Recent Fight the cuts Articles

An open letter to the Telegraph

by Sue Marsh     April 5, 2013 at 9:10 am

Dear Daily Telegraph,

Yesterday, you published an article by Allison Pearson, (“Mick Philpot, a good reason to cut benefits” 3rd April) based on a press release issued over the Easter weekend by Conservative Central Office. (NB :NOT the DWP who are barred from issuing overtly political and partisan press releases)

Your original story (900,000 choose to come off sickness benefit ahead of tests, 30th March) claimed “828,300 sick or disabled ppl had chosen to drop their claims rather than face new tougher assessments (my italics).

That claim simply isn’t true.

What’s more, it wasn’t true back in April 2011, when the government first made the same false claim.

A little while later, The DWP’s themselves issued figures showing a huge proportion (94%) of claims were dropped because the person got better or went back to work. They dropped their claims because they were honest, not because they were dishonest!!

There is a three month qualifying period for out of work sickness benefits. (ESA/IB)

As you can imagine, most people need a little help to get through a nasty illness or accident at some point in their lives.

Maybe a weekend rugby player who snaps his collar bone resulting in 2 months off work, or the Mum who needs a sudden hysterectomy and time afterwards to heal? This will happen to every last one of us at some point.

But you can’t get help when you really need it any more, in those first terrible weeks of pain and recovery. Now you have to wait 3 months before you can apply. In that time, for all but the most unfortunate, bones and scars will have healed and the person will be back on their feet again.

With no point in continuing the claim, people do the honest thing and let the DWP know they no longer need support.

This information is all in the public domain and all proven by evidence. Yet the government send out a politicised press release over the Easter weekend aimed at mis-leading the public and encouraging an entire nation to mis-trust one of the most vulnerable groups in society.

Worse still, you run the story unquestioningly, repeating claims that had already been proven to be completely untrue.

—
A longer version of this letter is here.

Iain Duncan Smith’s boast he could live on £53 a week shows how out of touch he is

by Sunny Hundal     April 1, 2013 at 7:33 pm

Iain Duncan’s Smith’s boast today that he could live on £53 a week is perhaps the best example of how removed this cabinet of millionaires is from the experiences of ordinary people.

Go ahead IDS, try it. Try it not just for one week but try it for 52 weeks in a year.

Try living every day and every week just hand-to-mouth. Try living in a state of constant anxiety that a big unexpected bill could completely bankrupt you. Try living in a world where you constantly have to make excuses to friends because you can’t afford going out, and see what state of mind that puts you in. I’ve been there and it was depressing.

The Tories have always believed the vast majority of people people on welfare are lazy and would prefer benefits over work.

Their changes to welfare aren’t driven by compassion (as IDS used to claim), evidence or a genuine attempt to help people.

This is an entirely ideological crusade because none of their policies (from the Bedroom Tax, to Workfare programmes, Universal Credit and disability benefit cuts) are designed to help people.

There are constant setbacks and u-turns because IDS has never cared whether they are driven by evidence or not. Why else would he continue a Workfare programme that wastes money and is less successful than doing nothing? Why else would he penalise disabled people for having a spare room if they’ve got nowhere else to go?

If Iain Duncan Smith was genuinely interested in helping people out of poverty he’d try to understand their concerns, look at how policies affect people and understand the evidence.

There is none of that. There are just attempts to foist ill-thought-out changes on people’s lives in the belief it is best for them. And there is the arrogant belief that it isn’t so difficult being in their shoes.

Let’s see him put his money where his mouth is. If there was any evidence he doesn’t understand reality, this is it.

Sign the petition to get IDS to live on £53 a week.

UKIP want freedom for themselves but to deny it to others

by Chris Dillow     March 25, 2013 at 10:45 am

Katie Price and UKIP agree that benefit recipients should not spend "our money" on booze and ciggies.

A little thought, however, reveals that such spending is in fact puny. Let's do the numbers.

The DWP says that, in 2011-12, working age people got £52.7bn in benefits. Of this, £16.6bn was housing benefit and £2.7bn council tax benefit, so benefit recipients saw £33.4bn. This is 2.2% of GDP, and 5.2% of total government spending.

What fraction of this £33.4bn is spent on drink and ciggies? We can use table A6 of the latest Family Spending tables as a guide. These show that the poorest decile spend an average of £148,80 per week on non-housing. Of this, £2.70 per week (1.8%) goes on alcohol and £3.90 (2.6%) on tobacco and narcotics. If we apply these proportions to the £33.4bn of benefit income, then £606m of those benefits are spent on alcohol and £875m on tobacco.

But the government gets a lot of this money back in VAT and excise duties – about £689m on tobacco and £190m on alcohol. This implies that benefit recipients'  spending on tobacco and alcohol costs taxpayers a net £602m. In fact, not even this much, to the extent that brewers and tobacco manufacturers pay tax on their incomes.

This is a tiny sum. It's 0.09% of public spending and 0.04% of GDP. In making an issue of this, Ms Price is enlarging things out of their proper proportion.How unlike her.

What's going on here? Usually, I'd quote C.B.Macpherson, to the effect that there's still a puritan strand in politics which regard poverty as a moral failing and the poor as objects of condemnation. However, considering Ms Price's career, puritanism is hard to discern.

Instead, I suspect what we see with her and with Ukip – and, one could argue, with some who support press regulation whilst favouring social liberalism in other contexts – is asymmetric libertarianism.

People want freedom for themselves whilst seeking to deny it to others; this is why some Ukippers can claim to be libertarian whilst opposing immigration and gay marriage. This debased and egocentric form of libertarianism is more popular than the real thing.

I was beaten for saying ‘Cameron has blood on his hands’

by Guest     March 15, 2013 at 10:40 am

by Bethan Jones

Yesterday I was found guilty in the Oxford Magistrates’ Court of causing “harassment, alarm and distress” following a peaceful and legal political protest in Witney in December. The judge said “I can think of nothing more alarming than the statement that ‘Cameron has blood on his hands’.”

I will continue to say that Cameron has blood on his hands, whenever the opportunity presents itself.

The words that the government and media are using is the indirect part of their attack on disabled people. Disability hate crime, which ranges from comments in the street through vandalism of motability cars up to imprisonment, torture, rape and murder is growing.

I knew about this through hearing and reading stories about the people who are being affected, I also knew that these stories weren’t being given the front page spreads that ‘scrounger’ stories get.

Here’s what happened. On the 30th November David Cameron was booed as he came on stage to turn on the Witney Christmas Lights. There’s a very funny video of him trying to drown out any criticism by awkwardly getting the crowd to cheer everyone from themselves to the Queen.

I find it very weird watching the video, because while this was going on I was being beaten up by the police on the other side of the stage. I have never been so scared.

I held up a placard that said “Cameron has blood on his hands,” and I shouted that “disabled people are dying because of Cameron’s policies.” I didn’t expect that to be a big deal, I only wanted to do my bit to show that we’re not all taken in by the rhetoric that disabled people are ‘scroungers’ and ‘shirkers.’

My face was pushed into the ground, I could feel blood coming from my nose, there was someone putting their whole weight on my back while someone else was stamping on my knees, along with various people grabbing and twisting my limbs. And then the officer on my back moved a knee up onto the back of my neck.

Up until then I’d been shouting “I’m not resisting, I’m cooperating,” trying to ask them to stop, but from the moment I felt someone pressing their body weight into the back of my neck I gave up trying to communicate anything to them, I realised the police officers on top of me either couldn’t or wouldn’t hear me.

Instead I began begging anyone who was nearby to intervene, to tell them to stop. Images flashed into my mind of what could happen. I was in pain, I couldn’t see what was going on, I was crying and bleeding, I couldn’t properly breathe, and I thought that they might leave me seriously injured. I’ve worked supporting people who’ve badly damaged their necks or back, and I can’t believe that any police officer was taught that kneeling on the back of someone’s neck is every an acceptable thing to do.

I didn’t think that it would lead to being beaten up, arrested, held overnight and then taken to court on two ridiculous charges.

The fine and costs come to more than I earn in a month. The judge said that on a whole £700 a month, of course I’d have no trouble paying it back. After rent, travel to work, food and paying off loans I don’t have money left at the end of the month, and my salary is going down soon.

We can listen to the voices of the people who know what’s going on, the people on the front-line of the cuts, and share them with our friends. Calum’s List lists the deaths caused directly by welfare reform.

—
A longer version of this post is posted to Facebook.

Labour launch campaign against the Bedroom Tax

by Sunny Hundal     March 5, 2013 at 8:25 am

Senior Labour MPs yesterday launched a campaign against the Bedroom Tax, encouraging Labour members to spread the word about its impact.

In an email sent to Labour members yesterday, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne wrote that the campaign would highlight the “incompetent, unfair and out of touch ‘bedroom tax’ David Cameron’s Government will introduce in April.”

The Labour party are framing the debate by contrasting the extra burden on poorer households with Osborne’s tax-cut for millionaires.

An image Labour are using

The email said:

While families of soldiers serving our country will have to find extra money for their son or daughter’s bedroom, 13,000 millionaires will get a tax cut worth £100,000 a year on average.

Two thirds of the households hit are home to someone who is disabled. Foster families will be hit – even if they have foster children in their ‘spare room’. Divorced parents and grandparents will be charged more if they want to keep a spare room for when their children or grandchildren come to stay.

To add to the chaos, the Department for Work and Pensions has admitted that there are not enough smaller properties for families to move to, yet the ‘bedroom tax’ will still hit households that don’t have the option to move.

Labour hope the campaign will put enough pressure on Cameron to re-think his plans.

The campaign website is here: http://www.labour.org.uk/bedroomtaxshare

How the internet (and other factors) propelled a comedian to the front of Italian politics

by Guest     February 27, 2013 at 3:47 pm

by Tom Gill

Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement is now Italy’s largest party, only overtaken in terms of seats in parliament by the alliances formed by the main, established parties – Pier Luigi Bersani’s Democrats and Silvio Berlusconi’s PDL party.

So how did Grillo, a former comedian and Italy’s number 1 blogger, come from nothing – no power locally nor nationally two years ago – to win in elections 24-25 February over 100 seats in Italy’s lower house?

Here’s the answer in five points

1 He’s built a massive following on the web, with his blog taking the number one spot in the country and about 1 million followers on Facebook and Twitter. This hegemony in social media, one that mirror’s Berlusconi’s rise using TV 20 years ago, has allowed him to send out his message unmediated and without real challenge (the fear of which may be in part behind his shunning of Italy’s traditional mass media). It’s also allowed him to reach younger voters, and the previously politically unengaged (one survey found half of his supporters didn’t identify with any political party).

2 His genius at attracting and entertaining large crowds, with half a million turning up to a rally in Rome days before the vote. This originates from his previous career as a touring stand up act, which he’s successfully applied to his political campaigning. Grillo has also shown himself a spectacular self-publicist, swimming across the Strait of Medina ahead of a stunning victory in Sicily in autumn 2012. In short, applying that mix virtual with real world campaigning that has overturn regimes in the Arab world

3 Grillo has gained popularity by attacking the throughly corrupt political class, now never more sleaze-ridden after 20 years of Berlusconi and the Bribesville scandals that precipitated the media magnate to enter politics. Seen as a complete outsider, Grillo fielded against the usual crop of ageing career politicians an army of complete unknowns – twenty- something housewives, students, graphic designers, IT engineers and jobless factory workers. Furthermore, in a country where political instability means parties habitually resort to backroom coalition deals, jettisoning campaign pledges in the process. Grillo’s refusal to play this game has given him an air of honesty and transparency badly lacking among his rivals.

4 Amid a string of largely forgettable Left leaders that have come and gone, politics has never been more personalised. Many find Grillo’s style aggressive, sometimes offensive, but his darkly comic personalized attacks – the best of which has to be to dismiss the former PM as Rigor Montis – get him headlines.

5. If Grillo owes at least some of his strident rhetorical style to the populist right, he stole much of his political clothes from the Left, just as the latter abandoned them to raid Mario Monti’s neo liberal wardrobe. Centre-left Democrat leader Bersani’s key campaign pledge was to stick to the former ‘technocrat’ premier’s EU-backed austerity and ‘reform’ programme.

Grillo was able to pose as the champion of the little man, and, since the onset of the Eurozone crisis, Italy’s much crushed sense of national pride. Among manifesto pledges were promises to revisit all international treaties including NATO membership and the most notably the Euro, with a referendum; a ‘citizen’s wage’ for the unemployed; support for small and medium sized businesses and a strengthened say for small shareholders; a ban on share options and a cap on executive salaries; and reversing cuts to health and education.

What now?

The ‘markets’ are all jittery about renewed political instability in Italy. Bersani’s centre-left coalition, while enjoying a majority in the House, has not won control of the Senate, and cannot do so even with the support of Monti.

So there’s pressure from some quarters internationally for a grand coalition between Bersani and Berlusconi to continue the same policies that since the 2008 crisis have caused a downward spiral of economic decline, rising unemployment and plummeting living standards, even if (under Monti) they tempered the dreaded ‘spreads’ have eased. And it would be an inherently unstable.

Fortunately it seems Bersani is instead looking to some kind of rapprochement with Grillo. There’s more in a deal with Grillo for the Democrats than for the Five Star Movement. Without one elections will likely be coming round again soon and this time it could be the comedian-blogger’s movement that is projected into government.

—
Tom Gill is a London-based writer who blogs at www.revolting-europe.com on European affairs from a radical left perspective.

The Beer Duty Campaign – why you should not sign

by Tim Fenton     February 27, 2013 at 9:01 am

This blog yields to no one in its advocacy of an occasional visit to the pub for a jar of decent quality beer. But a new campaign targeting beer duty will not be getting my signature, nor my endorsement.

The reason for this is straightforward: I also cast a sceptical eye over the dubiously crafted output of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), that astroturf lobby group which claims to represent this country’s taxpayers, and is behind the beer duty campaign.

But, as Full Fact has pointed out – and they’ve cast a sceptical eye over a previous Sun beer duty campaign – the evidence behind the claim that taxation levels are at fault for the number of pub closures is not persuasive, and far less conclusive.

If there was a connection, supermarkets would not have shelf upon shelf dedicated to the stuff (which they do).

What is rather more likely is that less folks are drinking beer, and especially the mass-produced brewery conditioned variety (ie canned, keg and nitro-keg). Sales of cask conditioned beer are either holding up or increasing slightly. The cheapest watering holes in Crewe are not necessarily the most popular. They’re not the best places to have a scoop, either.

What is worse, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has joined endorsed the campaign: perhaps its executive does not know where the TPA is coming from. Here I can be of assistance: they’re into abolishing the minimum wage, lowering the poverty line, abolishing the NHS and the BBC, trashing local bus services, and demonising the disabled, while wanting tax cuts for their rich backers.

Whereas having a pint or two down the pub is something undertaken by ordinary working people, many of whom will be in receipt of the minimum wage and tax credits, both of which the TPA is against. The overwhelming majority will use NHS services. They may watch a variety of broadcast media, but will watch and trust the BBC the most. And they are more likely to use public transport.

So they would be best advised leaving this campaign well alone.

It’s about time Westminster woke up to the Bedroom Tax

by Richard Exell     February 20, 2013 at 10:51 am

It’s good that the politicians have picked up on the Bedroom Tax.

In April – less than two months away – tenants in the social rented sector (essentially, Council or Housing Association) will face an extra restriction on the amount of Housing Benefit they can get. If they are deemed to have a ‘spare’ bedroom their HB will be cut by 14 per cent, 25 per cent if they are deemed to have two spare rooms, pensioners are excluded from this cut but other vulnerable groups are not and lone parents and disabled people will be very hard hit.

The government’s own Equality Impact Assessment, published last summer, calculated that 660,000 households will be affected, 31 per cent of all working age HB claimants living in the social rented sector; on average, they will lose £14 a week (one hundred thousand will lose more than £20 a week).

Joe Halewood has pointed out that these figures may be an under-estimate; he also notes that the average household has 2.4 people, so a good working figure for the number of people who will lose out is 1.6 million.

Who will lose out?
The government’s figures show that most of those who lose out will be people without children living with them, but 150,000 will be lone parents – 21 per cent of working age lone parents in socially rented housing will lose out.

The other big group of vulnerable people who are disproportionately likely to to lose out will be disabled people (using the Disability Discrimination Act definition of disability): disabled people make up 56 per cent of all working age social rented sector tenants but 63 per cent of those who will lose out. 420,000 disabled people will have their HB cut.

There will be some protection for disabled people: an extra bedroom for a disabled adult who needs a non-resident overnight carer will not attract the bedroom tax, but people with impairments that stop couples or children from sharing a room or who need an extra room for equipment may be affected. Many of the people affected will have gone to immense trouble to get rooms (or the whole property) adapted, often spending thousands of their own savings.

There is an increase in the Discretionary Housing Fund to mitigate this, but it is limited to one year, is limited to £30 million and is also expected to help foster carers who face this cut. Read this excellent post on the We Are Spartacus website for more information about how disabled people will be especially hard hit by this cut.

It is good that politicians have taken up this issue. It has forced the government onto the defensive and local news websites are beginning to report examples of the sort of people who will be hit by this cut:

• The couple who may lose the bedroom that has become a ‘shrine’ to their son who died of cancer;
• The couple who will lose the adjustments that help them cope with arthritis;
• The mother who will lose HB because her son is serving in the army in Afghanistan;
• The couple who can’t find a smaller property to move into (and the 4,700 families in Hull who will be chasing 73 smaller properties);
• The woman who can’t take in a lodger because the bedrooms are simply too small for her daughters to share;
• The carer who can’t share the special mattress for his wife’s spina bifida and so has to sleep in a separate room.

If you’re angry about this there are some things you can do. If you’re on Facebook, there’s a Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/antibedroomtax/, you can ask your MP to read We Are Spartacus’s Parliamentary briefing and there’s a Scrap Spare Bedroom Tax page on the Labour Party’s Campaign Engine Room site. I’ll add to this post as I learn about other initiatives.

Why are we tough on people in poverty but not its causes?

by Guest     February 6, 2013 at 10:45 am

by Gary Rae

Some journalists still use shorthand. It’s really handy. Some politicians use shorthand. It’s really dangerous.</

Language, as a tool, is never neutral. It’s used and exploited by me, by you, by journalists and by politicians. A tool can easily become a weapon and here lies the greatest danger; not just in the characterisation of people living with poverty, but in their demonization.

Intentionally or not, we are doing what Professor Ruth Lister calls ‘Othering’ The Poor: making them into ‘convenient strangers’, subject to ridicule, subject to reform, subject to ignorance.

In the current debate on welfare reform, people in poverty are casually labelled as economic burdens, or even bereft of morals. Popular polls, supposedly proving public support for cuts, are often cited by politicians and journalists as justification for reducing the welfare budget during “tough times”. Some of this commentary is contaminated with a hint of wrong-doing.

Lest readers see this blog as the ramblings of a soft liberal-type: waste and fraud is wrong and those who allow waste and commit crimes should be held to account. That said, according to the Department for Work & Pensions’ own figures, last year we overpaid 0.7% of the welfare budget due to fraud.

Compare that with an estimated £70 billion lost through tax evasion. The entire out-of-work benefits bill is 3% of our gross domestic product.

So let’s keep calm, provide the evidence and tell the story of those ‘hard-working families’ (thought I’d borrow that phrase from the Politicians’ Book of Clichés) struggling with their daily lives.

At the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, we’ve taken a closer look at the people behind the percentages. Here’s a glimpse at their stories, part of our work on developing an anti-poverty strategy.

Seventy years on from the Beveridge Report, little appears to have changed in how we describe some of our fellow citizens – a theme to be developed by my boss, Julia Unwin, in her Toynbee Hall lecture later this month.

You’re familiar with the words “don’t be a shirker, best be a worker”. We all love a striver, never be a skiver. Cartoon clichés can reinforce Party political loyalties and help meet deadlines, more easily than carefully crafted, well-researched articles and broadcasts – to be clear, there are plenty of those around as well.

In her blog, my colleague Abigail Scott Paul talked about the risk of broadcasters’ in particular, resorting to lazy stereotypes of ‘problem families’ on ‘sink estates’. The inescapable conclusion being, these people are ‘A Problem to Society’.

Beware the shorthand, because the facts are often lost in translation and manipulation. As a Mr T. Blair nearly said, I’m not one for soundbites or quote-grabs, but it could appear, through the language we use, that we’re being tough on those in poverty and not looking closely enough at its causes. 

—
Gary Rae is Senior Media Relations Manager at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

The cuts haven’t worked; it’s time to challenge austerity more strongly

by Guest     January 24, 2013 at 9:10 am

by Ivo Petkovski

This week, yet another expert lined up to warn that that cutting public spending at the rate Osborne insists on has contributed directly to a triple dip recession, and has not helped growth in any way.

Among many others, Nobel prize laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz have repeatedly argued that austerity is counter productive to growth, even if we accept – and many don’t – that perpetual ‘growth’ is either realistic or desirable.

Figures released this week by the Treasury show that both government spending and the deficit are on the rise compared to this time last year. In other words, exactly the opposite of what the government said would happen. The conclusion that the austerity program is ideologically driven is getting harder and harder to dismiss.

The idea of an ideologically-driven government is not a problem in itself, provided that a majority agree with the ideology. That is by no means the case with the austerity doctrine – it was presented as a necessary evil, at a time of general panic over the 2008 crisis, and a deeply exhausted Labour opposition. Even in that climate, Cameron and Co. couldn’t get a proper mandate, and events since have done nothing to build confidence that their ideas have any pragmatic foundation at all.

Between now and the next election the burden of proof should shift from the government’s critics to the government themselves. Labour should pursue this more aggressively than they have been doing so far – it’s not enough to dispute some cuts while generally agreeing that deficit reduction is the priority.

Ed Miliband and Ed Balls should spend the next two years wresting the agenda back – they should firstly cast doubts on whether we need to reduce the deficit at all. As Stiglitz and Krugman have argued, growth can be better stimulated by keeping more money in the economy via public spending, which can be offset by progressive taxation measures, such as the Robinhood Tax.

Labour should refuse to engage with the idea of benefit cuts and cuts to public spending, except to ridicule it. Francois Hollande’s socialists recently won a majority in France on just such a platform, and at the time of writing, the markets have not brought fire and brimstone to France.

Labour taking such a sharp step to the left may be against the public mood, and there might be a price to pay in the polls, but with two years until they face election, they can afford to pay that price right now. Also it’s impossible to know how many currently disengaged voters would migrate to Labour if they presented themselves as a properly left-wing alternative.

There will be plenty of time to be centrist when the election comes nearer, and by moving to the left now, they could shift the axis of the whole debate. George Osborne has provided them with the perfect starting point. His austerity measures aren’t working – that’s fact – so it’s on Labour to sketch an alternative.

—
Ivo Petkovski writes the I to the Vizzo blog and for Guardian CIF