Sanctions, sanctions, sanctions

Channel 4 had a programme about the sanctions regime last night which I wasn't able to watch.  I'd intended to catch up on it today, but decided not to bother.  When the producers seek an opinion from the odious Tory front group The Taxpayers' Alliance you know it's not an impartial programme, and posts on Twitter suggest it followed the government line.
The need for truth was highlighted in an extraordinary way in a Twitter exchange this morning.  Kevin Maguire, the Mirror journalist, tweeted: "Imagine being late for work one day and the boss docks your pay for a month.  That's how benefits sanctions work."  Someone replied that he had been 7 minutes late for an appointment and was sanctioned for 3 months.  In came the journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer.  She asked, politely enough, whether he'd been late before and if he'd been given a warning before.  Someone else waded in to point out that there are no warnings in the system and that sanctions are automatic.  Back came the snappy response from Brewer: "not true".  She was asked how she knew that, told politely she was wrong and the point about no warnings was repeated.
Ms Hartley-Brewer obviously doesn't like to be contradicted.  She snarled back: "have you ever tried talking to people who work in the benefits office AND people who've been sanctioned.  It helps."  (She was obviously too cross to pay attention to punctuation.)  The respondent said that she had worked in the system and would like to explain it to her, politely.  But it was too late.  Others waded in, one with a string of obscenities which played into Brewer's hands; she retweeted it.  The polite respondent left the fray and it descended into childish name-calling.  That Brewer was wrong in her original statement was never addressed, and those who were angry and feel themselves provoked were made to look like the baddies.
And that's the trouble.  It's usually impossible to contact a journalist directly, and that's understandable.  But it reinforces the power relationship.  She has a platform.  Whether she is telling the truth about her conversations we can't know.  It seems unlikely, given that she doesn't know what she's talking about.  But like everyone on the right she can ignore all the evidence and repeat government lies.  If she has read the recent reports by various churches she has discounted them.  If she followed the evidence given in the Work & Pensions Select Committee enquiry, she has discounted it.  She prefers to believe IDS, McVey et al because to do otherwise would be to shake her faith in Conservative politics.
There are lots of links I could post, but I'll stick to just one, which is very relevant here, although it's mainly about Universal Credit.  Helen Lewis wrote this excellent piece in the New Statesman last week.
If you haven't yet read Owen Jones' latest book, The Establishment, you really should.  (A4e gets coverage in a section on outsourcing.)  We knew the gist of Jones' argument; but he provides a wealth of facts and figures and pulls the threads together to present a frightening picture.  His concluding chapter contains a hopeful picture of what needs to happen.  But it won't, and that is depressing.

Feeding Britain

The report on hunger came and went.  For the media it was a one-day wonder and then they moved on.  The coverage elicited the expected denial and incomprehension, and nothing will be done.

The report, unfortunately, conflated two unrelated issues; the huge wastage of food, and the fact that large numbers of people can't afford food at all.  This allowed the media to focus on the first and to give the impression that the surplus food now thrown out could feed the poor.  There are, in fact, several organisations such as Fareshare which collect surplus food from the producers and retailers and pass it on for distribution to those charities which feed people; but they can't pass it on to food banks because it's fresh food which can't be stored by those food banks.  And anyway, that would not solve the problem of why people are going hungry.

It was important that the report brought out the reasons for food poverty.  It drew on the figures collected by the Trussell Trust to show that the majority of users are suffering from benefit delays and sanctions.  How did Iain Duncan Smith respond?  According to a Guardian report, he "promised to respond positively, telling MPs "“We want to do everything we can to make sure that people do not stumble into a process of sanctions”.  But on the same day the paper reported, "It is also unlikely that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will shift its stance on the administration of benefit sanctions, even though the report says they are the single biggest reason for the poor resorting to food banks. DWP sources said it was very clear at the start of a benefit claim what was required of a claimant and there would be consequences for failing to meet that commitment."  The FT commented on a suggestion by Nick Clegg, among others, that there should be a sort of "yellow card" system for sanctions, a warning before an actual sanction was imposed.  Many of us would endorse that, and could come up with detailed plans for how it could work.  But, "aides to Iain Duncan Smith, work and pensions secretary, argued that the yellow card warning system was 'not necessary' because jobseeker’s allowance claimants were now required to sign a 'claimant commitment'. This left them in no doubt as to the obligations they were required to fulfil in return for their social security."  So IDS's pious words in the House of Commons were nothing more than pious words.  He did say that he would ensure that people are informed about hardship payments; but neglected to tell his colleagues that such payments are a pittance and don't kick in immediately anyway.
At least we know where Business Minister Matthew Hancock stands.  He said that that food banks had only increased “because more people know about them” and that poverty in Britain “coming down”.

I could point you to numerous articles about the report and the fall-out from it.  But you can find them for yourself.  The fact is that nothing will change.  At PMQs today Clegg, standing in for Cameron, reeled off lie after lie, apparently believing what he was saying.  

Sanctions and lies

The Work & Pensions Select Committee has launched its inquiry into benefit sanctions, something which owes a lot to the tireless pressure of Debbie Abrahams MP.  But if you read its terms of reference (here) you notice some important things missing.  First there's the actual process of sanctioning; the automatic stoppage of money which can't be reversed if it's found to be a mistake.  This is crucial to expose the lie that sanctions are only ever used as a last resort.  And then there's the question of arbitrary sanctions applied by JC or WP staff just because they feel like it or have targets to meet.  The inquiry must hear from victims and whistle-blowers or it's pointless.  The page makes it clear that they can't investigate individual cases, but don't let that stop you if you want to submit evidence.

It gets wearisome to report on Iain Duncan Smith's character and lies.  He knows that he is untouchable and his arrogance has grown to monstrous proportions - as has his rudeness.  There was an incident this week in the House of Commons which demonstrated what one MP called his boorishness.  He had remarked that Rachel Reeves MP, his Labour shadow, "couldn't be bothered" to turn up to vote in a particular debate.  She raised a point of order demanding an apology; he had no knowledge, she said, of why she wasn't there.  IDS showed his contempt by saying something about her being in Rochester (for the by-election).  Reeves denied this and repeated her demand for an apology.  She didn't get one, of course.  This wretched man just smirked.

Then there were the "angry scenes" described in the Mirror at the Work & Pensions Select Committee's hearing yesterday.  Now, I missed this part of IDS's "evidence".  I'd stuck it out for an hour, but couldn't bear any more.  So I didn't hear Debbie Abrahams' ask him about the numbers not included in the unemployment figures because they were sanctioned.  According to an Oxford University study this figure could be as high as 500,000.  IDS's response was that this was "ludicrous".  Ms Abrahams said, "People have died after being sanctioned, Minister."  The response?  "No, I don't agree with that."  The last line of the Mirror's story is, "A DWP spokesman dismissed the study, saying 'It looks to be partially based on unreliable data.'"

This disgusting man and his disgusting department put out a press release today which claims: "More than 12,000 households have made the choice to move into work or stop claiming Housing Benefit because of the benefit cap".  He's been warned about this before; it's a complete falsification of the data.  But the London Evening Standard allows him space to amplify this claim, with the arrogance of the seriously deluded.

Ironically, the Public Accounts Committee reported today on the "scandalous" failure of the Work Programme to help ESA claimants.  The Independent covers this.  It also ends with a meaningless quote from "a DWP spokesman".  I do wish papers would stop giving space to this person.

Nothing is going to change.  And if there is a Conservative majority next May it will get much, much worse.

The brutality of sanctions

You will probably have read about the tragic case of David Clapson (at least, if you read the Daily Mirror or get your news from the internet).  The story first emerged on the same day that Matthew Oakley published his report into the way that sanctions were working.  Clapson's death was first reported in his local paper, but then was taken up by the Mirror with an uncompromising headline: "Killed by benefits cuts: Starving soldier died 'as result of Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reform'."  What made this case so difficult to brush aside was that Clapson couldn't be labelled as a scrounger, even by the most bigoted of right-wingers.  He was a former soldier who had given up work to care for his sick mother and, since her death, was looking for work.  He was sanctioned for missing an appointment.  He was a diabetic, dependent on insulin (which he couldn't take when his electricity was cut off and he couldn't keep it cool).  He died of the consequences of not having the insulin; but there was also no food in his stomach.
The Mirror returned to the story yesterday when David's sister launched a petition for an enquiry into sanctions.  A campaigner for just such a petition is Debbie Abrahams MP, a member of the Work & Pensions select committee.  She thought that Esther McVey had agreed to it at one of the committee's meetings; but I watched that meeting, and felt that McVey had dodged it.  And why would McVey, let alone IDS, agree to such an enquiry?  McVey has lied to the House of Commons (supposedly a serious offence) by stating that sanctions are "only used as a last resort".  Even Matthew Oakley pointed out that that is not true.  And why would they want to investigate the fact that, as the Mirror says, almost a million people apparently deserved punishment by destitution last year?
They know that not enough voters care to make a difference.  Even with the Clapson case there were plenty of people saying that he must have been mentally ill - as if that would make it understandable.  But the ministers also take the view that these are not really people at all.  They inhabit a totally different conceptual universe, one in which the poor are not really human.  And once you've dehumanised someone it is easy to treat him with brutality.
The sanctions regime is brutal.  Every time someone is sanctioned without good reason a crime is being committed.  No, they won't have an enquiry.

The sanctions report

Matthew Oakley's report is out.  You can read it here.  His brief was to look at how the sanctions system was working amongst certain groups; in particular at the communications with, and understanding by, claimants.  It was said from the beginning that the remit was far too narrow, a cosmetic exercise to justify the DWP but ignoring the real issues.  And it was said that Oakley was the wrong person to do it.  If you read the Foreword to the report you do get the impression that Oakley dutifully applauds the system.  But in fact he has gone beyond his brief, and there are some very important points in the document.
The Financial Times wrote a fair piece, highlighting the poor way in which the DWP communicates with claimants who have been sanctioned.  They also got a quote out of Esther McVey: "I have already started to make improvements ..."  Far be it from me to call anyone a liar, but I doubt that this is true.  The Guardian went with the fact that "Benefit sanctions hit most vulnerable people the hardest", sending out unintelligible letters, and not telling people about the availability of hardship payments unless they asked.  There's also a very significant observation from the report: "It also revealed serious flaws in how sanctions were imposed, with Work Programme providers required to send participants for sanctions when they knew they had done nothing wrong, leaving 'claimants … sent from pillar to post'".  This is the first time I've seen this fact in print.  The Guardian produced an update on this article this evening to take account of the fact that the government is to "overhaul the way it treats benefit recipients threatened by sanctions".  This must be based on the DWP's press release, which doesn't use the word overhaul and promises very little.  It does provide a quote from McVey which is probably made up by the DWP Press Office.  (You can play meaningless platitude bingo with it.)  The BBC website has a very careful piece which isn't worth reading.  And from Iain Duncan Smith, not a peep.  
This report is, of course, far from sufficient.  As the TUC has said, there must be a much wider review into the sanctions regime.  Perhaps it should look at this case reported today in a Hertfordshire local paper.  It's as bad as it gets.

Why Iain Duncan Smith should go

Someone yesterday started a story of a conversation supposedly overheard on a train to the effect that in the forthcoming reshuffle "Ian" was to be replaced by "Esther".  Despite there being no substance to this story at all it's made it as far as the BBC website.  One thing that this demonstrates is that Iain Duncan Smith's future is the biggest talking point in the reshuffle.  Will Cameron move him?  Will he have the guts to fire him if he refuses to be moved?  Who would replace him?

I have blogged before about IDS's failures, as have a great many people.  There's an excellent piece on the Labour Left website which lists "Iain Duncan Smith's 100 biggest failures".  It's a heroic effort, well worth study.  But let's distil it into the most obvious areas where his ambition has far exceeded his competence.

• The Work Programme.  This was the first of IDS's grand schemes to be put in place.  It was going to solve unemployment; and the most revolutionary aspect of it was "payment by results".  But it was never that.  The providers were guaranteed an "attachment fee" which would keep them going if they did nothing; and they were able to look forward to an "incentive" payment even if they failed badly.  And fail badly they did.  After 4 years it's clear that job outcomes (below even the minimum performance demanded and way below the providers' promises) depend on the economy and not on anything the companies do.  Helping to drag down the WP is:-
• ESA.  The companies were never going to be able to help those on ESA into work.  Indeed, most have been parked.  And overall, the companies have spent less than half the amount per client which they promised.  Remember, they get contracts because of the promises made in the bid documents.  And now they've got contracts to scoop up the people they've failed into:-
• Community Work Placements.  Okay, these appear not to have actually started yet.  But that's because a huge chunk of the voluntary sector want nothing to do with them, and a growing number of councils have also refused to take part.

There were a number of other, almost incidental, schemes along the way which have also been disasters, notably

• The bedroom tax.  (Let's face it, no one was ever going to call it "the removal of the spare room subsidy".)  It has cost councils a fortune, saved no one any money and inflicted huge distress and misery on thousands.
• Universal Jobmatch.  This was, it seems, entirely IDS's baby.  A grand one-stop-shop for employers and jobseekers alike which would have the added advantage of monitoring the activities of claimants.  The contract was given to a company with a poor record but which claims that much of what went wrong with UJM could have been prevented - but they were told not to put the necessary refinements into the software.  The system has been used to control and punish claimants without ever being the wondrous solution IDS envisaged.  But its costs are enormous.
• The sanctions regime.  A ludicrously impractical "claimant commitment" has been coupled with a vicious imposition of punishments which breach people's human rights.  Yet time and again IDS and his ministers have simply lied about sanctions; McVey repeated again this week in Parliament that they are "a last resort".  The human cost is appalling.  

The biggest failure of all, however, is:-

• Universal Credit.  This was to be the lasting legacy of Iain Duncan Smith, transforming "welfare".  At the outset opposition parties said yes, great idea, but it's never been done because it's too difficult.  Not for IDS, though.  Millions have been spent on IT that didn't work, more millions on trying a different IT system, and on patching up the problems thrown up by the very limited trials of UC.  We needn't rehearse all the problems.  But through them all IDS has insisted that it will all be fine.

We're told that it's Osborne who is keen to get IDS out because the Chancellor wants to slash the welfare budget and IDS resists that.  We're also told (in the Mail today) that Smith will again refuse to go.  This man's failures have cost us dear.  Surely he must go.

Ignorance is bliss

Have you ever wondered why so few people know what's going on in "welfare" these days?  Ever shouted at the radio or TV when someone pontificated on, say, the Work Programme without appearing to have any knowledge of the subject?  Ever despaired at the sheer ignorance of most people about unemployment?  Then you might have been cheering this morning when the Today programme on Radio 4 decided to look at whether all that self-employment in the latest job figures is genuine.  Two experts were asked; one was a woman whose name I forget, the other Professor Roy Sainsbury.  I'd never heard of him, which is a pity because he's head of the Social Policy Research Unit at York University - and he knows what he's talking about.  Speaking lucidly and quickly (important if you want to get your point across without being interrupted) he pointed out that Work Programme providers were pushing people into spurious self-employment because it enabled them, the companies, to claim for a job outcome under PbR.  Cue astonishment from John Humphrys, who was doing the interview.  "You mean they get paid for it?" he gasped.  And well he might.  When did you last hear a clear and honest examination of anything this government is doing in the name of "welfare reform" on the BBC?  Oh, I know they've looked at food banks, the bedroom tax etc., but always with a timid eye on "balance" for fear of IDS launching another complaint.  At least Humphrys learned something new this morning.

However, the government's apparent ignorance about sanctions cannot be excused.  They have repeatedly been confronted with real cases of people being punished for trivial or non-existent offences, by Labour MPs and others, but have insisted that it's not true.  That has become more difficult since the Mirror published revelations on Tuesday.  Iain Duncan Smith, along with Esther McVey and Neil Couling, head of Jobcentre Plus, attended a meeting last week with a whistle-blower who has worked for the DWP for more than 20 years.  The man told them, "“The pressure to sanction customers was constant.  It led to people being stitched-up on a daily basis.”  He went on "“We were constantly told ‘agitate the customer’ and that ‘any engagement with the customer is an opportunity to ­sanction’.”  The targets, he said, are sometimes referred to as "expectations".  And this led to managers stitching up claimants by altering their appointments without telling them so that they missed the appointment and were sanctioned.  They were told to "inconvenience" the clients and to regard them as scroungers.  It's a horrific account.  And now the Labour MP Debbie Abrahams is agitating for an independent enquiry into sanctions.  It won't happen, of course.  

There's one area of outsourcing on which most of us prefer to remain ignorant.  Read Polly Toynbee's Guardian piece headed "Now troubled children are an investment opportunity".

 

The delusions of Iain Duncan Smith

A health warning goes with this post.  Before reading the link you need to be calm, your blood pressure low.  Do your yoga breathing or something.  Because you could very well get angry.
It's an "interview" with Iain Duncan Smith.  It's from The House magazine, the MPs' own journal, and it's not an interview at all, just a chance for IDS to spout, unchallenged, his version of reality.  You need to consider not just the obvious divergence from truth, about sanctions and food banks and so forth.  You need to think about the mental processes which lead a man into believing he knows better than all the voices raised against him.  Here it is.  

Okay?  I'm not going to dissect the article; it would be too long a task.  But I will pick out one sentence: “But it’s also important that you do that by reforming the system so that those who are in the system are essentially rewarded for the right behaviour and no longer does the system perversely reward behaviour that is destructive."  "The system"; you thought social security was about state help when you needed it.  But no.  It's about rewarding "right behaviour" (as defined by who?) and not "behaviour that is destructive".  

This article oozes contempt for everyone who does not agree with him, including the leaders of his own church.  There is only one acceptable version of truth, whether it be on food banks (who apparently have an empire to build) or on sanctions (since he's been into a jobcentre he knows that the whistle-blowers and their clients are making it up) and nothing will sway his opinions.

I'm sorry to inflict this on you on a sunny weekend.  But this is a man whose delusions are harming millions.

Unjust sanctions

Just a quick note that the Guardian journalist Shiv Malik has posted a tweet asking for contacts from people who have had their benefits "sanctioned unjustly in the last few months".  He can be contacted at shiv.malik@guardian.co.uk
Journalists protect their sources, so don't be afraid that you could be targeted if you contact him.

An interesting week

Well, where to start?  "Welfare" has certainly been in the news this week.

On the outsourcing front, we knew that there were moves to oust ATOS from their WCA contracts and move the work to other providers.  Today we learn that the company has announced that it wants out.  They gave the information to the Financial Times, perhaps significantly, giving as the reason the abuse of their staff.  They say that they've been trying to agree an early exit for some months (the contracts are due to end in August 2015) but won't walk away until there are other providers in place.  The BBC news website reports that the government is furious at this announcement because it will probably mean that other companies will put in lower bids to take on the work than they otherwise would.  Which other companies would pick up this poisoned chalice?  Capita already has half the PIP contracts, along with ATOS, so they might be keen.  Then there are the other usual suspects, including A4e.  This is not, after all, payment by results (not officially, anyway) so it's a guaranteed income.  But would it be worth the hassle?

The row between the government and church leaders escalated this week.  27 Anglican bishops and 15 nonconformist church leaders wrote a letter, published in the Mirror, which attacks in no uncertain terms the government's creation of a "national crisis" of hardship and hunger.  This forced the whole subject onto the agenda, with much discussion on TV and radio about Cameron's claim to a "moral mission".  The debate was further fuelled by the publication of the latest sanctions figures.  Record numbers have been plunged into destitution in the year to September 2013; 897,690, including 22,840 ESA claimants.  This compares with 500,000 in the year to April 2010.  Iain Duncan Smith's response, parroted by his colleagues, was, "sanctions are used as a last resort".  We remain unclear as to whether he actually believes that.  My congratulations go to the Bishop of Manchester who, in the face of a very hostile interview on BBC radio, was extremely coherent and accurate about the hardship inflicted on individuals for no good reason.

However, a leak to the Guardian this week showed that, just when you thought they couldn't sink any lower, they do.  The idea has been considered by the DWP of charging people who have been stripped of their benefits to take the case to appeal.  At the moment 58% of appeals are successful.  This is clearly too many for the DWP, so slapping on a charge which no one could afford to pay would cut this figure admirably.

While the expected drivel poured from the right-wing commentators and their readers, I do suspect that a lot of people who had previously taken no interest in the subject have now woken up to what is going on.  It probably won't change anything in the long run, but getting all this out in the open can only be a good thing.

.... and a happy New Year

While the more fortunate of us were tucking into our turkey on Christmas Day, even if it was courtesy of a charity in a homeless shelter, Iain Duncan Smith was composing a piece for the Daily Mail.  There will, it says, be "No hiding place for those who opt for a life on benefits".  He didn't have to think too hard about it.  All the familiar cliches and lies are there, like "lifestyle choice".  On the benefit cap, for instance, "around 19,000 who would potentially have been subject to the benefit cap have already moved into work".  That's two fingers up to the government's own statisticians who told him that the statement was dishonest.  But the main point of the piece is to trumpet the new scheme "that will require 6,000 jobseekers to spend 35 hours a week at a supervised jobsearch centre.  People who have been out of work for several years or those who are lacking motivation [my italics] will be required to spend up to six months looking for and applying for jobs in return for their benefits."
More dishonest twaddle.  This is about sanctioning as many people as possible as quickly as possible.  Even if they turn up on time and do as they're told, they'll be sanctioned for "lacking motivation".  Some will go into the cash-in-hand economy (which hurts the rest of us) and some will simply be homeless.  But it will give the repellent IDS the chance to say that he's got them to sign off.  There's no detail about who will run these centres, but they will certainly provide jobs for loads of security staff.
The Mail likes this stuff so much that it has an editorial comment on it.  The clever chappy who wrote it thinks that IDS's initiative "will doubtless provoke howls of indignation from the liberal establishment".  (Who are they, you may well ask.)  "It is a robust approach and there are those on the Left who will say it's cruel.  They said the same about the benefit cap, the 'bedroom tax', the unpaid work programme and universal benefit [sic]."  I could go on quoting, but it's too nauseating.
The lie about the numbers being driven to get a job by the benefit cap was published by the Telegraph on Christmas Eve, with elaborations and the statement from IDS that it had "pushed 250 people back into work every week".  (For those who are not clear why this is a lie, it was pointed out by the statisticians that there is constant "churn", some people coming off benefits and some coming on, and there is no way of knowing how many of those signed off as a direct result of the cap.)
More embarrassing for IDS (no, okay, he is never embarrassed) was the Christmas Eve news that 32,000 people had not received their benefits because of an "error" by the DWP.  Not to worry; if they rang up before 5.00 pm they would get the money within 3 hours.  Presumably, if they were lucky enough to hear about this, the unfortunate could phone a premium rate number -something which the government has now decreed should stop.  The DWP will have to give out private local rate numbers - a victory for Margaret Hodge and her Public Accounts Committee.
Boxing Day brought an interesting exclusive in the Independent.  Labour has decided that outsourcing public services is not necessarily a good thing.  They've recognised that the contracts don't provide better competition or drive down prices because "what we have in this country now is an oligopoly of a few companies that are not competing effectively and are providing poor value for money for the taxpayer."  Hallelujah!  Yes, Labour started it, but if they've now seen the light we can only rejoice.  Perhaps they'll also do something about the scam reported in the Guardian on Boxing Day.  The GMB union is taking a case to court against a marketing company, PerDM, which apparently employs people on a fake self-employment basis and then pays them way below minimum wage.
It's not going to get any better, folks.  The best we can hope for in 2014 is that there are more real jobs, and some of those desperate for work and a viable income will escape from the clutches of this appalling government.

Sanctions are good for you!

There's an excellent article on the Guardian's website today.  But what really caught my attention was a comment underneath it:

"In an effort to counter some of the bad press that the new tougher benefit conditionality and harsher sanctions have received the DWP intranet carried a 'good news' story last week.
8 case studies were published detailing the thanks that had been given to various staff for sanctioning or threatening to sanction jobseekers. A typical comment was something along the lines of 'Getting sanctioned was my wake up call. It was the kick up the backside I needed to understand that looking for work was my full-time job. I now have a part-time job in a fast food restaurant and I take extra hours as and when I can get them. I'd like to thank my adviser for getting me to take job-seeking seriously'..."

The poster went on to say that s/he was wholly unconvinced by this tosh - as, of course, are the rest of us.  One is reminded of the sort of fake testimonials you get on the literature of producers of rubbish.  And it's creepy.  Who are they trying to kid?  This site is only available to staff, so presumably they're trying to convince the staff themselves that attacks of conscience can be dismissed.  Let's hope they don't succeed.

The conversion of the Express?

An extraordinary story popped up in the news feeds this morning - extraordinary because it's in the Express.  Headlined "Food Bank Britain: Thousands need charity handouts because of welfare system failings", it talks about "scores of cases" which their investigation has "uncovered" of "administration errors and punitive sanctions".  It goes on to list cases of ludicrous sanctions and a few admin errors, and it ends with the verdict of the director of Oxfam's UK poverty programme.  They haven't bothered to ask the DWP for a response, just quoting Esther McVey's platitude that sanctions are only used against people who were "wilfully rejecting support for no good reason" and going on to prove her wrong.  The comments facility isn't available under the article.  Why?
What has brought about this startling conversion by the Express?  Perhaps it's just opportunism.  They've realised that there's a story here.  But I bet we see an article about the workshy before long.

What would I do?

Since reading this excoriating article by Polly Toynbee in yesterday's Guardian I've been asking myself how I would react if I was still working in the welfare-to-work system.  It's many, many years since I worked for a year as a teenager in what was then the Labour Exchange; but only a few years since I worked on the New Deal contracts.  There has always been a "sanctions" system.  If you weren't available for work or actively seeking work, you lost your benefits.  But it took Iain Duncan Smith to introduce a reign of terror and direct staff to throw as many people as possible into destitution.
Toynbee says that jobcentre staff are "mostly decent people", and I would agree.  So what do you do, as a decent person, if you find yourself caught up in this?  One strategy is to make sure the facts get out there, like the "regular 'deep throat' correspondent" who has described to her how, "You park your conscience at the door".
Part of me thinks I couldn't stay in the job.  But walking out isn't that easy, unless you can walk straight into another job (which is unlikely these days).  You wouldn't get any benefits for a very long time; and when you were finally eligible to sign on you would have to go to the jobcentre.  Not much of an option if you've been loudly blowing the whistle meanwhile.  So do you stick it out and try not to become part of the culture?  That, according to the informant, leads quickly to losing your job.
It is horribly easy to become part of the culture when something as wicked as this is going on.  You start by dehumanising those you deal with.  These are not unfortunate people who deserve support and consideration.  They are idle scroungers.  All of them.  That's what you're being told, and what the propaganda has been telling you for years.  They are not part of society, as you are, not "hard-working families".  So if you treat them like rubbish and they react badly, they just confirm your opinion.  History is littered with such treatment of minority groups who have been made scapegoats for other people's sins.
So I don't know what I would do.  But I do know where the responsibility for this misery lies.  And it's not just on Iain Duncan Smith, guilty as he is.  It's on David Cameron, who appointed him and keeps him in his job, presumably because he approves of what he's doing.

"I don't believe it"

There are two big stories to look at today.  First let's look at:

SANCTIONS FIGURES
The latest sanctions figures have, at last, been published.  Between October 2012 and June 2013 they show a rise of 6% on the same period a year before, to 580,000.  Think about that - more than half a million.  The BBC website explains the new rules, and says that 53% of the decisions were at the lowest level, up to 13 weeks, for such failures as not attending an appointment.  Then it says that about 1 in 5 were for failing to keep an appointment with an adviser.  Esther McVey is trotted out to speak for the DWP, saying that sanctions were only used against those who were "wilfully rejecting support for no good reason".
In another piece the BBC's Sean Clare looks at "Life when the Jobcentre says you broke the rules".  It brings out some of the absurdities and injustices of the system, with several horror stories.  The CAB is quoted as saying that they've seen a 64% rise in people coming to them because of sanctions.  The PCS union, whose members have to administer the regime, says, "There's no question that there is an overarching pressure to enforce the sanctions regime as strictly as possible."  The DWP, of course "flatly denies" this.  But the article has stories which cannot be brushed aside in this way.

"UP TO THE JOB?"
BBC Radio 4 did a "File on 4" programme yesterday on the Work Programme, which gives me my title for this post.  It seems that Esther McVey has rapidly absorbed her boss's approach to uncomfortable facts; three times her response was to say that she didn't believe it.
The programme started in Eastbourne, where unemployment is a lot lower than the national average, but the local MP Stephen Lloyd (a Lib Dem) is angry at the number of people who have done their 2-year stint on the WP and been failed by it.  One 47-year-old man said that there was no respect and he was treated like a child.  A woman said she'd seen her advisor only once a month.
The WP providers there are Avanta and G4S.  One older woman who had a good experience (and found a job) through a sub-contractor of G4S was interviewed.  But the programme then turned to Richard Johnson, formerly of Ingeus (didn't he work for Serco too?).  He said that the quality of the contract was deteriorating because case-loads were now up to 240 per adviser.  McVey said she didn't believe it.  The official figure is 80 - 140.  And, she said, people can make a complaint.
The point which emerged was that of the just under 2.5 million who are unemployed, 900,000 have been out of work for a year or more and these, along with those with medical problems, are not being helped.  A consultant, a chap called Grimes, said that the sanctions against the worst-performing providers (the 5% "market shift") are inadequate.  The DWP should remove their contracts altogether, but the providers know that this is not going to happen.
The attachment fees are due to end in April 2014.  Johnson spoke about the discounts of 30% or more offered by some of the providers when they bid.  These are back-loaded to years 4 and 5 (i.e. at this point the providers will get 30% less for outcomes) on the assumption by the providers that the government would never let this happen.  The contracts, he said, are not viable at this price.  Deloitte's, who partnered with Ingeus, are now trying to sell their shares, and Johnson thinks it's because they understand the implications of the discounts.  "I don't believe that", said McVey.  She thinks Deloitte's want out because they are doing very well.
Turning to those on ESA, the programme highlighted a man who had been sent to Triage Central.  In 7 visits he saw an advisor only once and got no help at all.  He said that the emphasis was on what he was doing wrong.  Disability Rights UK said that the Work Programme isn't working for disabled people, and a 90% failure rate is not acceptable.  Once again, McVey said, "I don't believe it."
More or less the last word came from Grimes, who said that the long-term unemployed were at the back of the queue and moving backwards.

Lots to comment on, I think.

More dodgy figures from shameless IDS

Iain Duncan Smith is obviously unrepentant.  He was taken to task, you remember, for coming out with dodgy figures to justify his benefits cap, but said he believed it so it must be true.  He still hasn't faced the Work and Pensions Select Committee to answer for this (although his civil servants did).  Now he's doing it again.  The odious Express tells us that "16,500 find jobs after clamp on benefits" in a headline, and goes on: "Tough but fair reforms to Britain's broken benefits system have helped 16,500 claimants back into work, new figures reveal."  The sceptical may already perceive that there's something wrong here.  What's the actual connection between this nice round number and any specific benefits change?  Well, "The people living in potentially-benefit capped households were helped to find the posts by Jobcentre Plus over 18 months."  Now, this is the sort of distortion that the statistics people got cross about before.  There is no proven connection between the number getting jobs (who may or may not have been "helped" by JCP) and the potential for household benefits to be capped.  Yet the article proceeds on the assumption that the cap is making the idle get a job.  "The figures, revealed exclusively to the Daily Express, showed that Mr Duncan Smith's promise to 'make work pay' is starting to change a culture where some lifelong layabouts viewed benefits as a limitless cash machine."
Surely it's time for the select committee to do its job and hold IDS to account.  As well as the dodgy statistics, there's his failure to publish any data on sanctions.  If Dame Anne Begg and her committee are not concerned about this, what is their purpose?

Figures

The latest batch of Work Programme statistics is due for release on Thursday, 26 September.  I don't expect anything startling.  And I don't expect the media to take an interest.  The significant numbers will be the outcomes for the long-term jobless, and the "sustainment" payments.  The latter will give an indication of whether providers can cope financially with the contracts.  Comparisons between providers also matter.  We can expect the headline, from both the DWP and the ERSA, to be raw numbers, which tell us nothing.

There's another important set of figures which the government has obviously decided to bury - the data on sanctions.  They were due out last May but the DWP waffled about quality issues with the data.  Then there were indications that the delay might be down to the hiatus caused by the high court ruling and the need to legalise what had been declared illegal.  Then there was a hint that an announcement would be made in August.  Still nothing.  But we do have an announcement that there will be "an independent review of benefit sanctions".  Don't get your hopes up.  This is only to look at the "clarity of information" given to JSA claimants about the process.  It's to be carried out by a think-tanker, a theorist called Matthew Oakley.  I wonder if he will talk to anyone who has been punished.  A comment by Mark Hoban is insulting: "It is important that Jobseekers know exactly what is expected of them when they apply for Jobseeker's Allowance, and that they risk having their benefits sanctioned if they fail to play by the rules." [My italics]  Perhaps it's a game to you, Mr Hoban, but not to those who suddenly find themselves penniless.  There is so much about this regime that should be examined by a qualified independent person.  He might, for instance, consider a story in Sunday's Observer which shows that one in three homeless people on JSA have been penalised, compared to about 3% of jobseekers overall.  But this review is simply a cosmetic exercise.

That last story, the Observer article, ends in the now familiar way, with a quote from that shadowy figure, the DWP spokesman.  This person always makes political statements of dubious accuracy, but is never named.  Is this a civil servant doing his master's bidding?  Or a political aide to whom IDS has passed the buck?  Either way, if the journalists can't get a comment directly from those responsible, i.e. the politicians, they should refuse to publish this anonymous nonsense.

Helpless - and furious

I feel increasingly helpless.  I'm getting more and more comments, often on old posts, from people who are desperate because they, or someone in their family, has had their benefits stopped.  It's heart-rending, and there's virtually nothing I can do except advise them to go to the CAB.
The situation is made very clear in an article in the Observer online today by the food critic Jay Rayner about "Food Bank Britain".  He doesn't just focus on the Trussell Trust, although they feature.  He also looks at the Real Aid charity in Hull.  The experience is the same.  And Chris Johns of Oxfam's UK Poverty Programme is clear why it's happening.  It's not just changing benefits provision, he says, but "the way government agencies temporarily remove benefits for perceived misdemeanours: a failure to sign the right paperwork, or apply for the right training scheme."  And then the same agency that sanctioned them gives them a food bank voucher.  In Fulham there's a woman getting food from the Trussell Trust who is her husband's full-time carer and has three children.  The benefits agency discovered an overpayment of £600 in 2009, they insist (although the woman says she would have noticed) and have stopped their benefits for a month to recoup it.  (Just as an aside, it used to be the case that overpayments couldn't be reclaimed if the mistake was not made by the client.)  Other cases are cited.  In Hull, Real Aid don't use vouchers, but charge £1.50 for the food.  A lot of people actually prefer this.  And they are giving the help to people who are working or who are pensioners, because they don't have enough money to buy food.
The article cites the claims of Lord Freud, who doesn't accept that the increase in the use of food banks has anything to do with increased need.
The evidence is overwhelming, but the government doesn't care.  It still refuses to publish the data on sanctions.  Why?

And then we get this.  The most disgusting, lying, vile piece rubbish that the Express has managed to come up with, in collaboration with the equally disgusting Iain Duncan Smith.  What is there to say?  It's a torrent of lies, of words designed specifically and unashamedly to lie.  I am too furious to be coherent about it at the moment.

Confusion - and a rant from IDS

Are Tesco and Next importing foreign workers because they cost less than British ones?  It's the claim by Labour MP Chris Bryant, indignantly denied by the firms concerned, and it's all a bit confused at the moment.  Many of us have little doubt that Bryant is right in general; but it's necessary to get the details absolutely right.
That's never been a consideration for Iain Duncan Smith.  He has penned an extraordinary rant in the Mail today.  The headline is: "For those eyeballing benefits as a one-way ticket to easy street, I have a wake-up call for you: those days are over! Says IAIN DUNCAN SMITH".  That in itself is enough to get jaws dropping among benefits claimants.  But the bizarre statements have yet to come.  Did you know that "there are 4,000 single people making more in benefits than many individual people would earn from work"?  Just try working out what that means.  You'll notice that there's no mention of the fact that this is all down to the cost of rents.  But IDS wants Mail readers to know that by the end of September those people will be subject to a new cap of £18,200.  Then there's the Claimant Commitment" which "transforms the relationship between the claimant and the system.  Claimants will sign an agreement to undertake certain activities in order to get their benefits in return.  Our advisers have the power to sanction people who don't uphold their part of the bargain.  No longer can people just turn up to claim benefits with no onus on them to better their situation."
What can one say to that?  Does he not know that the current system is already exactly what he describes?  And why won't he publish the sanctions figures?  Well, probably, but it's not truth or accuracy which matter, it's feeding the prejudices of the public at large.  And that seems to be the case with yet another poverty entertainment show tonight.  Channel 4, which once did such a good job with Benefit Busters, now prefers to give us a series which harks back to the start of the welfare state in 1949 and see how today's unemployed would fare.  The Mail, of course, has no doubt.  It uses the term "handouts", which had no place in 1940s thinking.  It says that "benefits were originally conceived as a temporary helping hand in times of trouble, not a lifestyle choice".  There's that phrase again, the lie which says that all unemployed people have made a choice to be so.  I won't be watching.
Duncan Smith's past is coming back to haunt him, and I'm starting to understand why he hates the BBC so much.  Well before the scandal broke over MPs' expenses, there was a lesser scandal of MPs employing their relatives on the government payroll, often for doing nothing at all.  One of the MPs caught up in this was IDS himself, who was leader of his party at the time.  The BBC's Michael Crick discovered that he was paying his wife, Betsy, £15k a year.  "Betsygate" was uncomfortable for IDS, but it was worse for some of his staff.  A blog points us to evidence given to Parliament by his aide Dr Vanessa Gearson in October 2003.  It's long and detailed, but well worth a read.

"I'm proud of our welfare reforms" says IDS

An astonishing piece appears on the Guardian site today in which Iain Duncan Smith is given the space to tell us how proud he is of his welfare "reforms".  There's no point in my analysing it for falsehood and self-delusion.  That's an exercise you can do for yourself.  It is, perhaps, significant that the paper disabled comments after 329 - quite a few of them not allowed by the moderator.  People were angry.  I will just pick out one claim: "Our Work Programme has launched and the industry tells us that so far 321,000 people have found a job through it."  This is at worst mendacious, and at best utterly misleading, as all of us who follow the WP know.  And it's typical of the whole article.
There's still no sign of the figures for sanctions, figures which were supposed to be published in May but were suppressed because of "doubts about the quality of the data".  I wonder why.