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Post by Admin on Sept 14, 2020 14:58:49 GMT
Food bank use forecast to rise by 61% due to the impact of coronavirus.Calls for stronger welfare support as food banks warn of surge in demand welfareweekly.com/calls-for-stronger-welfare-support-as-food-banks-warn-of-surge-in-demand/The UK government has been urged to do more to help struggling families affected by the Coronavirus pandemic, after a damning new report from the UK’s largest food bank network warned of a “61% increase in food parcels” in the coming months – equating to “six parcels given out every minute.” The report published today by the Trussell Trust also found that, in April, there was a 89% surge in demand for emergency food parcels, inclusing a 107% increase in the number of parcels given to children, when compared to the same period the previous year. Trussell Trust says there is likely to be at least an extra 300,000 emergency food parcels distributed by food banks in the last quarter of this year – an increase of 61% compared to the previous year. Analysis also shows that in the second quarter of this year, the need for food parcels remained “much higher than normal, at 81% above last year’s levels.” And, that “removing the current temporary increase in the Universal Credit standard allowance rate could increase use of food banks in the Trussell Trust network by almost 10%.” The charity has called on the UK government to protect people’s incomes by making permanent the £20 uplift to Universal Credit and to “rethink the impending cliff edge of the Job Retention Scheme coming to an end.”
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Post by Admin on Sept 18, 2020 7:59:58 GMT
DWP silent as it stops answering questions from Disability News ServiceBy John Pring on 17th September 2020 Category: Politics www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-silent-as-it-stops-answering-questions-from-disability-news-service/The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has stopped answering questions from Disability News Service (DNS), and is refusing to explain why it has taken the “totally unacceptable” step. Since early July, DWP’s press office has failed to provide a meaningful response to questions submitted by DNS on 10 consecutive news stories. There has been no explanation from DWP for the apparent refusal to respond on issues including the deaths of benefit claimants, the failure of minister for disabled people Justin Tomlinson to engage with disabled people’s organisations, and the silence of the government’s Disability Unit during the coronavirus pandemic. In two of the stories, the DWP press office suggested that it could not respond for legal reasons, but with the other eight there was no explanation for the department’s refusal to comment. The stories DWP refused to comment on include the department being accused of “careless cruelty” after it mistakenly sent out letters to disabled claimants during the pandemic that informed them their disability benefits had been stopped for failing to fill in review forms. It also failed to comment on its own research which showed that levels of satisfaction with working-age disability benefits had plummeted in the two years to spring 2019. The department continues to respond to requests from mainstream news organisations, but not to those from DNS, which is run by a disabled journalist, John Pring, and was founded in April 2009. A Guardian journalist confirmed yesterday (Wednesday) that DWP was continuing to provide responses to Guardian queries. This week, DNS asked DWP why it did not appear to be responding to questions, and whether it agreed that its policy appeared to be discriminatory. DWP had failed to comment by noon today. Over the last decade, DNS has reported on links between DWP and the deaths of disabled benefit claimants, DWP’s breaches of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, evidence of flaws in DWP programmes such as Disability Confident, and misleading statements made to parliament by work and pensions ministers. Over the last six months, DNS has also exposed repeated breaches of disabled people’s rights by the government during the pandemic. In July, DNS reported how DWP had re-introduced benefit sanctions, while millions of disabled people were still shielding from the virus, a move described by disabled campaigners as “barbaric” and “life threatening”. Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said: “We are saddened to hear that DWP is failing to answer the important questions put to them by DNS, which is totally unacceptable whatever the reason. “We hope that this failure of DWP press office is urgently resolved. “The work and investigations carried out by DNS have uncovered many facts which we’re sure DWP would have preferred to keep covered up and provide a vital resource for disabled people and our campaigns for equality and justice.”
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Post by Admin on Sept 18, 2020 8:01:57 GMT
Government chooses architect of universal credit to chair its benefits advice bodyBy John Pring on 10th September 2020 Category: Benefits and Poverty www.disabilitynewsservice.com/government-chooses-architect-of-universal-credit-to-chair-its-benefits-advice-body/The government is facing criticism over its decision to nominate the “architect” of universal credit to be the next chair of its independent committee of advisers on social security. Dr Stephen Brien wrote Dynamic Benefits (PDF), the report that became the blueprint for universal credit, and he is still a board member at the Centre for Social Justice, the right-wing thinktank which published his report in 2009. He worked closely on that report with Iain Duncan Smith, who introduced universal credit (UC) as work and pensions secretary in 2013. Brien, currently director of the Legatum Institute, another think-tank, was yesterday (Wednesday) questioned by MPs on the work and pensions select committee (pictured) on his suitability for the role as the new chair of the social security advisory committee (SSAC). SSAC is supposed to be an independent body that provides impartial advice to DWP on social security matters and scrutinises secondary legislation related to the benefits system. But Stephen Timms, the Labour chair of the committee, asked Brien if he could be “impartial” now when he had been “obviously an insider in the development of universal credit”. Brien, who was also an adviser at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in the three years leading up to UC’s introduction, said: “I think it can be what it is perceived to be.” He said UC had developed “a long way” in the seven years since he was involved with it, and he was “more than happy to identify issues that I think need to be improved within universal credit. “My job would be to help the committee to evaluate its performance and help identify its strengths and weaknesses, rather than saying it should go in a particular direction.” Asked if he would be comfortable with the committee making policy recommendations in the future, he said it should “call out gaps” or “oversights” in the system and highlight “rough edges” in policy, but that it should not be its role to make specific policy suggestions, which was the role of parliament and ministers. When asked by Labour’s Steve McCabe if he still had an “emotional attachment” to UC, he said: “It’s hard for me to completely detach myself from it.” But he added: “I am very happy to take an evidence-based stance on it. “There are always going to have been mistakes, there are always going to be things that you learn along the way. “My emotional attachment is to a social security system that works for the most vulnerable in society, that provides value for money for the tax-payer, and helps as part of an over-arching social structure.” Labour’s Debbie Abrahams asked if Brien would make it a priority for the committee to produce a report on the deaths of disabled people who have been found fit for work by DWP, which she said was “an increasing scandal”. She said: “It is an unintended consequence, I am sure, but it is still happening, so would this be something that you would want to explore within your committee?” Brien said he would need to discuss with the committee “areas that were not being properly addressed”, whether there were other “more pressing issues”, and if the committee had “the skills and mandate to do that”. But he said: “As you laid it out, you have made a very compelling argument that there is an issue there that would warrant an attempt at investigation.” He added: “I would certainly not be averse to putting that on a list of issues to consider. “As you have laid it out, it does feel like one that warrants consideration.” Abrahams, who has played a key role in highlighting the need for an inquiry into benefit-relate deaths, replied: “I would suggest the deaths of claimants would need to be a priority.” Commenting before the evidence session, Mark Harrison, from the Scrap Universal Credit Alliance (SUCA), said appointing Brien would be “like giving Mr Wolf the keys to the hen house. “Choosing the architect of UC to provide scrutiny is consistent with this government’s preferred methods for avoiding any serious scrutiny. “They are operating a punitive system of sanctions in the benefits system which treats people worse than if they have been convicted in the courts of committing a crime. “That’s why they need a tame cheerleader rather than someone who will hold them to account.” Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said Brien “sounds the ideal appointment if you want a yes man on the SSAC, and I am guessing that will become yet another useless committee that in no way supports the rights of disabled people”.
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Post by Admin on Sept 19, 2020 8:39:37 GMT
1.6 million households hit by £60 cut to benefits in just one month DWP urged to scrap universal credit advance "loans" before thousands more are pushed into debt.welfareweekly.com/1-6-million-households-hit-by-60-cut-to-benefits-in-just-one-month/The Tory government has been told that it can no longer ignore calls to turn Universal Credit advance payment loans into non-repayable grants, after DWP figures revealed that 1.6 million househols saw their benefits slashed in £60 in just one month at the height of lockdown. Two in five households on Universal Credit had money deducted from their claim in May, almost entirely to repay loans to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The shocking figures were obtained by SNP MP and Work and Pensions Committee member, Chris Stephens, in an answer to a written parliamentary question. Other deductions to repay historic debt and overpayments were suspended in May but now they have resumed, it is likely that more than £1 billion in total will be deducted from Universal Credit claims this year, according to Feeding Britain – who have identified deductions from Universal Credit as one of the prevalent causes of food bank demand. In Scotland, the Glasgow East constituency was the hardest hit, with 4,600 claims having had an average of £55 deducted.
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Post by Admin on Sept 19, 2020 12:04:17 GMT
Regional inequality in BritainWhy Britain is more geographically unequal than any other rich country Other countries have poor bits. Britain has a poor half www.economist.com/britain/2020/07/30/why-britain-is-more-geographically-unequal-than-any-other-rich-country“Someone’s been busy”, says John Trueman, a builder. Apart from an old sign at the entrance, there is little hint that the enormous patch of ground in South Yorkshire was a working mine until 2013. The baths where the men washed before Maltby Colliery closed are a pile of rubble. An old car park is being used to store construction vehicles for auction. A site that once employed more than 1,000 people is quiet, except for one security guard, who is breezily informed by Mr Trueman that trespassing is not a crime. Maltby grew quickly in the early 20th century after coal started coming out of the mine. “It seemed as though a town of bricks had been carried bodily through the air and dropped”, remembered Fred Kitchen, a farm labourer who published a memoir in 1940. It has declined almost as quickly. The village seems past its best, bereft of wealth, and lagging. The miners welfare club is boarded up; the high street is full of bargain shops. One street still has flags up from Remembrance Day, eight months ago.
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Post by Admin on Sept 23, 2020 9:05:05 GMT
23 September Update: DWP Searches For Thousands Of PIP Claimants Owed Up To £13,000www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/4281-23-september-updateDear Reader, We begin this edition with the startling news that the DWP has begun a search for potentially thousands of PIP claimants who are owed up to £13,000. We have free downloadable info and, for the first time, a short video explainer as well. We also have the good news that PIP success rates for telephone assessments are similar to face-to-face assessments, though the same may unfortunately not be true for DLA to PIP reassessments. We reveal that the DWP are now reviewing thousands of PIP claims a month, but some of our members are concerned they may have been lost from the system. We are reassured that PIP claim numbers are rising again after their recent huge fall. We warn that the DWP are not allowing all ESA claimants to bypass the mandatory reconsideration system. We offer our sincere thanks to the over 700 people who responded to our survey on claiming PIP for arthritis. We have an additional date for our Claiming PIP Mobility Component On Mental Health Grounds Zoom training. And we share some feedback from over 600 people who completed our readers survey.
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Post by Admin on Oct 8, 2020 18:12:44 GMT
Reports of disability hate crime continue to rise as number of police charges fall New figures show a continuing increase in reports of disability hate crime to police.8th October 2020 welfareweekly.com/reports-of-disability-hate-crime-continue-to-rise-as-number-of-police-charges-fall/Over 7,300 disability hate crimes were reported to the police across England and Wales in 2019/20, yet only 1 in 62 cases actually received a charge from the police. The harrowing figures come from new research by leading disability charities Leonard Cheshire and United Response. Findings from the joint investigation are today released ahead of National Hate Crime Awareness Week, which starts on Saturday 10 October. Two thirds of the 36 police forces that responded to the Freedom of Information (FOI) request reported increases in disability hate crimes in 2019/20. Just 12 forces reported drops in numbers for their region. And the shocking trend continued across the UK with an overall 11% increase in reports. Worryingly, while nearly 21 crimes were reported to the police every day in England and Wales during 2019/20, an average of 10 crimes per day involved an act of violence against a disabled person, including assault and harassment. Alice, from Monmouthshire, has seven children, a number of which have autism. As a family, they have been the victim of disability hate crime frequently. “Most of our experiences have involved being yelled at or threatened when out as a family,” she explained. “People call us offensive names like ‘retard’ and ‘spastic’ and make us feel like we shouldn’t be part of the community. “Our neighbour has also physically intimidated us because they find my son frightening and don’t want him out in his own garden. “Now he not only feels isolated from the community, but his own garden too. Being told that your son is frightening to other people because of his condition is pretty awful.”
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Post by Admin on Oct 8, 2020 18:14:44 GMT
Families on Universal Credit face a ‘cold, hard winter’ with 26% already cutting back on heating PM Boris Johnson urged to increase benefits and retain the £20 a week increase to Universal Credit.8th October 2020 welfareweekly.com/families-on-universal-credit-face-a-cold-hard-winter-with-26-already-cutting-back-on-heating/Families reliant on Universal Credit to pay bills and put food on the table are facing “a cold, hard winter”, with over one in four (26%) already cutting back on electricity and heating and many more forced to borrow money to make ends-meet. This is the startling warning from Save The Children, who have conducted an online survey of 3,100 parents of children under 18 across the UK, claiming either Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit. The survey also reveals that 38% have been forced to rely on help from charities for food and clothes in the past two months, while a shocking 60% have been driven into debt because of the Covid-19 pandemic. 38% of low-income families have been left even worse off by the pandemic, with 27% reporting that they’re finding it even harder to afford food now than in April. According to Save The Children, families have borrowed over £1,700 on average in the last two months alone. Previous research by Save the Children and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in June found that 70% of families had to cut back on food and other essentials when the pandemic hit. The charity says the new figures suggest things have not improved for many families, despite recent benefit changes and government schemes to support workers. Indeed, less than half of those surveyed by the charity thought the government was doing enough to help low income families.
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Post by Admin on Oct 14, 2020 20:06:30 GMT
OCTOBER 14, 2020 Inequality in America: Far Beyond ExtremeBY BOB LORD www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/inequality-in-america-far-beyond-extreme/We’ve all seen the stats on America’s extreme inequality. Over 20 percent of our nation’s income flows to the top 1 percent. The top 1 percent’s share of our country’s wealth is approaching 40 percent. Our top 0.1 percent hold roughly the same share of our wealth as our bottom 90 percent. All eye-popping numbers to be sure. But don’t be fooled. These numbers understate our problem. And not by just a little. Let’s consider, for a moment, what our income and wealth numbers are really telling us. Statistics on how we share our wealth right now tell us where things stand, but not how we ended up where we stand — or where we’re heading. Stats on how we share our income don’t tell us anything about how we’re sharing in wealth’s accumulation. Take, for instance, the value of the Jeff Bezos Amazon fortune. If this value doubles, the increase doesn’t register anywhere as “income” for Bezos until he sells his Amazon stock. And the resulting income numbers don’t reflect what living expenses and taxes consume. So our conventional measures of income and wealth don’t tell the whole story. We need to know more about how our society is sharing the real wealth we create, more about what remains from the fruits of our collective efforts after we take into account all the costs involved and after adjusting for inflation and population growth. Through that lens, we see a rather gruesome picture. Of America’s inflation- and population-adjusted increase in wealth between 2006 and 2018, over 87 percent went to the top 10 percent. Over 60 percent went to the top 1 percent. The top .01 percent, a baseball-park-sized group of just 32,669 Americans, grabbed over 23 percent of the country’s increase in wealth. And nearly 10 percent of that increase went to the 400 wealthiest Americans. The 290 million or so unlucky souls who make up the so-called bottom 90 percent, meanwhile, saw just 13 percent of the nation’s wealth gains between 2006 and 2018, not much over half of what went to the top .01 percent. Our bottom 50 percent actually lost wealth over that 2006-2018 period. Some may call this level of inequality extreme. Obscene would be more appropriate. I calculated these wealth-gain shares from data compiled by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two leading economists now at the University of California-Berkeley. Other data sets — the Federal Reserve’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances, for one — let us calculate much the same basic story. In 2018, according to the Saez and Zucman figures, U.S. household wealth stood at $88.662 trillion, up from $68.310 trillion in 2006, with both figures in 2018 dollars. Between 2006 and 2018, our U.S. population increased by 9.5 percent, to 326.69 million. To create a true, apples-to-apples comparison, I increased the Saez-Zucman 2006 household wealth figure to $74.791 trillion. That total amounts to the household wealth a country of 326.69 million people would need to have to be equivalent, on a per-person basis, to the nation of 298.38 million people we had in 2006. That 2006 nation held $68.310 million in household wealth. The inflation- and population-adjusted increase in America’s wealth between 2006 and 2018 turns out to bring us from $74.791 trillion to $88.662 trillion, a difference of $13.871 trillion. My next step: applying the Saez and Zucman wealth-share percentages to this inflation- and population-adjusted increase in America’s wealth. The end-result of all this number crunching: Of that $13.871-trillion increase in inflation- and population-adjusted household wealth, $12.078 trillion went to the nation’s wealthiest 10 percent, leaving just $1.793 trillion to the bottom 90 percent. Within that $12.078 trillion for the top 10 percent, $8.537 trillion went to the top 1 percent, $5.519 trillion to the top 0.1 percent, and $3.201 trillion to the top 0.01 percent. And the 400 wealthiest Americans? They pulled down $1.314 trillion of the increase. Unfortunately, this obscene inequality appears likely to get worse. As the 2006-to-2018 period ended — and after our top 1 percent had already grabbed an appallingly outsized portion of the wealth created during those dozen years — the Trump tax act enacted at the end of 2017 went into effect, a giant giveaway to the top 1 percent. This is insanity. Tax the rich. Now. Bob Lord is a veteran tax lawyer who practices and blogs in Phoenix, Arizona. He’s an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.
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Post by Admin on Nov 1, 2020 13:25:10 GMT
Britain is facing ‘perfect storm of awfulness’ warns welfare expert Louise Casey calls on the government for more help for the vulnerable as hunger and homelessness risewww.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/01/louise-casey-britain-is-facing-perfect-storm-of-awfulness-warns-welfare-expertThe country is on course for a “perfect storm of awfulness” that will see rising homelessness, hungry children and poor families unable to cope unless the government rethinks its support for the most vulnerable, its former homelessness adviser has warned. Dame Louise Casey, who led the government’s emergency programme to tackle rough sleeping earlier this year, warned that a series of economic pressures were now in danger of colliding. She said that while the campaign led by England and Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford had provided hope, and she urged ministers to act. “What we are facing here is a perfect storm of awfulness,” she told the Observer. “Everyone has been affected by Covid, millions have seen their income drop and even those who can weather that, are thinking twice. Rashford has pulled everyone together on the key and compassionate issue of making sure kids don’t go hungry or their parents don’t have to go hungry to feed them. The spirit of the Thursday clapping to show our support to the NHS and care workers lives on in his kind, honest leadership. “The British public do really care. The rising levels of homelessness and [with] the reduction of universal credit on the horizon, it’s hard not to feel bleak about this winter. Rashford and those supporting his campaign give me hope. Now is not the time for political division and tribal loyalty – it’s the time to bring us all together again. The government needs to heed the mood of the country and take action now. Kids should not go hungry, people should not be on the streets and the elderly deserve only the best of care that we can give.” Her intervention came as the head of the CBI called for the government not to ditch the £1,000 increase in the basic universal credit allowance due to be axed in April. In a rare move, Carolyn Fairbairn said “having a strong safety net is going to be absolutely vital” in the months ahead. “A period of impoverishment in our country is unthinkable,” she said. “I think the idea that the £1,000 supplement would run out in March is something that should really be rethought. It’s also about fairness. There are going to be some people who have been kept in work through variations of the job support scheme, and others who are not so lucky. The gap between those two positions should not be so great.” Fairbairn is also calling for a new National Commission for Economic Recovery, involving business, unions, government and civil society, to plan how to revive the economy in the aftermath of the virus. Official figures last week revealed that there had been an increase in 16- to 25-year-olds sleeping rough in London between July and September, from 250 last year to 368. The previous quarter saw a similar 48% increase. Pressure is still mounting on the government over child hunger. A coalition of more than 50 public health directors, healthcare professionals, charities and local government figures have signed a letter to chancellor Rishi Sunak in support of a key element of Rashford’s child poverty campaign. They demand a major expansion of the Healthy Start scheme, which gives young pregnant women and low-income families with young children free vitamins and food vouchers to purchase vegetables, fruit, pulses and milk. They want the scheme to be enhanced and offered to more people, an increase in the value of vouchers and a publicity campaign to ensure it reaches those in need. “We are ready to help in whatever way we can,” they write. “We know that the nutrition and health of mothers and young children will have profound and life-long consequences for children’s futures. A fair start in life should be a key tenet of the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda. Now is the time to act.” A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: “We are wholly committed to supporting the lowest paid families, boosting welfare support by £9.3bn in response to the pandemic as well as introducing income protection schemes, mortgage holidays and additional support for renters and constantly keep these measures under review.”
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Post by Admin on Nov 2, 2020 10:57:28 GMT
I’m Sick To Death Of Your Middle Class Stupidity About Food PovertyStop pretending you know what it’s like to go hungry, writes Harriet Williamson. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/free-school-meals_uk_5f96b5a8c5b673c60825a685“Two boiled eggs – 28p, slice of wholemeal bread – 3p, butter – a penny or two.” As is customary whenever food poverty makes the headlines, infuriating lists begin to spill over on social media, detailing just how “cheap” it is to feed a family. Anyone could do it, really, they proclaim. And if you can’t afford to feed your kids, well, then that’s your fault for being poor. Or perhaps you’ve got your priorities wrong. Middle class Tories and the usual right-wing pundits have been particularly vocal in attempting to justify the Conservatives’ recent vote to block the extension of the free school meals scheme into October half-term and the Christmas holidays. These people might think what they’re doing is proving how feeding children is cheap and easy. But in reality, all they’re showing is their own ignorance of the causes behind food poverty, and just how out of touch they are with the average person’s daily reality. I don’t know about you, but when I’m out shopping I really struggle to find individual slices of bread for sale and cartons that only contain two eggs. Not to mention tiny slivers of butter. And it’s especially hard to cook up a meal when you don’t have enough money to pay the gas bill, or to stock your kitchen with basic utensils. There have been suggestions that people should simply “grow their own food”, when not everyone has access to a garden and allotment waiting lists are laughably long. In some areas, you’ll be waiting over ten years to get one. And of course, we all have time to be tending to an allotment. Others are hot with rage that parents don’t just forage some apples for their children, because, obviously, urban areas are packed with orchards where kids are able to frolic, freely scrumping fruit. There seems to be a whole subsection of the population who live in a world completely disconnected from the reality of poverty and its complex causes. Well, lucky them. Each time food poverty is discussed, disgraceful and galling comments about the cost of cigarettes and alcohol next to food items begin to circulate. Perhaps those people have forgotten that 72% of the roughly 4.2 million children living in poverty in the UK – that is to say a third of all children in the country – live in a household where at least one person is working, according to the Child Poverty Action Group. The truth is, hard working parents are skipping meals so that their children have more to eat. That is the reality of Britain in 2020. Some are forced to rely on few types of low cost food, meaning they can only provide unbalanced meals. No parent wants to be in this situation. This is the harrowing reality for millions of families, where circumstances have forced them to choose between paying rent, heating their homes and feeding their children. Of course, there are also situations where children are living with parents who have addiction issues. But to focus on these cases paints a skewed picture of the drivers of food poverty. The idea that providing free meals in the holidays for the children of poor families creates some sort of “dependence” is equally ridiculous.
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Post by Admin on Nov 2, 2020 13:05:50 GMT
Disabled person handed £1,200 in Universal Credit sanctions during lockdownThe Government suspended benefit sanctions during lockdown, but people with pre-existing sanctions continued to have money taken from them. It plunged Clara, who has a slipped disc and chronic pain issues, into poverty. www.bigissue.com/latest/disabled-person-handed-1200-in-universal-credit-sanctions-during-lockdown/In March this year Clara, who has several disabilities, met her work coach for an appointment at the job centre. By August she was facing more than £1,200 in Universal Credit sanctions and left without money to pay bills or buy food. Campaigners say it is people like Clara who could be pushed into destitution by the Universal Credit system and want the Government to make permanent the emergency £20 increase brought in at the start of the pandemic as well as increasing legacy benefits to protect people from poverty. But Chancellor Rishi Sunak still won’t budge despite repeated calls to keep the uplift beyond April 2021, and experts say sanctions could push more people into hardship during the pandemic. When Clara visited the job centre, her work coach asked her to commit to a claimant agreement that wasn’t possible with her health conditions. Within months she had dropped into poverty, unable to work the jobs she was being asked to apply for and docked Universal Credit payments as a result. Support The Big Issue and our vendors by signing up for a subscription When the Chancellor increased Universal Credit £20pw, he failed to increase legacy benefits the same amount, disproportionately hurting vulnerable groups like the disabled. With new rates set to be announced soon, make sure MPs don't forget them this time t.co/WlQrbEneHH— Peter Lamb (@cllrpetestweets) October 28, 2020 Clara, not the individual’s real name, spoke with The Big Issue on the condition of anonymity. A claimant agreement lays out the responsibilities a person has agreed to in return for Universal Credit, usually requiring that they do everything within their power to get a job. But because Clara suffers from a slipped disc, diabetes, arthritis and other issues that cause chronic pain, her options are limited. She provided medical evidence to support her argument but her work coach wanted her to go for a job interview in a physical role at a supermarket. When Clara didn’t go for the interview, she had £82 taken off her Universal Credit payment. Shortly after, the Government suspended sanctions when the country locked down, but pre-existing sanctions continued to function as normal. A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions told The Big Issue: “We don’t want to sanction anyone and no one will be sanctioned unless they fail to meet the agreed conditions of their claimant commitment without good reason.” Clara was “very upset” when she was sanctioned, she said. “I had the doctor’s certificate, yet they were forcing me to go to work, which was not comfortable for me.” Mental health struggles after being sanctioned compounded the problem, and she said she found it “hard to carry on”.
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Post by Admin on Nov 9, 2020 19:00:26 GMT
The Inequality MachineBy Grace Blakeley From the rise of multinational corporations to the decline of trade unions, the modern economy has been built to deepen inequality at every turn – and the only way to change it is to empower workers. tribunemag.co.uk/2020/11/the-inequality-machineThe pandemic has punctuated a long period of economic stagnation by plunging the UK – and the world – into a deep economic crisis. After the financial crisis, the illusion of rising growth and productivity generated by the bubbles in finance and real estate was shattered and the deep-rooted political economic problems that had been stored up for the previous thirty years suddenly became very obvious. Investment – both public and private – was chronically low, productivity and wage growth had both stagnated, and inequality – wealth, income and regional – was rising. In the gap between stagnant income and rising asset prices (including house prices) lay a mountain of debt. Risky corporate debt in the US and the UK had ballooned in the post-crisis period, and before the pandemic hit at least 8 million families in the UK were struggling with problem debt. In short, our economic model was profoundly broken before Covid-19. Three new books – Competition is Killing Us by Michelle Meagher, The Asset Economy by Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper and Martijn Konings, and Unions Renewed by Alice Martin and Annie Quick – cut to the core of why our economy works so badly for the majority of people. Competition is Killing Us, written by a former corporate lawyer who became disillusioned with facilitating huge mergers between large businesses, documents the massive increase in market concentration that has taken place across many industries in recent years. Meagher identifies the drivers of these trends, including the neoliberal turn in competition law that has discouraged competition authorities from intervening in big mergers – such as the mega-merger between Monsanto and Bayer approved by US and EU competition authorities a few years ago. Rising market power is rarely seen as a problem by economists who only focus on whether monopolies decide to raise prices, but it is associated with a number of negative political and economic trends – including higher inequality, lower levels of investment and innovation, and political capture. Big businesses are, Meagher argues, increasingly able to dominate not just the market but also our politics, leading to regulatory capture, tax avoidance and all sorts of examples of outright corruption. The other side of the coin to rising corporate power is the hobbling of the labour movement that has taken place over the last forty years. Ever since the 1980s, governments in the US, the UK and many other rich countries have seen it as a central aim of macroeconomic policy to reduce the power of their domestic labour movements. The anti-union laws in the UK and policies like ‘right to work’ across many US states have made it much harder for workers to organise to demand higher wages, safe conditions and adequate benefits. At the same time, the financialisation of corporations, Martin and Quick argue, has made it harder for workers to bargain directly with those who profit from their labour as shareholders can be anyone from high-frequency traders to private equity firms. With huge, financialised monopolies able to exert massive power over labour market outcomes, and workers facing all sorts of barriers to collective bargaining that could be used to resist this power, the balance of power between capital and labour has shifted fundamentally. The Asset Economy identifies another trend behind rising inequality in advanced capitalist economies: the growing importance of asset ownership in the determination of class identity, and the increasing policy focus on maintaining and increasing asset prices. The privatisation of the social housing stock and peoples’ pensions, combined with financial deregulation, fundamentally restructured the nature of many economies – particularly those in the US and the UK, where these trends proceeded especially quickly. Those who were able to afford to purchase these assets, often at a discount or with access to subsidised mortgages, benefitted from substantial capital gains over the following decades when asset prices rose sharply. In contrast, those who were left out and forced to rely on the housing, pensions and social security that remained in the public sector saw their living standards diverge from those of the wealthy. After the financial crisis, these trends deepened as central banks focused on cutting interest rates and pumping money into asset markets through quantitative easing. With wages stagnant and house prices rising, young people began to struggle to acquire assets in the same way as their parents, even as older homeowners found it much easier to access credit to purchase buy-to-let homes. Today, the widening divide between those who own assets and those who don’t has become a fundamental driver of our politics. Each of these problems are only likely to get worse in the coming years. Many small businesses will fail as the government’s dismal response to a direct public health emergency leaves us in a deep recession. Big businesses, on the other hand, are either thriving due to increased demand (such as Amazon) or receiving cheap credit from the state (such as EasyJet). Ultimately, those big businesses could use the pandemic to buy up failing small businesses and increase their market power even further. With a renewed lockdown coming into force across England this week, unemployment is likely to increase sharply – and organising the unemployed has always been fraught with difficulty. Those who remain in employment are likely to be more concerned about keeping their jobs than they are about joining a union to fight for better pay and conditions. House prices, which one might have expected to fall in the context of a pandemic that has seen many people opt to move out of the cities, have remained largely stable – at least in part due to the decision of the Bank of England to step up quantitative easing once again. Private renters – particularly young people – are, however, facing a crisis with the end of the evictions ban. Each of the books reviewed here provides interesting policy prescriptions for fighting these trends – from reforming competition law, to altering the tax system, to reducing working time. What has become abundantly clear during the pandemic, however, is that none of these victories will be achieved without a movement to champion them. The fundamental problem in our economy today – analysed from different perspectives by each of the books mentioned here – is an imbalance of power between workers and bosses. Only a united left that is able to link up the Labour Party, the labour movement, the tenants’ movement, the anti-racist, feminist, environmentalist and anti-imperialist movements, and all those fighting for a better world, will be able to correct this imbalance.
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Post by Admin on Nov 10, 2020 12:04:37 GMT
Scrap benefit sanctions for the mentally ill, report saysReport finds that benefits conditionality is counter-productive and causes emmense distress for the mentally ill. welfareweekly.com/scrap-benefit-sanctions-for-the-mentally-ill-report-says/The current provision of social security and employment support in Scotland and the wider UK do not effectively recognise mental health and is failing people with mental health problems, according to a revealing new report. The report co-produced with the social security and mental health organisations including Poverty Alliance, Inclusion Scotland and Mind calls for a radical shake up of the social security system. Surprisingly, the report hasn’t attracted too much attention from the mainstream media despite its damning rebuke of the UK Government’s flagship Universal Credit system and its strong calls for a more humane approach to social security for the mentally ill. Among its key findings, the report finds that the “use of sanctions is ineffective and can exacerbate mental health problems”. Sanctions reduce the amount a person can receive in benefits and are imposed on claimants who the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and its equivalent in Scotland, believes are failing to live up to their commitment to look for work in exchange for benefit payments. But this latest report warns that this “conditionality gives little or no consideration to mental health problems.” It also finds that “claimants with mental health problems are not effectively supported by existing employment services”, whilst calling for a more “tailored” approach to employment support for people with mental health problems. The report calls for an end to sanctions “for claimants awaiting a limited capability for work assessment, in the Employment and Support Allowance work-related group or Universal Credit work preparation group.” It also calls on the DWP to “provide personalised support and improve the experiences of people with mental health problems in the Jobcentre,” and a “sustainable investment to evidence-based, personalised employability interventions for people with mental health problems.” Professor Sharon Wright of the research project team said: “Reform is urgently needed to the current provision of employment support for people with mental health problems across the UK. “Mental health needs to be better recognised in our social security system and people with mental health problems need much more support without the fear of losing entitlement. “The Health Foundation funded research that informs the recommendations finds that there are huge discrepancies between the UK’s policy statements and the actual experience of people with mental health problems. “Despite being increasingly present in policy documents, mental health remains invalidated within the welfare system. “Furthermore, the experience of welfare conditionality among people with mental health problems is largely negative. “The pressures arising from conditionality and its disempowering nature are likely to exacerbate mental health problems.”
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Post by Admin on Nov 16, 2020 9:25:31 GMT
Britain’s War on Disabled PeopleBy Ellen Clifford In 2016, the UN said austerity had created a ‘human catastrophe’ for Britain’s disabled — but the last decade has also seen unprecedented organising to fight back. tribunemag.co.uk/2020/11/britains-war-on-disabled-peoplePrior to 2010, the UK government was known as a world leader on disability. A decision was made under the Coalition government and carried forward by successive Conservative administrations that this progress had gone too far. The implementation of a fast reverse turn was of international significance, marking the first time in the history of modern social policy that things went backwards for disabled people. The fact that this was done in order to make disabled people pay for a financial crisis that we did not cause is abhorrent. It needed to be concealed from the public. The way in which right-wing politicians and the media achieved this — by creating a narrative that blamed disabled people themselves, purposefully stoking fires of division and hatred — makes it even worse. What the government did is one half of the story. On the other is the resistance mounted by disabled people and our allies. If the Tories imagined that disabled people would be easy targets for their brutal cuts, they were wrong. Again and again, the government has been forced into U-turns and concessions. These discrete wins along the way have not been able to halt the overall regression in material conditions for disabled people, wiping away the hard-won gains of generations of disabled campaigners before us. After more than a decade of tireless resistance against austerity and welfare reform, the odds against us have grown even greater. Targeting Disabled People In 2016, the UK became the first country in the world to be found guilty of grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s rights. This was the finding of an unprecedented investigation by the UN Disability Committee into the impacts of welfare reform and austerity measures. The committee was not claiming that conditions are worse for disabled people in the UK than elsewhere in the world; what was of such concern was the large-scale retrogression of the rights of disabled people driven forward, the inquiry revealed, by deliberate legislative and policy choices. Regressive measures, badged as government ‘reforms’, have been pushed through by the Conservatives in the face of sustained opposition since coming to power with the Coalition government. As a consequence, disabled people have experienced negative changes within all areas of our lives. In 2018, the Equality and Human Rights Commission warned that ‘[d]isabled people are falling further behind in many areas, with many disparities with non-disabled people increasing rather than reducing’, and they called on the government to urgently adopt an ‘acute focus on improving life in Britain for disabled people’. Measures implemented in the name of austerity and welfare reform have had a disproportionate impact on disabled people. This was the truth behind David Cameron’s lie that ‘we are all in it together’. Cuts to benefits (excluding pensions) and local government made up 50 per cent of the 2010 austerity plan. Disability and carers benefits make up about 40 per cent of non-pension benefits and social care makes up 60 per cent of local government expenditure. Thus, the decision to target spending reductions in these two areas automatically led to extensive cuts to income and services for disabled people. The combination of cuts in benefits and services was found to hit disabled people on average nine times harder than most other citizens in research carried out by the Centre for Welfare Reform. For disabled people with the highest support needs, the burden of cuts was found to be nineteen times that placed on most other citizens. Contrary to the government’s repeated claim to be ‘protecting’ and ‘targeting resources’ on ‘the most vulnerable in society’, the cuts were effectively aimed at disabled people. At the same time, decisions were made to benefit the rich and help households with the highest incomes. A 2019 report from the Fabian Society identified how changes to tax and benefit policies since 2010 have contributed to Britain’s crisis of inequality, revealing that the government is providing more financial support for the richest 20 per cent of households than the poorest 20 per cent. Human Catastrophe Evidence before us now and in our inquiry procedure as published in our 2016 report reveals that social cut policies have led to a human catastrophe in your country, totally neglecting the vulnerable situation people with disabilities find themselves in. – Theresia Degener, chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities These words were addressed to representatives of the UK government during the concluding session of a routine public examination of the UK under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It took place less than a year after the government dismissed the findings of the committee’s special investigation. Death and suicides linked to cuts and benefit changes are the most extreme example of the human cost of austerity and welfare reform, but there have been many other terrible impacts, including rising poverty, food-bank use, debt, survival crime, and homelessness, in addition to dramatically escalating levels of mental distress. A study by academics from Liverpool and Oxford Universities published in 2015 found that reassessments for Incapacity Benefit from 2010 to 2013 were associated with an extra 590 suicides, 279,000 additional cases of self-reported mental health problems and the prescribing of a further 752,000 anti-depressants. Victims of welfare reform who have died or taken their lives as a direct consequence of benefit cuts are now a common item on daily media coverage. Legislation and policies that have inflicted such suffering have also largely failed to deliver their stated aims. The transition from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) was intended to save 20 per cent compared with DLA remaining in place, but it appears to have cost around 15 to 20 per cent more. A report from the Office for Budget Responsibility published in January 2019 estimated an overspend on the DLA/PIP budget of £2 billion, leaving an estimated £4.2 billion shortfall when compared to the original savings target. On a societal level, cuts to local authority budgets threaten disabled people’s continued existence in the community alongside non-disabled people. Funding cuts to education and social care and a failure to invest in accessible social housing are leading us towards physical re-segregation and institutionalisation. Alongside this, there has been a fuelling of attitudes that ‘other’ and thereby marginalise disabled people: on the one hand, growing disadvantage, resulting from cuts to state-funded support and leading to greater reliance on charity, has encouraged a pitying view of disability; on the other, hatred and hostility towards disabled people have been enflamed by anti-benefit-claimant rhetoric used by the government to justify welfare reform. Political Fallout Agovernment does not attack its own citizens en masse without consequence. The impacts of austerity and welfare reform on disabled people have played a significant but overlooked role in the political upheaval of the last ten years. In terms of retaining control of Westminster, the Tories were largely correct in their assumption that — as Iain Duncan Smith observed — ‘[disabled people] don’t vote for us’, and thus that their attacks on disabled people would not affect their chances of re-election. Nevertheless, Cameron’s miscalculation on the EU referendum can be attributed to his failure to adequately understand the impacts of his policies and the bitter anger towards anything regarded as ‘establishment’. Welfare reform has politicised large swathes of people. Experiences where individuals have their benefits stopped are obviously traumatic for those affected, but all benefit claimants are now subject to a benefit assessment approach which is personally humiliating. Trauma, confusion, and anger can turn to demoralisation and distress, but they can also lead to politicisation and activism. Research by the University of Essex and Inclusion London found that, in order to make sense of their situation, claimants came to think about their difficulties within the context of politics and Tory attacks on disabled people. Those who adopted an attitude of resistance towards the system and/or became politically engaged were better able to restore a sense of self-esteem that had been taken from them by their interactions with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Issues affecting disabled people have the potential to cause far greater social upheaval than the public and political profile of disability suggests. Disabled people make up 22 per cent of the population, a figure that is often underestimated. We are geographically and generationally dispersed across the population. Issues relevant to us also affect our friends, family, neighbours, and the range of workers whose jobs are linked to disability. Lack of recognition for the social significance of disability issues within politics and the media reinforces in those experiencing them the idea that their lives are not valued by those in power, making them hungry for a change from the status quo. Forefront of the Fightback With the Disabled People’s Movement (DPM) in decline from the mid-1990s, resistance from 2010 onwards can be characterised as a return to grassroots activism. In a conscious departure from the identity politics era of disability campaigning, new groups such as Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) were set up with the explicit aim of building alliances and joining the wider anti-capitalist movement. One of the ways in which the British government was able to get away with making war on disabled people was by the sheer volume and complexity of the measures they unleashed. Where disabled people and their allies succeeded in holding them back was through intense and varied activity operating on many fronts and involving many people, each making an invaluable contribution in their own way. Resistance has used every tool at its disposal — from research, lobbying, protests, endless legal challenges, awareness-raising, and direct action. Collectively, the stakes are too high to give up and give in. Since 2010, campaigners have won significant victories such as forcing Atos, a global corporation with a revenue measured in billions, out of its contract to deliver the Work Capability Assessment. The government has been free to ignore the UN disability committee findings but it was a considerable achievement for grassroots disabled activists to secure the unprecedented special investigation that took place from 2015–16. The findings served to validate the experiences of millions of disabled people under attack from their own government. The government’s failure to slash the DLA/PIP budget can be attributed to the hard work of campaigners, claimants, advisers, and public lawyers who have consistently resisted attempts by the DWP to introduce measures limiting eligibility for the benefit. Disabled activists have been at the forefront of the anti-austerity movement. Despite our efforts, the direction of government policy is further regression of disabled people’s living standards. One of the impacts of this is that it is becoming harder for disabled people to mobilise resistance. The War Goes On In December 2019, the most right-wing government in modern British history was re-elected with a significantly increased majority. This was disastrous news for disabled people. Under Boris Johnson, the Conservatives now had the parliamentary power not simply to carry on in the same direction with the continuation of policies that have spread inequality, poverty, and immiseration, but to ramp up their attacks and implement welfare reform measures that they were previously beaten back from achieving. An early indication of what the election result meant for disabled people was the decision announced in the New Year’s honours list to award Iain Duncan Smith a knighthood. Duncan Smith had not held a ministerial appointment since his period as secretary of state for work and pensions from 2010 to 2016. The honour effectively endorsed the dismantling of the social security safety net over which he presided. It also suggested full government commitment to rolling out Duncan Smith’s big idea, Universal Credit, in spite of the well-evidenced harms it has caused. Into this picture, we then had the Covid-19 outbreak. The pandemic exposed existing inequalities within society even more starkly than a decade of austerity and welfare reform had. Disabled people were at the same time most at risk from coronavirus and also largely ignored in official responses to the pandemic. At a time of great uncertainty and anxiety, disabled activists and health workers had to challenge NHS guidelines that stated that disabled people were not a priority for life-saving treatment. Two thirds of deaths from coronavirus in the UK are disabled people. Between 15 March and 2 May, 22,500 disabled people died from Covid-19 compared to 15,500 non-disabled people. Campaigners suspect that Boris Johnson’s original strategy of seeking to create ‘herd immunity’ and the government’s failure to do more to protect disabled people was part of a deliberate plan to remove from society those whose lives are deemed to represent a cost burden on the state. This is not inconceivable. Both Johnson and his close adviser Dominic Cummings have expressed views described by researcher-activist Roddy Slorach as ‘textbook examples of eugenic opinion’. Speaking to city bankers during his time as mayor of London, Johnson said: Whatever you think of the value of IQ tests it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85 while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130 … the harder you shake the pack the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top. And for one reason or another — boardroom greed or, as I am assured, the natural and God-given talent of boardroom inhabitants — the income gap between the top cornflakes and the bottom cornflakes is getting wider than ever. Inequality is a state that Johnson and Cummings both regard as natural and even desirable for the functioning of society. It is nevertheless important to remember that the war against disabled people cannot just be attributed to individual ministers or Tory governments. Its existence is bound up with the intrinsic relationship between disability and capitalism. What has happened since 2010 is a sharp reflection of the fundamentally important role that the category of disability plays within capitalist political economy, where it serves to identify the less productive members of society and enables a ‘weeding out’ from the rest of the population. Interrogating the relationship between disability and capitalism is a powerful way to expose the inequalities and cruelty of the system of exploitation under which we live. It is no wonder then that disability issues are so hidden and misunderstood within mainstream society: they need to be shrouded in myths and misconceptions in order to obscure the true nature of capitalism. Those of us who want a fairer world must fight for improvements in the living conditions of disabled people as part of — not in isolation from — the rest of the working class. But our resistance must also be consciously situated within the struggle to transcend capitalism itself. Only then can we guarantee freedom from oppression and a society where diversity is truly valued. This article is excerpted from Ellen Clifford’s The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe which is now out from Zed Books.
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