Is Welfare Reform The Hidden Threat To Liberals?
Forget NHS reforms and tuition fees, it is welfare reform which the Liberals should be worried about, argues Chris Bowers.
29 Feb 2012, 14:35
Should Clegg be worried?
Tuition fees, NHS reform, lost electoral reform referendum. You could make out a case that the coalition has been a bit of a disaster for the Liberal Democrats. I wouldn’t – I think there have been some major achievements, and it could be that the political historians will come to write about this period as the golden era of modern liberalism in British politics.
Such achievements have happened as a result of concessions, which means the Lib Dems will be forever gritting their teeth at things they have to accept that they’ve always campaigned against (as indeed will certain figures on the right wing of the Conservative Party). But there is one area that hasn’t garnered the headlines that perhaps should be causing the Lib Dems more soul-searching than it has.
The way Iain Duncan Smith has reinvented himself – turning from failed Tory leader to leading exponent of a modern-day welfare system – is quite remarkable. Yet look behind the clauses of the Welfare Reform Bill, and to many liberally-minded folk IDS hasn’t changed at all.
Indeed there is an awful lot to be alarmed about.
Like any department that has evolved, the Department of Work and Pensions could do with a certain restructuring. It’s important to ask whether money is being spent in the most efficient way possible. And is enough use being made of approaches that target the cause of people needing benefits, for example lack of self-esteem, lack of opportunities to work? Even whether certain approaches that have evolved in the alternative movement could help someone back to work (for example, breathing techniques to help those vulnerable to panic attacks).
Yet if these questions get used as cover for budget cuts, bad decisions can be made, and there is a danger that the Welfare Reform Bill (WRB) is indeed rapidly becoming a cover for a massive round of public spending cuts among some of our most vulnerable citizens: those with physical and mental disabilities. Under the guide of welfare reform, there seems to be a redefining of illness and disability, and the fact that this redefining is linked with considerable spending reductions should ring alarm bells with anyone who believes – like I do – that our attitude to vulnerable people is what defines how civilised our society really is.
To take one example. There is a proposal to reduce the benefit bill for Disability Living Allowance by 20% (and the number of claimants by 23%). The official line is that this is to ensure the benefit gets to the most needy. Nothing wrong with that in principle, except that the reality is a random redrawing of the lines to remove benefit from people who are in need.
Not only that, but the plan is to force disabled people to work while receiving Employment Support Allowance (the replacement for incapacity benefit), and to force them to do so indefinitely. The word ‘force’ is used deliberately – the proposal is that it should be mandatory. This includes people who have been diagnosed as being terminally ill. The absence of fairness from this proposal should worry the party that made the biggest deal out of ‘fairness’ at the last election.
Accompanying the detail is a campaign to change people’s perception of disability and mental illness. The minister for disabled people, Maria Miller, said last week there is no problem for disabled people getting jobs; the problem is their attitude towards the jobs that are supposedly plentifully available for them. No doubt one can easily find a few people whose sense of being a victim leads them to gain more for their self-esteem by not working than by taking on some form of work, and of course we should encourage people to work if they can. But to assume that the nation’s welfare budget problems can be summed up by saying there are masses of jobs for disabled people that they just don’t want to do is perverse, and a terrible reflection on our society.
At the root of this is not just George Osborne’s wish to cut spending, but the tactical machinations of an insurance industry whose gut instinct is to say ‘How can we avoid paying out?’
Both the last Labour government and the current coalition have been receiving advice from Unum, an American insurance provider with a record of having suffered several convictions in America for failing to pay their customers what they were due.
The latest ruse is to try and redefine illness and disability so it becomes ‘biopsychosocial’, which is effectively a form of downgrading so that insurance companies – and by extension governments – don’t have to pay out as much. If you then run a PR campaign to suggest disabled people could be doing more to help themselves, you generate public support for such redefinitions. Yet what happens if much of the truth doesn’t fit? Interestingly, the Department for Work & Pensions has twice in recent months been reprimanded by the head of the UK Statistics Authority for overstepping the mark over claims about benefit scroungers put out in press releases.
It was this kind of thinking that got the Conservative Party the tag ‘the nasty party’.
That it should be happening again is perhaps not surprising. That it should be happening with Lib Dem approval should be of greater discomfort to Lib Dems, certainly than tuition fees. And as the move towards redefinition as a route to financial savings started under Labour, the acquiescence of the Lib Dems does rather give the impression of a three-party conspiracy against the most vulnerable members of society.
The big stick with which the Lib Dems have beaten the Conservatives over the NHS issue is that top-down reorganisation was specifically ruled out in the coalition agreement. On the WRB, the reorganisation being promoted by Duncan Smith is not ruled out, but only because the agreement on welfare was so bland and broad that it could cover anything. Yet when the result is an increase in hate crime against disabled people, as has been officially confirmed in recent months, you do wonder whether anyone supporting it can claim the epithet ‘liberal’ to describe their party or their politics.
Comments (2)
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"Yet when the result is an increase in hate crime against disabled people, as has been officially confirmed in recent months"
It seems a bit of a leap to connect the WRB - mostly noted for the generous and overwhelmingly popular cap of "£26000" (equivalent to a taxed salary of £35000, more than the vast majority of taxpayers funding that largesse will ever be paid for working full time) - indeed, as far as disability is concerned, all I've seen is a vague "anti-cut" protest from some disabled people which made them look like economic flat-earthers. *THAT*, I could just about understand causing a backlash against disabled people - but the WRB itself, with almost no public interest in disability aspects? Hardly. Indeed, your article here is the first I've seen from anyone not writing specifically about disability issues which even mentions that aspect of the Bill!
I'm wary of numerical targets, but the notion of being a little stricter as well as more generous with DLA seems a reasonable one, and ESA has included the expectation people will work if they are able for years now: hardly a controversial notion I would think.
The biggest threat here is, ironically, from the WRB: the House of Lords, in opposing the welfare cap, showed itself so ludicrously out of touch that reforming the anachronism to shake out those "let them eat cake" dinosaurs became a much higher priority.
02/03/2012 08:35What concerns many disabled people is that they fear that the replacement of DLA with PIPs will be a cut in disguise. David Cameron said in reply to a question from Dame Joan Ruddock that PIPs would be a better system -it remains to be seen in this is so.
Meanwhile, we have ATOS carrying out assessments for ESA, even though its methods have been heavily criticised by MPs from all parties and independent reviewers. As long as the government continues to use ATOS, many disabled people will be wary of the fairness of any government assessment of their needs.
If Maria Miller really did say the words quoted in the above article, then it is an extraordinarily crass thing to say.
20/03/2012 09:41