Brexit as a lever for further Tory attacks on our rights

A KUWG member has asked me to publish the below as a blog post after I had e-mailed it to him as an update on the Green Party's response to Labour's 2008 'welfare reform green paper'.

 

I suspect that the Tories are seeing Brexit as an opportunity to further attack disabled and other people's rights by rewriting our laws. The EU has a Working Time Directive that limits the hours that Brits have to work, for example. http://www.jeanlambertmep.org.uk/?s=Working+time+directive&x=0&y=0

Remember Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary saying that Britons should learn to work "more like the Chinese"? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/05/hunt-tax-credit-cuts-make-britons-work-like-chinese-or-americans

The Chinese 'guolaosi' would think differently, no doubt. As Johann Hari reported in the Independent in 2010:

"Deaths from overwork are so common in Chinese factories that they have a word for it: guolaosi. China Daily estimates that 600,000 people are killed this way every year, mostly making goods for us. Li had never experienced any health problems, his family says, until he started this work schedule; Foxconn say he died of asthma and his death had nothing to do with them. The night Li died, yet another Foxconn worker committed suicide – the tenth this year."
Souce: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-and-now-for-some-good-news-2044578.html

There is also this involving the Justice Minister

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/minister-suggests-realities-of-the-world-mean-government-will-not-halt-attack-on-rights/

It fits in with Naomi Klein's concept of 'disaster capitalism' as turning catastrophes into opportunities for more of Milton Friedman's

"holy trinity" -- privatization, deregulation and cuts to social spending -- in which governments dismantle trade barriers, abandon public ownership, reduce taxes, eliminate the minimum wage, cut health and welfare spending, and privatize education. She calls the means of achieving this goal "disaster capitalism" and describes how it has resulted in a worldwide redistribution of income and wealth to the already rich at the expense of economic solvency for the middle and lower classes.

Source: http://www.naomiklein.org/reviews/ms-magazine-review-shock-doctrine

As was merely touched upon in Writing off Workfare by Anne Gray and myself in 2008, UK 'welfare reforms' since the time Peter Lilley was the responsible government minister/secretary of state have been strongly influenced by dodgy American health insurance giant Unum who regard the UK as a 'potential market'. Medically retired RAF veteran and health care professional Mo Stewart has elaborated much of this with documentation.

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/disabled-researchers-book-exposes-corporate-demolition-of-welfare-state/

Fundamental to the way the UN Disability Committee regards disability is the Social Model of Disability. http://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/5/3/35
The Social Model of Disability focuses on physical, economic and social barriers to the inclusion of people with impairments that makes us disabled. That perspective is fundamental to Green Party of England & Wales policy on disability. https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/dy.html

Unum's model is called the 'bio-psychosocial model' and is fundamental to the Health & Work Programme and its 'psycho-coercion'. Useful links on this include:

• https://dpac.uk.net/2012/04/a-tale-of-two-models-disabled-people-vs-unum-atos-government-and-disability-charities-debbie-jolly/
• https://scottishunemployedworkers.net/2016/07/11/psychocoercion-and-unemployment-a-marriage-made-in-austeritys-hell/
• https://scottishunemployedworkers.net/2016/06/22/psycho-coercion-and-workfare-fighting-back/
• http://www.unum.co.uk/media/unum-and-professor-dame-carol-black-launch-new-essay-collection-on-work-and-health
• https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/?s=human+catastrophe
• https://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2018/04/26/amnesty-international-express-grave-concerns-about-uk-governments-outsourced-back-to-work-therapy/
• https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/charities-delivering-dwps-work-programme-must-promise-not-to-attack-mcvey/

Unum is not the only global company involved in UK 'welfare reforms'. The principal contractor for the 'Universal Credit' IT deal is Accenture. The subcontractor for the forms used for online application for UC is Atos!
http://www.information-age.com/dwp-awards-accenture-500m-universal-credit-it-deal-1666348/

Accenture, incidentally, is now providing much of the reporting for centre-right think tank Reform.uk in its promotion of 'digital jobcentres' and more, much more.

"... 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, but the story may be different if Brexit triggers an economic slowdown. The introduction of in-work services under Universal Credit will increase demand, while the Work and Health Programme will require jobcentres to take a more central role in the delivery of disability employment support services."
Source: http://www.reform.uk/publication/the-future-of-public-services-digital-jobcentres/

What were the sources of those 'plaudits' that "Jobcentre Plus — the UK's public employment service — won ... for its performance over the financial crisis"? One of those sources, as I recall, was David Cameron and I think the other was the National Audit Office. You can find out for yourself at http://www.reform.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/The-future-of-public-services-digital-jobcentres.pdf

and remember that Reform.uk is a registered charity. See also https://www.google.com/search?q=nao+dwp

Had they spoken to the people that blogger Kate Belgrave talks to in her 'Talking with people dealing with public sector cuts' blog, no doubt they would have got a different story regarding how well the Department for Work & Pensions has performed.  https://www.katebelgrave.com/?s=dwp&submit=Search and https://www.katebelgrave.com/?s=dwp+foi&submit=Search

Alan WheatleyCo-author of 'Writing off Workfare', writing in a personal capacity

Would 'hard Brexit' be an excuse for worse claimant cull to come?

Would 'hard Brexit' be an excuse for worse claimant cull to come?

Yahoo News: May privately agrees to pay up to €40bn Brexit bill

Multi-millionaire to give money to pro-Brexit Tories. What's in it for him?

Yahoo News reports: (1)

Jeremy Hosking, a London asset manager and Conservative Party donor, spent £1.7m ($2.19m) on the Vote Leave campaign and has vowed to funnel cash to Tory candidates who will not oppose Brexit.

He told the Observer that he wanted to give Prime Minister Theresa May "an army" of pro-Brexit MPs that was "fully equipped and as big as possible".

He will target constituencies where most voters backed Brexit, but which are currently represented by an MP that favoured Remain, offering upto £5,000 per candidate. With nearly 140 such constituencies, Hosking could end up spending close to £700,000 on the campaign.

 As an 'asset manager', he would consider it an investment to help make him and his clients much more wealthy.

But does he give a shit about public service workers at the front line of public service delivery such as paramedics on 1% pay increases who put their lives on the line for £12.35/hr in saving lives?(2)

Some 'give' more money than others make in a lifetime to make themselves and their clients more wealthy. Others give their lives to public service.

Link references

1. https://uk.yahoo.com/news/millionaire-brexiteer-launches-bid-oust-113103244.html
2. https://tompride.wordpress.com/2017/04/28/desperately-underpaid-paramedic-tells-theresa-may-ive-seen-things-no-one-should-have-to-witness/

Information, advice and guidance workshop for UK resident EU nationals at Swiss Cottage Library, Fri 12 May, 1:30pm to 3:30pm

The following appeared first in last Thursday's Camden New Journal print edition as a reader's letter.

Residents face uncertainty – there’s a workshop for EU nationals on May 12

04 May, 2017

• I AM deeply concerned by the uncertainty facing local residents following the vote to leave the European Union.

This uncertainty is a real issue for people making employment, housing, and family decisions for the years ahead. The Conservatives’ refusal to guarantee their right to remain, as Labour proposed, insults their profound contribution to life in the UK and was an entirely avoidable decision.


I will therefore be running a workshop for EU nationals who are anxious over their future residential status. The event will enable residents better to understand their rights and the possible options available to them, as they attempt to secure permanent residency in the UK.

The meeting will be on Friday May 12 at Swiss Cottage Library [88 Avenue Road, NW3 3HA] and people are free to drop in at any time between 1.30pm and 3.30pm. I look forward to welcoming all those unsure of their futures in the UK to this important workshop.

[Location map and how to get there]

TULIP SIDDIQ
Labour candidate,
Hampstead & Kilburn

Let us not help Theresa May bury the bad news about Universal Credit rollout, suicides and homelessness under a Brexit General Election

Yesterday's Kwug Blog carried a 'guest blog post' from Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty.(1) Even in his mid-80's, Revd Paul is extremely prolific with his offerings and far quicker to respond than this disabled person. The best I can do to 'catch up with him' is generally to forward e-mail notifications of the Taxpayers Against Poverty (TAP) website on to the Kilburn Unemployed e-list, but even then be selective so as not to give vulnerable list members a sense of melt-down and information overload.(2)

The Kwug Blog 'guest contribution' posted yesterday, — A Universal Credit case study — however, included tabulated data that proved difficult to transmit by e-mail and provided valuable information about Universal Credit that the general public are largely ignorant about, and corporate mass media generally keeps buried while Universal Credit-related rent arrears can catapult the number of evictions from social housing.(3) It can take up to 12 weeks for a Universal Credit claim to be processed and thus for the claimant to get any Universal Credit income; yet under English Law, eviction proceedings can begin after just eight weeks or rent arrears.(4)

Revd Paul Nicolson does not keep his incisive light buried under a bushel, and though his latest offering by e-mail has not yet made it to the TAP website, I can help here to get the message out as soon as possible even while I was hoping to prioritise other things just now.

Referenda and General Elections are too often based not on real knowledge of issues, and the results are mangled in an unrepresentative 'first past the post' electoral system that is too influenced by the wealthy. Whatever the result of an 8 June General Election, it will not really be a mandate for what the people have heard too litlle of. I should add that while the KUWG focus is mainly on the benefits system while housing law is too complex for us to handle, TAP has a more extensive overview of things, and more specific to LB Haringey where Revd Paul lives.

With that, I shall just bring in Revd Paul's latest offering.

During election TAP will do what we do

Highlight depth of income poverty!!  

YELL "HOUSING CRISIS!!"

​

--

HARINGEY COUNCIL TAXES BENEFIT INCOMES OF ITS POOREST RESIDENTS OF UK'S MOST DEPRIVED WARDS WITH 

LOW LIFE EXPECTANCY AND HIGH RISK OF LOW BIRTH-WEIGHT.

from the Reverend Paul Nicolson

Taxpayers Against Poverty

No citizen without an affordable home and an 

adequate income in work or unemployment. 

93 Campbell Road, Tottenham, London N17 0BF, 0208 3765455, 07961 177889, 

https://www.facebook.com/Taxpayers-Against-Poverty-299911526728884/

https://twitter.com/taxpayers_a_p www.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk, 

www.z2k.org, www.prohousingalliance.com

Link references

http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/a-universal-credit-case-study-by-revd-paul-nicolson.html
http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/
http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/a-universal-credit-case-study-by-revd-paul-nicolson.html 
https://scottishunemployedworkers.net/2016/07/15/sharing-knowledge-in-the-face-of-further-attacks/

What does Brexit mean for tax justice?

Naomi Fowler of New Internationalist magazine writes:

"In this podcast, our friends at the Tax Justice Network speak with two journalists who got the Panama Papers scoop, Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier who’ve written a book about their experience."

For further info and the podcast, go to https://newint.org/blog/2016/07/27/what-does-brexit-mean-for-tax-justice/

From New Internationalist magazine

Could Brexiteers Johnson, Gove, Farage be prosecuted for lies?

By Vanessa Baird | 2

 

  115  441  

Anti-Brexit protest, London, July 2016. by Vanessa Baird

Vanessa Baird reports on new citizen initiatives calling for honesty in politics.

A crowd-funded campaign could see leading British political figures such as Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Michael Gove facing legal investigation for their conduct during the EU referendum campaign.....

More at https://newint.org/blog/2016/07/25/could-brexiteers-johnson-gove-farage-be-prosecuted-for-lies/

Global corporate lobbyists and right wing politicians only hate regulation when it is not on their terms. Screwing the disadvantaged is their staple diet

Britain's MEPs and poor folk face threats imposed by Brexit, including dodgy trade deals

'TTIP — the hidden threat' poster should include reference to the threats to social security and poor people

With the Brexit vote, if Britain does leave the EU it seems to this blogger that both Britain's Members of the European Parliament and poor people are more likely to be screwed.

With Britain out of the European Union Parliament, there would by definition be no more seats for British Members of the European Parliament in the European Parliament; and global corporate lawyers would seize the opportunity of a Conservative & Unionist Government ever more desperate to enter dodgy trade deals and dismantle the welfare state.

Regarding dodgy trade deals, there would be a more exclusively UK trade deal with global corporations from the USA. On her website that is still up and running at present, Molly Scott Cato MEP (South West England, Green Party of England & Wales) looks at the perils and pitfalls for the UK as Germany looks like it is pulling out of the 'Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership' (TTIP).(1)

'Privatisation of public service delivery' equals dismantling of the welfare state

Kwuggies (Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group members) have been against TTIP for about two years now, and of course deeply concerned about what corporate lawyers would want to do to not only the NHS, but also the welfare state as a whole. One of the worst 'players with people's lives' in the American health insurance industry — Unum — has been 'advising' successive UK  governments  on 'welfare reform' since the early 1990s.(2) (3) 

The Disability News Service has reported that in 2005, whilst at Unum, Professor O'Donnell [now Chief Medical Officert at Maximus, the company that replaced Atos' administration of Work Capability Assessments for the Department for Work & Pensions] wrote: "We know that our views and understanding are not yet in the mainstream of doctors' thinking, but Government Policy is moving in the same direction, to a large extent being driven by our thinking and that of our close associates, both in the UK and overseas."(4)

Regarding the then Unum Chief Medical Officer's reference to the 'direction' in which UK Government Policy was moving in 2005, there has been the ongoing matter of the regulation of psychotherapeutic professionals and the standards, methodology and 'outcomes' by which they operate.(5) That has more recently extended to the recruitment or attempted recruitment of helping professionals such as pscyhotherapists and counselling professionals into 'delivering the work cure'.(6)

There is further encroachment of Unum and its associates into the dismantling of the welfare state even without even more dodgy trade deals:

In Secrets and Lies: Maximus the leader of the inhumans we [Disabled People Against Cuts] ask why Disability Rights UK have agreed to a) be part of the Maximus testing process on the WCA [Work Capability Assessment] and b) why they've teamed up with Unum and other insurance companies to develop a TV programme showing how much better off disabled people will be if they take out private insurance. With user-led disability organisations like these we don't need enemies.(7)

Workfare — 'work for your benefits' exploitation — originated largely in the USA under the Clinton Presidency, ridiculing Clinton's purported aspirations of being kinder to poor people than his Republican opponents. One of the major — and fraudulent — players with vulnerable people's lives that emerged from America's introduction of workfare was Maximus Incorporated.(8) (9)

Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty has drawn attention to the lack of human rights orientation in American-based accountancy firm Grant Thornton's accountancy framework:

I had specifically drawn Grant Thornton's attention on the 3rd May 2015 to the work of the Government Office for Science and the Royal College of Psychiatrists showing that debt is linked to mental health problems. Grant Thornton replied on the 5th May 2015,

"We have no remit over related public sector bodies nor to opine on the impact of this policy on the well-being of those required to pay council tax."(10)

That is the kind of mentality that we face. Corporate lawyers' and accountants' orientation to the rights of 'shareholders', 'investors' and 'stakeholders' with financial/legal clout seem to reign supreme; and TTIP-type deals are driven by 'Investor to State Dispute Settlement' (ISDS) corporate law enforcement that overrides democracy and the rights of poor people.

The UK Government's systematic abuse of disabled people's rights continues while an investigation of its actions is still pending. Disability News Service reports:

Delayed UN examination of UK government 'will take place next year'Disabled people's organisations and grassroots groups are set to call on disabled people across England to provide the evidence they need to prepare a "hard hitting" report on the government's failure to implement the UN disability convention.The Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) has announced that it will put together a "shadow report" to submit to the UN's Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). It emerged this week that the Committee is set to hold its delayed public examination of the UK Government's progress on implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) next year; the first time the UK has been examined since the Labour government ratified the Convention in 2009....(11)

Do the devisers of ISDS-driven trade deals have any consideration regarding the rights of disabled and disadvantaged people re UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities? Any possibility of 'government by corporate law firms' must be suspended until that investigation has been carried out, I would argue

Britain's Members of the European Parliament may no longer have seats in the European Parliament, but they and Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group members can still engage in extra-parliamentary activity — activity outside parliaments. Our extra-parliamentary activities still include the Internet.

Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Link addresses

1. http://mollymep.org.uk/2016/07/19/ttip-brexit-uk-us/
2. http://dpac.uk.net/2013/02/unum-finally-nailed-through-bragging-on-driving-government-thinking/
3. http://dpac.uk.net/2015/02/maximus-and-the-fit-for-work-service/
4. http://dpac.uk.net/2015/02/maximus-atos-and-work-capability-assessments/
5. See especially Jennifer Maidman's detailed comment at http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-care-experts-blog/2009/08/cognitive-behavioural-therapy/
6. https://scottishunemployedworkers.net/2016/07/11/psychocoercion-and-unemployment-a-marriage-made-in-austeritys-hell/
7. http://dpac.uk.net/2015/01/dpac-2014-review-toryroadtoruin/
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximus_Inc.
9. http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/?s=maximus
10. http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/news/summoned-to-court-for-civil-disobedience-of-laws-damaging-the-health-and-we
11. http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/delayed-un-examination-of-uk-government-will-take-place-next-year/

FAO: All who want a progressive outcome following UK Brexit vote — and get to Stoke Newington for 18:30 on Thurs 7 July 2016

Forwarded by a Hackney Green Party member and into this blog editor's Yahoo! Mail inbox. (The timing of the meeting is not helpful for Kilburn Unemployed meeting attenders that afternoon, but this blog is widely read! The online references at the bottom of this blog post may also be of advantage to people who cannot attend the meeting.)

This might be of interest. Please circulate...

It isn't a Green Party meeting, but Hackney Greens are publicising it.
Everyone wanting a progressive outcome is welcome.

https://www.facebook.com/events/168960706851690/

*Please come and discuss how we build a progressive country following the
Brexit vote. Thursday 7th July at 6.30pm-8.30pm at the Unitarian Church,
39A Newington Green, N16 9PR. 10 minute walk from Canonbury Station, buses
21. 73, 141, 236, 341, 476 from Angel etc.The idea of the meeting is to
work towards building and coordinating an active and campaigning movement
to influence the shaping of our country and its relationship with the world
over the coming months and years.*

*Please come and discuss how we build a progressive country following the
Brexit vote. Thursday 7th July at 6.30pm-8.30pm at the Unitarian Church,
39A Newington Green, N16 9PR. 10 minute walk from Canonbury Station, buses
21. 73, 141, 236, 341, 476 from Angel etc. *

*The idea of the meeting is to work towards building and coordinating an
active and campaigning movement to influence the shaping of our country and
its relationship with the world over the coming months and years.*

OpenDemocracy article

The source email gave a number of links that did not work to an OpenDemocracy article.

By using the readable text from one of those links, this however seems to be a link to the relevant article

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/alex-goodman/post-exit-britain-democracy-or-autocracy

The Kwug blog editor also draws attention to Taxpayers Against Poverty article headed

Once Article 50 triggered no mechanism to reverse or change that decision to leave the EU even if we want to

at http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/news/taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk

Benefits and Work Publishing news headlines 29 June 2016

1. What do you think Brexit will mean for claimants?(1)
2. DLA to PIP Mandatory Reconsideration success rate halves in a year(2)
3. 30% of DLA to PIP claimants get no award at all(3)

Link addresses

1. http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/3528-what-do-you-think-brexit-will-mean-for-claimants
2. http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/3527-dla-to-pip-mandatory-reconsideration-success-rate-halves-in-a-year
3. http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/3526-30-of-dla-to-pip-claimants-get-no-award-at-all