Benefit claimants require firmer safeguards, not tougher sanctions

The blog post below was written nearly nine years ago by the current administrator of the Kilburn Unemployed before the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group was formed, and hosted on the blog of London Green Party member Noel Lynch at a time when the Green Party Press Office was underresourced(1) Noel is a great friend and a great antidote to the idea that people engaged in polititics — by definition, 'politicians' — are 'only in it for themselves'; thus it was that that motivated him to publish that original blog post of mine and one or two others besides.

What motivated me to write it can be summed up in words of Victor Frankl from his book Man's [sic] Search for Meaning.(2)

"It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand against those conditions."

In republishing that blog post here, I have changed one word in the title: 'Benefit claimants need firmer sanctions' becomes 'Benefit claimants require firmer sanctions'. Disability Equality Trainer Michèle Taylor has said that the word 'require' infers more than 'need': it infers also both rights and responsibilities. It is on that basis that it appears here with the title, 'Benefit claimants rquire firmer safeguards, not tougher sanctions'.

Thursday, 11 October 2007

*Benefit claimants require firmer safeguards, not tougher sanctions

"Benefit claimants require firmer safeguards,not tougher sanctions" by Alan Wheatley.

David Cameron says that tougher benefit rules will help make the economy fairer. He says that jobseekers who turn down suitable offers of work should lose benefit.(3)

This panders to the tabloid exaggerated stories of abuses by benefit claimants. Do the tabloids ever report the dismal performance of Jobcentre Plus (JCP) call centres? Last year, JCP was criticised in Parliament for leaving 44% of incoming calls for the tax year 2004/2005 unattended; that was over twenty million calls.(4) Only 5% of calls to the help line for Disability Living Allowance and Incapacity Benefit were answered!

That state of affairs has been exacerbated by JCP's insistence that those making fresh claims for benefit must apply over the telephone.(5) I am really glad that when I started part-time cover-duties as a social care worker in 2005, I 'kept my claim fresh' by signing on each fortnight and submitting part-time earnings forms.

JCP, however, was so inefficient that I was left waiting more than two months on two occasions for Jobseekers Allowance top-up to my meager part-time earnings. The second of those occasions was after I resigned from the strain of JCP-inefficiencies and from lack of in-service training and other such circumstances; there was a 'sting in the tail' to my receipt of £500, mainly made up of annual leave accruals. In the time while I was waiting for Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) to resume, Housing Benefits (HB) were told that I was no longer entitled to JSA and therefore not automatically entitled to HB. A telephone contact I had with HB at the Town Hall was not logged, and so in the months I was waiting for JSA to be resumed, the Council almost closed my HB file, believing I had not responded to their earlier communication.

Regarding those who gave up benefits in going into paid work, the tax credits debacle led many families to be dependent on help from famine relief charities.(6)

Further, I quote the following statistic:

Insecure at Work (7)

* 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 proportions are similar to a decade ago.)

Alan Wheatley
(Then) Green Party of England & Wales Disability Spokesperson

PS: The WEEKLY 'earnings disregard' on Jobseekers Allowance is now LESS than an hour of paid work on the statutory minimum wage. That 'earnings disregard' has remained at £5 since 1988!(8)

Link addresses

1. http://theonlygreenroom.blogspot.co.uk/2007/10/benefit-claimants-need-firmer.html
2. https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2782.Viktor_E_Frankl
3. http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2007/10/03/david-cameron-vows-to-end-welfare-for-those-who-refuse-jobs/
4. http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2006/11/16/jobcentre-plus-poor-service-continues/
5. http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2006/07/20/jobcentre-plus-wrong-to-deny-use-of-paper-forms/
6. http://www.communitycare.co.uk/search-results/?q=tax%20credits%20food%20parcels
7. Original source seems to have been subsumed into a much longer-term paper at http://poverty.org.uk/57/index.shtml — "Throughout most of the last decade, almost half of the men, and a third of the women, making a new claim for Jobseeker's Allowance were last claiming this benefit less than six months previously.  In other words, almost half of men who lose their job, and a third of women, had had that job for less than six months.  This shows the short-term nature of the jobs that many unemployed people go into."
8. http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2006/06/23/why-people-work-informally-while-claiming-benefits-special-report/

TUC Welfare Conference 27 February 2015

Kwug was there!  

From a Star Blogger in the Making (She has been tentatively dubbed 'Can-Do Cat Woman' though she claims that she has no idea what her 'byline' should be.)

Welfare conference at Trade Union Congress on Friday 27 February 2015 — Outline Summary

11.00-11.30 am:  

We were welcome by Kevin Flynn, Chair Trade Union Congress NCCUW (National Coombine for Centres for Unemployed Workers?)

1. Introduction of Helen Flanagan (PCS): Vice President of the DWP Group of Public & Commercial Services Union who is responsible for Jobcentre issues.
2. Introduction of Eleanor Firman (Disabled People Against the Cuts) who is a member of  the DPAC Steering Committee and Unite Community.

11.30 am: Workshops:

KUWG members who assisted at the Welfare Conference were Alan, Ben, Gisele, Joan, Abby, Liam, Leigh and Pauline. (Robin was one of the organisers.) There were about 100 people who attended the conference and these were divided into four groups:

1-Sanctions, Conditionality and Work Capability Assessment.

In this group people  shared their experience on how to challenge sanctions and the reasons behind sanctions.  A jobcentre’ Adviser apologised for the inhuman application of jobcentre policy. 

People present included among others, 

• DPACactive members,
• Boycott Workfare
• London Coalition Against Poverty (Mohammed),
  some members of PCS,
• a disabled claimant and
• similar group as ours and many more.  

2- Contribution or a right? Who gets what benefits, when and why?

The group looked at contribution schemes and debated on unconditional basic income. How can we achieve real economy and social equality?  People on the whole have accepted that there should be a safety net for everyone.

3- Work: Workfare, internship, apprenticeship and traineeships.

The group looked at the  government workfare which exploits and undermines employed workers. They also debated on how we could challenge such procedures, the defending of workers' rights and free education. Everyone agreed that volunteering and training should be voluntary and proper jobs should be paid, with over 100 charities signing against mandatory workfare.

4- Equality: Making it a reality in Welfare.

They looked at the Increase of discrimination and multiple problems that have been created through the stigma that politicians and the media have brought up around benefit claimants. And how it resulted for the most vulnerable in losing touch with services and other issues such as socialising (being marginalised). 

 

They concluded that we should implement services to help with more complex needs especially for those who can’t communicate or are unable to move because of their physical disability.

12.45: Feedback from workshops with what should be included in the DWP legislation (the combination of all the above workshops).

13.30. Lunch

After lunch pictures were taken from the group in front of TUC offices with the banner against benefit sanctions.

14.15: Plenary.

Short history of the UWC (Unemployed Workers Centres) movement by Alec McFaden. I missed the talk. At lunchtime there was so much food left over.I put all the sandwiches in bags and ask Tom Mellish “the organiser” to give me a hand to bring them to St Mungo's. He helped me to carry the food to St- Mungo.

14.25: Richard Exell (TUC)

Richard is the TUC’s Senior Policy Officer responsible for work and on Employment and social security, writing and commissioning TUC guides and reports. I missed the talk part of the talk but I do remember hearing that the sanctions were there to foot the bill for Tax Credit instead of asking the employers to offer decent wages. They take the money from the claimants to pass it onto the underpaid.

14.45 Ideas sessions. Mapping a welfare system.

Discussion in mapping a Charter (more or less):

1. Unconditional income that hasn’t been defined completely

2. Banned sanctions for good
3. £10 hourly work rate ('Living Wage')
4. Jobcentres should advise the claimants. (This advisory role should not be surrendered to an external agency.)
5. Workfare that is mandatory should be banned
6. Free Education and proper training
7. Only doctors, specialists and the claimants should be involve in assessing ESA and other health benefits not ATOS or MAXIMUS.
8. Financial Help for families’ carers.

16.15. Report back and brain storming from ideas above.

A final Charter will be revised and published in later date.

17.00

Liane Grove spoke about what Unite is doing. Her own experiences and the hard work that the group is contributing to in changing the policies of this government through workshops like this one.

17.15 The End.

DWP to sanction HB claimants

From Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty

UNIVERSAL DESPAIR

DWP makes the point for a "yes" vote

in Scotland

by announcing "Part-time workers judged to be doing too little to find full-time work face having their benefit for housing costs sanctioned by the government for the first time under universal credit. ‘It is only right that people claiming benefits should be aware that not sticking to the rules can have a consequence. Any reductions to benefits as a result of a sanction are applied to the universal credit benefit as a whole rather than a particular element of it,' say Ministers.

Inside Housing article — DWP: Housing benefit will be sanctioned.

Yesterday The Times published the following letter which I edited from a letter I have already sent you.

It was the lead letter. I became an associate of the Iona Community in the 1990s which, since its foundation on the Isle of Iona in 1938, has been committed to peace and justice.

DEEP DIVISIONS HAVE BEEN EXPOSED BY BOTH THE "YES" AND "NO" CAMPAIGNS

.

Sir, Magnus Linklater (Opinion, Sept 1) is right. Deep divisions have been exposed by both the Yes and No campaigns and opened up wounds which will be hard to heal. The Church of Scotland decided to remain neutral, but influential members of the Kirk deeply committed to social justice, including the leader of the Iona Community Peter MacDonald, are expressing the concerns shared by many of us who work with and for the poorest citizens of England and voting yes.

He said: “I no longer believe the Westminster government is capable of delivering the socially just and equitable society in which I want to live. The British state no longer serves the needs of all its people. Economic policies have favoured the wealthy who have grown richer, and stigmatised the poor and vulnerable who are paying for the failures of the private financial sector.” Even if Scotland votes No the wounds will remain unhealed north and south of the border until confidence of every UK citizen in the fairness of the Westminster government is restored.

External blog

CarerWatch and Pat's Petition: Making ESA Fit for Purpose

HEALTH WARNING

This statement contains a message that no disability campaigner wants to hear – let alone campaign on. At first sight it appears negative and discouraging. However we believe that the best way to overcome a barrier is to name it and address it. And if it isn’t named, it leaves the government an open goal to take away safe, secure benefits....