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.  

Keeping us in the dark

We've all been going on about media bias towards the Tories, particularly in the BBC, for ages now.  So it was no surprise that when Iain Duncan Smith appeared on Question Time last night there were no questions chosen about any of the "welfare" issues in the news - despite the fact that they also had the shadow minister for "welfare reform".  The internet was buzzing with excitement.  But no.  Iraq, Islam in schools ..... and we waited in vain.  The Salma Yaqoob, with whom I had disagreed on everything else, decided to have a go at IDS.  He hated it.  Chris Bryant joined in, refusing to be shouted down.  A middle-aged man in the audience (I can't remember whether this was before or after the spat) told IDS exactly what he thought of him and was cheered.  Dimbleby hastened to move on.  The cynics among us decided that assurances had been given to IDS that there would no no hard questions for him.  But his face, when he found himself under attack, was a sight to behold.  He really doesn't like it.
But there has been a small chink in the BBC's protective wall.  The appalling delays in processing PIP assessments have been well known for months.  Suddenly the media decided it was a story.  Mike Penning was on the Daily Politics yesterday, apologising and being very lightly grilled by Andrew Neil.  This morning the Today programme took it up.  A good journalistic report was aired and then a Labour MP (I'm sorry, I've forgotten her name) commented clearly and ably.  No DWP spokesman was available, apparently.  But what we didn't get was the background to this debacle; no discussion of the wider implications of outsourcing.
Another issue we wouldn't know about but for the internet is the report that the Trussell Trust had been threatened that the government might try to shut them down because the DWP wanted to discredit them.  It was an obscure website, civilsociety, which first reported this.  Strangely, I can't now get at the article.  But Channel 4 News took it up the following day (see Jackie Long's blog) and today the Independent weighs in, having done some digging.  Citing "sources" they say that the man who did the threatening was "Conservative MP Andrew Selous, parliamentary private secretary to Mr Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary."  He denies it vehemently, but the Indy is confident enough to do a profile of him.  It's an excellent article.  But where is it in the rest of the media?
And there's the row about the Oxfam cod film poster.  The Daily Mail got outraged about it; but there's been no debate on the BBC, and other papers have ignored it.
Until the mainstream media do their job properly the Tories will continue to get away with murder.

Question Time

Iain Duncan Smith is on BBC's Question Time tonight.  Don't expect any hard questions, however.  It's clear from the line-up that the intention is to lead on the issue of Islam in schools.  If you're thinking that it depends on what questions the audience ask, you'd be wrong.  I was in a QT audience 10 years ago, and I don't suppose much has changed.  The producers select those questions they want to use.  However, since another panel member is Labour's Chris Bryant, who is the shadow welfare minister, there will probably be a discussion on employment.  There's a useful summary on FullFact which could help with that.

It's also possible that the Oxfam graphic will be raised.  Tories hate it and are attacking Oxfam's charitable status because they've become "political".  The Daily Mail has the right-wing response, but there's a very sensible article by Richard Murphy on the Tax Research UK site.  There could be a lively argument on this, especially as Ian Hislop is also on the panel.  I don't suppose for one moment that IDS will be asked about threats to shut down the Trussell Trust.
The programme will inevitably be a disappointment, but Twitter should be fun.

An Easter story with a happy ending

Once upon a time there was a publication called the Mail on Sunday.  It pretended to be a newspaper.  Its editor hated poor people, and published lots of stories about how they were all too lazy to work and got lots of money for doing nothing.  The people who worked at the paper particularly hated food banks because they showed that some people were so poor that they had no food.  And the Trussell Trust which ran food banks angered the paper's best friend, a man called Iain Duncan Smith who was Secretary of State; he didn't like anyone who said he was wrong.
So the Mail had an idea.  It sent two people called "reporters" to food banks in Nottingham and London to make up lots of stories.  One reporter, called Ross Slater, went to the CAB in Nottingham and told lots of lies to get a voucher.  He took that to the Trussell Trust food bank and was asked some more questions, so he told more lies.  He was given about £40 worth of groceries.  When the reporters took their story back to the Mail, the sub-editors added some more lies, such as "no questions asked", and "vouchers for sob stories" and this was published in the paper.
But the Mail had not realised that this particular Sunday was special.  It was Easter Sunday.  And they had not realised that many people in this country would get angry at the lies.  On Twitter lots of real journalists started making up headlines for the Mail of 2,000 years ago, like "Outrage as carpenter feeds 5,000 people with no questions asked".  The Mail reporters didn't understand this, but they knew that people were angry.  So Ross Slater tweeted, "All food returned to saint Philip church Notts at 0930 plus small donation".  (Despite calling himself a journalist he did not understand punctuation.)  This did not help, because many people answered him with insults.
Some people had a good idea.  They tweeted that if people were angry about the Mail's lies they should give money to the Trussell Trust, and they gave the Trust's JustGiving page.  This brought in lots of donations, more than the Trust had ever had in one day, and they were very pleased.
But no one lived happily ever after, because the Mail went on making up stories.

Religion and the war on the poor

In Easter week it's appropriate that the focus should be on Christianity.  David Cameron's Easter message, his declaration that he is a Christian in a Christian country and his mini-sermon, has drawn scornful comments.  But most of the journalists who have been cynical about it are atheists, and so while they are right in many respects they miss the point.
Cameron, along with Duncan Smith, is under fire from the leaders of all the mainstream Christian churches.  They first wrote to try to draw his attention to the misery which his policies were causing to individual people, real people.  IDS's response to his own church's leader was, "He's wrong; I wish he'd talked to me first."  There's no way through that insane arrogance.  Cameron waffled about having a moral mission.  The church leaders have written again.  And that's what has brought on the sermon about the big society.  Neither he nor IDS ever address what the churches are saying about the real cases of hardship.  Is Cameron trying to set himself up as an alternative focus of Christian authority?  Is he trying to appease the Tory shires church-goers who loathe gay marriage etc.?  Does he really believe what he is saying?
Many have pointed out that there might be another agenda here.  The Tories are happily dismantling the welfare state and leaving casualties to be picked up by the charities, many of them church-run.  Perhaps they envisage a US-style system where huge, wealthy church charities do the job which the state has hitherto done here.  But we don't have huge, wealthy church charities in Britain, and bleating about the "big society" isn't going to create them.
While Cameron hasn't openly declared war on his opponents, Duncan Smith has.  He can rely on the likes of Stephen Glover in the Mail to write preposterous nonsense on his behalf, and on councils like that in North Lincolnshire, where they have decided that "residents who smoke and have satellite television" are not eligible for hardship payments if they are hit by the bedroom tax.  But IDS's arch enemy is the Trussell Trust, which he accuses of "running a business" and therefore having a vested interest in the proliferation of food banks.  That'll go down well with the thousands of volunteers, in Trussell Trust and other food banks, who are giving their time and energy freely to help those in desperate need.  An excellent article on the subject appeared this week in an unexpected place - the Economist magazine.  I recommend it.  It draws attention to the soaring number of sanctions.  A similar point is made by the Citizens Advice blog, and it expresses concern that with the new regime of 4-week minimum sanctions duration this is going to get much worse.
Of course, readers of the Daily Mail don't know anything about that.  In a baffling article yesterday someone called Matt Chorley, their political editor, ranted about the "welfare state we're in" and, since Mail readers need pictures, included lots of helpful graphics.  What's peculiar is that he happily acknowledged that a huge proportion of the bill is the state pension.  And pensioners react badly to being told that they're on "welfare" when they've paid in all their working lives on the basis that they would get a pension at the end of it.  So this may well come under the heading of "shooting yourself in the foot".
There's some minor news about A4e.  Two of its non-executive directors, Sir Hugh Sykes and Steve Boyfield, have stepped down, replace by Neil MacDonald and Sarah Anderson.  It's not significant.  Non-execs are only supposed to serve for 9 years, and for Sykes and Boyfield that period was up.
So, if you can, have a happy Easter.

The mind of Iain Duncan Smith

The most remarkable item to pop up in the news feeds this week was in a regional paper, the Gloucestershire Echo.  It's the key to understanding the mind of Iain Duncan Smith and the battle which his opponents face.  I urge you to read it before going any further.
Okay?  You're surely bemused now.  Can this be what he really believes?  Let's take it a few sentences at a time.  He was asked if he accepted blame for the fact that the use of food banks has quadrupled in Cheltenham, according to the Trussell Trust.  IDS replied that he is "very much in support of people helping other people.  I don't even think there is a blame here."  So it's just a matter of mutual support, and not something anyone, least of all IDS, is at fault for.  Now we get the waffle:
"The reality is that first of all people who get involved with food banks, set them up, are doing what they feel is very community spirited and want to help out people who they think have got a particular issue or problem."  
This is pretty meaningless, but implies that the Trussell Trust is doing what it wants to do, and so what?  Nothing to do with me.
"The reality is [that silly phrase again, which asserts rather than argues] that usage of food banks has been rising anyway and it was rising even during the time of growth under the last Government, continuing to rise over this, most of the period you are talking about anyway is pre-the impact of welfare reforms, most of them didn't come in until the early or middle part of last year."
Food banks started in a small way under the Labour government, but their numbers have soared since 2010.  That hasn't stopped the Tories making thoroughly dishonest statements.  And what is IDS arguing here?  That the growth is not down to "welfare reforms"?  So what is the reason?  He leaves that one hanging.
"I think it is a positive thing for people to use food banks and I think if they need it, local authorities sometimes refer to food banks now because they run the social funds and instead of actually just paying money out some of them refer across."
The first part of that is just grotesque.  Then he gets on to blaming local authorities.  They "run the social funds" so they save money by sending people to the food banks rather than giving them cash.  No mention, you notice, of jobcentres doing the same thing, or of his refusal to publish, or even collect, any data on this.
"There are complex reasons why people use food banks but I think it's excellent."
Dismissive, contemptuous and stupid just about sums up that sentence.  But he hasn't finished:
"We should put this in context.  In the UK the Trussell Trust has put some figures out that say about 60,000 people use them a week but in Germany, which has a more comprehensive welfare system, one and a half million people a week use them and in Canada which has a smaller population about 800,000 a week use them."
Notice the phrase "has put some figures out".  It drips with contempt for the Trust's propaganda, and then implies that the figures are tiny anyway in comparison with other countries.  I have no idea whether his figures for Germany and Canada are correct or whether direct comparisons are possible, but it's irrelevant to the argument.
The interviewer must have felt that it was like punching blancmange.  There is no sense at all that Duncan Smith understands what's going on or why.  He literally doesn't want to know.  He has a completely fixed idea of his mission, and filters out any inconvenient fact which doesn't fit.
Mr Duncan Smith is appearing before the Work & Pensions Select Committee on Monday to answer questions about Universal Credit.  Not the PAC, as I thought, which means he won't get the sort of grilling he would have got from Margaret Hodge.  It's at 4.30, I believe.  Let's hope it's televised.

Tidings of comfort and joy

After I had read this piece in the Observer last night, I put it together with something a friend had told me the day before.  The friend had been helping to set things up for Christmas at her local church, when a woman came in looking for "the food bank".  She was very pale and looked ill and exhausted.  There isn't a food bank in that part of the city, so my friend volunteered to drive her home.  In the process she learned something of her story.  It was the usual thing - very long delays and complications in getting her benefits through.  That's one of the problems which the Trussell Trust want to discuss with Iain Duncan Smith.  But he's refusing to meet them, accusing them of publicity-seeking, scaremongering and having a clear political agenda.  Not, of course, like the political agenda which led the UK government to turn down a £22m grant from the European Aid for the Most Deprived fund specifically for food banks.
I am no longer a Christian by most people's definition; but I still regard Christian values, and the teachings of the gospels, as a pretty good guide for living.  Iain Duncan Smith does profess to be a Christian - a Roman Catholic.  Maybe he went to Mass this morning.  So I wonder how he squares that supposed faith with his actions and attitudes.  Oh yes, I know that terrible things have been done in the name of Christianity, and of every religion.  He's hardly unique.  But the psychology is fascinating.  I could cite any number of passages in the gospels which should give him pause for thought.  How about Matthew chapter 25, starting at verse 34?  Or if you prefer one of the Old Testament prophets, there's a piece of advice in Micah, 6 v.8.  In the old translation it says, "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."  The three qualities - justice, mercy and humility - seem entirely lacking in IDS.
When IDS or the DWP mess up, the cost falls on the hapless benefit claimant and / or taxpayer.  Hugh Muir in the Guardian returns to the story of the botched procurement process for the Universal Jobmatch site.  He originally reported back in March this year that there were three bidders at the start, Steria Ltd, Methods and Monster Worldwide.  Steria challenged the evaluation process, so it was run again, but Methods started legal procedures and were paid off.  The DWP wouldn't say how much it had cost to stay out of court.  But now, with the DWP annual report published (very late) there's a clue.  There's a payment of £950,000 "to compensate a supplier for reasonable costs incurred in connection with procurement activities".

Burying bad news

In the big news towards the end of this week, stories about "welfare" got rather lost.  Iain Duncan Smith finally admitted that his Universal Credit target isn't going to be met; but everybody knew that.  Various reports should have caused trouble for the government, but few noticed.  There was a report pointing to the failure of HMRC to police the minimum wage legislation properly, said the Guardian.  Only a couple of employers have ever been prosecuted, and only one named and shamed, although 10,777 firms have been investigated.  On the same day the Independent's Charlie Cooper wrote about the "public health emergency" of food poverty.  That's the verdict of a group of expert doctors and academics, following a report commissioned by Defra - a report which, in a familiar move, the government has not published, claiming that it needs a "review and quality assurance process".  The Trussell Trust, which runs a lot of food banks, says that they've tried to talk to the DWP, but been refused a meeting.  Meanwhile the experts cite recent figures showing a surge in the number of malnutrition cases diagnosed in English hospitals.
The people who read those two articles probably didn't read another in the Express.  The paper which has done so much to spread hatred of the unemployed found a story which ticked a different set of boxes.  "Veteran loses his jobseekers benefits for selling poppies" it yelled.  The 60-year-old former soldier gets £71.20 a week and has done everything he can to find work.  However, he "admitted" to the jobcentre that he'd spent 24 hours over a two-week period selling Remembrance Day poppies.  He was promptly sanctioned for a month for not "actively seeking work".  The response from the infamous, anonymous DWP spokesperson was predictable: "We make it clear to people what the rules are and they risk losing their benefits if they don't play by them.  Sanctions are only used as a last resort."  The Express's outrage is commendable.
But none of this made much of an impression on the public as a whole, and it all faded away as other news monopolised the media.

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.

Zero hours and food banks

It's the silly season, when the politicians and lots of the journalists are on holiday so there's no news.  But life goes on for the rest of us.  And there have been two topics still being covered.  The first is the prevalence of zero hours contracts.  From an original estimate of 250,000 people on these, it keeps climbing.  We now hear that Sports Direct, Burger King and Domino's Pizza, and now Curzon and Everyman cinemas all employ the bulk of their staff on this basis.  The BBC tried its best to present a "balanced" view - it works well for lots of people - but it's increasingly obvious that zero hours works principally for the employer and leaves vast numbers of workers struggling to survive.
And then there are food banks.  The Independent published an excellent piece yesterday headed "Summer of Hunger".  Here's something which government ministers would never think of; the school holidays mean that the one good meal a day which the children of struggling families is no longer available, and that pushes the family over the edge.  The Trussell Trust gives detailed figures for the rise in numbers seeking help, and they make an interesting observation.  "We see a lot of people who've had their benefit sanctioned in ways which, on the face of it, seem inappropriately punitive.  We meet people who've had their benefits stopped because they were late for an appointment."  Remember that the DWP won't publish the figures for sanctions, claiming with ever-decreasing credibility that they're doing quality checks on the data.  A development officer for the Trust in the north west is convinced that the doubling of need in that region is down to welfare reform of various kinds.  They give figures; eight years ago the proportion of people referred to them because of benefit problems was 20% - it's now 52%.  But the DWP is still in denial.  A spokesman said, "The benefits system supports millions of people who are on low incomes or unemployed and there is no evidence that welfare reforms are linked to increased use of food banks."  That is patent nonsense, and they know it.

Will we get more results?

We were told that more Work Programme performance data would be published this month.  I would be very surprised if that happens.  It would be only four more months after the last lot, and one cannot imagine that there's been such a dramatic improvement that the government will be keen to publish.  Without that improvement, A4e and the other providers will be in real difficulties.  The attachment fees were just about keeping them ticking over, and we know that A4e were in trouble a year ago.  So, will we soon hear about contracts being ended?
While we wait and wonder, you might care to read a couple of DWP documents.  There's an impact assessment justifying the legislation to ensure that they don't have to pay back the £130m wrongly taken from people who were sanctioned while the compulsory work schemes were illegal.  Then you could look at a number of documents which tell "the DWP reform story", downloadable from their website.  They call it a "communications toolkit".
Last week we were told that under Universal Credit, enquiries would have to be made via an 0845 phone number - in other words, expensively.  In fact, this was raised a year ago by the Mirror.  Last November the DWP confirmed this but said that "free claimant access phones" would be available in "a large number" of Jobcentres.  So that's all right, then.
One other item: there's an article about the Trussell Trust and food banks on the Independent's website.  What caught my attention was a comment by someone calling himself Marchie1053 - scroll down and find it.    He draws attention to the close links between the Trussell Trust and the Conservative party.  Interesting.