Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group — the Kwug Blog: David Freud

Showing posts with label David Freud. Show all posts

Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Internet searchers like welfare advocacy and Tony Cox — DWP clearly do not!

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

In his 2009 speech to Green Party Trade Union group fringe, Peter Allen (Advice Worker and a member of UNISON) advocated Green Party members holding something like 'advice surgeries' for economically vulnerable people, to help inform them of their rights. (Post title Welfare Rights and Advice, Friday 27 March 2009 (1) Further video parts at that Green Party Trade Union Group blog post, which is on the old Green Party Trade Union Group blog. The videoing was done by Peter Murry [no 'a' in the spelling of his surname] of Neasden.)

Since then, against a backdrop of ever greater Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) nastiness against benefit claimants, there has been an upsurge of self-help groups offering advice and advocacy to benefit claimants and others. These include the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG) in North London and the Scottish Unemployed Workers Network (SUWN). (2) (3) The advertising 'strap line' of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is, "Never attend anywhere official alone," and that imperative has certainly helped validate claimant's vulnerability when they attend disability benefit assessments. KUWG is affectionately known as 'Kwug' and its caseworkers — through diligent persistence and becoming informed — have helped people get the benefits to which they are entitled.

Too often, the stage at which people have come to Kwug with their cases have already been turned down for the disability benefit for which they have applied — and they have not been accompanied in their original benefit assessment 'medical', nor received proper advice about what documentation to supply in making their claim. The more 'lead time' between their appeal to a Kwug meeting for assistance and their assessment or tribunal, the greater their chances of a successful outcome, generally. Partly for that reason, Kwug meets every Thursday a community centre that is very accessible.

What happened to state benefits after someone who did not even do a Google search for 'Incapacity Benefit test' declared the majority of Incapacity Benefit claimants bogus?

Tony Blair appointee 'welfare reform guru' and former investment banker David Freud's February 2008 ill-informed and badly researched statements about 'benefit fraud' seem to have signposted the 'norms' by which the DWP cuts benefits by cutting the number of disability benefit claimants and more perceived to be 'legitimate'. Then head of Child Poverty Action Group Kate Green — now a Labour MP — observed that Freud had clearly not done a Google search on 'Incapacity Benefit test'.(4) He is now installed in the House of Lords as Conservative Welfare Reform Minister and benefits sanctions often hit very vulnerable people who are not only not fit for work, but also unfit for the Jobseekers Allowance 'conditionality' that being turned down for Employment & Support Allowance has forced them into.(5)

The conditionality attached to 'entitlement' for benefits is now extremely hard and demeaning as blogger and NUJ member Kate Belgrave | 'Talking with people dealing with public sector cuts' has discovered through talking to and accompanying benefit claimants.(6) The extent of benefit sanctions and the way that they have been administered without the decision maker facing the claimant have been highlighted respectively by U. Glasgow Law Professor Dr David Webster and by Kate Belgrave.(7) (8) "Those who give the order seldom see the mess it makes" and the DWP clearly do not want the public to know that mess and how it was caused.(9)

DWP on the hunt for much needed welfare advocates — and not to give them paid work doing what they do so well!

Now, it is not just claimants as claimants that the DWP is attacking, it is also the advocates of DWP claimants that they are attacking, as evidenced in the case of Tony Cox of the SUWN, as outlined at The Crown versus Tony Cox — and welfare activists everywhere: Part 2, Round 1.(10) Observing and listening to Tony Cox's input at a meeting served as part of screenwriter Paul Laverty's research for Cannes Film Festival Palme D'Or winning film 'I Daniel Blake', directed by Ken Loach.(11) (12)

I believe I am not suited to doing the direct advocacy stuff, but have empathy in talking to fellow claimants and an understanding of what they are subjected to. That and Internet and writing skills help me blog while I have never been successful at jobsearch enough to get more than 'precarious' positions from the time I became a jobseeker in 1977 till the time I claimed ESA in early 2009 — which I later won through tribunal in December 2009. The extent of 'precarity' in people's socio-economic status has now become so widespread that Prof. Guy Standing has declared 'the precariat' a 'new dangerous class'.(13)

As a jobseeker with an invisible disability, I was all-too-frequently timed out of what 'supports' were available to disabled jobseekers even before these much harsher times. Through all those years of diligent jobsearch and skill building — largely without official support and much official hindrance by ignorant government employees — my sum total of waged employment amounted to a grand total of 17 months, the last 11 months of which was so part time that I was still claiming Jobseekers Allowance and submitting part-time earnings forms at the jobcentre at my fortnightly signing sessions. The stinginess of the '£5 earnings disregard' badly impacted on me in those 11 months.(14) Stress led to weakening of my immune system to the point that I suffered cellulitis in my legs and became increasingly forgetful at just 52 years old.(15) (16)

As a result of Kilburn Unemployed blogging, I have been able to observe a huge interest in the case of Tony Cox. Since I uploaded a blog post on Thursday 17 June in the evening about Tony Cox and welfare advocacy, that blog post has attracted enough viewings to make it the #5 in the 'All Time (May 2010 to June 2016) Most Viewed' blog posts of the Kilburn Unemployed blog.(17)

Posts

Entry	Pageviews
KUWG with Simon of Occupy Highlight What Goes on a... 1 Apr 2014	3285
Unite Community-sponsored Inequality Bus Tour goes... 23 Apr 2014, 2 comments	1026
Harlesden Neighbourhood Forum Launch - Weds 15 Apr... 3 Apr 2015	690
12 month investigation exposes stark reality faced... 4 Feb 2014	574
Roll up at Kilburn Jcp on Thurs 23 June, 09:45 to ... 17 Jun 2016	446
What councils don't tell you about the enforcement... 20 Mar 2013	443
Benefits sanctioned? Take mass action! Write your ... 14 Nov 2014	405
Our Work Capability Reassessment Workshop 11 Nov 2011	353
High Court challenge vs WCA, Monday 21 October 201... 21 Oct 2013	351
The Council Tax scandal 12 May 2015	297

The price of liberty is constant vigilance!

Amendment to the above regarding sourcing of viewings for

The presupposition of the author is at fault in identifying the source of viewings for Roll up at Kilburn Jcp on Thurs 23 June, 09:45 to 10:45 in support of Tony Cox and welfare activists everywhere as based on Internet searches. Internet searches have indeed sourced most of the viewings for Kilburn Unemployed blog posts in the previous six years of this blog, as this 'All Time Stats' copy and paste illustrates:

Traffic Sources (May 2010 to June 2016)

Entry	Pageviews
https://www.google.co.uk/	3455
http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.com/	1030
http://www.vampirestat.com	405

A look at the viewing sources for the blog as a whole reveals a break in that trend not only for the past week but also for the past month:

Traffic Sources (24 May 2016 to June 2016)

Entry	Pageviews
http://m.facebook.com/	325
https://www.google.co.uk/	96
http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.com/	61

That revelation, however, does not invalidate the importance of supporting Tony Cox and welfare advocates everywhere. There has been a huge take up of viewings from one Facebook source.

Monday, 30 May 2016

What does Nicky Morgan have in common with the Welfare Reform Minister?

A Children's Social Worker who went under cover for a Channel 4 'Dispatches programme was asked by Community Care magazine why she decided to take part in that programme as a whistle blower.(1) (2)

Social Work Tutor: Aside from what the producers wanted, what was your aim?‘Vicky’: I am sick (as many social workers are) of people like Nicky Morgan, who has no knowledge of social work, no experience of social work, being appointed as secretary of state and then saying [effectively] “I’m going to fix social workers”, “I’m going to fix social work” and then pointing at social workers. We all know that is a false discourse. It is unhelpful, inaccurate and laden in party political bullshit.
SWT: How much do you think the issues you helped showcase are indicative of social work on a national level?‘Vicky’: The doc makers said they want to present a real picture of the difficulties in social work that social workers are having to deal with. I think to a varying degree they are shared across the country. Some local authorities are better resourced with different demographics that enable them to manage better but the story of social work is being starved of resources.

Does not the Children's Social Worker's analysis of Nicky Morgan's competence as Secretary of State for Children and Education sound very similar to the background of an investment banker as, firstly New Labour's 'welfare reform adviser' and then Conservative Welfare Reform Minister?

For in 2008 that 'welfare reform adviser' who is became Baron Freud, Conservative Welfare Reform Minister after defection and promotion to the unelected chamber, said of his appointment by Tony Blair:

"I didn't know anything about welfare at all when I started, but that may have been an advantage. I was genuinely shocked that the analysis was such a blob, nobody had come up with anything clear. In a funny way the solution was obvious [after a miraculous three weeks research and writing]."(3)

The then CEO of the Child Poverty Action Group Kate Green and others were far from favourably impressed with the investment banker's analysis of the situation and his solution. The BBC reported:

Kate Green, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said the most recent official figure for incapacity benefit fraud suggests it is below 0.5% [very different from the more than two thirds cited by Freud].

She said: ""Ministers will surely be alarmed that the man charged with major reform of the welfare system and family security rights gets basic facts wrong about benefits that he could find out in a second with a Google.

"His suitability must be under question for the task Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell has set him."(3)

Meanwhile, Hertfordshire Council's Head of Money Advice observed:

The government’s chief welfare to work adviser, David Freud, said recently: “I worked out that it is economically rational to spend up to £62,000 on getting the average person on incapacity benefit into work somebody will see a gap in the market and make their fortune.”....
Using Freud’s calculation that the state could pay £62,000 for each of the two million plus people on incapacity benefit they put into work, it would amount to anything up to £120bn going from public funds and into the private sector in the space of three years.
As incapacity benefit costs the country £12bn a year, and claimants who move into low-paid work may still qualify for working tax credit and housing and council tax benefit, Freud’s sums do not appear to add up. All of which is rather worrying for someone with a background in merchant banking. But it certainly explains why he believes private sector firms can make their fortune from this kind of contract.
Social workers and advisers who are working with claimants going through the Pathways to Work programme need to be aware of the “payment by results” world that their client is entering. Employment is a valuable and viable target for many of the people we work with and of course, genuine help to move people nearer to finding work must be welcomed. But the work has to be suitable for the person and the person has to be suitable for work – in a contract-driven environment, those facts may get overlooked in the drive for results.(4)

Fundamentally, I would argue, the problem of these outsiders transferring into meddling with the lives of vulnerable people is that they lack the core values of the really helping professions.

Link

Saturday, 16 April 2016

Freudian slips, pauper funerals and 'fit for work' tests

On 23 November 2012, the Telegraph reported:

The Tory peer [Lord Freud], a former banker and descendent of Sigmund Freud, who is helping to push through a radical overhaul of the welfare state, insisted he understood the reality of living on benefits, arguing "you don't have to be the corpse to go to a funeral."(1)

At that time, there had already been several deaths of disability benefit claimants who had been found 'fit for work', including Nygell Firminger of South Kilburn who had committed suicide in the week that the Welfare Reform Bill 2012 was passed by Parliament.(2) In July 2013, the North London Coroner ruled that Nygell's suicide had been brought on by the stress induced by homelessness;(3) and since then suicides related to the 'fit for work tests' that the Freud Report of 2008 brought in have mushroomed, as has the campaign against such corporate homicides.(4)

Is it not time that someone challenged Baron Freud to eat his words, including his 2008 incorrect assertion that Incapacity Benefit tests were conducted by the claimant's own GP? Regarding that 'basic error', Kate Green, the then CEO of Child Poverty Action Group remarked:

"Ministers will surely be alarmed that the man charged with major reform of the welfare system and family security rights gets basic facts wrong about benefits that he could find out in a second with a Google."His suitability must be under question for the task Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell has set him."Claimants were assessed by independent doctors - rather than their own GP - after 28 weeks, she added.(5)

Maybe someone should remind the Welfare Reform Minister of his unfortunate metaphor, that might be called a Freudian slip? Atos has been replaced by Maximus as testing company for Employment and Support Allowance claims, and at greater expense to the Government and thereby the taxpayer, yet someone might challenge Lord Freud with some of the last words of 'fit for work' test victim Larry Newman:

His widow, Sylvia Newman, recalls that one of the last things he said to her, as doctors put him on a ventilator, was: "It's a good job I'm fit for work." He was trying to make her laugh, she says, but it was also a reflection of how upset he had been by the conclusion of the medical test.
"He was so hurt by it. It made him so upset that they thought he was lying, and he wasn't," she says. "I think it added to him just giving up."(6)

It could be argued perhaps, that investment banker David Freud only believes in rewarding the risks taken regarding the reputations of already notorious global corporations in becoming even more 'toxic' as brands.

Notes

(1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9698985/Lord-Freuds-welfare-lifestyle-comments-show-nasty-party-is-back-say-Labour.html

(2) http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2016_03_01_archive.html

and http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/supporting-and-commemorating-sanctions.html

(3) http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/north-london-coroner-said-vulnerable-person-took-his-own-life-as-a-direct-consequence-of-his-being-evicted-by-genesis-ha.html

(4) http://blacktrianglecampaign.org/2016/04/14/preventable-harm-is-government-policy/

(5) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7223687.stm Two million 'wrongly get benefit'

(6) http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jul/24/atos-case-study-larry-newman

Wednesday, 26 August 2015

Is it not high time that Welfare Reform Minister David Freud was punished for gross negligence?

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Referring to the 'fake quotes' on Department for Work & Pensions sanctions promotion literature, Work & Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has said that those quotes were meant to be anonymised from genuine cases and that the staff involved in the misquoting will be disciplined.(1)

But if this alleged improper interpretation of Government orders is true, and it be any more heinous a crime than the DWP's negligence that has arguably led to a great many claimant deaths?(3) Maybe a real issue here is that when those most responsible for the policies and practices that prove publicly unacceptable when revealed are found out, they shift the blame to those who follow their orders on the grounds that those orders were [allegedly] not carried out properly?

And what of the architects of many of the nasty changes that have really screwed disability benefit claimants? I am referring most specifically here to

investment banker turned Tony Blair's 'welfare reform guru' turned Tory Welfare Reform Minister David Freud and
dodgy American health insurance company Unum that has been 'advising' successive UK governments on 'welfare reform'/privatisation of the welfare state since at least the mid-1990's.

Some of my charges against those are outlined by way of my blog comments on Kate Belgrave's blog piece If government is so obseessed with "helping" disabled people, why did it close the Independent Living Fund?(4)

Notes

(1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34038928
(2) Eg, http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/?s=esa+claimant+deaths
(3) http://www.katebelgrave.com/2015/08/if-government-is-so-obsessed-with-helping-disabled-people-why-did-it-close-the-independent-living-fund/

Tuesday, 18 November 2014

Steep rise in ESA sanctions. Swheatie says: "Now it's not just the absence of winter fuel payments that can do sickness benefit claimants in."

By Swheatie of the KUWG

Harsher sanctions against ESA claimants were introduced in December 2012

Yesterday's 'You and Yours' programme on BBC Radio 4 had a feature on a steep rise in the number of people in the Employment & Support Allowance 'Work-Related Activity Group' (WRAG) who had been sanctioned, while the overall number of people sanctioned on Jobseekers Allowance had fallen.

Why increasing numbers of disabled people are having their benefits cut, You and Yours - BBC Radio 4

Why increasing numbers of disabled people are having the...

The disabled claimants having their benefits reduced.

View on www.bbc.co.uk

Preview by Yahoo

"In the first six months of this year, compared to the first six months of last year, there were around 54,000 fewer sanctions. So that leaves around 383,000 able bodied [sic] benefit claimants who have been sanctioned because they have broken the rules. And the rules say, 'You have to be looking for work.'.... Fewer people overall claim the sickness benefit Employment & Support Allowance, but the increase in sanctions that we have seen in the first six months of this year is really steep.

"So in the first six months of 2013 there were 9,000 people on Employment & Support Allowance who had their claim suspended, and then for the same period of this year, for the first six months, that number had leapt up to 25,000!..."

The programme goes on to say that while the Department for Work & Pensions says that the rules are clear and the sanctions generally last for only [sic] one week, people with learning difficulties and mental health difficulties are particularly amongst those sanctioned. And an Oxfordshire Welfare Rights Adviser says that the reasons for the sanctions are not clearly explained, which makes appealing against the sanctions much more difficult even for trained advisers, and especially as those advisers are facing increasing workloads as a result of the steep rise in sanctions against people on ESA.

There is a real lack of awareness and Disability Equality Training among the staff who apply the sanctions. John, an underperforming JSA claimant with learning difficulties who was disallowed ESA and had to go onto JSA is interviewed after being sanctioned for not meeting his target of 10 job applications in one week by one job application. (5 mins 14 secs to 7 mins 32 secs into the programme.) He has been told that he has been sanctioned up till the end of this year; and the very first indication that he had been sanctioned came when his Housing Benefit was stopped! The Department for Work & Pensions say that they will look into John's case more closely. Hopefully, that experience will lead to documentary evidence that he should be on the Employment & Support Allowance that he has been turned down for three times. (John is not the only JSA claimant with learning difficulties that can seriously impede online jobsearch activities, as Kate Belgrave has revealed elsewhere.)

Labour MP Dame Anne Begg who chairs the House of Commons Work & Pensions Select Committee is interviewed, saying that there should be sanctions for those not trying hard enough, but the increase in sanctions experienced through her own casework as an MP and the circumstances of those sanctioned shows that something is clearly wrong and that her Committee will need to look further into this matter.

She says that there has always been some level of 'conditionality' in the giving out of unemployment-related benefits, but seems to ignore any idea of bargaining power and 'consideration'. In contract law, bargaining power helps differentiate claimants from potential slave fodder and consideration implies that the DWP as 'employer' should consider what the claimant requires in order to fulfil their side of the deal. Existing UK benefit levels alone — ie, without all the bullying that goes on within JobCentre Plus! — show so little regard for the vulnerability of claimants that I am reminded of the chorus of the Allan Taylor song, 'The Morning Lies Heavy on Me' that he wrote for his Vietnam War draftee brother-in-law:

Tell me who's the one who fights until he's broken —
Is it the ones who sit in judgement of us all?
I wouldn't care if it was their lives they were taking,
But they don't listen or even answer to the call.

On poverty levels of income, every day is a struggle for survival.

Welfare reform and statistical respraying of Incapacity Benefit claim closures due to claimant death

And I'd say that we must remember that a great deal of what is currently happening under the Conservative Government with investment banker Baron Freud as Welfare Reform Minister can be tracked back to when an earlier incarnation as David Freud was appointed by Labour's Work & Pensions Secretary John Hutton in late 2006.

Around that time, I was demonstrating outside Parliament with a group of disability activists while I was on JSA and the then Government talk was rumoured to be about reserving the 'no need to apply for work' group of would-have-been-Incapacity-Benefit-claimants to people whose claim was on the grounds of incontinence. A case of disability stigma there, along the lines of, "Don't tell us what your disability or health condition does to you; tell us how it can piss others off."

A few months on from that it had been revealed in Disability Now! magazine that a backbench Labour MP's research using official government figures had revealed a direct correlation in the fact that Incapacity Benefit claimants below the age of 60 were denied the winter fuel support availabe to even government ministers aged 60+ on much higher salaries, and a steep seasonal rise in Incapacity Benefit claim closure due to claimant death in winter.

How did Work & Pensions Secretary John Hutton respond? Perhaps with the respray skills of the David Freud who led the Euro Tunnel flotation on the Stock Market. Hutton told BBC radio news in early 2007 in relation to the transformation of Incapacity Benefit toward what is now ESA that his department's figures revealed that after two years on IB, a claimant was more likely to retire or die than get another job.

Subpoena those whose policy-making negligence puts vulnerable people's lives at risk

Would you willingly place any lives in these people's hands?

Benefits sanctioned? Take mass action!

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Telephone: 07724 843 973

Meetings: 3pm - 5:30pm
Thursdays, Kingsgate Community Centre
107 Kingsgate Road, London, NW6 2JH

Meeting structure

Helping you feel at home: We meet weekly in the Small Hall at KingsgateCC and start gathering from 3pm, attempting to start the meetings at about 3:15pm and definitely before 3:30pm.

Bring and share refreshments are included. We are not like the 'No eating or drinking on the premises' jobcentre.

The formal meetings start with firstname and what benefit we are on or a one-liner about what brings us to KUWG. (Pensioners and other allies welcome.)

We then ask for casework from those present, arrange who will help with what case, and go onto discussing campaigning leafleting and such outreach activities. We also arrange who will do the chairing or facilitating and note-taking for the following week. Rotating these roles helps minimise the risk of being dominated by one person and helps us build our skills as we share the workload.

Meetings actually finish at about 5:20pm to allow for putting tables and chairs back and leaving the kitchen facilities ready for the next group.

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