Praise efficiency, condemn sick note culture (New Labour style)
Posted by Louise
Another one of those favourite phrases banded around at the moment is “efficiency savings”… Lets be honest, that means straightforwardly, cuts. A leaked doc from the Orwellian Ministry of Justice has stated that jobs across the criminal justice system will be lost.
The Treasury wants to save £1bn (3% a yr) or as they put it, in market speak, “value-for-money savings”…
Jail wings will close with an estimated £180m in cuts. Harry Fletcher, from Napo, argues:
“Cutting probation and prison budgets can only be achieved through cutting staff“.
The court service will lose £102m
Legal aid fund budget will lose £193m
The tribunal service will lose £93m
And coupled with the fact that the prison population is full to bursting what a logical blue-sky kinda thinking from New Labour ….make lots of cuts.
Legal aid is already being attacked and money swiped from the coffers. Justice won’t be about fairness it will be about if you can afford it. The poor will be handed rough justice.
The tribunal service will probably have to cut some of its venues, which will make it difficult for people to get to. Jobs will be lost so more pressure on the staff who remain and pressure on the judiciary to push decisions through without much time or preparation spent. Therefore there will be poor decision making.
It will be interesting what Napo and the POA will do to highlight and campaign against these cuts.
And further onslaughts on the welfare state involve coming up with a brand new test for the claimants on disability benefits. At the moment anyone claiming Incapacity Benefit has to go through “Personal Capability Assessment” previously called the ”All-Works Test”. This new test, Work Capability Assessment (WCA), will come into practice in Oct 2008. They reckon 20,000 people who take the assessment won’t pass it as the test is tougher to pass. Again, as there’s going to be a continued overhaul of welfare then I will be interested in knowing what the PCS makes of this.
At the moment people are tested according to their incapacity (for example, ability to walk 437 yards). Instead it will revolve around ability. Peter Hain (Work and Pensions Secretary) argues that this will be a “more robust, accurate and fair system“…and my own favourite, “work is good for you“…
They hope to save £12.5billion a year, a drop in the financial ocean when you consider how much tax evasion there is. Around £97bn-£150bn is lost to tax evasion. While £7bn in benefits are unclaimed. So…. we know where New Labour’s priorities lie.
This new test will reduce people to robots. How robots operate under capitalism. Work orientated yet nothing about these elusive jobs. What kind of jobs is Hain talking about?
Good equality work where the employer takes disability seriously and treats the employee with respect and fairness? Oh, sorry, just woke up from that fantasy. I suppose it will be working for the rat race in any old job but….”work is good for you“…and “this test is not a punishment“.
In the green paper on welfare reform it boasts a list of companies as “partners” that suggests careers of badly paid drudgery in the retail, hospitality and care home trades…the jobs nobody else wants.
Many of these jobs would vanish over night in a recession. It would be people from disadvantaged groups that would be laid off first if the firms are hit by the fallout from the credit crunch or a similar crisis courtesy of the merchant banks.
In reality disabled workers are treated appallingly and many employers admit they wouldn’t employ people especially with mental distress. No tightening up of the Disability Discrimination Act or making employers accountable for their shoddy work practices. Nope the onus is on the claimant. Disability Alliance have “grave reservations about the consequences of this new test”
It will also create a hierarchy of deserving/undeserving and we already see that Dickensian language slipping in. The 21st century version of the Victorian workhouse will be upon us … workfare…
Is workfare not already upon us? JSA? “Environmental task force”? “New deal jobs”….?
Comment by Karl-Marx-Straße — 19 November, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
Well, workfare is sorta upon us but not totally. I agree with what you say but the workfare system in the States that some New Labour bods have liked and examined. At the moment to be in receipt of JSA you need to be actively seeking work but with workfare you are given a job in order to get your benefits. Workfare in the States people are given the worst jobs for a measly benefit. The unions hate workfare ‘cos it undermines pay and conditions for the real workforce while it is soul destroying for people forced on this vile scheme.
At the moment JSA is a straightforward benefit with a degree of conditionality but with workfare it is one nasty onslaught on disabled and poor. You get a crappy job and paid your benefit. And that’s one system not wanted here!
Employment Support Allowance will come into force next year (they will be switched over to this from Incapacity Benefit). They want to enable people to move forward in getting a job (not on their own terms but on everyone elses). Who knows what will happen but I bet the results won’t be positive!
Comment by Louise — 19 November, 2007 @ 11:21 pm
by the way - good post
i think a reord today we had articles posted by three differnent contributers - it is getting to be like a newspaper!
Comment by Andy — 19 November, 2007 @ 11:47 pm
“it is getting to be like a newspaper”!
Tabloid or broadsheet? Get your supa soaraway Socialist Unity..maybe? Me thinks tabloid
Comment by Louise — 20 November, 2007 @ 12:18 am
Well we had 7421 unique visits today (Monday) and have had 110750 so far this month.
So tabloid I reckon.
Comment by Andy — 20 November, 2007 @ 12:22 am
Hi,
New poster here
Sadly, it is indeed looking likely that we are hurtling back to an age before the Welfare State: that ‘golden age’ when people couldn’t afford a doctor, when child mortality was sky high and many unfortunates often spent many years in awful conditions in the workhouse and were buried in paupers graves (Frank Field is even calling for a return of the workhouse!) It’s certainly possible that there won’t be a welfare system as we know it in the u.k within five to ten years. for example, the Tories are backing the Winconsin model of welfare, which as Andy notes basically means there is no welfare, plenty of ‘help’ job clubs, etc, but no money. Watching a package on it on Newsnight recently. It seemed to be a nightmarish and barbourous system using Orwellian language such that leaving people to rely on charity is described as ‘giving help’.
In terms of the new PCA test this is all about saving money and creating an atmosphere where disabled people are reluctant to claim. It is incredibly hard for such people to enter the workplace and the jobs simply aren’t there. Further, while benefits are still available in the UK, ‘reforms’ over the last few years have already made it one of the most draconian system in Europe. So, yes, this is about punishing the vulnerable and the poor and saving cash. The former DWP minister John Hutton admitted as much awhile back saying it it was to save money to pay for the pensions deficit. If they were so caring, they wouldn’t be making the reforms target led and fraud is by the DWP’s own opinion, ‘neglible’ It’s a punitive new system massively influenced by giant US insurance companies such as Unum Provident who smell vast profits in the future.
It is also only part of the new Welfare Reform Act 2007 (which Louise has regularly blogged about) which will see disabled people threatened with significant loss of benefits and forced into unsuitable work or even medical interventions. An ever more intrusive and brutal welfare regime and the threat of losing homes as housing benefit in the private rented sector is replaced by a fixed rate allowance for each city.
This is certainly the next phase of the neo-liberal offensive, the marketisation of welfare and the extension of the notion of the ‘deserving poor. n the UK, the political parties are being aided by giant US multinationals who see rich pickings(see above) and UK training companies such as A4E who also want a piece pf the pie. What is also revealing is that the scurrulious info dug up on who gets what from I/benefit which has been much cited in the media today was sourced under the FOI by an right wing libertarian group: the Tax Payers Alliance with close links to US r/w think tanks ,
However, what is also worrying is that while the neo-liberal economy is being challenged in so many areas, in welfare it seems to be in the ascendancy. We shouldn’t forget welfare systems worldwide were fought for by generations of trade unionists and activists such as the in the U.K, the National Unemployed Workers movement in the 1930’s etc,. Now, they are being dismantled in front of our very eyes and progressives, and todays’ unions, the labour left, the far left, etc seem to be doing nothing. Indeed, Brendan Barber, president of the T.U.C has broadly supported the UK welfare reforms. Life without benefits will lead to a dystopian future, some people of course will ‘triumph’ and make some sort of a life, but there is no doubt crime would rise and maybe over time social unrest. Though many will blame themselves and fall into despair, becoming invisible.
Btw, lets hope this article gets a few replies, though if its not about Iraq or respect, that may be unlikely, please wake up, the futures disappearing…
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Comment by John Rogers — 20 November, 2007 @ 12:27 am
Hey John,
Good to see you and thanks for the emails you sent me the other week. Really appreciated the information.
I will be interested in what the PCS have to say about these changes, ongoing attacks on welfare. I agree with what you say John as things are getting depressingly grim…
Has SWAN and other disability rights orgs got anything planned?
Comment by Louise — 20 November, 2007 @ 12:36 am
The government wants to save £1 billion, and yet they have sunk £24 billion into saving Northern Rock with little chance of recouping.
This country clearly can’t afford low taxes for the rich and super-rich as they’ve enjoyed for so long, especially since John Major lowered top rates from 60 to 40 percent. That Labour has been in office for ten years and still hasn’t raised tax to the level under Thatcher says a lot.
Comment by Madam Miaow — 20 November, 2007 @ 12:56 am
Indeed Madam Miaow, but what was ironic, while watching the news was there was a piece about Northern Rock and then next something on Farepak…while NR was bailed out the 120,000 people who put money into Farepak won’t see a penny for Xmas.
Unison has just published a report re Farepak and say that majority of the people who put money in were low-paid women and this has caused further repercussions re debt. As Richard Garside from Centre for Crime and Justice Studies says:
“Many are asking why, if the government was prepared to underwrite Northern Rock to the tune of billions of pounds, no comprehensive help has been forthcoming”.
This social injustice and the Department of Business and Enterprise spokesman has the gall to say that a Family Fund had set up and distributed about £8m to victims and that its investigations would ensure anyone who acted improperly was held to account.
I can’t wait to see the establishment dragging their feet over accountability though someone low low low down the pecking order will probably be sacrificed.
Peanuts compared to salvaging Northern Rock and it does indeed show NL’s non-commitment to Farepak savers who are mostly low paid people trying to make ends meet.
Comment by Louise — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:08 am
To be a bit controversial ….
In Manchester there are 40,000 people on IB, out of an adult workforce of around 300k.
I’m not convinced that given the right support, significant numbers of claimants couldn’t find work and in turn get out of poverty.
Comment by paulm — 20 November, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
PaulM: Precisely that, “given the right support” and I would also add, “on their (claimants) own terms” because what Hain and the NL’s whole attack on welfare is predicated around coercion, compulsion and punishment.
Comment by Louise — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:02 pm
I’m sure it’s that clear cut. 40% of IB claim are linked to mental ill-health. There are examples of local services taking sensitive and holistic approaches. Our message has to be that broadly, work is good for people, and in a socialist society, there would be an obligation to work.
Comment by paulm — 20 November, 2007 @ 11:14 pm
Louise, I was involved in campaigns against the JSA when it was brought in, in the mid-90s. How has the situation changed since then? Have the ‘new deal’ rules (which I always understood as being essentially ‘workfare’) been extended to all claimants since then, as opposed to ‘just’ the under-25s?
The movement against workfare (known as ‘Hartz IV’, the proper name is ‘Arbeitslosengeld II’ - which sounds roughly along the lines of ‘Employment Support Allowance’) in Germany was responsible for a few left-ish splits from the SPD, resulting in the WASG, and at the same time saved the then-PDS (ex-GDR ruling party) from almost certain oblivion, when it merged with the WASG; both then forming ‘Die Linke’ (the ‘Left Party’).
So it might not all be bad news… Also - the change in the rules meant that when before, mainly fully unemployed workers claimed social security, a lot of the stigma has gone which used to exist when claiming supplementary benefits, as they are no longer adminstered by ‘the DSS’, but by labour exchanges.
This means that a lot of people now rightly ‘claim what’s theirs’ - they still work full time, for a pittance, but now top-up their wages with benefits. Obviously this means the government is defacto supporting poverty wages (there is no national, set minimum wage in Germany - though the theme is complicated) while at the same time constantly speaking out against this very idea. So far from cutting the benefit bill, it has gone up drastically - and raising people’s awareness of their rights…
At the moment JSA is a straightforward benefit with a degree of conditionality but with workfare it is one nasty onslaught on disabled and poor. You get a crappy job and paid your benefit. And that’s one system not wanted here!
Here the main effect of workfare has been cuts in council departments, to have the staff replaced by ‘1-Euro (per hour)-jobs’ (1 Euro/hour on top of benefit). And a lot (in Berlin at least) of the ‘top-up pay’ refered to above is a result of competitive tendering, where the companies providing the services on the cheap can only do so as the same council (!) then has to pay the same staff supplementary benefits!
Also: there is a shortage of ‘workfare jobs’. Dispelling the myth of the ‘lazy unemployed’, there are demands - from the unemployed themselves - for more *useful* jobs that can be done while on benefit (voluntary work for example is strictly speaking ruled out, as then you are no longer ‘available for work’) - i.e. for more ‘1 Euro jobs’. This entire debate has gradually led to discussions re. a ‘guaranteed minimum income’, a state-funded employment sector and the purpose of work (as opposed to ‘wage labour’) in a society where it is accepted that great numbers of people will never find paid employment again (in much of the former East Germany, for example).
Of course, at the same time, the government has just put up the pensionable age, and is currently forcing large numbers of the ‘older unemployed’ (55+) into early retirement, in order to get away with not having to pay further pension contributions, resulting in a pension worth around 20% less for the rest of their lives. It’s all a bit contradictory, isn’t it….
Perhaps a longer article on this whole experience would be called for?
Comment by Karl-Marx-Straße — 22 November, 2007 @ 10:59 am
KMS,
The policy of both German and UK governments is to increase the numbers of older workers. The Germans have a bigger problem because the employment rate of older workers is so low. In 2005 the Federal government launched invested 250million euros into programmes for older people. So I don’t understand your point about forcing the over 55s in retirement..
Comment by paulm — 23 November, 2007 @ 2:34 pm