Benefits

The “gay girl blogger” in Damascus was really a male student in Edinburgh. Labour movement activists must be wondering whether the “leader of the Labour Party” is really some dimwitted Blairite apparatchik. As the Tories launch their Workfare scheme and their slightly-modified NHS marketisation plans, Ed Miliband made a speech on 12 June... pillorying people on incapacity benefit for not getting jobs, and recommending local authorities allocate council housing not by need but by whether tenants have jobs or do voluntary work. He also said, rightly, that: • New Labour “saw responsibility as...

Theydon Boyce is a benefits worker in East London. Tell us about the work you do. I work in a east London processing centre that administers claims for Income Support, Jobseekers Allowance, Incapacity Benefit and Employment Support Allowance. Do you and your workmates get the pay and conditions you deserve? Definitely not. Some long serving colleagues have not had a consolidated pay rise for five years now. Low pay is endemic. 63% of civil servants earn less than £25,000 a year. The starting salary in my office is £17,650, barely above the London Living Wage. The sickness absence policy is...

The Work Programme unveiled last week by Department for Work and Pensions minister Chris Grayling is in many respects another stage of the “welfare reform” process initiated by New Labour. Where the last government operated an array of schemes for the unemployed, sick and disabled, Work Programme essentially merges them into one. Many of the companies bidding for Work Programme contracts – A4E, G4S, Serco – also made large profits from running New Labour schemes like the New Deal. The New Deal like the planned Work Programme also included mandatory “work placements” of up to 26 weeks where...

Over the bank holiday weekend of 28-30 May a number of British papers covered stories on the “Ten worst excuses put forward by benefit cheats”. This was simple and yet carefully crafted populist journalism. Crafted not only because it played to all the stereotypes of the poor, (feckless, swindling, on-the-make) but also because it had “watercooler currency”. The ten worst excuses were being swapped on radio phone-ins, comment columns and no doubt workplaces over the following days. For a short time public discussion about the welfare system and cuts was dominated by “yes, but have you heard...

Government plans to cut housing benefit will have a particularly severe effect on young disabled people according to a homeless charity. Crisis says the changes could leave up to 11,000 young disabled people homeless. From next January single people aged 25-34 will only be able to claim housing benefit for a room in a shared house rather than a one-bedroom flat, an average cut of £41 a week. According to figures produced by the Department for Work and Pensions, the average cut will rise to £45 a week across the South East, £87 a week across London, £108 a week in Westminster, £109 a week in...

A report produced by the University of Portsmouth and accountancy firm PKF, “Welfare to Work in the 21st Century”, is based in part, it says, on interviews with “23 clients from difficult to employ groups: 18 of who were identified via Kennedy Scott and 5 via the GMB”. Kennedy Scott is an employment training provider currently delivering the New Deal programme for the Department for Work and Pensions in London and the South East. The report recommends that “the DWP pilot a US welfare-to-work programme developed by America Works". The same US workfare company is known for the draconian regime...

The reality of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government’s cuts has been revealed by figures showing that the number of women claiming unemployment benefits is at its highest level since 1996. According to the Office for National Statistics, 474,000 women were in receipt of Jobseekers Allowance last month. Out of a total of 12,400 JSA new claims in April, more than three-quarters were made by women. As well as cuts to local government, the civil service and voluntary sector disproportionately hitting women workers (65% of public sector workers and 75% of local government workers are women)...

In the context of the fight for the welfare state, how do struggles for reforms intersect with the goal of revolutionary socialism? Click here to download article as pdf .

On 14 April, David Cameron tried to firm up the Tory vote for 5 May with a hardline speech on immigration and on welfare cuts. The speech was made to an invited audience of Tory activists in a small town, but pushed to the press so that it would get front-page headlines. ( Daily Mail : “PM savages Labour's open-door policy”). Lib-Dem leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said he saw the speech in advance and “noted rather than approved” it. Lib-Dem business minister Vince Cable, more irritably, told the BBC that the speech was “very unwise”. “I do understand there is an election coming...

At the same time that its policies send unemployment skyrocketing, the Coalition government is persecuting the unemployed. On 1 April the Guardian cited Jobcentre Plus workers whistleblowing on a practice of bosses imposing arbitrary targets for throwing people off the dole. Claimants have been deliberately confused tricked into failing stringent obligations placed on them to look for work. Staff at one Jobcentre, for instance, were given a target of three people a week each to refer to “sanctions” i.e. removal of benefits. Individual advisers, teams and regions are being pushed to compete for...