NOTES AHEAD OF THE WHITE PAPER ON WELFARE REFORM
Britain has more than four million people who are of working age but who are claiming benefit on the basis that they are not working. This is the case after more than a decade of economic growth. The figure is likely to rise substantially now that we have entered a recession.
The numbers who are claiming benefits in this way are about four times the equivalent figure in the 1960s. This has been a massive increase and it shows particularly in the number claiming benefit on the basis that they are sick or incapable and then number claiming benefit as lone parents.
This enormous change in our society has been and remains extremely damaging.
1. Living on benefits and not on earned income is demoralising and disaffecting for many people. It has a tendency (though of course this does not always happen) to change the values of those affected. People are sorely tempted to go on claiming benefits when they know, in fact, they are no longer genuinely entitled to them. Karen Matthews, allegedly, was tempted to have more children for the bad reason that she would get more benefits and perhaps larger accomodation. Women are tempted not to care so much whether a man who fathers a child with her actually stays around. Men consequently feel they no longer have a duty to take responsibility for children they father. Unintended consequences such as these reverberate through a benefits culture.
2. The unemployed are depressed as is evidenced by the increased likelihood of them becoming ill, committing suicide, drinking and smoking more than others and dying.
3. Children brought up in families in which no one has worked are twice as likely to have psychiatric disorders (this telling statistic comes from the government-commissioned report by Professor Gregg published a week or so ago).
4. The benefits system has led to enormous growth in lone parenting and absent fathers. It is well established that children of lone parents and absent fathers tend to less well in life, tend to be less happy and have a greater likelihood of becoming delinquent. (Of course this is a tendency, not true in every or indeed many cases. I should also add that the evidence for this holds true even after allowance is made for class, wealth and other factors which might be thought to be a cause of children's good or bad outcomes.)
5. The welfare benefits have to be paid for out of taxing those who are working. This is, in many cases, simply unfair. It is also distressing to think of able-bodied people claiming benefits and the cost being paid for in part by taxing, for example, elderly people with very low incomes.
6. The fact that millions of able-bodied people are not working means that Britain's economic output and growth is lower than it would otherwise be.
What the present administration has done:
Unemployment benefits
- it has reduced the value of benefits in comparison to earnings (continuing the policy instituted by Lady Thatcher)
- It has created various schemes of encouragement and training to try to get people to work.
- Incapacity benefit has continued to be paid on more attractive terms than unemployment benefit
RESULT There has been a big reduction in the number claiming unemployment benefit/jobseekers' allowance since 1997. (Personally I suspect the reduction in the value of the benefits is the more important cause of this change.)
Sickness and incapacity benefits
- There has been some mild tightening up on the checks on people and some encouragement to take up work.
RESULT The numbers of such benefits are a little higher now than in 1997. These benefits are now the benefit of choice for those who are unemployed. (As well, of course, as being the benefit which is paid to those who have genuine incapacity to work.)
Benefits to lone parents
- Little change except the general reduction of benefits in comparison with earnings.
- Some extra pressure on mothers with older children to take up work. This pressure is now due to increase especially on those with an oldest child of 12 or more.
RESULT A small reduction in the numbers of lone parents claiming benefits.
OVERALL VIEW OF THIS ADMINISTRATION'S PERFORMANCE
The Labour government basically funked it. President Clinton had signed into law a radical change in the USA which resulted a 60 per cent reduction in the numbers claiming welfare benefits. Other countries, according to Professor Gregg, also sharply increased the conditionality of their welfare benefits. Britain has made only marginal progress. The welfare culture with the damaging effects it has on national culture has been allowed to continue.
THE CURRENT PROPOSALS IN THE WHITE PAPER
At the time of writing, these have not been published. If the leaks are accurate, the proposals will tighten up the conditions more and offer more assistance to people in getting work. This is welcome. But it will still be modest compared to what has happened in America. It sounds as though there will be little in the way of workfare or in requiring people to turn up every week either to work or to try to get work (important elements of the reform in New York State, for example).
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Parenting • Reform • Welfare benefits
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Possibly slightly off topic, but I wish I could see how closing job-centres fits in with the government's plans to get people back to work. I live in Saltash (the 5th largest town in Cornwall, with a population of approximately 15,000), where the job-centre was closed earlier this year. Job-seekers are now expected to either find some £3 for bus-fare or to walk 4 miles each way if they want to visit the nearest job-centre. I have no way of knowing how many times this scenario has been repeated nationwide, but (with this government's track recoed) I doubt it is an isolated case.
Posted by: Sylvia at December 14, 2008 04:20 PM
"Benefits to lone parents
- Little change except the general reduction of benefits in comparison with earnings. "
Not if you take into account the cost of accomodation. If you take into account that then benefits have increased in comparison with earnings. In 1995 a graduate employee straight from uni could afford a better house than a single mum would be given not true now. It took me 6 years of working to achieve the same standard of housing as a baby farmer.
Posted by: David at December 17, 2008 04:04 PM
There are people who will be deemed fit to work when they clearly are not capable of working. There is hard medical evidence that I am unfit for work but no doubt I will be told I can do a light job, without of course defining what light job I can do. A one-size-fits-all policy is not going to work. Each person needs to be assessed on their own individual problem. People repeat what they have been told and say that people lie about having a bad back because it cannot be proven either way. Rubbish!!! I go to a manipulative therapist in Neath and he found problems as did a rhumatologist is Singleton Hospital. So there is no reason why x-rays, ct or mri scans cannot be carried out on more people. If nothing shows up the person pays for the cost of the tests themselves, but if they are found not to be lieing they don't pay. Why not incorporate that idea? By the way if they do adopt lie detector tests I have no problem with that because I am not lieing.
Posted by: Wayne Morris at December 18, 2008 05:45 PM
I think the previous comments have missed the point. Its a growing number of people who are claiming benefits when they are fit to work and these are the people who are taking money from the ones that actually need the benefits. When you have 4 million people on benefits - how can you ascertain who is taking the mickey and who isn't?
Posted by: Lillput at December 19, 2008 11:00 AM
I am also proven unfit for work, I have 4 prolapsed disks in my back and take very strong painkillers. I have also had mri scans.
I would like to agree with wayne, onsize fits all will not work with the benefits system, and it isn't working, they have already brought in the reforms to Private rented housing benefit. Under the new reforms there are set amounts in each area for 1 bed, 2bed, 3bed etc each size has a set rate, and if you are a couple or a single person you are entitled to a 1 bed room property and that is it. The limits are like this through all sizes check with your own office. But basically if you are disabled and are a childless couple then you will be entitled to 1 bedroom Rate even if you need a 2 bed property because of your disability they will only pay the 1 bedroom rate.
How's that not discriminatory?
Posted by: fasturd at December 30, 2008 06:12 PM
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My wife has spina bifida she worked until she was 45 and then doctors said he spine was crumbling and she had to stop, I suspect you know what spina bifida is if not the spinal cord has a gap it is not complete it can be serious it can be mild my wife's is serious.
Then I had an accident in which I cut my spinal cord at the L5, this is called a lesion it has affected things like my bowel and my bladder but the loss of use my legs really caused me serious problems , when doctors said to me you will not walk again I said we will see.
This was eighteen years ago and I can walk sort of with crutches but in the most I use a wheelchair, I can cope with all of this and live with it. but the nerves in my spine are firing off pain, it's so severe it can cause my brain to fit and I've had four now already one leaving me in hospital for three months not knowing who I was or anyone else.
Doctor have now found the damage to my spinal cord is severe but thats not half of it, they found the accident had in fact caused damage to my kidneys liver and heart, and then I was told that I might have a tumour I sat down and said for god sake what next, but when you think I fell 100ft straight down hit the floor and told my work mates shit that hurt before passing out, I spent eighteen months in hospital.
Now then thats about me, in the past six years I have tried to return to work, but not work as you know it. My bladder does not work so I have a bag fitted or I can empty my bladder by pushing a tube into my bladder, my bowel does not work, I have to take drugs to empty my bowel and this can happen at anytime and I've no control.
this means sometimes when I'm out I will have a bowel movement because of the drugs it's like water and it's messy.
So simple put what job do you think I would do or could do. let me tell you what my job center thinks and this is no joke.
Perfume sales assistant at Boots did not get it. Painter and decorator doing small jobs like skirting boards from a wheelchair mind you, and then taxi driver for me to drive a car it would cost £20,000 to adapt the car for hands only, sadly I still could not do it because of fits.
Then I was told window cleaning.
Under the new medical regime I would be deemed fit to work
Posted by: treborc at December 10, 2008 10:37 PM