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| Social Security is the only real 'life insurance policy' |
- Theresa May has appointed John Godfrey as a director of policy in her special adviser team at Number 10. Godfrey joins the policy unit from Legal & General, where he ...
The Green Party is ... very concerned about the strong role of one or two private companies in advising the government about the development of welfare to work proposals, particularly in relation to the restructuring of incapacity-related benefits (see Jonathan Rutherford, https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/soundings/36/new-labour-market-state-and-end-of-welfare ) It seems extraordinary that so much attention has been given to the views of a company which is on record as saying that it sees the UK benefits system as one of its major markets for the future; one would expect advice to have been taken from a wider and more balanced range of sources. As Rutherford's paper shows, the credibility of Unum — formerly Unum Provident — has been badly damaged by having been prosecuted for fraudulent businesss in the USA
and independent researcher Mo Stewart later dug much deeper into the links between Unum/Unum Provident, the DWP and Atos and published her findings in the aptly named Cash Note Care: the planned demolition of the UK welfare state.(3)
Anyhow, since then daytime and night time tv in the UK have been largely colonised by 'life insurance' ads proclaiming that the only real way to protect one's grandchildren is via a life insurance policy, or at worst, a funeral protection plan for oneself so as not to leave one's loved ones enormous bills from one's parting. Of course, much of the daytime tv audience for such ads is made up of older people. The funeral protection plans especially carry the tag, "as long as you keep up the payments" — but what use is such a plan to those "of working age" when it comes to transferring us onto Universal Credit?
Reference links
https://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/issues/21-july-2016/theresa-may-appoints-lgs-godfrey-no-10-team/https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/reports/GPEW_writing_off_workfare_final.doc NB: The Jonathan Rutherford hyperlink has been updated, as its location on lwbooks website has altered in the nine years since the Green Party publication of its response to a Labour Party 'welfare reform' 'green paper'.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cash-Not-Care-planned-demolition/dp/178507783X
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