The Supreme Court ruling

It sparked a lot of argument yesterday.  What had the Supreme Court actually ruled?  A lot of people thought that the DWP would have to repay any money they took away in sanctions while the regime was illegal.  But no, the retrospective legislation took care of that.  There was even confusion about who had appealed the High Court ruling, and on what grounds.
The best article in the press was, naturally, in the Guardian.  Joshua Rozenberg used to be the BBC's legal expert, and knows what he's talking about.  He points out that was Iain Duncan Smith who appealed.  He had no need to, because the retrospective legislation was already in operation.  The original decision was that the whole basis of the workfare schemes was unlawful because i) it hadn't been put to Parliament and ii) the information given to claimants was inadequate.  That's what Smith appealed.  And he lost.  The Supreme Court upheld that decision.  But, as Rozenberg points out, Smith's immediate response was: "We are very pleased that the supreme court today unanimously upheld our right to require those claiming Jobseeker's Allowance to take part in programmes which will help get them into work."  Rozenberg picks up the "very pleased" and comments, "Pleased that it had lost an unnecessary appeal at no small cost to the taxpayer?"  He quotes the ruling:"...it is rather unattractive for the executive to be taking up court time and public money to establish that a regulation is valid, when it has already taken up parliamentary time to enact legislation which retroactively validates the regulation."
To be fair (it pains me to say this) the lawyers for Cait Reilly and Jamie Wilson did make a cross-appeal about the legality of workfare, and lost that, so IDS could claim that that's what he was talking about.  But that's almost irrelevant.  Esther McVey (who has, in a very short time, become very irritating) was trotted out to repeat IDS's spurious claim and confuse the issue.
On the subject of workfare generally; the government has to maintain the fiction that it is not work, it's training, work experience or whatever, but not work.  Because that would have to be paid.  No court in this country is going to go against that.  It might be that the only recourse is the European Court of Human Rights.
A final thought.  Could we start a petition to impeach Iain Duncan Smith?

That fraud case, a report and a couple of memos

First, there's an update on the court case against the nine former A4e employees charged with fraud.  They were in court again yesterday and have all been bailed to return for further hearings at the Crown Court, seven of them on 25 November and two on 3 February.

Second, there's a report out from the Manchester CAB, entitled Punishing Poverty?  A review of benefits sanctions and their impacts on clients and claimants.  It can be accessed from here.  It's packed with information which IDS, Freud and the rest should be compelled to read and answer questions on.  One interesting fact:- in 2009 the number of claimants sanctioned was 139,000, in line with previous years; by 2011 it had jumped to 508,000.  What the report doesn't mention is that we still haven't had the 2012 figures, and it's becoming ever clearer why not.  Other points to note include the fact that under Universal Credit the "hardship payments" when someone is being punished become effectively loans, to be repaid from any future benefits.  When did that little gem slip in?  There's really too much to summarise in the report, but it backs up what many of us have been saying for some time.

Third, there are a couple of what the DWP calls "live running memos" which are of interest.  One refers to changes and clarifications in provider guidance, and includes under "Raising a compliance doubt" the statement that "providers should be putting the contact details of the referring advisor on the WP08 referral."  How odd (or perhaps not) that some have been doing it anonymously.  The other memo is more serious in its implications, and can be found here.  There has been a vigorous campaign to persuade people to withhold their consent to data sharing by refusing to sign the consent form.  The aim, as the DWP recognises, is to prevent the WP provider from claiming a job outcome fee.  Not any more.  They have been pushing through the legal authority to contact employers without the client's permission.  They say it's "to improve the delivery of our interventions".  If you think you can still thwart this by not telling the Jobcentre where you're working, or even why you're signing off, I suspect the DWP can get the information through the tax office.  It's another instance of this government regarding data protection, or any other legal rights, as not applying to those dependent on benefits.

Despair

Having read this article in the Express, "Despair" was the only title I could think of for this post.  I remember my own long spell of unemployment in the 1990s, and wonder how I would have coped with this vicious, dehumanising regime.  And I suspect I would not have survived.  I had been working for nearly 30 years; I had paid plenty of tax and National Insurance.  Now it was time for me to claim the benefits to which I was entitled, while I tried everything to get a job (which I eventually did).  I never allowed myself to feel humiliated; I had done nothing wrong, and life was difficult enough without being denied any self-respect.  If it was happening now - I think I would be looking into the abyss.
Some of you who comment here and have been passed back to the Jobcentre after wasting two years on the WP, have already experienced this "claimant commitment" demand, which officially came into force today where UC is being implemented, and are bemused as to how it's going to be possible to meet it.  Others have asked what "commitment" is being made by Jobcentres and government to help them.  The article gives us no answer.  "The radical plan is the idea of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith who said a job search should be a full time occupation in itself.  The unemployed will be expected to fill their 'working' weeks searching for work, attending interviews, training, assessments and workshops.  If they deviate from their signed commitment, their benefits will be stopped for 13 weeks for a first offence, then 26 weeks and then 3 years."  That's the Express's words in bold, not the DWP's.  But they strike a chill, don't they?  Criminalised for something trivial.  What the DWP's infamous anonymous spokesperson does say is rather puzzling: "Those claiming out-of-work benefits will be expected to dedicate their working week not only to searching for work but also to invest in training and the skills necessary to make getting a job easier."  Apart from lousy grammar, what does this mean?  That the unemployed person has to "invest" in training and skills?

My only advice on how to cope with this is:
 i) keep a detailed diary, not only to prove that you're doing what is demanded, but to show to yourself and others just how punitive and demeaning this regime is.  Start a blog about your experience if you're in a position to do so.  Writing down your thoughts can be therapeutic in itself.
ii) always remember that they cannot rob you of your self-respect unless you let them.

Another fine mess

We all know by now that another shambles has occurred in Iain Duncan Smith's welfare "reforms".  People on Disability Living Allowance are to be assessed for its replacement, the PIP.  But instead of it going live all over the country, as it was meant to do, it will only happen for now in parts of the country.  Nothing wrong with that, say ministers, we intended to do that all along, and anyway, better to go slowly and get it right.
Now, there are two contractors involved in this, Capita and Atos.  In one report I saw that the places which are going ahead with the PIPs assessments are those in which Capita has the contracts.  And we know that Atos was struggling to get everything in place because many of the proposed sub-contractors who were listed on its bid documents have pulled out.  Does this mean that the scheme can't go ahead where Atos is the contractor because they're not ready?  I don't know, but it seems likely.  The DWP won't want to blame Atos because, as with all outsourcing contracts, the question would be asked, "Why did you give them the business?"
IDS seems to be keeping his head down this weekend.

The hate campaign goes on

The Express's disgusting hate campaign against the unemployed continued today with a story which has so many holes in it that not even the editor should have believed it.  Read it carefully before continuing.
Do you see what I mean?  This bloke has a job agency in Worcester.  Now, the idea of these agencies is that they sign up people onto their books so that, when a company contacts them for personnel, they've got clients who they can contact and use, even at short notice.  The agencies then get paid for supplying the labour.  This chap, Danny James, hadn't done that.  When he got an urgent order for 50 people to man a food packing line that same night, he went to the Jobcentre.  (Would James have given the agency commission to JCP?)  The Jobcentre, obviously, couldn't help.  A spokesperson said, "The very short timescale given by the agency and the need for jobseekers to be available to work the night shift, that same day, meant that we were unable to help on this occasion."  So Mr James had to fall back on doing what an agency is paid to do in the first place - phone his own contacts.  He could only find ten.  Now he's ranting on Facebook about people "scrounging from us taxpayers".  And the Express has deliberately misrepresented people who were unwilling to do a single shift at a few hours' notice; people who would lose money by doing so, because the system penalises them for signing off, doing one shift and signing back on again.
But facts don't matter to the Express, or to its owner, Richard Desmond.

Getting ahead of the game

We reported recently that A4e were happy to publicise the fact that they had a presence at all the party conferences this year.  The latest edition of Private Eye reveals that last year, 2012, they were there with a very specific purpose - to lobby on the Transforming Rehabilitation contracts (that's the outsourcing of the probation services).  Remember that lobbying means getting access to the decision-makers to push for the business you want.  And last year what A4e wanted was to change the contracts to reduce the initial risk carried by the private companies and reduce the penalties for missing targets.  Along with other WP providers, they asked for meetings with Ministry of Justice ministers.  A senior civil servant, Jenny Giblett, advised against this meeting.  It wouldn't look good, given the "reputational damage" suffered by A4e over the fraud allegations.  Chris Grayling and two other ministers heeded the advice.  But A4e (or their lobbyist) took advantage of the Lib Dem conference to get at Lord McNally, another minister, who agreed to a meeting.  The civil servants were in a bit of a panic, and wanted to ensure that McNally was told exactly why it was a bad idea.  But the meeting went ahead; A4e gained access ahead of its rivals.
It's not clear whether they got any advantage from this.  But it's revealing that government thought that the company was so tainted that the normal lobbyists' contacts should be avoided.

A new way with figures

I heard an item on the lunchtime news programme which had me laughing in disbelief.  One of the housing associations came up with figures to show that the bedroom tax was not raising the sort of money the DWP insisted it would, because people are moving to the private rented where rents (and therefore housing benefit) are higher, rather than paying the tax and staying where they are.  They got a university department to go through the figures and produce a report.  The university confirmed it.  So today Esther McVey, the new minister, was interviewed about this.  Her response?  To rubbish the report as not true because it was based on figures provided by an organisation which had a financial interest.  The interviewer, clearly gob-smacked, pressed her.  What was not true?  All she could say was that the DWP had modelled all this before it was put in place.  But what was not true?  She repeated the canard that the housing association had a financial interest in providing false figures.  She's obviously settling in fast and absorbing the culture of the DWP.  When the figures come from government, distort them, lie about them or just refuse to publish them; if they come from outside government, say they're lies.  Brilliant!

The Indymedia website carries an article which confirms that A4e is putting in a bid for the Transforming Rehabilitation contracts, effectively privatising the probation service.  It's not a surprise.  They need contracts to survive.  But the model is the same as that of the Work Programme; payment by results with a three-tier structure of primes and sub-contractors.  We'll see whether A4e makes it through the PQQ stage, but there's no reason to think they won't.

PS:  Here's the Independent's take on the housing report and a comment from McVey.  This one is a little different but no more sensible.