The ‘Welfare Reform Bill’ : a Declaration of War
On the eve of the founding conference of the Scottish Anti Cuts Alliance, I received a letter from Iain Duncan Smith MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. After dithering for months about whether to accept a public debate-challenge, over plans to cut benefits by £18 billion, he was finally saying no: “due to my diary commitments for the foreseeable future.”
So, despite calls for IDS to debate with myself from the Scottish Trade Union Congress, FBU, RMT’s Bob Crow, PCS, National Shop Stewards Network, actor Brian Cox, Jody McIntyre, disability rights groups, and others, there would be no debate. After reading the draconian ‘Welfare reform Bill’ I can see why. The Bill is indefensible.
On the DWP’s website, IDS himself led the propaganda charge: “The publication of the Welfare Reform Bill will put work, rather than hand-outs, at the heart of the welfare system.” It is this mix of policy and propaganda which lies at the heart of one of the biggest attacks on the working-class in decades.
In a nutshell, all benefit claimants – particularly sick, disabled and unemployed people – are to be made to pay for the economic crisis by having their incomes slashed. And, as a softening-up exercise, there has been an organised propaganda onslaught in the media to brand benefit claimants as workshy ‘scroungers’.
Largely left out of the propaganda onslaught for now, except for a few snipes at the minimum wage, have been low-paid workers. Yet, this group – several million strong – are also under attack in the same Bill, as tax credits are abolished.
On the day the Bill was published, IDS placed an article in the Daily Telegraph, under the headline: ‘It’s time to end this addiction to benefits’. Here, following earlier rants in papers like The Sun and the Daily Mail, IDS trotted out the old lies that it is benefit claimant laziness, and public-spending ‘waste’ which needs to be curbed, not poverty or inequality. And: ‘Welfare dependency, educational failure, addiction, debt, and family breakdown – these are the five pathways to poverty which we are determined to deal with.
They are our five giants, our modern-day equivalent of the great social challenges William Beveridge outlined all those years ago.’ This dishonest historical reference was to the Report to Parliament on Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942), which pointed to the five ‘Giant Evils’ of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. Whilst Beveridge was no socialist, his recommendations included a demand for a National Health Service, and that benefits would be paid to people who were sick, unemployed, retired or widowed. Beveridge argued that such a system would provide a minimum standard of living “below which no one should be allowed to fall”. The Welfare Reform Bill removes the safety net from millions.
The scale of the attack is the benefits-equivalent of shock-and-awe warfare. Wiped out are: Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, Working Tax Credits & Child Tax Credits, Job Seekers Allowance and Employment Support Allowance. Also vanishing is the Social Fund – although a flawed system, the last resort of all who find themselves in such dire straits that they do not have a penny. Begging and charity will be their only option if the Bill goes through. And, in the small-print is the ending of Industrial Death Benefit, with no clear idea what if anything will replace it.
All of these old elements of welfare, a lifeline for millions of families, will be replaced by ‘Universal Credit’. It is not known how much money families will be given, but it is known – it will be less than before for many (1.7 million people is one figure given by the press for the ‘worse off’, but it is likely to be much higher once new job losses are factored in, and the full details of the cuts are announced during the passage of the Bill through Parliament.) Some hints of the horrors to come are given in the Bill’s guidance notes – yearly savings from cuts by 2014 of nearly half a billion pounds in Housing Benefit, over £1 billion in Disability Living Allowance, and £1.43 billion in Employment Support Allowance. And these are only some of the cuts planned. Alongside closures of advice centres, NHS and other care facilities – it all amounts to a massive recipe for mass misery, and the need, as in the days of the poll tax, for an uprising by millions of people.
This attempt by the Con-Dem Cabinet of millionaires to wipe out welfare flows straight out of Right-wing think tanks. ‘Universal Credit’ was largely designed by the Adam Smith Institute – Thatcher’s favourite policy group. It’s ideas on privatisation and cutbacks fuelled not only the Tories bonfires of services, but also New Labour policy. The group’s Director gave Tony Blair’s welfare-to-work programme 9 out of 10 for performance! This was the policy which signalled to the Tories that New Labour were prepared to go along with blaming benefit claimants, rather than poverty, ill-health and unemployment for growing welfare bills.
There is a collusion today between Tories, Lib-Dems and Labour on the ‘need to cut welfare’, and all are apologists for the deadly profiteering of Atos Healtchcare Ltd, which has disallowed benefits to hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people. Ed Miliband, who praised Atos in a recent visit to the company, accepts most of the cuts: “The government is right to reform welfare, just as we did when we were in government.” This is a slap in the face to the 500,000 people estimated by the study-group Compass to have been unfairly cut off Incapacity benefits over the last 15 years. It is a figure likely to go up as 10,000 sick people a week are ‘migrated’ off Incapacity Benefits from April, under tests which the governments own advisors have said are unfair.
Some of the victims in all of this are dying. The press is picking up on a few of their stories. In Derbyshire, it was a former miner, who had fought for 8 months to get on benefits, despite a severe heart condition. Even then he was harassed to attend courses, until he died. In Fife, a severely ill man who weighed 5 stones and could barely walk was declared ‘fit for work’ by an Atos official. Two day later, this ill man also died. Three other deaths were highlighted in a report in the Herald, and the Guardian interviwed a 31 year old woman with MS who says she will kill herself if she is cut off DLA, as she would then become a prisoner in her own home.
Increasingly, organisers of sick, disabled and unemployed people are challenging the lies of the Right-wing press and the government. Strong campaigning links are being formed with trade unionists to oppose all the cuts. The stakes are high – nothing less than the reversal of all these vicious cuts in order to save lives, and prevent further impoverishment of millions of families. We want to see an end to profiteers in welfare and health; and a welfare system based on medical and social needs, not cuts and profits. Above all, we want a society free from fear. For me, that’s a socialist society.
