living on IB. And in today’s conditions, even if they chuck hundreds of thousands off IB, where’s the work, where are the jobs?
Lets examine the inherant question.Both new labour and now this coalition government,more extreme, want to cut welfare benefits.
Why? It “saves” money. WRONG. It enhances poverty, deprivation,
crime,addiction rates and social unease.
To attack the disabled is worse than any “bannana reblic” dictator. Well done “DAVE”
You lot are about to force,sorry kick public servants onto the dole. Well all is well in Tory Towers Then. I doubt it.
It was easier on benefits in the ’70s cos we didn’t have the mass unemployment we’ve had since and the big manufacturing industries, which the Tories destroyed in the ’80s were still going.
But they could still come down hard on you. There was a law (is it still on the statute books?) of “failing to maintain” yourself, which could land you in the magistrates court. I don’t know what the penalties were, but my druggy young self was threatened with it.
I think all this hammering those on benfefits is bullshit. Why do they think we’re in this state? Neo-liberals and their dumb followers wail about it when it’s all part of the neo-liberal package.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
(and I’m not even a Marxist)
Bill Corr. Whom do you suggest determines who gets incapacity payment! Perhaps another tier of highly paid experts.
“The danger of providing benefits, which are both adequate in amount and indefinite in duration” is “that men as creatures who adapt to circumstances may settle down to them…….the correlation of the state’s undertaking to ensure adequate benefit for unavoidable interruption of earnings, however long, is enforcement of the citizen’s obligation to seek and to accept all reasonable opportunities of work, to cooperate in measures designed to save him from habituation to idleness…”
William Beveridge
Danger for who?
Bill Corr’s cry for eugenics would see him ( and quite rightly so) arrested should he spout his views on a public platform.
When will the great blog comments dictator come to power and delete his irrelvent trolling garbage. It’s a question nearly everyone to the left of Himmler appears to be asking.
‘A Socialist’ seems to believe that advocating Eugenics is, or ought to be, an arrestable offence. It would be amusing to put together a one-hour television programme in which the now-departed Great and Good who advocated Eugenics at one time or another were to be aggressively cross-examined on their views. The link I provided earlier gives a beginner’s list of names; many are names revered on the Thinking Left to this day.
Here is the great Polly Toynbee, cynosure of all enlightened eyes, telling us from the sun-dappled orchard of her Tuscan villa what the facts about the benefit culture are. Some of the contributions are well worth reading, too:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/28/iain-duncan-smith-work-and-careers
It seems that one or other of the Identikit Millibandi is demanding that Labour-run councils actually take the plunge and pay each and every one of their employees a living wage. It takes a lot to surprise me these days, but I confess to having been mildly shocked to learn that any such Labour-run councils were paying wages so direly low that the households of such breadwinners qualify as households below the poverty line.
Do these Committed Socialists tell their impoverished wage-slaves that they should offer up their poverty to God, as the late Mother Teresa did?
My own views are grotesquely distorted by historical accident; I grew up in Barrow-in-Furness, a town which enjoyed full employment in the fifties and sixties. In fact, Barrow acted as a magnet for job-seeking Scots and Irish and quite a few Geordies. Among Barrovians themselves, only the halt, lame and blind – and those afflicted by chronic inertia – were welfare recipients.
The tragic realy, all kidding aside, is that driving people off benefits and into work is an utter impossibility if unskilled and semi-skilled OJT work is non-existant.
Sorting out the great dole / idleness / benefits conundrum will probably prove beyond even IDS’s extolled powers.
Every low-paid worker can point to a household with no actual breadwinners which is at least as prosperous as his/her own; anecdotal evidence should never be accepted as Holy Writ, of course, but a great many of the actually-employed working class smoulder with silent fury about benefit-receiving households – whom they can unhesitatingly name – who seem to be doing very comfortably with no apparant effort whatsoever.
Here endeth the lesson.
Margaret Sanger, one of the Unforgotten and Still-Commemorated Enlightened Ones*, was an advocate of Eugenics in her day …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger
… she was also one of those heroic wimmin who foresaw the Rise of Vicky Pollard and all that such a dismal cultural and social development would entail.
* USCEO, a new coinage.
Pass it on.
I often wondered if eugenics might not make a come-back; perhaps if New Labour wasn’t so God-botherer-ridden it might have tickled their authoritarian imagination. I could also see the slogan of ‘stop the underclass reproducing’ being remarkably popular at many levels of society.
As for myself, I would far prefer policies that eradicated poverty and gave people some sort of creative hope for the future, but I fear that in today’s climate such ideas will be seen by many people as utopian.
Instead of punishing those who have already suffered in the worst recession in 50 years, do something constructive.
Make employers pay a fine for each job applicant they reject.
Nothing useful happens at jobcentres, so close them all, and save money.
Fine doctors who place healthy people on incapacity benefit.
Stop paying the career scroungers, i.e. women who live in free houses and keep having more and more babies to qualify for more and more benefits.
Only pay child benefit to families with both a mother and father, and then only for the first two children, until they are 5 years old.
Stop pampering illegal immigrants, just deport them within 24 hours, and fine the companies which brought them.
So, 2500000 unemployed, and allegedly 500000 jobs. That means 2000000 are not going to get jobs whatever they do. More stupid government schemes are not going to help.
Forcing the unemployed to work unpaid is grossly unfair. Yes, abolish all benefits, but provide community work for the unemployed, and pay them the minimum wage for that work. Where’s the money coming from? Put up income tax for anyone who is paid more than £50000 per year. Nobody ‘earns’ more than that.
Don’t let me get started.