Opposing Welfare Reform

- What's in the Bill?

- Why we oppose it

- Please write to the Lords

- Mums' letters to Lords

- Letter vs BBC attack on claimants

- Complaint to BBC re: programme on welfare

Oppose the Welfare Reform Bill, currently being debated by the Lords, which:

• Brings in Universal Credit to replace Jobseekers Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit.

• Universal Credit will have a personal allowance and additions towards rent, children, childcare costs, disability (two levels based on severity) and other needs. It is not clear what any of these amounts will be, but they are expected to be less than now.

• Removes automatic payment to the main carer, usually the mother, of the benefit for children and childcare.

• Pays benefit monthly in arrears, instead of weekly or fortnightly as now.

• Abolishes the Social Fund which helps with emergencies such as setting up home after homelessness, escaping domestic violence, or leaving prison. Councils will take over responsibility, but have no legal duty to help and no ring-fenced funds.

• Brings in jobseeking for single mothers (and for both parents in couple families) when the child is five, and work-focussed interviews and sessions from when the child is one.

• Brings in more conditions for benefit to do with jobseeking and workfare, and limits our right to benefit if we leave a job. ‘Work for your benefit’, i.e. £1.63 an hour, is already being implemented.

• Enforces conditions through harsher sanctions, including a three-year ban from claiming benefits if we refuse three ‘reasonable’ job offers.

• People in low-waged work who apply for Universal Credit will be expected to work longer hours or look for a better paid job.

• Forces job seekers to look for work up to 90 minutes away from home, with no limit on what we should spend travelling to and from work.

• Maintains (but not extends) the current 13-week exemption from jobseeking for victims fleeing domestic violence.

• Excludes pensioners with small savings from pension credit.

• Pensioners caring for children or grandchildren will not be able to claim child tax credit and no replacement has been proposed.

• Brings in a ‘benefits cap’ of around £500 per week per couple or family, perhaps lower for a single claimant, which takes account of all benefits.

• Caps the housing allowance so it may not cover the full rent or mortgage. The allowance will be set nationally, without reference to local rents.

• Reduces the housing allowance by £11-£21 a week when a home is ‘under-occupied’ i.e. has a ‘spare’ bedroom. From 2012 single people under 35 won’t be allowed to claim for a one-bed flat, only for a bedsit.

• Fixes the council tax allowance despite varying council tax charges.

• Replaces Disability Living Allowance (DLA) with Personal Independence Payment (PIP). People now on low-rate DLA won’t qualify. We’ll have to be disabled for the six months (not three months as now) to apply. People in residential care won’t get mobility money.

• Limits contributions-based Employment and Support Allowance to one year. Now there is no time limit.

• Immigrant people not entitled to work won’t be able to claim contributions-based benefits despite having paid taxes.

• Forces people to pay back benefit overpayments even when we didn’t know we were being overpaid.

• Restricts rights to independent appeals against benefit decisions.

• Applies Universal Credit with an untested computerised system.

Oppose the Bill by:

- Speaking out against it at occupations, rallies, public meetings . . .

- Urging organisations and trade unions to defend our right to benefits as a crucial way to defend everyone’s wages and working conditions.

- Protesting at Jobcentres, “back to work” companies, Atos offices.

- Telling Lords, MPs and media how you’ll be affected (cc your letter to us).

- Supporting anti-poverty amendments by Zacchaeus 2000 Trust and others.

- Protesting against media misrepresentation of claimants as scroungers.

- Sharing info about rights and successes so we can better defend ourselves.

- Urging nurses, doctors, teachers and other professionals to oppose the cuts and lobby government about the impact of these changes.

www.globalwomenstrike.net Tel: 020 7482 2496
 

Defend our entitlement to benefits – we’re not “workless”

Dear friends,

People who haven’t been on benefits before and have recently lost their job, are shocked by how little money you are supposed to live on. Jobseekers get £67.50 a week, under-25s only £53.45. How can we cover the rising costs of food, fuel, rent, transport and other basics on this?

Now, even this small guarantee of survival is under threat. The Welfare Reform Bill is being rushed through Parliament. People assume that welfare will continue, but it won’t if the government gets its way.

Take sickness benefit. It used to be that if you had cancer or other serious or terminal illness, you would get sickness benefit – but this hasn’t been true for years. We are regularly found “fit for work” regardless of ill-health. If we get Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) -- which replaced incapacity benefits – most of us are expected to “prepare for work” and to attend Jobcentre appointments, even when we are undergoing chemotherapy. Only 6% of people who apply for ESA are excused “work-related activity”.

This is the cruel regime which the coalition wants to extend to all claimants regardless of circumstances. And it is spending £2 billion to change admin. systems to do so.

The Bill is abolishing Jobseekers Allowance, ESA, Housing Benefit, the Social Fund and Income Support and replacing them with ‘Universal Credit’. Other benefits are also being abolished. Benefit levels are expected to be set even lower than they are already and paid monthly in arrears. Those who can’t manage the long gaps between payments will be unable to eat or will fall prey to loan sharks – debt already accounts for a lot of the worsening poverty

New sanctions are being introduced, heavier than ever. On 6 October, the Work and Pensions Minister Lord Freud announced that people will be barred from benefits for three years if they refuse “three reasonable job offers”. We’ll be expected to travel three hours a day for work. Is that a reasonable job offer? Who is likely to suffer? Those of us with an already heavy workload because of children to care for, or disability. More here 

Mothers are expected to become jobseekers when our youngest child turns five. Since 2008, this age deadline has dropped from 12 to seven to five. Only mothers of babies under one will be excused. In couple families, both parents are expected to be jobseekers.

Benefits can be arbitrarily stopped, and already often are. Trivial ‘breaches’ of the jobseeking agreement can lead to benefits being stopped, endangering the survival of the whole family. A single mother of three children who does some tasks as part of her jobseeking agreement but misses making one phonecall, may have her whole benefit stopped, including her rent, threatening the roof over her and her children’s heads. If problems escalate, she may then have her children taken away by social services because she can’t provide for them – so that not only destitution but the trauma of separation is visited upon mother and children. People who have missed appointments because they were ill, received job application forms in the post too late to apply, or can’t read information, have been tricked out of benefit and exist on hardship payments of £30 a week, food parcels or nothing. 
Jobcentres 'tricking' people out of benefits to cut costs, says whistleblower

Many benefits staff who were trained to help people get their entitlements, have been deliberately got rid of, replaced by call centres where staff are trained not to care and some vent their prejudices against claimants. An ‘accent’ may be enough to get you targeted and told wrong information.

The complaints sections, where you could ask senior staff to sort out errors other staff made and put people’s claim back on within a day, have been abolished. Privatised ‘back-to-work’ companies working to targets and for profit, are making people come in for interviews and Mickey Mouse sessions just to make up numbers. Even when we are desperately sick, suicidal or disabled and unable to travel without problems, we are made to come in and answer questions about our ‘employment goals’, under threat that our ’benefit could be affected’.

The Welfare Reform Bill is inviting a “food parcel” society – no guaranteed entitlement to cash income -- where destitute and near-destitute people can be exploited and abused in all kinds of ways. Asylum seekers were the first to be made destitute. This is what’s going to happen to many of us unless this Bill is stopped:

1. Disabled people, single mothers, young people just out of care and others will end up destitute, homeless and begging on the street as we did before the welfare state. Many homeless and benefit-less people are already begging.

2. Vulnerable people will be the first to suffer increased illness and early death.

3. Mental health problems and violent attacks, suicide, drink and drug addiction will go up and more of us will be sectioned.

4. Others of us will end up in prison because we may have to resort to shoplifting or prostitution to survive. It’s ironic that government ministers have made a moral point of stopping Jobcentres from advertising sex industry jobs, while their cuts are forcing more and more women onto the game. (more here)

5. More women and children will be vulnerable to rape and other violence in the home if we have to put up with a violent man just to keep a roof over our head because there is no longer help to leave and set up home somewhere else.

6. Malnutrition will cause more babies to be born with low birth-weight and disabilities.

7. More accidents and fires as children are left home alone because both parents are at work or looking for a non-existent job.

8. Very young children will spend ever-longer hours in childcare even into the evening while mothers are forced to work unsocial hours, because those who refuse will lose their job or be denied benefit.

9. A rise in children taken into care as mothers are deemed unfit because they can’t find a job or can’t cope.

10. People working inhuman long shifts and accepting terrible working conditions.

The Bill concentrates on people of ‘working age’, but pensioners, mostly women, are being finished off in hospital wards where yet again, spot checks have found patients deprived of water, food and basic care. All the entitlements generations have fought and lost their lives for, are being taken away. Only the wealthy are considered to have any value. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/oct/13/nhs-hospitals-care-of-elderly

Women’s retirement age is being raised to 66 and maybe further. If we are 60+, we are expected to compete for jobs alongside younger people. Those of us who are older will be discriminated against as too old, and those who are young because we are inexperienced.

The government wants to cap benefit income per week at £500 total – for everyone in the household, including rent and all our needs, except perhaps if someone has a serious disability. If we have a large family, we’ll suffer most. Even Child Benefit – which children need and mothers earn with their vital caring work – is included in the benefit cap. If we have several children and are also caring for elderly parents, we could lose Carers’ Allowance because our weekly benefit total already comes to £500. And those of us entitled to maintenance from the father of our children have to pay a fee for maintenance collection, out of money our children need.

As parents, we’re struggling to cover childcare costs since Working Tax Childcare Credit was cut to 70%. New money for parents doing less than 16 hours waged work a week does not make up for this cut. It’s like they will do anything to make parents go out to work, but won’t pay for decent childcare.

We face a threat to the roof over our head: spending food money on rent, as the housing allowance is too low. If we live in a wealthy area, the government will only pay part of our rent due to the housing benefit cap. Children will have to move schools, families will have to move out from wealthy areas, disrupting relationships. Blame extortionate rents on landlords, not us! If we are in Council or housing association homes, we’ll be expected to move if our place becomes “underoccupied” after our children or a carer leaves. We won’t have the option of rent paid direct to landlords, so if we have trouble budgeting, we are more likely to be evicted for arrears.

The disability amount in Universal Credit is likely to be too low to meet extra disability costs of living such as heating. Already, we are having to choose between paying for food, heating or charges for essential homecare services.

Disability Living Allowance, paid on top for care and mobility needs, is also being abolished and replaced with a stricter benefit called Personal Independence Payment. 78,000 fewer disabled people will get cash help with care and mobility needs. Many of us who use DLA to get to work, etc., will be forced to give up waged work. If we’re in a residential home, we won’t have any mobility money to go out independently, only group outings (if any) which we may not have chosen. Other provision is also being cut.

· People who were in work before falling ill will only get one year of contributions-based sickness benefit. Cancer patients and others need time to recover. Many of us are not eligible for alternative means-tested benefit if we have some savings.

· Those of us who are immigrant and have worked hard for years, paying National Insurance, won’t get any contributions-based benefits such as Maternity Allowance, even if we have paid for the required years, unless we are officially entitled to work in the UK. And the UK got ready-made workers, not paying anything for our schooling or training!

· They are abolishing the Social Fund (community care) loans, which we rely on to furnish a new home if we are fleeing domestic violence, coming out of hospital or prison, or lost all our belongings after a crisis. The government expects us to apply to local councils instead, who’ll have no obligation to help and no dedicated funds for it.
 

WHAT WE ARE DOING AND INVITE YOU TO DO WITH US

No party stands with us. They are all determined to end our entitlements and run us into the ground. Only a few individual politicians have been speaking out against the Bill. But more can be persuaded to oppose the Bill if we tell them what the consequences are for us, which gives them ammunition to oppose it and particular measures in it.

We are:

® Writing to Lords and MPs about the impact of the Bill and how we’ll be personally affected.

® Urging local councillors and Councils, doctors and other professionals, to lobby government about the impact of these changes.

® Spelling out the welfare cuts at anti-cuts protests – it’s not just about jobs.

® Protesting against welfare cuts and workfare at Jobcentres, “back to work” companies, Atos offices.

® Sharing information about our benefit rights so we know the rules we can rely on and what other people have been able to establish.

For information and to campaign together against these cuts we want to meet you. We can help to spread your news. Contact:

Single Mothers’ Self-Defence smsd@allwomencount.net

WinVisible (women with visible and invisible disabilities) Tel: 020 7482 2496 or email: win@winvisible.org

Global Women’s Strike gws@globalwomenstrike.net

Legal Action for Women law@allwomencount.net

Websites: www.allwomencount.net www.globalwomenstrike.net www.winvisible.org

 “BBC accused of anti-welfare stance “

 Guardian Letters, Friday 28 October 2011

We are outraged that the BBC is joining the propaganda war aimed at destroying the welfare state, Britain's most civilised and civilising legacy (Last night's TV, G2, 28 October). In the 1940s, after years of depression and slaughter, working-class people who had sacrificed so much felt entitled to [a world where they mattered] -- a life without the constant threat of war and poverty.

Family allowance, income support, unemployment and housing benefits, disability benefits, a state pension, the NHS and free education have assumed that everyone contributed and deserved to be looked after "from the cradle to the grave".

Entitlement fostered not only dignity and respect, but decent wages and working conditions for those of us in work. [The social wage ensured that we are not destitute if we turn down starvation wages. When people are threatened by destitution, decent wages and hours cannot be maintained.]

Since 1979, Thatcher's love for the free market and her hatred for "the culture of entitlement" has determined social policy. We are now all expected to chase nonexistent jobs or work for our benefits, i.e. £1.63 an hour; sick and disabled people are found "fit for work" even despite terminal illnesses; older people have had their pensions postponed because living "too long" is [considered not a blessing but] a crisis; the vital work of mothers and other carers is disregarded and dismissed. [Prisoners sentenced to lose their liberty are not sentenced to slavery; but they are now having to work for corporations for as little as £2 a day.]
The minimum wage is bypassed and we all stand to lose. Why should corporations pay a living wage if they can get claimants and prisoners to work without one?

We are expected to compete with Chinese workers, 600,000 of whom drop dead from overwork every year. Is that what we should aspire to? The Chinese, like the rest of us, are demanding better wages and working conditions – and the welfare state is part of that.
Haven't they noticed people are getting together internationally to raise everyone's standards, not to lower them? The fight is on for the society Thatcher said did not exist.

Selma James Global Women's Strike
John McDonnell, MP
Mark Serwotka General secretary, PCS
Bob Crow General secretary, RMT
Nina López Legal Action for Women
Kim Sparrow Single Mothers' Self-Defence
Claire Glasman WinVisible (women with visible and invisible disabilities)
Marie Lynam Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group
Prof Peter Beresford Chair, Shaping Our Lives
Noel Lynch Chair, London Green Party
Dave Skull Mad Pride
Johnny Void Benefit Claimants Fightback
Sam Weinstein assistant to the President, Utility Workers Union of America
Alan Wheatley Green Party Trade Union Group
Joanna Long Boycott Workfare
Anne-Marie O'Reilly London Coalition Against Poverty

[The sentences in italics were edited out by the Guardian.]

Complaint email to BBC Radio4 Today Programme, 27 October 2011

“I am appalled at John Humphrey's piece on welfare reform Today programme, 27 October 2011. He finished by saying that Beveridge failed to deal with the culture of idleness and this government must deal with the culture of entitlement. What about the right to live free from poverty.

Minimum wage jobs leave people in absolute poverty. Four million children are living in poverty in the UK. The majority (59 per cent) of poor children live in a household where at least one adult works. So work doesn’t prevent grinding and debilitating poverty. And Rev. Paul Nicolson provides chilling figures on how this poverty is going to increase. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-1000-more-doctors-join-call-to-reject-nhs-bill-2369043.html

Children and their mothers will be begging on the street.

I was particularly incensed at his attitude to the single mother who said that she couldn’t find a job that would fit around childcare or cover the costs. Why should she have to take another job? She is already doing the most vital job there is – raising a child.

John Humphreys earns £150,000 a year. That is 3000 a week. And he feels qualified to tell people that they are idle if they refuse to work for a wage that you cannot survive on. Shame on him.”