by Neil BatemanThe welfare reform green paper (published on 21 July) contains yet more proposals for toughening up the benefits system. It seems there is no turning back when it comes to these ideas that Tebbitt, Lilley and Co only dreamed of and now being wafted through by Brown, Purnell Associates.
One must ask whether it was coincidence that the green paper is published in the middle of a joint DWP/BBC TV series about benefit fraud? After all, having a few folk demons chanting in the background always helps the public swallow radical benefit changes.
Central to the proposals is the concept that work is the best route out of poverty. Of course, secure, well paid work is an important right and having personally seen the destruction caused to communities, families and individuals from mass unemployment in Liverpool in the 1980s, I need no lessons about why work matters.
Bucket loads of help
But is work any solution if it still keeps people in poverty? If they still need bucket loads of state financial help to get by and if it means doing a job of the type that government ministers wouldn't get out of bed for?
Given that over 60% of those on incapacity benefit have no skills or qualifications and that unemployment is rising, what sort of job opportunities will emerge from the cull of IB? More dole more like.
Most worrying of all are the Workfare proposals - compulsory work in return for benefit after two years unemployment. Government is ignoring the reality of this punitive American Neo-con idea. Even on its own terms, Workfare doesn't work. For example, free labour provided by Workfare distorts the labour market and replaces paid jobs thus adding to unemployment, it prevents claimants from looking for work and litter-picking type jobs do little to enhance their skills.
No work, no welfare
Worst of all, in the US it has created a huge "no work, no welfare" group who fund themselves though begging, stealing and borrowing. Drill down through the UK's worklessness statistics and there are already signs of a similar phenomenon developing.
Local authorities and voluntary bodies could be key providers of Workfare, so they need to think long and hard before embracing it. This really is a test of whose side your organisation is on.
Having ratcheted up conditionality in the benefits system, finding that it inevitably doesn't work the government just wants more. When will the penny drop with this lot that you get the best out of people by encouraging, empowering and caring for them than by penalising and threatening them?
And how about sanctions for senior DWP officials for not delivering a decent service or for employers who prefer not to employ the long-term jobless?
Neil Bateman is a welfare rights specialist
Click here for Neil Bateman's analysis of employment and support allowance and the demise of incapacity benefit
Community Care report on the green paper
Sky News report on the leak of the green paper (21 July 08)
BBC coverage of the green paper
Neil Bateman writes that under implementation of the Freud Report, "ESA [Employment and Support Allowance] will allow some individuals to do certain types of work for less than 16 hours a week. The amount which can be earned before affecting income-related ESA will be the same as contributory ESA — up to £88.50 per week at current rates (expected to rise in October)."
Meanwhile, for disabled and non-disabled Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) claimants, the allowable earnings limit is £5 per week — viz, less than an hour on the national minimum wage, and unchanged since 1988. Resultant JSA admin melt-down keeps JSA claimants who do part-time work with fluctuating hours are kept waiting several months for the benefits top-up to which they are officially entitled. Can that be good for anyone's mental health?
This is a restraint of trade, especially as meals and travel expenses between shifts have to be covered by the worker themselves out of that £5 per week earnings limit if their income falls below the JSA threshold of about £60 per week. Too much is made of the resentment of 'decent hard working families' and too little of the resentment of decades long single jobseekers whose efforts to find paid work have gone unrewarded and under-supported.
Alan Wheatley
Disability Spokesperson for London Green Party
In my first Green Paper response for the Green Party, I am aware of selective omissions in the Welfare Reform Green Paper 'No One Written Off: Reforming Welfare to Reward Responsibility'. As Community Care website highlights government consultations, perhaps you could make regular features for the aid of consultation responders?
2.10 states, "After a year, about nine out of ten claimants have left JSA" (NOWO, page 40). For how long? A Joseph Rowntree Foundation study, 'Insecure at Work' points out that half of the men and a third of the women making a new claim for JSA were last claiming the benefit less than six months ago. These figure have remained consistent for at least ten years. (NOWO makes no mention of this.)
Australian workfare got 7% more participants into paid work compared with non-participants (NOWO, page 44). But the researchers involved point out that NOWO omits reference to the 68% increase in very-long-term unemployment among Australian workfare participants.
Yet in its 118 pages, I have yet to find any reference to disabled jobseekers on JSA. Maybe, even though I see the Disability Employment Adviser, the Green Paper authors consider me an 'overstayer' and not a working-life long volunteer and disabled jobseeker?
Alan Wheatley
Green Party Disability Spokesperson
I've been disabled for eighteen years now after an accident at work, after the accident I wanted to return to work went to my jobs center and was told my god who is going to employ you, then the New Deal came out and my job center said it's only for those with a good chance of getting work, so I was told to go home and do not waste their time, the Pathways to work came around I went back down to my job center plus saw DEA who said ah yes we can help you no problem, go and see this agency, they will sort you out, it was Remploy, within three weeks Remploy without telling anyone moved out of the area saying employers were not helping, I went back to my job center and they took over, I've a lesion of the L5 with all types of problems including chronic pain. They said OK do you need the wheelchair I said yes of course I do. Then it was suggested I do window cleaning doing only the windows I could reach, or taxi driving, or perhaps painting and I kid you not skirting's.
I then asked to go on a retraining course and at 39 was told forget it unless you can pay for it your self.
In July this year my DEA asked me to come back after Christmas I mean in July.
Everything is being placed in my way no funding no employers, the NHS is not employing, the benefits office closed now the tax office has closed companies are leaving left right and center, where am I going to work, well they said I can always work for nothing, so I said OK fine I'll do it, and they said well yes but who would take you on.
I give up.
So many od the rather brisk lady enforcers on Pathways to Work are less than half the agoe the the claimants they rollock. Dont we need more
mature advisers/enforcers> PF
Pathways to Work (Lincoln)
Is there any appeal against an enforcers decision on benefit?