Benefit sanctions as a mechanism for rewriting economic history at whatever cost

I find reading bullshit from 'think tank' Reform in tandem with global accountancy corporation Accenture not good for my health but better than rolling over into an inertia of doing nothing to challenge injustice.

The Bullshit

The opening paragraph of the Reform/Accenture report 'The future of public services: digital jobcentres' reads:

Up to the job?

The financial crisis precipitated the deepest peacetime recession the UK had experienced since the Great Depression. As the banking sector went into meltdown and lending to businesses dried up, the economy contracted by 6 per cent in a year.1 Many lost their jobs, but unemployment during the downturn was less acute than in other periods of economic decline... While 10 per cent of the workforce were claiming unemployment benefit during periods of the 1980s, the financial crisis saw this measure of worklessness peak at 4.7 per cent. The labour market has also proved resilient in recent years. Unemployment returned to pre-crisis levels shortly after last year’s general election, leading the then Prime Minister David Cameron to herald a ‘jobs miracle’.(1)

Time for a response in British Sign Language:


And also in American Sign Language:

The reality, or as American English would have it, 'actuality'

In reality, benefit sanctions masked the reality of the true number of 'non-working poor'. The 'claimant count' is based on the numbers of people judged to be legitimately claiming benefits, and mass sanctions serve as a mass grave for the truth. If the DWP admitted that there were targets for the numbers of sanctions to apply as 'norms', that would undermine the perceived legitimacy of the figures cited above by Reform/Accenture.

Look to what Dr David Webster has written regarding sanctions data and how sanctions are 'administered' and you will not see such a rosy picture. 

Benefit sanctions: Britain's secret penal system

Benefits claimants are subjected to an 'amateurish, secret penal system which is more severe than the mainstream judicial system', writes Dr David Webster of the University of Glasgow....(2)

Years ago, companies such as Unum and Accenture under the respective guises of Unum Provident and Arthur Andersen Consulting were found guilty of fraud. Now they talk of [heavily distorted] 'data' as the solution to benefit fraud and a think tank that has 'charitable status' goes along with them!

Mass sanctions disguise reality

And on the false premises of what an investment banker turned 'welfare reform guru' — Baron Freud the Welfare Reform Minister — has said of benefit fraud levels, the State and fraudster corporations have blood on their hands on account of sanctions deaths.(3)

Mass sanctions create mass graves.

Sanctions deaths are not so numerous as the impact of fear of sanctions, as for example Kate Belgrave | Talking with people dealing with public sector cuts attests.(4) Whether benefit claimants are sanctioned or not, they are still treated by the DWP as subhuman.

Kate's latest blog post is No-one believes anybody now. Not even on [Domestic Violence] issues.  More stories from the jobcentre(5) Thus the DWP is in effect administering violence in a public facility on a routine and systematic basis. Two comments on that blog post affirm that the domestic violence survivor Kate accompanied and who got the authorisation she attended for would not have faired so well had Kate not accompanied her.

A problem benefit claimants face regarding accompanying people to jobcentre interviews is the fear of being vicimised by the DWP, yet the motto of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is, "Never attend anywhere official alone." So, please, if you have the comparative liberty to accompany people to jobcentre interviews, make the attempt. You might learn from first-hand experience witnessing how Jobcentre Plus [sic] and its associate institutions actually operate!

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Link addresses

1. http://www.reform.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/The-future-of-public-services-digital-jobcentres.pdf
2. https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/benefit-sanctions-britains-secret-penal-system
3. http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/?s=sanctions+deaths
4. http://www.katebelgrave.com/?s=sanction+fear&submit=Search
5. http://www.katebelgrave.com/2016/08/nobody-believes-anybody-now-even-on-dv-issues-more-stories-from-the-jobcentre/

Disability impact assessments and 'think tank' reports by the clueless

This blog post started off as a comment in relation to Kate Belgrave's excellent coverage of jobcentre practices regarding how to treat claimants who have learning difficulties.(1)

When I was into reading and challenging government ‘green papers’ on, say, welfare reform with Green Party comrades around 2008/09, there was a standard heading, ‘disability impact assessment’. (A ‘green paper’ is a government discussion or consultation document toward putting in new legislation.) Perhaps the reason I forgot about the ‘disability impact assessment’ is that it was generally recorded as ‘Not Applicable’!

And now one of those wonderful ‘think tanks’ that work with governments toward privatising government services has a new report out called, The future of public services: digital jobcentres.(2) I find the introductory blurb so unbelievable that maybe that is why I did not even refer to it when I blogged about it last night. The introductory blurb reads:

“Today’s report, The future of public services: digital jobcentres, sets out the opportunity to transform public employment services in the UK. This paper is the fourth in a series, conducted in partnership with Accenture, which looks at the role technology will play in the future delivery of public services.

“Jobcentre Plus – the UK’s public employment service – won plaudits for its performance over the financial crisis….”

Plaudits from whom, I wonder? Then of course the blurb goes on to talking about financial pressures on the UK economy post-Brexit vote and with Universal Credit’s ‘introduction of in-work services [sic]' bringing about a ‘need to do things differently’. (I’ve heard it all before with ‘austerity’, haven’t you?)

But anyway, it struck me that with online tools, I could do a word search in the pdf document of that report The future of public services: digital jobcentres, in search of the term ‘disability impact assessment’.(3)

Lo and behold, as I typed into the ‘Find’ bar within that document window and reached the letter ‘s’ of the word ‘disability’, the background of that ‘Find’ bar turned a pinkish colour indicating that the word ‘disability’ did not occur in that document.

Anyhow, my blog post announcing the existence of that wonderful new think tank report started from the Boycott Workfare Welfare Action Gathering recognition that online signing would lead to greater isolation for benefit claimants and reduced opportunities of solidarity between jobcentre clients and self-help groups such as the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG), Scottish Unemployed Workers Network, etc.

My own initial blog response to the Reform report Digital jobcentres to heighten isolation and reduce solidarity? focuses much more on who are the ‘movers and shakers’ advising government on how to privatise everything?(4)

Yet the matter of ‘disability impact assessments’ or the lack of reminds me of something I said at the KUWG’s first burnout workshop this last Tuesday.(5) I observed that while I do get burnt out occasionally, as an integral member of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group I am far less burnt out on ESA Support Group status than I ever would be on Jsa conditionality and the like, where those who told me what to do would not have a clue who I was and had been institutionalised into sanctions targeting, not caring. 

When I was a jobseeker on far less money than I receive as an ESA Support Group person, and stressed out wondering how I would get through the week with woefully inadequate income, basically all I had to live on was the hope that all the effort I put in would be rewarded one day with a job that would allow me to at least 'break even'; but then I discovered that everything I volunteered at in teaching other slower learners in learning basic skills was wound down through lack of funding.

Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Link addresses

1. http://www.katebelgrave.com/?s=learning+difficulties&submit=Search
2. http://www.reform.uk/publication/the-future-of-public-services-digital-jobcentres/
3. http://www.reform.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/The-future-of-public-services-digital-jobcentres.pdf
4. http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/digital-jobcentres-to-heighten-isolation-and-reduce-solidarity.html
5. http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/kuwg-burnout-workshops-1-and-2-tues-26-july-and-2-aug-1pm-to-5pm.html