A good budget - for ATOS

Only the Independent has reported this: "Atos given responsibility for new childcare scheme despite previous fitness-for work fiasco."  Yes, the French firm which has performed so splendidly on the WCA contracts that it's handing them back, and which is currently making life impossible for people waiting for PIPs assessments, has the contract to provide the IT for the new scheme to allow people £2,000 towards childcare costs.  What could possibly go wrong?  Atos won't be doing any assessments, we're assured.  But if you take this together with its new contract to extract patient data from GP surgeries (see our post on 26 February) you can see just how ridiculous the outsourcing business has become.

There was nothing in yesterday's budget to give hope to the poorest.  The unemployment figures are worthless, concealing the reality of just how many people are in work and how many are not.  But the measure which we tend to overlook is the benefit cap, the overall limit on spending on "welfare" per year (which Labour supports).  It excludes pensions and JSA.  But it includes housing benefit, tax credits, disability benefits and pensioner benefits.  So while people out of work will continue to get JSA, they could find their housing benefit cut; and those in casual, part-time or zero hours jobs (or in fictional self-employment) could find that their top-up benefits are withering away.


Then there was that poster.  Wherever it originated, the Tory party chairman, Grant Shapps, tweeted it yesterday.  At first people thought it was a parody.  But it wasn't.  And with the hashtag #torybingo it was soon trending wildly, with people having lots of fun playing the game.  A massive own goal for the government!

A damp squib

A lot of people were looking forward to Iain Duncan Smith's appearance in front of the Work and Pensions Committee, believing that there would be an interrogation that would skewer him and expose his sins.  Those people were always going to be disappointed.  By all accounts he got more and more bad-tempered under questioning.  When Glenda Jackson MP had a go at him he accused her of "conflating so many issues here, it's almost becoming risible".  (Yes, I'm sure we were all amused.)  Debbie Abrahams MP was accused of "moaning".  What she raised has only been reported, as far as I can see, in her local paper, the Oldham Evening Chronicle.  She has a whistle-blower, a JCP employee with 18 years experience, who told her about quotas for sanctions and how "claimants are being set up to fail to meet benefits criteria - without regard for justice or welfare".  IDS's response?  He is unaware of the claims.  "I would like to see the evidence for it.  He's making allegations about people who work very hard.  I'd be prepared to meet him to discuss it but there is someone in charge of this they should meet first.  If he's got an issue to raise I would want to know".  Well done for trying, Ms Abrahams, but this is yet another lie from IDS.
As for those dodgy statistics - it wasn't his fault.  Surprise, surprise.  It was actually Grant Shapps' fault.  Well, one story was, let's not talk about the others.
The main focus was on the progress, or lack of it, on Universal Credit.  He admitted to a write-off of £40m on the IT so far, but, hey, what's £40m when you're IDS?
Among all the accounts in the press, the one in the Spectator is the most informative.
One suspects that Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, would have given him a worse time and wound him up more spectacularly.  The PAC might even have raised the matter of sanctions, and all the cruelty being perpetrated by the DWP.  But in the end it wouldn't have changed anything.