Wednesday, October 30, 2013 

The snobbery of a day's pay for a day's work returns.

Today's ruling by the supreme court that it was unlawful for those sent on workfare schemes to be sanctioned when the government had failed to set out how the schemes would be regulated in law leaves us almost precisely where we were back in February when the Court of Appeal gave its judgement.  The only thing that's changed since then is the DWP under Iain Duncan Smith immediately set out to retroactively define the schemes in law, so as to stop any possibility of those illegally denied their benefits from claiming compensation.  Despite doing so, the government still sought to have the appeal court's ruling struck down, for reasons known only to itself.

Indeed, the supreme court in its ruling rather acidly passes comment on the DWP's approach.  It is rather unattractive", Lord Neuberger and Lord Toulson write, "for the executive to be taking up court time and public money to establish that a regulation is valid, when it has already taken up Parliamentary time to enact legislation which retrospectively validates the regulation".  Not content with that, they also note the dates when the DWP changed the regulations and then appealed against the ruling, which just so happens to be the same day as the judgement was handed down, which was extremely speedy by DWP standards, and then the same day as the act setting them out in law was passed in parliament.

Unattractive is just about the kindest possible way you can describe how Duncan Smith and friends have handled opposition to their myriad of pet projects.  "Intellectual snobbery" was the colourful formulation decided upon by IDS to condemn the clearly old-fashioned belief that a fair day's work should be rewarded with a fair day's pay.  From the very beginning they set out to impugn Cait Reilly's motives, suggesting that as a graduate she thought it was beneath her to stack shelves and scrub floors in Poundland, something only slightly undermined by how she's currently working for Morrisons.  Even today they've tried their darnedest to spin the ruling as being in their favour, the supreme court deciding it is simply common sense that on jobseeker's allowance can be sent on "work experience", and that it isn't in any shape or form forced labour.  It doesn't matter they lost on the other three counts, so long as they can claim some sort of hollow victory and make that case on TV.

This goes to the heart of how politicians on occasion couldn't give a fig for the rule of law or even basic fairness.  We've seen the consequences over the last couple of days, with Ed Balls' sacking of Sharon Shoesmith coming back to bite all concerned.  Somehow we're meant to be outraged about Shoesmith being "rewarded for failure", when it was Balls reacting to the Sun's hysterical campaign over the death of Peter Connelly that inexorably led to the former head of children's services at Haringey council quite rightly being awarded compensation for unfair dismissal.  In this instance the DWP acted to deny that which was rightfully due to thousands of those deprived of the most basic means to subsist, having not been informed of what their rights actually were.  That the failure to legally outline how the schemes would operate and how those who refused to take part or objected to the terms would be sanctioned may well have been deliberate just underlines how pathetic Labour were to abstain on the retroactive legislation.

Workfare then will continue as it has.  This is despite the fact that at least one scheme has been found to be actively counter-productive, and there is little to no evidence to suggest "work experience" as some reporters and the government still wish to describe the various programmes help those placed on them to find long-lasting work.  They do however help enormously with the unemployment figures, as those on them, despite still claiming JSA, are counted as in work.  Those companies who have resisted the likes of Boycott Workfare also benefit, with a constant stream of workers passing through they don't need to even bother paying the minimum wage.  And this is before the Community Action Programme is massively expanded as announced by George Osborne at the Conservative party conference, due to increase the number of those who, like Jamieson Wilson, will find themselves working for their benefit for six months at a time.  Refuse, and they get nothing.  Such is the morass into which we've descended, with commentators still happy to accuse Reilly rather than engage with the reality of hundreds of thousands being forced to work for far less than the minimum wage.

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10/30/2013 11:08:00 pm | |

Tuesday, March 19, 2013 

Liam Byrne: must try harder.

In one sense, you can understand the more than cautious approach Labour has taken on welfare reform in opposition.  They know it's an utter lie that they didn't reform welfare, as the Tories continually claim; they introduced the work capability assessment for goodness sake, still making life miserable for tens of thousands of those declared to be fit for work by ATOS, but know it's futile complaining too loudly about it.  It's also the case that in principle, Iain Duncan Smith's universal benefit makes sense: whether it works in practice we're yet to see. Lastly, they also deserve credit for calling the Tories' bluff and opposing the coalition's 1% cap on benefits, despite the dangers of such a policy.  As it's turned out, it hasn't affected the party's polling whatsoever, even if they again haven't properly set out the arguments against a real terms cut in benefits.

All this said, the decision to abstain on today's vote on the "emergency" workfare bill is perplexing and naive.  Yes, you can understand that it would be incredibly easy for the Tories to paint Labour as being the party of the welfare scrounger, and the DWP certainly has worked every sinew in its attempt to paint those who have been sanctioned for any reason as malingerers who refused reasonable job offers. It's also laudable that Liam Byrne has at least attempted to improve the bill by ensuring those sanctioned have the right to appeal and know from the outset exactly what it is they're agreeing to when they go on any of the various schemes recommended to them at Jobcentre Plus.

The issue here though ought to be a simple one: the government is legislating to deny those at the very bottom rung of society what is legally and morally owed to them. As Sunny writes, many of those on the workfare schemes were deliberately denied the information which would have allowed them to make an informed choice on what to do, while the legislation on sanctions was purposefully vague. This is wholly a mess of the coalition's own making, and they shouldn't be allowed to get away with such manoeuvring.

Moreover, as Mark Ferguson on Labour List argues, abstaining also gives tacit approval to the work programme that the party has rightly been deriding as worse than useless.  Indeed, in the specific case of mandatory work activity, the scheme is worse even than that as it saw the numbers claiming employment and support allowance increase. Liam Byrne's argument is also completely disingenuous: his suggestion that if everyone was to be compensated it would mean more cuts implies that savings through sanctions are built into the DWP's budget, which can't possibly be the case.

It's true that Labour's opposition wouldn't see the bill defeated, as the Tories can in this at least rely on the support of the Lib Dems, but it's beside the point. If Labour's position truly is that there should be a job's guarantee, then those who have been let down or worse, actively mistreated by the current system, surely deserve better than the forced imposition of schemes that are being used just as much to massage the unemployment figures as they are to help those out of work. Byrne's intervention hasn't so much challenged Iain Duncan Smith's bad faith as made it more slightly more palatable.

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3/19/2013 08:52:00 pm | |

Tuesday, February 12, 2013 

Not quite the "blowing of a big hole".

Before everyone celebrates the "blowing of a big hole" in the government's workfare schemes, it's worth noting that today's victory for Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson at the Royal Courts of Justice was on a rather narrow point of law.  It wasn't that the schemes themselves were unlawful, as that original challenge was thrown out last year.  Rather, the three-judge panel found that the rules for sanctioning those who refused to take part in or failed to finish their placements had not been properly defined in law (PDF).  While this is potentially good news for those who have either had their benefit reduced or temporarily stopped as a result of not complying with the rules as they stood, as they could be in line for a rebate, the government is to appeal and so it's likely to be months before any more is known. 

What the ruling does all but confirm is that the plethora of different schemes seem to be designed to be confusing.  Despite what was thought originally, Reilly was neither on mandatory work activity or the work experience scheme when she was forced on pain of losing her JSA to work at Poundland.  She was in fact on the "sector-based work academy" programme, which is voluntary, or at least is up until the point you decide to go on it.  After that, regardless of whether it turns out not to be what you expected or completely pointless in terms of helping you get a job, if you then don't complete the placement you're liable to be sanctioned.

In Reilly's case, she was misled from the outset: told that if she accepted a place she would get a week's training and then a guaranteed interview, her placement was in fact for six weeks. Told wrongly that it was now mandatory that she took it, her work in Poundland merely involved stacking shelves and washing floors, with no actual training whatsoever. While for some such a placement would be helpful, Reilly already had retail experience and was doing voluntary work at a museum.  Her placement was purely for the benefit of Poundland, not the both of them.

If anything Wilson's proposed placement is even more troubling. Having been on JSA for two years after losing his job as a HGV driver, he was to be put on the community action programme, where he would have worked 30 hours a week for 6 months purely for his JSA. Indeed, although the placement was for 6 months to start with, it was essentially open-ended; it would only end if he found a job or dropped his claim.  That working 30 hours a week on pain of losing his JSA would drastically limit his chances of finding a job or attending interviews seems to be the point rather than a flaw: after 2 years you are essentially being written off, regardless of the reasons behind your failure to find a job.  Either you work for far below the minimum wage indefinitely, or you're deemed worthy of nothing.

The only difference it seems between mandatory work activity and the community action programme is that CAP becomes all but compulsory after two or three years, while you can be placed on MWA at any time and the placements are shorter. Both are equally objectionable, especially when the definition of "work of benefit to the community" is stretched to the limit. Wilson's placement would have involved collecting furniture, renovating it and then distributing it. Very worthy, which begs the question of why the work can't be properly paid, or whether someone placed on the scheme is taking a job which would otherwise be fully paid.

Which is the ultimate objection to the vast majority of the government's workfare schemes.  Some of the firms that were using them to blatantly fill positions which would otherwise have been at least minimum wage jobs have been forced through shame into dropping out. With even the best will in the world, at a certain point training stops being just that and becomes work, which is when it should start being paid. It's not just as we've seen that mandatory work activity doesn't work, it's actively counter-productive.  Doubtless as it is that some placements will have been highly beneficial to some individuals, best practice would see that everyone knows exactly what it is they are agreeing to go on, and that they have an opportunity to pull out if it isn't for them, for whatever reason, without being sanctioned, at least on the first or even second occasion. At best it currently looks as though the government is using JSA claimants as below minimum wage labour to keep the jobless figures down, while at worst it's writing off the long-term unemployed as fit only to work unpaid. What a thoroughly despicable paradox.

Update: See Robin's comment of Lib Con for some clarification on what exactly was found unlawful.

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2/12/2013 09:30:00 pm | |

Tuesday, November 27, 2012 

The coalition isn't working.

The news that the government's much vaunted work programme isn't working is about as much of a surprise as the equally exciting discovery that some people when living abroad adopt the mannerisms and even accent of their hosts, including, horror of horrors, footballers and football managers.

Much as the coalition is deserving of a kicking for setting up a programme it knew was untested, similarities to the Flexible New Deal aside, it should instead be receiving a veritable truckload of opprobrium for one of its very first acts of vandalism, one that we've discussed before.  The abolition of Labour's Future Jobs Fund, where the young unemployed were found subsidised work with local charities and paid at least the minimum wage, was one of the most vindictive and counter-productive decisions made by the new government.  A study commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions (PDF) and peer-reviewed by The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has found that those who had took part in the scheme were 11% more likely to be in unsubsidised employment than those who hadn't, while they were also 7% less likely to be in receipt of benefits.

Contrast this to the data released today on the work programme.  The government set the 18 various contractors (mostly private firms) the target of getting 5.5% of those referred to them into a job for six months.  Not a single one has managed to achieve this: most successful was Maximus, which missed the target by 0.4%, while the worst performer was JHP, which found sustainable jobs for just 220 of the 11,820 people referred to them, or a pitiful 2.2%.  Even if we accept the argument from both the government and the contractors that these are initial figures which will improve, and the average achievement rate doubles to 7% as problems are ironed out, then the scheme with still have failed to be anywhere near as effective as the FJF was.

It's true that this is hardly the first government to ignore evidence which isn't helpful to its wider political aims.  Gordon Brown ignored the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and reclassified cannabis as Class B, while Lord Goldsmith famously changed his tune on the legality of the Iraq war for reasons we can only speculate on (as a side note, it's worth remembering that the Chilcot inquiry is still to report while Leveson is due to on Thursday, despite both hearing a similar amount of evidence).  A reasonable government would though have waited for the evidence on the FJF to come in before taking any action on it either way.  Likewise, when confronted with the study on the mandatory work activity programme, which showed that its effect was so severe on some referred onto it that they were soon claiming employment and support allowance, a responsible government would have either modified it drastically or abandoned it.  Instead, then minister Chris Grayling provided funding for another 9,000 places.

While the refusal to change MWA looked as though it was influenced by the determination of this government to be seen as punishing "scroungers", something it has most certainly achieved, the fixation on the work programme doesn't seem to be helping anyone.  It certainly isn't helping the vast majority of the long-term unemployed; it's making the firms running the scheme look fairly useless; it isn't saving any money as more than ever is being spent on jobseeker's allowance; and as  the politicians themselves are privately admitting, to Nick Robinson at least, the scheme is a "failure", so it's hardly doing much for them.

This doesn't mean the FJF should be reintroduced as it was: as the man who ran the scheme argues, it should have been improved and better run, as almost any government programme could.  It more than suggests however that in this instance at least the state needs to have a role, even if it's only to subsidise those who need not just opportunity but also a decent wage in order to then move on.  As this goes against everything the modern Conservative party believes, the likelihood of ministers changing their minds is even lower than the percentage of sustainable jobs provided by JHP.

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11/27/2012 10:50:00 pm | |

Tuesday, July 03, 2012 

Because they're worth it.

Here's a teaser: when does a journey of 542 miles cost £19,583? Stumped? Staggered that even the most exclusive charter company would ever dream of demanding nearly 20 grand to take a couple from Aberdeen to London? You shouldn't be. For this couple were, of course, members of the royal family. In the aftermath of last year's riots, it was decided that Charles and Camilla were needed to travel to the capital to show some sympathy for those who had lost everything. Rather than thinking it would make better sense to go first class by train and perhaps delay the feel your pain tour for a day, with the money saved going to a fund for the victims, they of course jumped straight on a plane. Today the Graun reports that thousands of claims for compensation following the riots have been rejected, while one couple whose flat was destroyed by fire received less than £2,000 in damages.

£19,583 is, it must be said, relatively cheap when set against the £67,215 expense of chartering a jet to fly Big Ears to Saudi Arabia to commiserate with the lovely ruling clique there on a death in the family. The Duke of Gloucester meanwhile went on a similar jaunt to Tonga, costing an incredible £91,381, while Edward and Sophie went to the human rights paradise Bahrain, a snip at a mere £18,068. Overall, £6.1m went on ferrying the royals about the place in the style to which they've become accustomed.

We have to keep in mind, you see, that as individuals we only pay 52p each a year for the entire shower, a sum which will now barely get you a Mars bar from the local corner shop. Frankly I'd rather have the chocolate but we have to accept that for some strange reason that the first people to be famous simply because they're famous are incredibly popular. Who cares if all they do is wander around, shake hands with the occasional unpleasant person and then go back to being waited on for the rest of the day? £19,583 is clearly a small price to pay for the effect that Chaz 'n' Cams must have had on those they visited, even if Haringey isn't exactly what you'd call a hotbed of royalism.

Why then should be we worry about little things like how that £19,583 could have paid for a whole year's worth of Jobseeker's Allowance for 5 people unable to find work? Quite clearly we shouldn't because, to judge by the number of sanction referrals coming from those companies contracted to provide the Work programme, most of those on the benefit are workshy ingrates who need some very tough love to get them back into the jobs market. Collectively, they asked the Jobcentre to sanction claimants on 111,000 occasions, with the advisers agreeing with their decisions less than a third of the time. Sanctions vary from benefit being cut to being stopped all together, for periods ranging from a week up to six months. As Richard Whittell from Corporate Watch put it, at the current rate more will have lost their benefit through the Work programme than been employed through it.

This it seems is the new reality of the welfare state under the coalition. Where Labour brought in the Work Capability Assessment, administered by Atos, currently inflicting misery on thousands of the disabled and sick who are being told they are in fact fit for work, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have turned their attention to punishing the unemployed despite there not being enough jobs to go round, or the economic growth needed for the Work programme to operate with even the slightest chance of success. It doesn't matter that this is self-defeating, as shown by how a small percentage of those placed on Mandatory Work Activity ended up on Employment and Support Allowance as an apparent result of being forced to work for their meagre £71.00 a week, it goes down well with the hard pressed that do have jobs. An ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph found that an overwhelming 56% thought the benefit system was too generous as it stands, with only 12% saying it should be more generous, and 24% thinking it was about right. 48% said that JSA should be time-limited, with 36% disagreeing. There were more even splits on some of the other specific policies David Cameron set out in his speech last Monday, but nothing that will make the Tories think again about trying to ram through such changes.

For as John Harris sets out, to be on benefits at the moment is an incredibly lonely place. About the only support you're likely to receive is from the unions, as politicians of all hues are terrified of being seen as soft on scroungers. The Labour party, rather than directly opposing the abolition of housing benefit for the under 25s, instead concentrates on criticising the administration, rather than the changes in criteria, seeing this as a "safe" area where it won't face the opprobrium of the Daily Mail. Those on the Labour benches who have previously spoken out, such as Emily Thornberry, brought up on a council estate by a single mother reliant on benefits, have gone silent. Individual MPs, whose constituency caseloads must be overflowing with the fallout from those told they no longer qualify for ESA, are also being slow to admit how many people the system is currently failing.

As the largesse thrown towards not just the royals but also the Olympics shows, the idea that there's no money left or that we can no longer afford an "unreformed" welfare state is a nonsense. It comes down to a choice of how we want our society to look like, as David Cameron acknowledged last week. When we can subsidise the chartering of jets by our social betters to foreign climes simply because another royal in a far away land has died, or pay the likes of A4E the equivalent of £11,000 for every person they manage to get in work, then we must be able to provide people with living standards that ensure they don't have to rely on food banks. My fear is the same as John Harris's and that of the police: that rather than improving, things have only got worse since last year's riots. The exclusion some are going to feel when Olympics fever is shoved down their throats is hardly going to help, and with the police liable to being even more trigger happy than usual while the greatest show on earth is on, it's hard not to see the potential for a situation similar to the one in the aftermath of the shooting of Mark Duggan arising again. And if it does happen, they can't say this time that they haven't been warned.

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7/03/2012 06:46:00 pm | |

Friday, June 29, 2012 

When there's nothing left to burn.

On the same day as a judge considers whether to order a review of the Work Capability Assessment's deficiencies, a man sets himself on fire outside a Jobcentre after an apparent change in the benefit he was receiving. Still, got to be cruel to be kind, haven't you?

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6/29/2012 07:40:00 pm | |

Monday, June 25, 2012 

Hating the young.

The key moment in modern British politics is not, as some might imagine, the bail-out of the banks and the subsequent recession as the collapse of Lehman Brothers reverberated around the globe. It in fact came a year earlier. Gordon Brown was still enjoying his political honeymoon, having finally taken over from Tony Blair as prime minister. Realising that it would help enormously if he had his own mandate, while at the same time bouncing a not yet ready if finally beginning to recover Conservative party into an early election, everyone in Westminster and the press was gearing up for a "surprise" November vote. Knowing that they needed something bold if they to were halt this seemingly unstoppable juggernaut, George Osborne stood up at the Conservative party conference and announced that if elected, his party would raise the inheritance tax threshold to £1 million.

It was a policy that ought to have been derided. Very few paid inheritance tax (about 6% of estates), the threshold being set at £300,000, shortly to rise to £325,000. It was though repeatedly complained about in both the Daily Express and Daily Mail, and many feared that even if they weren't currently over the threshold, they believed they soon would be if house prices kept going up and up as was expected. In response to Osborne's announcement, the polls shifted: either suggesting that the Tories were neck and neck with Labour or that Brown would win with a very slender majority. Unwilling to risk the possibility that he would only spend around six months in a job he had sought for 13 years, Brown called the election off. His premiership never recovered.

Apart from showing that Brown was the ditherer his opponents had made him out to be, the Tories noted it meant the home ownership revolution they had helped launched meant more to people than ever. They now not only wanted to own their own home, they wanted to pass it on to their children, regardless of whether or not they too had got on the property ladder. Where previously there had been majority support for a tax that kicked in at death on the upper classes, meaning they couldn't just pass the wealth either they or their own parents had accumulated down onto their children who potentially hadn't earned anything, this was dissipating. It could well be that they would have supported a threshold of £500,000 as much as they seemingly did of £1m, but even so it showed that attitudes were changing.

Ever since then, the Tories have become ever more daring in their defence of the upper middle at the expense of the poor and most vulnerable. They took Alistair Darling's plans for fixing the deficit which were the model of progression and all but turned them upside down; they took Labour's welfare reforms and put rocket boosters under them, abolished the future jobs fund and introduced the "work" programme, overwhelmingly dependent on making the unemployed toil away unpaid on various placements, to the point where it has driven some onto sickness benefits; they tripled tuition fees with the connivance of the Liberal Democrats, the only sweetener being that nothing is now paid upfront; and finally, they went the whole way and ignoring how the introduction of the 50p top rate rate of tax had been dodged, abolished it before there was any clear evidence of whether or not it was bringing in extra revenue.

Now David Cameron has all but declared the beginning of the end of the welfare state, with the young the first to be targeted. Partially, this must be filed alongside Michael Gove's leak to the Mail last week that "dumbed down" GCSEs would be abolished with "less intelligent" students taking old-style CSEs as part of a battle to win back right-wing Tory support, especially as Cameron also set out his stall in yesterday's Mail on Sunday. The Tories have already reached the stage where they're so worried about their polling that they've given in to backbench demands to move to the right.

Cameron's speech today shouldn't be seen as an example of his weakness however. It might have taken the budget and surrounding omnishambles for the Tories to decide that they needed to bring measures like this forward, but this is always what they planned to do. Look at what he said today and compare it to his message in the aftermath of last year's riots: they're almost identical. The themes are exactly the same: that a culture of workless, dependency and low aspirations has left us with an underclass who do nothing but drain the hard-working majority of their taxes. They believe that they are automatically entitled to houses and other benefits despite never having worked a day in their lives, while those who do the right thing find themselves having to either postpone having children, or move away from where they would like to live because they can't afford it.

The real culture of entitlement you see isn't among those at the top, who through breeding and public school drilling believe they are born to rule and walk into the best jobs, who think that taxes are things that the little people pay, and who donate massive sums of money to political parties in an effort to ensure these values are the ones everyone should aspire to, it's in fact at the bottom among those who have nothing. Call it playing divide and rule, a dog whistle, class war or whatever you like, it's all the same thing: setting the working and middle classes not against those who decide what to pay themselves, but against those who are dependent on the state almost always through no fault of their own. And it works: look at how popular the benefit cap is, which ignores individual, often unique circumstances, and we really should have seen this coming.

As politics must now be conducted, you have to understand that Cameron's kite-flying isn't a run-down of the changes to the welfare system to come, oh no, it's just the prime minister trying to start a debate. Just as we've so often been encouraged to have an honest debate about immigration, even though we've been having one now for 50 years, we must take this opportunity to discuss what the welfare state should do, despite the tabloids having being telling all their readers that it shouldn't be supporting the feckless, single mothers and all other assorted malingerers for years now.

Never before though has a prime minister set out so bluntly just how much the young (or at least the young not maintained on trust funds) should be discriminated against. No one under 25 should be eligible for housing benefit as it encourages worklessness and provides a roof that those in a job often cannot provide for themselves; that this is a disgraceful lie when the majority of those claiming HB are either in work or when most households claiming it have at least one person working goes unmentioned, including by most of the press. Cameron made no mention whatsoever that the real reason why the HB bill increases inexorably is that private landlords keep on pushing rent up and up, and didn't dare to suggest that there should perhaps be a cap as to how much can be charged, or indeed that there's a chronic lack of social housing as the council houses sold off haven't been replaced. Clearly, the fault lies with the young who believe they're entitled to move out of their parents' homes as soon as they can and that the state will provide, or with the clichéd single mother, getting pregnant repeatedly for the child benefit and free council house, no father in sight.

As for those unlucky enough to be without work and who know full well that the requirements on them are already onerous enough, Cameron believes they should be even tougher. The young shouldn't be able to exit education at 18 and start claiming straight away, regardless of whether their parents have been paying into the system all their lives, that's just madness. So is the idea that they should be able to claim when they haven't even drawn up a CV, even though many will need the help provided by the JobCentre to write one in the first place. Just as ridiculous is benefit rising in line with inflation when wages haven't; who cares if 2% or less of £500 a week is a massive difference compared to 5.2% of £64.50? And why aren't those on JSA doing community work much sooner than they are currently, when the Aussies are expected to do so after six months of claiming? Why should the prime minister have to concern himself with facts like how 49,000 claimants were sent on Mandatory Work Activity in the first 10 months of the scheme operating when it was expected that only 10,000 would be a year, a figure which doesn't include those on the other work placement schemes now intertwined with JSA? The age old points that putting someone on full-time "community work" for their benefit rather interferes with their attempts to find paying work and deprives others of an actual paying job have also gone for a Burton.

I could if I wanted spend more time pointing out the mistakes and false comparisons in Cameron's speech, such as how he twice mentions Income Support, which is the process of being abolished with everyone on it being reassessed as to whether they're entitled to Employment and Support Allowance, the vast majority unsurprisingly finding that they're not.

The point is that even though Cameron doesn't slip into simple scrounger rhetoric, instead blaming the system for these perverse outcomes, even though he knows full well that the tabloids and the "debate" he calls for will swirl with contempt and even hate for those who are reliant on benefits for whatever reason, the entire purpose of the reforms is as Cameron says not about getting the books in order, it's about the kind of society and country we want to live in. Cameron and the Tories want to make it crueller, harsher and nastier, punishing the young for being born at the wrong time. Pensioners meanwhile can be glad that for now at least they will keep all of their benefits, for the reason that Cameron promised that they would and that secondly they vote. The young mostly don't, and they tend not to support the Tories anyway. What began with the baby boomers asserting their right to pass on their houses has led directly to the young poor with abusive, stifling families holding them back being potentially denied the chance to escape until they're 25. And sadly, I expect Cameron's speech will be wholeheartedly welcomed. Perhaps it really is time to think of emigrating.

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6/25/2012 05:21:00 pm | |

Wednesday, June 13, 2012 

Mandatory humiliation activity.

So now we know. The government's workfare programme, known as mandatory work activity, has nothing whatsoever to do with getting the long-term unemployed back into work. Counter-intuitive as this sounds, this is exactly what the research commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions has found (PDF). The study, which compared the outcomes between 3,000 of those put onto MWA and 125,000 on Jobseeker's Allowance who were not referred during the first three months the scheme was running, and was peer reviewed by The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, reached predictable conclusions: that only 55% of those referred onto the scheme actually started it, with 29% dropping their claim, while 17% temporarily lost their benefits for refusing to take part.

Far from this being evidence that "up to a third" of the jobless are in fact working, as has been briefed to the Sun, if anything it suggests the opposite: that the sick and disabled are being forced into working for their benefit, having wrongly been declared fit for work. As Jonathan Portes, director of the NIESR writes, after 13 weeks the impact on claiming had disappeared; instead, those referred were 3 percentage points more likely to be claiming Employment and Support Allowance rather than JSA. Either that, or the experience of being forced to work for up to 30 hours for a meagre £71 on JSA is so dispiriting and humiliating for some that their previously unsympathetic advisers at the jobcentre, as all are referred onto the scheme from there, have decided en masse that their "clients" aren't ready for work after all.

Any minister prepared to change their policy based upon evidence would have taken a look at these results, and either cancelled the scheme or announced a major overhaul of it. After all, it isn't just failing; it's actually costing the department more money because of the increase in those claiming ESA, which pays out more than JSA. Far from doing this, Chris Grayling has actually announced an increase in the number of places available by 9,000, meaning that a further 9,000 unfortunate people will on the pain of losing their benefit be forced to work for companies such as Close Protection UK, as those stewarding the jubilee were. Even if we give Grayling the benefit of the doubt and accept that the lack of impact is down to "teething problems" with the scheme, such as some gaming the system by signing off and then back on to avoid MWA, this doesn't excuse him from refusing to commission further research which would ascertain whether this is really the case.

Mandatory work activity clearly isn't then about preparing the long term unemployed for work by giving them the chance to experience it again, or at the very least it isn't for the vast majority. It's rather punishment for some of the most vulnerable in society, who haven't been able to find a job because there simply aren't any, or indeed, because as we've seen, certain companies are taking such advantage of the various work experience schemes set up by the DWP that they've cut back on the hours of their permanent staff. It helps that cracking down on "scroungers" is so overwhelmingly popular, the benefits cap of £26,000 apparently the coalition's most supported policy, but it doesn't begin to excuse Chris Grayling and Iain Duncan Smith's extreme heartlessness and refusal to accept what's staring them in the face, even when it's potentially costing their department money. Humiliating the desperate to the point of sickness is now officially the business of the government.

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6/13/2012 07:43:00 pm | |

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