…and that’s why I don’t vote Labour anymore.

Yeah, an impression of an elitist nanny state would be much worse than cancer patients dying three weeks after being told to go back to work by ATOS.

Yet another reason to avoid Labour like the plague….

Oh hai Labour.

Please let me know when there is a fag paper between you and the tories. Not today, obviously.

Thing is – while the woman who can’t get care for her husband (and actually, there is no explanation offered of why on earth that is – has he been assessed as not being in need?) complains about people recieving help – what does she actually know about them?

I’m reminded of the story in Middlesborough when the reports went around of asylum seekers being given cars and phones for free when they arrived in the UK.

When it was looked into – what it turned out to be was a bunch of people with brown or black faces driving cars and talking on phones. They were often not asylum seekers or even immigrants – and they had jobs and spent their money accordingly, as many white people do.

But of course when we don’t get things we want, we tend to cast a resentful eye somewhere – anywhere – and people of colour with cars and phones quickly morphed into asylum seekers being treated better than everyone else.

How does she know about such people getting stuff they don’t deserve.

@4 ‘Highly accurate’ stories in the Star?

I agree that a distinction should be drawn between toughness and demonisation. However, you do seem to be saying that we should get tough in response to demonisation: most of those “outraged” people are responding to misinformation campaigns by our friends in the media. You’re talking about punishing the victim, in other words.

“Another problem with Teresa Pearce’s article was when she said that Labour should be educating people about illness, disability and level of support people get on benefits. But what does ‘educating people’ actually mean and how would it work in terms of policy?

If it means lecturing people or public campaigns then that will give an elitist ‘nanny state’ impression to people, which is the last thing we need.”

If non-judgmental information campaigns count as “nanny state”, then the term has lost all meaning. Although hats off for examining what “educate people” would mean in terms of policy instead of just accepting the platitude. We need more of that kind of thinking.

What the hell is this drivel?

“I remember talking to an old black woman…” I’m sorry, are you David Cameron in disguise? How do you know she and her husband “cannot get help”? Even if it’s true I thought you said that welfare being ‘tough’ wasn’t a bad thing. How do you know that she’s correct in claiming “…that there were people who are not contributing yet get more help.” You haven’t even got as far as the plural of anecdote never mind presented any data.

The reason why so many believe that there is always some one else ‘getting everything’ when they ‘get nothing’ is largely down to the fact that the media tells them this. People often over-estimate the amounts of benefits other people get. They aren’t always super rational about what they receive themselves. When I worked as a welfare rights adviser there was a steady trickle of, mostly pensioners, who gave various versions of ‘getting nothing’ when, on closer examination, were in fact getting State Pension or sometimes an occupational pension.

These people weren’t lying, it’s a matter of perception. State Pension is taken for granted and widows particularly saw an occupational widow’s pension as being their ‘husband’s pension’. When they said they ‘get nothing’, what they meant was they weren’t getting any of this vast hoard of riches that the media told them was being paid to ‘other people’. And of course, in a lot of cases there were other things they could claim. It’s sometimes a bit more complex than it first seems.

On the other hand you appear confident enough to base your entire opinion on the welfare state on one anecdote. Your viewpoint is so woefully uninformed as to be positively dangerous.

And please don’t get me started on “That is why we’ve got to face the uncomfortable reality there are some claimants who misuse the welfare state and people rightly feel outraged.” Oh alright then. Did you know that fraud in Incapacity Benefit and Disability Living Allowance is 0.3% and 0.5% respectively? That’s why individual cases of benefits fraud are news; they are rare enough to be exceptional. Of course the government press office makes damn sure you hear about it in via sympathetic media. Labour played exactly the same game when it was in power.

We do need a serious discussion on welfare but this woeful article isn’t part of it. Its starting point needs to be facts not innuendo or endless speechifying about Beveridge. Beveridge’s report came out nearly 70 years ago, in a society that assumed married women didn’t work, that there was no such thing as gay people and that the ‘handicapped’ were ‘put away’. I’d like a slightly more modern approach please.

@ M4E

“I’m reminded of the story in Middlesborough when the reports went around of asylum seekers being given cars and phones for free when they arrived in the UK.

When it was looked into – what it turned out to be was a bunch of people with brown or black faces driving cars and talking on phones.”

Woah! Is there a source for that one? I always thought the “50k benefits and a free Xbox for every immigrant” shtick was invented out of whole cloth, not the result of people’s brains exploding at the difficult thought of black people possessing things.

Hi Renie

I don’t want to seem ageist here, but your Twitter bio says you are 16. Aside from the woman you met in August, do you know anyone who has claimed welfare?

A tiny minority of people who do misuse welfare does not mean we require more “toughness”. Most of these people are rapidly caught and punished.

As mentioned, fraud in Incapacity Benefit and Disability Living Allowance is 0.3% and 0.5% respectively. We should not make things harder for the 99.5% of genuine claimants to punish the 0.5%

Of course it’s demonisation.

We DON’T need to be tough on the poor.

The poor didn’t create the problems. The rich did.

Was is this labour rubbish?

Deserving versus undeserving poor – check

Anecdotal appeal to Daily Mail-reading Little Englanders – check

“Red Renie”? “Red State” Renie, more like….

Sorry meant what.

It does say on his twitter, Neo-Gaitskellite.

If you look up gaitskellism it describes it as the rightwing faction of Labour opposed to Anuerin Bevan.

Labour doesn’t need to be tough on the sick and disabled. It needs to be tough with bankers!

Yeah Labour put the boot into the poor and strip their benefits but not so tough on corporate welfare. Who brought in Atos and the likes of A4E. The likes of the odious parasite Emma Harrison has done very well out of Labours welfare policies. You just don’t get it do you. Anyone with any insight as to what is really happening to the poor will never vote Labour again, me included. I’d rather stick my head in a deep fat fryer.

However, toughness on welfare is not bad; in many ways the welfare state was built to be “tough”. It was particularly built to protect people from the Five Giant Evils: idleness, disease, ignorance, want and squalor – and Labour should continue to protect people from those Giant Evils in any future welfare reform it proposes.

‘Protecting people from idleness’ is one of the reasons Labour can suck my balls at the next election.

In August, I remember talking to an old black woman in Tottenham when I was out canvassing with the great David Lammy and London Young Labour. She came to this country when she was young and has lived here ever since. Her husband is ill and in need of social care but they cannot get help even though they have worked all their lives and paid into the system and she was frustrated that there were people who are not contributing yet get more help

And making things tougher will help her husband… how?

If it means lecturing people or public campaigns then that will give an elitist ‘nanny state’ impression to people, which is the last thing we need.

‘Lecturing’ people about disability is ‘elitist’ and ‘nanny state’ but saving them from the Evil (your captal letter) of ‘idleness’ is fine?

Quite the worst OP I ‘ve seen here in some time.

Demonisation is wrong because it stigmatises claimants, many of whom turn to the State because they are truly in need of help through no fault of their own.

So, we should not be helping people whose need for help can be in any way attributed to their own actions, then. Only those who have led a wholly-government-approved life should be entitled to benefits.

she was frustrated that there were people who are not contributing yet get more help.

Not contributing? I thought you said you didn’t want to demonise people, and yet here you are agreeing with the concept that a person can be so worthless that they do not contribute anything to the country.

God so young and knows so much. and reading this I’ve noticed it seems like bits have been pinched form many articles. Real new labour.

Thankfully I’ve moved on from New Labour and Newer labour.

Chaise

Alas – it was about ten years ago and I can’t find the story from a google search. Basically the area got targetted by the typical national front lies, and so a journalist or campaigner went out to study the story and find out how it happened.

The study found that of those who believed the story, the single most common evidence offered was “well you see them driving around all the time” – raising the obvious “how do you ‘see’ them?” question.

Which has always led me to ask – when some one says “those people who are less deserving than me, get more than me” – how do you know they get more than you and are less deserving?

Usually the answer ammounts to little more than having picked up the general complaint from the press and the pub.

@7. Andy (@NCCLols) – spot on. More research needed. A grown up argument should be developed.

“That is why we’ve got to face the uncomfortable reality there are some claimants who misuse the welfare state and people rightly feel outraged.”

To follow on from a well-known journalist:

“It is vital to end the perverse welfare incentives which punish virtues such as prudence, thrift and the work ethic and promote irresponsibility, dishonesty and licence.”

Yes, Melanie Phillips (of Daily Mail fame) backs your view! Not a brilliant start for your proposed welfare reform.

Regarding this article, why, all of a sudden, is outrage a decent basis for government policy?

As far as I recall, outrage is rarely based on a sensible reading of the situation: seen the middle east recently?

Not just 16, but 16 and being educated at a prestigious public boarding school as well. I am sorry, but I am doubtful about the extent of knowledge of the real world on show here. This is a poor show.

To be fair, I couldn’t have written this well at 16, and probably neither could most of the commentators here, but “big boys games, big boys rules”.

Today on the news a report which stated Bonus payments are down for the first time on banking bonus payments , it’s now £35 billion, and £13 billion in the financial industry.

DLA fraud is believed to be about 0.3% and IB ESA is believed to be 0.5% or in that range.

Now this young man may have had some problems with a disability in his time, I’m sure nappy rash is painful and maybe he carried on playing with his toys so he knows about pain, sadly he knows little about life.

Now then his young lad, even to day believes that we still have fraud when people are going through one of the most drastic welfare medicals, and before he asks have I yes.

Without doubt this young man is a Blairite New labour progress type, he sixteen now I suspect to see him g fighting to be leader of labour in 2015, once Miliband gives up.

Any way good laugh.

Renie

Why do you think we invented the Welfare State in the first place? You know, we did not invent it for a laugh or to combat an imaginary phenomena that, up 1997 no one had ever encountered.

Poverty and unemployment were rife in this Country before the introduction of the Welfare State. Work houses, begging and child prostitution were commonplace in this Country long before the Welfare State was invented. The idea that people deliberately become unemployed to receive benefits is a nonsense. We have had mass unemployment in this Country at various times in our history, irrespective of the provision of a welfare state.

We had soldiers coming back from various campaigns from the Napoleonic wars who came home to workhouses. Of course, within the edge of our own living memory we had those millions of men who returned home from the great war in 1918 ended up unemployed. Again, there was no welfare State in anything like we have today.

Are we saying that these people where lazy? Are we saying that after half a decade of the grimmest, most brutal conflict in human history, these people came back to civy street and thought ‘fuck this for a game of soldiers’ and lived of the charity of others?

There was no work for them and no hope of work turning up. These people lived in poverty and prostitution, ‘paying the rent behind the door’ was common place. Employers would often set two men against each other in impromptu boxing matches, the winner being give a days work. These bouts were often deliberately ill matched with a younger, fitter man set against older, disabled men for better sport. Tories were just as brutal then as they are today.

The modern political Parties tell us that if people where willing to look for work it would turn up, well the 1920s would suggest otherwise.

The Welfare State was not set up in isolation, Rennie, it was part of a wider post war settlement that was largely followed until the 1979 election, but that is another story.

Once the post war settlement was in the process of being dismantled, the long term, grinding unemployment that it designed to combat began to resurface. As employment laws start to be repealed long term unemployment takes shape.

Never let the bastards of either Party tell you unemployment is down to laziness or that everyone could find a job if the happened to look, because the history of this and every Country suggests otherwise. Never let the bastards in either Party tell you that if we deregulate we can create jobs, because we created these regulations to protect people from bad employers. Never let these bastards tell you that there is no such thing as poverty, because looking around the evidence is pretty clear.

One of the bleating from the political elite is that you can be better of in benefits than in work. Rennie, if that is true, that is down to the deregulation of the labour market to the extent that employers are driving the price of labour into the ground.

Rennie, you are a young man, starting out in life. Don’t let the dirty scum in the Labour Party poison your mind against the decent people out there.

@ M4E

“Usually the answer ammounts to little more than having picked up the general complaint from the press and the pub.”

Yep. As proved by my own search for the Middlesbrough story giving me reams of results where idiots were parroting the story in BTL comments.

I did, however, find the following from the PCC:

http://www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=NjAzNQ==

“On July 26, our columnist Carole Malone claimed illegal immigrants receive “free cars”. We now accept illegal immigrants do not receive such a benefit and apologise for the error.” – News of the World

Because, you know, we TOTALLY thought it was true before that.

@ 21 James

“To be fair, I couldn’t have written this well at 16, and probably neither could most of the commentators here, but “big boys games, big boys rules”.”

Talking politics on the internet is a big boy’s game, is it? You went out of your way to sugarcoat that ad hom, but it’s an ad hom nonetheless.

There is a genuine problem here, and I’m damned if I know how to solve it.

Nobody would have a problem with an article calling for us to ‘get tough’ on people who forge prescriptions in order to steal drugs from the NHS. Nobody would have a problem with an article calling for us to ‘get tough’ on people who fraudulently collect pensions on behalf of imaginary individuals. In principle, the situation should be no different with people who fraudulently claim, say, disability benefits.

In practice, though, there *is* a difference. If you highlight cases in which fraudsters have stolen drugs from the NHS, nobody is going to jump to the conclusion that all (or most, or many) of the people queueing at the pharmacy are crooks. If you highlight cases in which people have fraudulently claimed pensions, nobody is going to jump to the conclusion that all (or most, or many) of the people queueing at the Post Office on pension day are crooks. This is because the decent, honest majority of pensioners and NHS patients are highly visible. They’re part of mainstream society. It’s natural to think: my parents claim a pension. My kids collect prescriptions. So probably most people claiming pensions and collecting prescriptions aren’t fraudsters, but people just like me and my family.

But when it comes to services and benefits *not* generally used/claimed by the sort of people I know and trust – ‘people just like me and my family’ – there’s a knowledge vacuum the right-wing press are only too happy to fill. ‘Oh, you don’t know what sort of people claim ESA/JSA/HB? Well, it’s people like, for example, this bloke who supposedly needs a wheelchair but actually just ran the marathon.’

How do we react to that? It seems daft to say we *shouldn’t* ‘get tough’ on fraudsters, close loopholes, etc., especially when we know that any perceived weakness in the system will be used by right-wingers to attack the system as a whole. On the other hand, if we *do* start talking about ‘getting tough’, we feed the very perception those same right-wingers are out to create: that the whole system is characterised by fraud and waste, with claimants taking us all for a ride.

I can’t see an easy answer. I genuinely don’t know if talking about ‘getting tough’ does more harm (demonising genuine claimants) than good (promoting confidence in a system that is there to genuine claimants). I suppose what I’d like to hear is an acknowledgment that fraud is unacceptable, balanced by some robust words about how we mustn’t penalise the majority of genuine claimants for the actions of a minority of fraudsters.

Missed this till CIM pointed it out:

“Her husband is ill and in need of social care but they cannot get help even though they have worked all their lives and paid into the system and she was frustrated that there were people who are not contributing yet get more help. ”

Um, if people need state support to get by, in some cases being seriously disabled, how exactly do you expect them to contribute?

26/GO: In practice, though, there *is* a difference. If you highlight cases in which fraudsters have stolen drugs from the NHS, nobody is going to jump to the conclusion that all (or most, or many) of the people queueing at the pharmacy are crooks

Right. But nor is the prescription system set up on the assumption that fraud is commonplace.

If the prescription forms were 30 pages long like the (shorter) benefit forms, requiring a full explanation of the medical history that led up to this prescription being necessary for the pharmacist to assess, every time prescription charges went up politicians from all parties went on record about how it was unfortunate but necessary to cover the system’s losses due to fraud, etc. I think we’d find very different attitudes.

The family who now sees other people claiming prescriptions as “just like them” might instead be seeing them as potential fraudsters, driving the costs up for everyone else, forcing them to fill in ridiculously long forms, etc. Obviously they themselves aren’t doing it, but can you really trust that man walking into the pharmacist? He doesn’t even look ill!

Or perhaps people would stop getting prescriptions, because it’s easier just to buy the drugs at full price rather than wade through the forms, appeals, more forms, and so on.

“Since we have started our new approach of being tough on prescription fraud, the number of people receiving prescriptions has fallen by 15%. This is a clear vindication of our strategy to get people off their dependence on modern medicine and back to self-reliance.” says the Minister for Health.

It only sounds silly now because we haven’t been fed a steady stream of stories in the press and speeches from politicians of almost all parties about how prescription fraud is one of the major problems of our time, costing the taxpayer (singular…) billions of pounds annually.

Virtually no-one thinks it’s okay to deliberately manipulate and cheat your way onto benefits supposed to help the vulnerable. The OP is stating what everyone already believes, but in a manner that states somehow we didn’t actually come to this conclusion. Yes, cheats and scammers must be gotten rid of, duh. The problem lies in how this whole argument feeds into the stupid view that claimants are scroungers. You’ll always hear “Oh, some of them are genuine” but the sheer extent to which people believe this to be the case and to be completely endemic within the system is massive exaggerated. This is what we argue against.

I always feel that arguing over illegitimate benefit claimants in times of economic crisis is like arguing over the ants getting into your picnic sandwiches while wolves ravage the basket. We need a sense of priority. I’d rather the vulnerable were protected with some people taking advantage of the system while we solved the deep rooted issues with how our economy functioned, than risk leaving vulnerable people destitute out of an overzealous desire to appear ‘fair’.

Labour spent enough time cosying up to the hideous right wing rags which supported ‘benefit toughness’ and while stating the obvious about benefit cheats is nice, it misses the argument which many people have against Labour and it’s method of dealing with claimants, that it spent too long reacting to the demonization of the vulnerable rather than fighting for them. I’ve not seen a great deal to change that view to be honest.

“That is why we’ve got to face the uncomfortable reality there are some claimants who misuse the welfare state and people rightly feel outraged.”

Indeed. Whilst we should defend the disabled and unemployed on benefits from attacks by the government and the tabloid media it would be ridiculous to pretend that everyone who claims benefits is as good as gold and there are no mickey takers out there.

@ Albert

“I always feel that arguing over illegitimate benefit claimants in times of economic crisis is like arguing over the ants getting into your picnic sandwiches while wolves ravage the basket.”

Well put.

@ 30 Dan Factor

“Whilst we should defend the disabled and unemployed on benefits from attacks by the government and the tabloid media it would be ridiculous to pretend that everyone who claims benefits is as good as gold and there are no mickey takers out there.”

Agreed, but I’ve never come across anyone who’s claimed that there’s no such thing as benefit fraud, so I’m not sure who this is supposed to convince.

The thing about any system involving money is that you will get fraud. This is true both with the benefits and the tax systems.

It is also true that society should take appropriate measures to stop it, including criminal sanctions as appropriate.

The thing is, with the benefits system, the line of being ‘tough’ was passed long ago. It’s long been at the point where it genuinely puts people off claiming what they are legitimately entitled to.

There is also the law of diminishing returns. Being tough costs money and being more tough costs more money. When you’ve got to the point that you’ve reduced fraud to fractions of a percent the question arises whether toughness resources should be diverted elsewhere to, ooh let’s say, tax evasion.

That’s not ‘two wrongs making a right’ or whatever, it’s a rational response to limited resources being available. And when politicians, media etc stubbornly refuse to consider such a thing, it’s reasonable to wonder what their agenda is.

@33

Bang on!

- “In August, I remember talking to an old black woman in Tottenham when I was out canvassing with the great David Lammy and London Young Labour. She came to this country when she was young and has lived here ever since. Her husband is ill and in need of social care but they cannot get help even though they have worked all their lives and paid into the system and she was frustrated that there were people who are not contributing yet get more help. ”

We all know that social care is a big issue that all three parties have failed to sort out and it really needs a cross party consensus.

But this kind of anecdote use is unhelpful in the debate. The woman and her family have probably had all kinds of benefits thorugh their life, including chid benefit for their children and state pension now. They paid in, they got back.

And it is the same with pretty much all benefit claimants.

Why always put the public spotlight on the few who don;t do the right thing? It is part of the cause of the decent mainstream of benfeit claimants gettingn such awful treatment and such awful services that aren’t doing much to genuinely help them get back to work like thney want.

We need an EFFECTIVE system. The use of the word ‘tough’ in politics is just ridiculous. Maybe I want a washing powder to be tough on stains. But I want our politicians to have effective policies.

In fact, scratch that, I want Persil and Vanish to be EFFECTIVE on stains too! What the hell does tough on stains mean?

I’m gonna get tough on moronic uses of the word tough!

I think there are two issues; the fraudsters and the scroungers. Whilst no one really defends the former, when the attack switches to the latter, the left cries foul.

There are two arguments against the scroungers. One is a moral argument, i.e. it is wrong to live as a parasite on the money of other people taken involuntarily; and one is utilitarian, that living thus has a detrimental effect on the individual and society, and leads to an increase of the very things which the welfare state is supposed to eradicate.

The usual response to these arguments is a blend of whataboutery (such as ‘what about those bankers?’) and ad hominem, accusing those making the argument of being heartless sadists.

In the first case, the point is valid that there are plenty who feed off the beneficence of the state (i.e. tax-payers) higher up, and live lives of luxury at our expense, but it does not follow that this plundering should be extended to all, rather that it should be rooted out. As for the ad hominem, it doesn’t answer the argument, even if is indeed true that some people decry welfarism out of their own misanthropy.

Does anyone know what proportion of the DWP budget goes on prosecuting fraud?

Because if its greater than the money being fraudulently claimed its not a good use of resources.

Thanks Chaise

That’s the story I had in mind.

We really should not take the “but the underseving get stuff” line at face value.

It is often born of resentment at one’s own situation and not of any evidence that stands up to scrutiny.

m4e@38:

Or as our fellow commenter Flying Rodent put it:

“[A] society like the UK [...] seems to make most of its political decisions based upon mortal terror that somebody, somewhere is getting something for free.”

@ Margin

Agreed.

@ Richard Carey

OK, but how are you defining scroungers? Because at one end it could mean anyone on benefits, on the other it could only refer to fraudsters.

Probably some on the left want to believe that every single non-fraudster is an innocent who’s doing everything they can to improve their situation where possible. Definitely some on the right want to assume that anyone who’s on unemployment benefit for more than a week is just propped in front of the TV sniggering about the trusting fools who pay their way. The truth will be somewhere in the middle. Although this raises a good point: http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/benefits-claimant-admits-subsistence-income-scam-2012053029040

Thanks all for these comments, very helpful, even though some of these comments were very similar to that of Melanie Phillips’ article attacking the brilliant Rory Weal for being young and being Labour. To put on the record, I’m 16 and I do go to a boarding school and I am black myself (I’m no DC) but I got my place at school through a sponsor (it is a charity school) but I’ve lived with the welfare state most of my life – I still live in the same estate in South London, my Mum was unemployed when I was younger and is still in receipt of working tax credit amongst other things. But just as there are tax avoiding businessmen and ‘greedy bankers’, there are also people who have misused the welfare state. Labour should champion the poor but also try and build popular proposals to have a universal but contributory welfare system like on childcare, a Jobs Guarantee, social homes whereby it is a contract between the citizen and the rest of society. Nothing about hurting the poor. If you think there should be one rule for one set of people and other rule for another set of people, then go on but I will not write posts catering to that view.

Education about welfare is exactly what people need, especially you!
You say many turn to it through no fault of their own.
“MANY”? Don’t you mean the vast majority?
The public are generally unmaware how low fraud rates are, and cowardly Labour refuses to tell them. Nor do they say how meagre are our levels of benefit, nor explain how welfare money doesn’t just drain away but helps to create the demand we need for the economy as a whole,when it is spent on goods and services by the welfare recipients.
People feel enraged about welfare costs because they have been mislead.
You should have the guts to do something about that and fight to save this precious lifeline.

@ 41 Renie

“Labour should champion the poor but also try and build popular proposals to have a universal but contributory welfare system like on childcare, a Jobs Guarantee, social homes whereby it is a contract between the citizen and the rest of society. ”

What form does this take? Are you saying that someone who hasn’t contributed (maybe kicked out of their parents’ home at 16) should be left to fend for themselves? Because if so, I can’t possibly agree with that. If not, it sounds like you want pretty much the current system, but rebranded.

Good work on shooting down the ad homs by other posters, by the way, not that you should have to. If people are attacking you over your age and where you study, it just means they’ve got nothing relevant to say.

@43: I often feel concerned when I hear phrases like “popular proposals”. A popular proposal would, for example, be the reintroduction of capital punishment.

We need to be careful that political parties don’t succumb to the `tyranny of the majority’ in this respect. Public opinion may have shifted with regard to welfare, but many peoples circumstances have not changed.

I would like political parties to do more than fight for custody of a particular popular point of view. For a start, popular opinion may be well-meaning (or otherwise) but not necessarily well-informed (see fraud rates above).

The current welfare state debate is a typical example of this endless battle. Polarisation in this case leaves only two groups: those “for” scroungers, and those “against” scroungers. Such an argument indulges the worst of society, leading to a situation in which welfare claimants are vilified and the actual content of the debate is ignored.

By going down the “one rule for one set of people and other rule for another set of people” path we adhere to the polarised perspective and thus cannot have a stab at an objective evaluation of the welfare state. Any discussion about its future is then definitely off the table.

(That was supposed to be @41 BTW.)

‘Protecting people from idleness’ is one of the reasons Labour can suck my balls at the next election.

Some of the response here is truly deranged. For example, the above.

Nice one shatterface – now you try explaining to hard-working taxpayers why they should continue supporting the welfare state when there are people like you.

Sometimes I think people on the left purposely want to destroy the welfare state, by ignoring what ordinary people think about paying taxes.

Thanks for further comments.
@42 – Well, you can hold that view but it is patronising to tell people you need to be ‘educated’. Just because fraud costs reasonably little compared to other means of theft, it is still wrong and should be stopped. Also, where there are people who can work and should work but instead refuse to look for work and decide to live on benefits. Like it or not, it does happens even though most benefit claimants are not like that and want to work or literally cannot work.
@43 – Well no, if you are in need of help you should still get it but the idea that what you put in is what you get out should remain. The IPPR floated the idea of a National Salary Insurance scheme, that is one very good example of that. Labour should look at having a flat-rate of benefits and limiting means-testing. A Jobs Guarantee for the unemployed is very important whereby you get offered a job on the minimum wage (I prefer the living wage) if you have been unemployed for a year at maximum but if you refuse that job then you lose your benefits. Thanks for your support, regarding the ageism by the way.
@44 – There is a difference between popular and populist. Capital punishment is not actually popular but plainly populist. We cannot have a society where there is one rule for one set of people and an other rule for another set of people. I think most people would be absolutely united on that point. This is not just about the future of welfare reform but the future of our society too.

I also find the cries of ‘this is why I won’t vote Labour’ quite amusing – given the article is in response to and disagreeing with an article by a Labour MP.

‘Tough on welfare’.

So, like the Tories, Labour now make no distinction between welfare claims and benefit fraud.

If you’re claiming benefit, you’re part of the problem, according to these two.

When are Labour going to ditch the Tory-lite and start attacking the falsehoods on which their rhetoric is based?

Labour always seem to be attacking shambolic implementation, rather the opposing on principle.

And they always stop short of saying they’d reverse disastrous Tory policies if in power.

Andy Burnham has done on the NHS, but has never been backed up by not-very-red Ed, and they hold the same line on the piss-take workfare programme.

The judge
I like that line and will use it often having read it today.
Thank you.

Nice one shatterface – now you try explaining to hard-working taxpayers why they should continue supporting the welfare state when there are people like you.

What the fuck are you talking about – ‘people like’ me? Are you calling me a ‘benefit cheat’? Yes, I have been on benefits in the past and yes, I have a disability, both of which have been established in numerous theeads over the years, so in your eyes I probably am a ‘thief’ and its nice to see you reveal yourself so blatantly.

Sometimes I think people on the left purposely want to destroy the welfare state, by ignoring what ordinary people think about paying taxes.

Ordinary misinformed people. The single ‘ordinary’ person referenced doesn’t even have a coherant point of view: if she is worried about her and her husband’s welfare she shouldn’t be arguibg for a system that will make her own claim more difficult.

I don’t see how you can continue to pose as ‘left wing’ when you print Melanie Philips-style articles like this. How is excusing the demonisation of people on benefits ‘left wing’? Oh, sorry – you joined the party which gave us ESA, ATOS & A4E.

I also find the cries of ‘this is why I won’t vote Labour’ quite amusing – given the article is in response to and disagreeing with an article by a Labour MP.

An MP calling for a change of direction after a disgraceful period in office.

@ 47

“Well no, if you are in need of help you should still get it but the idea that what you put in is what you get out should remain.”

I’m struggling to see how this works. If you get help either way, how can you say that you get out what you put in? Similarly, I assume that it’s possible to pay lots and take out nothing (or not much) because you never need benefits. I can’t see the difference between that and the current system.

A literal “get out what you pay in” system would be no benefits, and no benefits-related taxes. Or possibly a mandatory pension-style system that you can access if you lose your job, and get the remainder back when you retire.

“Labour should look at having a flat-rate of benefits and limiting means-testing.”

There’s merit to this.

“A Jobs Guarantee for the unemployed is very important whereby you get offered a job on the minimum wage (I prefer the living wage) if you have been unemployed for a year at maximum but if you refuse that job then you lose your benefits.”

I tentatively agree with this, but you’ll find a lot of left-wing opposition. Some of it for ideological reasons that I find weird, but also because of the concern that these schemes would put existing workers out a job (by undercutting them), and that people who would otherwise hire workers would just recruit from the unemployed pool to avoid having to compete for wages. So it’s a good idea in theory, but the devil’s in the detail.

“Thanks for your support, regarding the ageism by the way.”

No problemo.

“A few days back Labour MP Teresa Pearce wrote a post on Labour List calling for Labour to change its attitude on welfare and to stop being ‘tough on benefits’.
She was absolutely right to warn against the demonization of welfare claimants but she was wrong to suggest that being ‘tough on welfare’ is the same as demonisation.”

This isn’t about being “tough on benefits”. Its about the fact that without the preceeding demonisation society would reject the cuts as abhorent.
The demonisation has done its job. People believe the rhetoric about scroungers, about people defrauding the system.
After that its easy.

As the author of this piece proves by the following statement;

“That is why we’ve got to face the uncomfortable reality there are some claimants who misuse the welfare state”

That is not reality.
That is the product of demonisation.
Fraud for DLA is 0.5%
Fraud for IB was 0.3%
Fraud for the IB replacement, ESA is 0.3%.

Pension credit has a higher fraud rate at 1.6%. Ever read a media article about Granny robbing the state?

And here is the ubiquitous single anecdote…
“….she was frustrated that there were people who are not contributing yet get more help.”

No evidence that this is happening, just some grumpy old woman who is demanding help that she assumes is being provided to others but not her.
And yet social care is for those who are “substantial” or “critical”.
This means that death or serious outcomes would be inevitable without assistance being provided. Her husband obviously doesn’t fit the criteria.
And its not a contributions based system – if people need substantial help they get it.

“This is a key example of social injustice and it betrays not only Labour’s traditions but also the traditions of our welfare state, and if Atlee, Beveridge or the people who marched the Jarrow March were here today, they too would agree.”

A single anecdote is not a key example.
Its also not a key example when it is wrong.
Its just garbage.
Its not social injustice, its economic failure leading to local government cutting funding to local government to provide the services.
I doubt if the Jarrow Marchers would care – they didn’t march for improved social service provision, they marched for jobs.

“Another problem with Teresa Pearce’s article was when she said that Labour should be educating people about illness, disability and level of support people get on benefits. But what does ‘educating people’ actually mean and how would it work in terms of policy?”

It means pointing out that £71 is what a single person gets.
And £28 is the sickness premium added on.
And that DLA starts at £20 a week.
And that DLA is used to pay for the social care that the “anecdote” lady demands for free.
DLA has to be surrendered in return for care.
And there are no “free” cars. DLA is surrendered to pay for a limited mileage lease car.

That is the education, the education that stops the rhetoric, that demonstrates that people on benefits are not living an extravagant lifestyle, but actually paying for care and equipment that levels the playing field and covers some of the additional costs of being disabled.

“If it means lecturing people or public campaigns then that will give an elitist ‘nanny state’ impression to people, which is the last thing we need.”

However something needs to counter the rhetoric of scrounger, a rhetoric that the author appears to enjoy and believe.
If you think poverty and ignorance are elitist, and education is a nany state device then you really have bought into some thought processes that would make people shun you at parties.

“Also, we need to remember that Labour must rebuild trust on welfare if it is to win, so it should engage with people about their needs and concerns but if all we said about welfare is that we would ‘educate’ people then not only would be look stupid but we would lose trust even more.”

Its about educating people that they have been fed a diet of lies, that sick and disabled people have been demonised.

That may seem like back tracking, it would also be the actions of respectable decent human beings who regret creating a frankensteinian monster.

You’re right, Sunny. I’ll definitely vote Labour now.

@ Chaise,

“OK, but how are you defining scroungers? Because at one end it could mean anyone on benefits, on the other it could only refer to fraudsters.”

I guess that’s the central thorny question. If I had to do so, I might say; those people who choose to live on state benefits, seeing them as an entitlement that they are owed by society, rather than taking responsibility for themselves, but the real problem is not such individuals, who are very often making a rationally-defensible choice in their circumstances, but rather the system which has allowed what was intended as a safety net to expand so much that it has enabled dependency on the state to increase, and the bill for all this largesse is being paid for through deficit spending, which drives inflation, which affects the poor more than anyone.

I think there is broad agreement amongst the public, that they want a safety net, and they want people who can’t support themselves through disability or whatever, to be supported and not made to grovel for it, but no more than this. The issue of National Insurance is slightly different. When people say things like; “I’ve paid into the system, so I have a right to a pension etc”, this is not the same as wanting a catch-all safety net. At present the public believes that only the state can deliver these things, although I would disagree.

I’m sure there’s plenty more to say on the subject but, as Sally could tell you, I need to iron a fresh brownshirt for the morning.

@ 46 Sunny

“Nice one shatterface – now you try explaining to hard-working taxpayers why they should continue supporting the welfare state when there are people like you.”

Wow. Now you think Shatterface should apologise for having needed benefits at some point. Are you David Cameron under the mask, or Ayn Rand?

I could not agree with Sunny more regarding some on the Left basically making it harder for people to like the welfare state.
@54 – That is just silly. Whatever the cost, fraud still exists however small. Also, it is the fact that people who can work and are offered work are staying on benefits for an indefinitely which is plain wrong. I think those who marched the Jarrow March would be upset that there are people staying on welfare for an indefinite period when they can work which is what I was referring to.
@53 – I see your point but I think your illustration isn’t right because you can have benefits at time of need but you can also have more benefits based on contribution and an element of ‘putting in what you get out’. It is not just cash transfers but as I said childcare, housing etc.

Excellent post, hossylass.

“@54 – That is just silly. Whatever the cost, fraud still exists however small. Also, it is the fact that people who can work and are offered work are staying on benefits for an indefinitely which is plain wrong. I think those who marched the Jarrow March would be upset that there are people staying on welfare for an indefinite period when they can work which is what I was referring to.”

Tax owing to the treasury is vast – does that not disturb you more than 0.3% fraud?

And why no demonisation of pensioners, with their extortionate 1.6% fraud?

It is, as someone said, dimishing returns. There are numerous ways that the DWP tackles fraud, and yet it will never remove fraud completely. To be confident that a fraud rate is 0.3% is an aknowledgement that the fraud is negligible.

It is NOT a fact that “people who can work and are offered work are staying on benefits”. They would be sanctioned and have their benefits removed.

And the actual number of stock is again tiny.
Stock is the static people who are on JSA for over a year, as opposed to flow.

Again, you have bought into rhetoric.
I suggest you look at the figures, try FullFacts, which has addressed many of your beliefs and shown them to be false.

People can only work when there are jobs available.
You have access to information – try doing some research into how many people are unemployed, how many are signing on for JSA, how many are working part time but want and need full time.
Then have a look at the jobs on offer.
There is, at any time, around one job for every unemployed person, but 85% of them are part time or zero hour contracts, or commision only.

These are not jobs that will take people out of the benefits system.
These are not jobs that will contribute to the exchequer.

Please dont call me silly either, and I’ll refrain from slapping your legs.

“I always feel that arguing over illegitimate benefit claimants in times of economic crisis is like arguing over the ants getting into your picnic sandwiches while wolves ravage the basket.”

Close, but I’d suggest it’s like someone at that picnic demanding that all ants should starve, while wolves are eating their legs.

This from someone who’s been on long term IB and been booted off, in the middle of appeal, as (surprise) all evidence was ignored in favour of just stopping me claiming.

The crazy thing is most of us want to work, but hey, how about helping us back to work, instead of saying you’ll help us back into work, then just force us do things we’re incapable of with no support, then steal the tiny weekly amount we had to live on?

You offer support to people, they’ll be able to get back to work and start paying taxes again, go out of your way to destroy them and you’ll never get them anywhere but forced into minimum wage jobs, which of course, costs the state a huge amount in tax credits, housing benefits, child benefit etc.

I’m bloody sickened by a recent survey that says even more people are in favour of tightening welfare and punishing the sick and unemployed than 2 years ago, I really had some hope that the facts were getting out there about the abuse happening to those at the bottom.

Trouble is, who do we vote for, if the three main parties all want everyone earning under 50K put up against a wall and shot to save tax money? The sad future I’m seeing is demoralised voters won’t bother to turn out, the Daily Mail brigade will, as ever, and the Tories will get in…again.

The only glimmer of hope I’ve seen recently is that my parents are getting pissed at seeing the cuts to pensioners, which blows me away. Seems Osbourne doesn’t even have the sense to leave his core voters alone.

@60 – It is not just the cost but the principle. In fact it is more than just fraud but the lack of social responsbility where you have people who do not want to work but remain on benefits for an indefinite amount of time. All of that the fraud and the lack of social responsibility annoys me. You do not understand demonisation. Read the Daily Mail, that is demonisation. However, people being concerned about people who shirk their responsibilities or genuinely abuse the system is not demonisation. People who can work, should work – do you or do you not agree with that?

It should be remembered that the British welfare state is not particularly generous and governments of both parties have been ‘tough’ on welfare since 1979. I am also not sure that there will be much scope for being ‘tough’ after Duncan Smith has finished. My preference would be for Labour to change very little on welfare after 2015 and concentrate on creating jobs.

I’m reminded of the story in Middlesborough when the reports went around of asylum seekers being given cars and phones for free when they arrived in the UK.

When it was looked into – what it turned out to be was a bunch of people with brown or black faces driving cars and talking on phones. They were often not asylum seekers or even immigrants – and they had jobs and spent their money accordingly, as many white people do.

It’s worth noting that internalised concepts of race=class helps produce these results too, ie because there were brown or black faces driving cars and talking on phones, which might have been thought to be beyond the means of such people by said complainers – then clearly the state had interfered with the natural order of things and ‘given’ things to them. This concept was best articulated by David Starkey’s infamous rant on Newsnight where by ‘white’ he meant ‘well-educated middle class person’ and by ‘black’ he meant ‘thuggish working/under class youths’. He didn’t conceive that in a vacuum.

@62

People who can work, should work – do you or do you not agree with that?

Does that include lottery winners and others with the wealth to not need to lift a finger?

If the issue is about benefits alone then I have to disagree with the article. It seems to me that the OP is referring to specific situations where there is a wider culture that needs to be confronted and which benefit dependency is only part of.

There is no doubt that there are places where crime, unemployment, poor educational achievement, alienation and disenfranchisement over generations have led to a culture of crime and benefit dependency. However just addressing the benefits side of the problem is missing the big picture, as these places are the source of most of the crime in our cities.

I have yet to see a politician stand up and declare the truth about our sink estates, for example: that we need to pour resources into them to stop the crime and change the culture, and that it will take many years’ commitment.

It would still be the right thing to do.

Yes it is.

@63 – Well there are things Labour can do after IDS such as a Jobs Gurantee, a new National Salary Insurance scheme, child benefit reform, free childcare, regional benefit caps etc. All very well and good to concentrate on creating jobs but people should be taking the jobs too which means welfare reform.
@66 – I agree with some of what you are saying. It is not just about benefits but a wider culture not of ‘something for nothing’ and irresponsibility which should be rooted out.

The sentiment is quite right. And I guess at sixteen you’ve not yet perfected the art of waving away any argument that stays precisely “on message”.

What we’ve has from the tories if brutal divide and rule, and people have fallen for it. They had a predetermined figure of fraudulent claiments in mind right from the start, THIS is the evil of it. If Miliband and labour wash their hands of the fraud problem there going to lose votes, pure and simple. The proof will be in what they do in goverment of course, but there doing the minimum they have to do.

* sorry, that should have read, “that dos’nt stay precisely on message”

@68 Renie

I’m a bit concerned that in your article and in your response where you say, for example, ” something for nothing” that you are repeating phrases and thus risk buying into memes invented by Thatcher and her cult.

The problems in disadvantaged areas are long standing and complex. They cannot be described in such simple terms. To do so makes it probable you will get no further than writing columns like Melanie Philips, and I don’t think she’s very happy.

You wish to base national policy on a notion which can not be supported by evidence and instead must rely on anecdote. Regardless of what others below the line have said, I’m disappointed that evidence continues to be the first casualty in a welfare discussion.

The benefit fraud hotline receives more than six-hundred calls a day. Those making those calls are representative of those who insist their neighbours are scroungers, yet the reports they make are almost entirely baseless. Even if we factor for repeat calls and reports about the same alleged frauds, 220,000 calls a year but only 35,000 benefit fraud prosecutions which are mostly from reports originating with Jobcentre Plus staff indicates the general public is immensely unreliable. Understanding of the benefits system is rare. We can thank the media for that and politicians and now unfortunately yourself.

Worrying about a ‘nanny state image’ might seem like good politics to you, but it’s atrocious ethics.

@ Renie 47

“if you are in need of help you should still get it but the idea that what you put in is what you get out should remain.”

You can’t have it both ways. If you give help to people who need it even if they have ‘put in’ little or nothing – e.g. severely disabled people who have never worked, people who become unemployed early in their working lives, people on very low incomes, women who have taken long career breaks to raise children – that principle has been abandoned. Yes, you can have some connection between putting in and taking out (as with the state pension), but nothing close to “what you put in is what you get out”.

“Labour should look at having a flat-rate of benefits and limiting means-testing.”

What do you mean? A flat rate of benefits paid to everyone, in or out of work, like a Citizen’s Basic Income? A flat rate paid to unemployed people, regardless of their partner’s income, how many children they have, etc.?

One does wonder if an open forum like Lib Con can really achieve its aims of bringing forward left-wing thought for open discussion and debate and to hopefully unite for the future.

I say this because here we have the open discussion and debate about “tough on benefits” within the Labour Party (the “left” in as much as it is the only mainstream party of the left – as much as I’d love to see the Greens grow in influence).

And yet we have a bunch of right wingers attacking Labour as a whole for one or other of the two sides of the discussion – and a bunch of non-labour left attacking Labour as a whole for one or other of the two sides of the discussion.

Which makes an open conversation about the subject fractious and hostile and hard to derive any real value or meaning from.

@ 56 Richard

“If I had to do so, I might say; those people who choose to live on state benefits, seeing them as an entitlement that they are owed by society, rather than taking responsibility for themselves”

That’s entirely reasonable. Of course, it can be hard to distinguish between those people and genuine claimants, especially when you get down to working out who’s got a bad back and who’s lying.

“but the real problem is not such individuals, who are very often making a rationally-defensible choice in their circumstances, but rather the system which has allowed what was intended as a safety net to expand so much that it has enabled dependency on the state to increase”

Sure. I agree the system is flawed, but I’ve yet to hear a better one proposed. Obviously, “just stop paying people who don’t deserve it” is bunk. The government’s current attempts to “improve” the system throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I have some time for the idea of offering the unemployed minimum-wage labour, and making this the only source of government income once you’ve been off work for, say, a year. But as I said to Renie early, that has attendant problems in terms of unintended consequences.

“I think there is broad agreement amongst the public, that they want a safety net, and they want people who can’t support themselves through disability or whatever, to be supported and not made to grovel for it, but no more than this. The issue of National Insurance is slightly different. When people say things like; “I’ve paid into the system, so I have a right to a pension etc”, this is not the same as wanting a catch-all safety net.”

The weird thing about National Insurance is that all it really does is codify this. It would be paid through taxation anyway.

“At present the public believes that only the state can deliver these things, although I would disagree.”

Well, people could put their own money aside for a rainy day, or take out unemployment insurance. That rather assumes you have the cash to begin with, though. And I also have sympathy for people who are well-off then find themselves beggared by completely unpredictable circumstances: Their home and business burns down and the insurer won’t pay out due to a technicality, for example.

“I’m sure there’s plenty more to say on the subject but, as Sally could tell you, I need to iron a fresh brownshirt for the morning.”

To keep her happy, we’ve started buying them in bulk.

46/Sunny: now you try explaining to hard-working taxpayers why they should continue supporting the welfare state

As Secretary of the Hard-Working Taxpayer’s Coalition, I must inform you that at the last meeting we voted unanimously to accept the principle of compassion towards others and a recognition of our shared humanity.

62/Renie: It is not just the cost but the principle

So, for instance, if it would cost £3 billion in extra enforcement to cut £100 million in fraud related costs (numbers arbitrary), you’d still think it was worth doing?

Me, I’d let them have it and spend the £2.9 billion saving on something else, but fair enough.

People who can work, should work – do you or do you not agree with that?

No. A 12-year old child can work but we generally accept that they should not be required to. Many people aged around 80 would be capable of doing at least some part-time work. Again, we generally accept that they shouldn’t have to.

People who stay at home to look after children or other relatives are definitely working – hard-working, at that, since “working” no longer appears to be enough any more – but it’s not paid work, so I guess that’s of no benefit to society either under these calculations.

So, why define a person’s value to society solely in terms of the amount of tax they have previously paid?

Of course fraud has to be dealt with but it needs to be remembered that only 0.5% of DLA claims are fraudulent ,and that the majority of disabled are therefore being unfairly and unreasonably demonised as scroungers and potential fraudsters.
Disability hate crimes have significantly increased as a result of incessant Tory propaganda and that of their supporters in the media ,Labour needs to be distancing itself from such morally offensive tactics not coming out with reactionary opinion pieces like this.

Hi Renie,

Thanks for this article. In terms of your anecdote about the woman who is in need of social care and frustrated about others getting help, then I don’t see how getting ‘tough’ on welfare is going to help.

Her frustrations are caused by the fact that her family isn’t getting the help which it needs. There will always be examples (or, indeed, inventions) of other people getting help when they don’t deserve it as much. The more that the welfare system gets tougher, the more people will experience the fact that it doesn’t help them while (supposedly) helping others.

So the absolutely key thing is to explain clearly how Labour will change the system so that it helps people who need social care, or child care or suchlike.

The welfare state is unpopular in theory, but the individual aspects of it are popular (hence the Tea Party slogan – ‘government hands off my Medicare’). The more people who have good experiences when they use it, the less hostility there will be to others.

That could include a jobs guarantee for unemployed people (reducing the long term costs of unemployment), affordable childcare, better access to social care (which reduces costs on the NHS), and more ‘Early Action’ services from befriending services for older people to help in the early years. Lots of this is investment for longer term returns, the rest can be paid for by cutting less productive spending (such as government handouts to companies such as Atos and A4e). This is plenty enough to be getting on with without spending time on working out how to outbid the Tories on being tough on welfare!

Anjeh:

But just as there are tax avoiding businessmen and ‘greedy bankers’, there are also people who have misused the welfare state.

Frankly this is the same flawed on-message argument that Miliband’s been trying to sell to ‘middle Britain’ since he become leader – the idea that ‘we’ are all in the ‘squeezed middle’ between benefit claimants and billionaire bankers. Labour spent 13 years trying to ‘get tough’ on benefit fraud in the belief it would somehow give them a hearing on more ‘progressive’ measures. Hell, they even considered resorting to using lie detectors. Perhaps they might have introduced waterboarding if Brown had won in 2010. Liam Byrne’s been selling the ‘tough on fraud’ for years. And now IDS and the rest of the Tories have picked up where they left off. The sad thing is, it’s much easier to go after alleged benefit fraud than bankers, because the bankers have got mates in all the right places, including parts of the Labour party.

“If you think there should be one rule for one set of people and other rule for another set of people”

Nobody’s asking for that. What I’m saying is there should be rational and proportionate responses taking into account the law on diminishing returns.

“I could not agree with Sunny more regarding some on the Left basically making it harder for people to like the welfare state.”

Complete nonsense. If the welfare state is unpopular amongst some people then it’s because their beliefs are based on a lie. The proper response is to correct that lie, not pander to it for electoral gain.

Look. Benefit fraud is tiny. There is simply no evidence whatsoever that significant numbers of people are simply opting out of work. Setting policy on the basis of massive fraud and hordes of rampant scroungers is the route of madness and bigotry.

I want policy based on evidence. Reneh’s anecdote is utterly meaningless because ultimately the ‘facts’ that the couple “get no help” while others “get everything” are simply unverified. Basing his story on that means it remains just that – a story, nothing more.

@54. hossylass

Very nice piece but when you argue that we need to educate it all falls down into a heap. The question why do we need to educate presupposes that those you wish to educate are receptive to the message. I would say most don’t care and others really don’t care. Very often they will read the Mail,the Sun etc and vote Tory and some will no doubt read the Guardian and vote Labour. But underneath it all is that structural paradigm which mixes distance ,indifference and in some case hostility which will always win out . What is wrong by saying old people etc are fairly useless and more resource should go to improving the economy by investing in the ‘economically fit’

” where you have people who do not want to work but remain on benefits for an indefinite amount of time”

I’ve just done a search on nomis for ‘people who have been claiming JSA for an indefinite amount of time’. Unfortunatly they only provided me with a category of ‘over 260 weeks (5 years)’ rather than ‘indefinite period.

Guess how many people in the UK have been claiming JSA for over 5 years?

4,435 (rounded to the nearest 5).

So in a population of 62 million we are worried that 4 and half thousand people (I would guess the majority of them being unemployable career criminals) have been claiming for an indefinate period.

Wow. Now you think Shatterface should apologise for having needed benefits at some point. Are you David Cameron under the mask

Typical comprehension fail. Where did I ask anyone to apologise? Did you even read or do you and shatterface keep your knees firmly jerked?

I said voters won’t support anyone who thinks the response to an article on benefits should be they should ‘suck balls’. That is basically the level of debate both of you are floating around in.

And FYI, I’ve also claimed unemployment benefits in the past, and also, the article specifically rules out people who are disabled. Again – I don’t expect either of you to respond to the points in question, only to get hysterical. But don’t accuse me of what I haven’t said.

Renie @62

People who can work, should work

It is does not matter if someone can or wants to work, if there are not enough jobs to go round.

The only time we ever had a sustained period of time of full employment was the aftermath of the second World War, when had policies specifically designed to create full employment. We had massive Nationalised industries, which were overmanned, we had powerful labour unions and strong employment laws. These things were produced not by a fluke, but were introduced to eliminate grinding poverty that spurred the birth of the Labour Party.

Social Security underpinned the whole system and catch people who fall through the cracks.

What has happened is that we have systematically dismantled the entire system we had when built to create full employment, then people like you, suddenly DEMAND that we return to full employment. What the fuck? Where the fuck do you think this ‘full employment’ will come from?

Look, you want full employment? Fine, then campaign for a command economy with all the benefits and costs (in every sense of the word).

You want Laissez-faire economy and labour market to go along with it? Fine, but you have to take costs (in social terms) into account as well. There is little point in making it easier to sack ‘unproductive’ people (however you define it) and then complain that there are lots of unemployed ‘unproductive’ people clogging up the streets. If you allow capitalism to discard say, epileptics or diabetics, without a moments thought, then don’t be surprised to find lots of epileptic people unable to find work.

The problem is what to do with such people when the ‘capitalist system’ has no need for someone who has slowed down with age, has a family, or whatever. Despicable worms like Carey have little doubt, they want these people to visibly suffer. The question is, Renie, what about you?

About ten years ago, there was an almost complete shift in manufacturing from this Country to China and the far East, every day it seemed that thousand of jobs were lost and moved to China. People could work but were stopped from doing so. So, how would you have tackled that?

@ 83 Sunny

“I said voters won’t support anyone who thinks the response to an article on benefits should be they should ‘suck balls’.”

No you didn’t. I actually quoted what you said in the post you’re responding to, so it’s odd that you’ve forgotten your own comment. Here it is again: “Nice one shatterface – now you try explaining to hard-working taxpayers why they should continue supporting the welfare state when there are people like you.”

So, what does that mean, if it doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with Shatterface for voicing an anti-Labour opinion when having claimed benefits? Or are you saying “Why should people support the welfare state when some random bloke on the internet doesn’t like Labour?” Because that would just be surreal.

“That is basically the level of debate both of you are floating around in.”

Excuse me, I think you’ll find that my responses to the OP have been among the most reasonable; that I have avoided vague anti-Labour rants, or stupid attacks against Renie based on age or place of study. You’re just making utterly random accusations now.

“And FYI, I’ve also claimed unemployment benefits in the past, and also, the article specifically rules out people who are disabled. Again – I don’t expect either of you to respond to the points in question, only to get hysterical. But don’t accuse me of what I haven’t said.”

Again, I have responded to the points in question, and have had an interesting chat about Renie regarding some specifics. So please stop with these accusations that take place in an alternative universe.

I said you think he should apologise. What you said was that he should explain himself. In terms of attributing guilt, it’s the same thing. So instead of splitting hairs in an attempt to avoid the issue, perhaps you should explain why, exactly, Shatterface should have to explain himself?

To clarify, Sunny, the vibe I am honestly getting off your attack on Shatterface is: “How dare you say nasty things about Labour when you’ve claimed benefits, you ingrate!” Which would be nasty and stupid on several levels, so I hope it’s not true, but I can’t find any other coherent interpretation of what you said.

Hence my response. Although given that you’ve made two utterly bizarre and demonstrably false attacks on me in your last post, it’s possible that you just roll a dice to decide which insult to use.

Sunny @83

I wonder how the ‘public’, especially the lower paid members of the public would react if people pointed out the logical extension of the ‘tough on benefits’ stance would be. For example, I wonder how many of these people who believe ‘benefits are too high’ are aware of the implication for the price of their labour would be of a significant cut in benefit rates? Or, I wonder if they have thought through the logic of forcing unemployed to ‘work for their dole’ would have on the price of their labour. I wonder how many low paid workers are aware of the link to ‘workfare’ and zero hour contracts? I wonder how many people on low incomes feel about being replaced by workfare claimants? I bet you can find shelf stackers who would see dole people ‘work for their benefits’, but I wonder if they would be as keen when they are asked to ‘willingly’ give up their jobs to create spaces for these workfare jobs? I wonder if they are aware that Vince Cable is proposing to make it easier to sack people and replace them with ‘trainees’.

Let us get one thing clear Sunny, attacking benefits does not just mean an attack on benefit claimants there are thousands of people who will be adversely affected by such cutbacks, even if they have, so far, never claimed a benefit in their life.

One of the main focuses of the welfare state was to support people who had become temporarily unemployed, @84 has outlined the environment which welfare was suppose to operate. Now, the welfare state is paying-out considerable amounts to people who are not unemployed and for me, that’s one of the biggest areas of ‘legalized fraud’ which exists.

Taxpayers, that includes pensioners, the disabled and the unemployed, are subsidizing companies, even large multi-nationals, towards their wage bills. Companies know that they can offer the least amount of pay because people will take those jobs as they are topped-up with several other benefits.

Not only do large companies manage to avoid tax through legal loop-holes, they are also responsible for taking a large bite out of the welfare budget, and we worry about the minute few who make it a career to live on welfare.

“That is why we’ve got to face the uncomfortable reality there are some claimants who misuse the welfare state and people rightly feel outraged.”

But being “tough on welfare”, and talking like there is an desperate need to be “tough on welfare”, plays into the very widespread belief – deliberately stoked by the Tories – that the MAJORITY of claimants are fraudulent. We saw this in the recent NatCen survey. Substantial numbers of real people actually believe that.

“she was frustrated that there were people who are not contributing yet get more help.”

Of course – anyone taking bulk of our press at face value on this would be frustrated about it. If I thought a huge proportion of claimants were stealing the benefits I’d be frustrated too. But it’s false. It’s just false. But Labour apparently dare not say it’s false. No doubt they would say they’re listening to the voters. Apparently if the voters believe fabricated lies, this makes the lies objectively true. Obsolete pie-in-the-sky lefty types denying the truth of the lies are clearly elitists who don’t listen.

So when Labour ‘centrists’ bleat on about being tough on welfare, while caveating this with respecting human rights and feeling the plight of those rare-as-hens-teeth genuine claimants (etc etc), it just gives the impression that they admit basically near-as-dammit-all the claimants are on the fiddle (exactly like the Tory right said they were) but they remain too cowardly to spill a bit of scrounger blood to deal with the problem.

It’s depressingly similar to the Labour attitude to cultural integration of ethnic minorities.

After old age pensioners (£64 bn) the biggest recipients of welfare payments under the social security budget are lanlords (£22 bn) as the ultimate recipients of housing benefit. Housing benefit is the second most expensive social security benefit.

This state of affairs arose from the creation of housing benefit in 1987 at a cost of £1.2 billion a year when rent control existed and has risen ever since rent control was abolished from 15th January 1989 by the Housing Act 1988. If we cap rents rather than benefits expect the welfare budget to fall. It would also be a good idea to start taxing non-resident landlords who simply export this money abroad, as happens with many properties in London which are owned by non-domiciled landlords.

“So, what does that mean, if it doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with Shatterface for voicing an anti-Labour opinion when having claimed benefits?”

fwiw, I read it as a comment on Shatterface’s response to the idea of ‘protecting people from idleness’, rather than this.

I want to say once again (or maybe three-times again) thanks for the comments below and the constructive criticisms. They have been incredibly helpful, and though I may not agree with all of them, it has been a really good learning curve.

Chaise: I actually quoted what you said in the post you’re responding to, so it’s odd that you’ve forgotten your own comment.

I haven’t. I was quoting shatterface’s comment which basically said people should ‘suck balls’. I said how would people react to that if they heard this is how people respond. 99% of the time I skim over shatterface’s comments so I don’t know whether he is on benefits or not or what his personal story is. His response was just typically unthinking and facile.

I am honestly getting off your attack on Shatterface is: “How dare you say nasty things about Labour when you’ve claimed benefits, you ingrate!”

Yes, because I’ve never attacked Labour party for its attitude on welfare or anything. I’m the biggest fan of Liam Byrne and previously James Purnell. What are you, a goldfish? You certainly can’t claim you haven’t been reading this site long enough.

What don said at #91.

Jim: Let us get one thing clear Sunny, attacking benefits does not just mean an attack on benefit claimants there are thousands of people who will be adversely affected by such cutbacks, even if they have, so far, never claimed a benefit in their life.

Discussion is about unemployment benefits – and I’ve not once indicated a preference for cutting unemployment or other benefits. Not sure what you’re arguing against.

“Discussion is about unemployment benefits”

Is it? I don’t remember that being specified, seems to me the author of the article was talking about welfare being abused.

Sunny, I seem to remember you defending EMili to the death after his speech including the Incapacity Benefit claimant who ‘he was sure’ could do some work. This article is exactly the same. It draws a conclusion without a shred of any evidence of the claimed problem.

When Cameron dis his ‘I spoke to a black man…’ nonsense we all rightly took the piss. Yet you seem to be happy to fall for the single anecdote when it fits a conclusion you’ve already decided for yourself. That’s an editorial policy Kelvin Mackenzie would be proud of.

I don’t care who Reneh is or how old he is but his article is tosh for the simple reason it is not evidence based. The evidence is that the numbers of people ‘abusing the welfare system’ is tiny, not a widespread social problem requiring even more widespread fixing.

Labour’s big mistake is that it bought into the welfare recipient = scrounger rhetoric because they perceived it would be easier to jump on the bandwagon rather than halt it with evidence based arguments. That’s a simple betrayal. Reneh’s article and Miliband’s remarks demonstrate that that has yet to change.

@ 93 Sunny

“I don’t know whether he is on benefits or not or what his personal story is. His response was just typically unthinking and facile.”

I wouldn’t say it was typical, but yes, it was facile.

“Yes, because I’ve never attacked Labour party for its attitude on welfare or anything. I’m the biggest fan of Liam Byrne and previously James Purnell. What are you, a goldfish? You certainly can’t claim you haven’t been reading this site long enough.”

What I am is someone trying to get some meaning out of your words. I’ve taken the only interpretation that seems to make sense, and asked you to clarify. You’re still refusing to do so. From which I take it that your original meaning was out of order, you’ve realised that, and rather than fess up you’re trying to dodge it by going off on a tangent.

So, AGAIN: why would Shatterface have to explain himself to people considering whether it’s a good idea to have a welfare state?

Oh, and Sunny: just because someone is prepared to give Labour constructive criticism from what might tentatively be called the “inside”, doesn’t mean that they won’t unthinkingly rush to defend it when a perceived outsider attacks. Much like people tend to argue with their family members but get offended if anyone outside the family insults them.

Sunny @ 93

Sunny, you have said on numerous occasions that people want the politicians to ‘get tough’ on benefit claimants. You have also suggested that Labour need to side with the public on this issue. On this very thread you are implying that defending the benefit system is damaging to the Left. However, what I never see from the Left and people like Renie is an examination of the implications that ‘being tough’ on benefit claimants are.

The problem is that Renie has based his entire piece on a false premise; he believes that there are an unlimited amount of jobs that the majority of claimants are routinely snubbing and are choosing to stay on benefits. The problem with a false premise is that any policy designed around a false premise is doomed to failure. The whole ATOS debacle and its myriad failures can be directly attributed to the fact that Labour bought into the idea that the disabled are just faking illness to scrounge benefits. Labour’s entire policy is based around the prejudices of the curtain twitching morons that infest this Country. It turns out that tests have been designed to appease these morons, rather than test anything significant. Who would have thunk it? Who could have imagined that people with a complex set of medical conditions, could not be diagnosed through a set of lace curtains? A flawed system is the result of some very flawed set of assumptions.

Now, Sunny this is where my remarks to you regarding ‘cutting benefits’ come in. You say that the Left need to ‘listen’ to those people who want us to ‘get tough on benefits’, that is fine, but what do they mean by ‘getting tough’? If they mean ‘cut’ benefits then that has implications to the low paid. If they mean ‘work for benefits’ then that means something for the labour supply too.

I did not mean to imply that you advocate cutting benefits, but you do suggest that lots of people on low incomes would like to see benefits cut. Perhaps we need to explain that cutting benefits will have a knock on effect or that supplying free labour to large companies will end up costing jobs as well?