"Hang on"

Perhaps you watched the interview with Iain Duncan Smith today on The Sunday Politics.  It was much as we have come to expect, although Andrew Neil did try, for once.  But from the moment IDS opened his mouth he lied.  Neil tried to nail him on Universal Credit.  There's no need to go over the true history of that epic failure.  IDS has rewritten history, as he always does.  He is the hero who spotted what was going wrong and got it all sorted out, and now it's all going swimmingly.  Neil confronted him with graphics to show that a normal, low-paid family in his own constituency would be worse off.  But it's pointless confronting Smith with figures; they don't register with him.  Today he was shown a graph and maintained completely different figures.  Whenever Neil tried to move on to a different point, Smith said, "Hang on," and reiterated the falsehood he was insisting on.  There was one whopping, blatant lie which stood out.  "The Treasury hasn't signed off Universal Credit," said Neil.  "Yes it has," said IDS, and nothing could move him.  Neil hates this, so after the interview he produced confirmation in the form of a direct quote from a Treasury official at the Public Accounts Committee recently.
The Feeding Britain report was brought up.  The bulk of people needing food banks were suffering benefit delays and sanctions.  No, "benefits were now being paid more quickly - from 88-89% being on time under Labour, to 96-97% now."  I have no idea whether that's true, but since IDS said it I assume it isn't; certainly the delays are much, much longer now.  And anyway, he said, food bank use "is tiny in proportion here compared to a place like Germany which has more generous benefits and in which you have a higher level of pay.  So just saying it is to do with benefits is quite wrong. What I do say is there are lots of other reasons lots of people go to food banks."  For Andrew Neil it must have felt like banging one's head against a brick wall.
There was nothing to provoke a headline until the end of the interview.  He was shown clips of various ministers saying that the "welfare" budget would have to be cut still further.  Where would those cuts fall?  Would you limit child benefit to two children, asked Neil, echoing something the hard right has been pushing lately.  IDS said he would certainly consider it.
We can rant and rage and heap abuse on this man.  But try to take a step back and consider what's going on.  Does Smith actually believe what he says?  Or does he know that he's lying and not care?  I suspect it's a bit more complicated.  We have a toxic combination of fixed ideology and grandiose self-delusion.  And it persists because his party loves it.  Who else could they find to do their dirty work for them with such enthusiasm?  Possibly Chris Grayling.  But all the other Tories who would do the job with gusto are even more stupid than Smith (think McVey, or Philip Davies or Alec Shelbrooke).  Those with ability tend to maintain a tiny morsel of compassion.  So IDS sails on.

The rich get richer .....

Economists are puzzled.  The figures show that the numbers in work are rising, the numbers claiming benefits going down.  And while, of course, the figures are false for various reasons, the trend is still there.  But the economists' models aren't working.  More people in work should mean that wages are rising; but they're not.  If anything, they're falling.  And more people in work should mean that the tax take is higher; but it's not.  Explanations are cobbled together, some of them more plausible than others.  But I think there's a straightforward story.
At the top of society (if that word has any meaning now) is what's often called "the one per cent" and what I will now call the elite.  They comprise three main groups; the top of the financial industry (banks and the like); the top of big businesses; and the top of government.  They are all inter-connected, know each other well and have a common purpose in making themselves richer and more powerful.  In 2008 the elite crashed the financial system.  Bankers were blamed, but politicians had failed to regulate banking effectively (the Conservatives, in opposition at the time, had wanted even less regulation).  Now, some people claim there was a conspiracy among the elite to do this.  I don't know if that's true, but the result was the same.  Someone had to pay to put the system back together again, and it wasn't going to be the elite.  They suffered not at all.  Many of us were astonished that nobody could be held accountable; there was no criminal responsibility.
The crash was a marvellous opportunity for the elite.  To pay for the failure of the bankers we were to undergo "austerity".  It took a while for us to realise what that meant.  Those at the top of the tree could have a tax cut.  The elite were sitting pretty, as were those in the next layer down, those on £100k a year or more.  These are the people whose pay continued to climb and whose accountants devised ever more complex schemes to get them out of paying back any of their income in tax.  Salaries for top earners, along with bonuses, grew to absurd and obscene levels.  "Austerity" only began to be felt further down, in what we might as well call the middle classes.  Their pay stopped rising but their outgoings didn't.  Many who worked in the public sector found themselves out of work altogether, or having to get by on much less than they were used to.
The elite seized the chance to flog off what was left of the public sector.  Services should be making profits for them.  That could only be done by employing fewer people on lower pay, but that was part of the process of channelling money upwards into the pockets of the elite.  In what little remained of the public sector, pay was frozen.  This gave private employers more reason to freeze pay as well.  For people near the bottom of the heap - the old "working class" - the minimum wage became what it was never intended to be, the normative wage.  And that didn't rise either, except by an insignificant amount.  Employers found new ways to lower their wage bills.  Permanent jobs became casual work via agencies, with workers never knowing what, if any, hours they would get.  Then the "zero hours" notion spread, with even greater insecurity of income.
The cost of living, though, rose inexorably, and more and more working people couldn't survive without top-up benefits.  The biggest cost was housing; but there was no thought of capping rents, or even restoring some sensible regulation.  Instead, the total benefits a household could receive were capped.  For those right at the bottom of the pile, those dependant on benefits, life was made harder and harder.  They were the scapegoats, apparently the cause of all our problems.  Taking money away from them had little effect on the economy, but worked politically.  So inequality has reached unprecedented levels.
Economists believe that there is a natural limit to inequality, because at some point there will be a revolution - unless there is a particularly repressive government.  But the chances of revolution are very low.  Radical change was brought about in the past because people could organise themselves into an effective force.  Yesterday was the 195th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre.  A crowd of up to 80,000 people had gathered in Manchester to demand change, but government forces killed 15 people and injured many more.  It wasn't the end of revolt, but the beginning.  Chartism very nearly succeeded, let down only by poor leadership.  The trade union movement grew stronger until, through the 20th century, it brought about a shift in power and decent wages and conditions for working people.  The movement was squashed in the 80s and is much weaker than it was.  There is no organisation through which people can fight back, and right-wing governments are adept at pitting the not-very-rich against the poor.
What happens now?  I have no idea.  But economists had better devise some new models if they are to understand what awaits us.

A brief history of "welfare"

I've been considering this post for a while, but two things came together this morning to push me into writing it.  First there was this excellent piece by Zoe Williams on the Guardian website setting out her view that Iain Duncan Smith wants to end social security altogether.  Then there was a comment from Chris_2812 asking if I'd chosen my nom de plume for a reason.
So, here's a brief history of welfare / social security, and I'll get on to the future of it after that.  I am not bothering to check my facts here, so if I get something wrong, feel free to tell me.

Back in the days of small communities, right into what we call the Middle Ages, there was only the security of family and clan.  Those who could work, did.  Those who couldn't had to rely on the community.  For everyone who wasn't part of the elite there was the constant threat of famine and starvation.  Disease, injury and warfare took its toll, and most people died young by our standards.
The spread of Christianity, particularly of the monastic movement, provided a basic form of help.  The monasteries would give out food, provide a refuge and what healthcare was possible.  Wealthy individuals and craft guilds, as well as churches, set up "hospitals" for the "aged poor".  There was still famine if a harvest failed, and there were still warring aristocrats destroying what little you had, but the monasteries, convents and abbeys were the only source of help the poor had.  So when Henry VIII closed them all down in the 1530s and confiscated their wealth, the consequences were terrible.
The start of something we would recognise as a welfare system came in the reign of Elizabeth I, with the Poor Laws.  The unit of local government was the parish, and each was run by a committee or "vestry".  These were given the power to levy an annual rate on property and use the money to pay "relief" to those in need.  It could be humiliating to ask for this relief, of course, and you wouldn't get it if you were considered to be undeserving.  Nor would you get it if you didn't belong to that parish, so people who had travelled in search of work would be turfed out if they didn't find it.  If an unmarried mother sought relief, she had to name the father of the child, and the man was then served with a "bastardy order", forcing him to pay for the child's maintenance.  Parishes set up buildings known as Charity Halls, or, sometimes, workhouses to provide lodging for those who needed it.  The system lasted into the 19th century, but it was creaking by the end of the 18th.  In 1795 one parish, Speenhamland in Berkshire, devised a way of compensating agricultural labourers for falling wages and rising grain prices; they would top up the wages.  But the men who paid the rates were also the employers who paid the low wages, and they didn't see why they should subsidise someone else's wage bill.  So the system failed.
There had to be changes.  But this came at a time when the elites were increasingly fearful of the potential power of the masses.  The American War of Independence had been followed by the French Revolution.  The British government set up an effective network of spies and militias, and the increasing civil unrest was ruthlessly put down.  Poverty became increasingly prevalent with industrialisation, and there were many riots and protests.  There was also growing agitation for electoral reform.  This atmosphere resulted in a blueprint for the system of "relief" which was based on making it as unattractive as possible.  In 1834 parishes were combined into unions, each of which set up a workhouse.  These would be the only source of relief.  (In fact, there was always some form of "out-relief" which paid a pittance to paupers who were not in the workhouse.)  The regime in these places was notorious.  Men and women were separated, so elderly couples who had been married for many years were forced apart.  Children were effectively sold as apprentices to the factory and mill owners.  Adult paupers were put to work on humiliating physical labour.  Yet these places were the only resort for those who could not fend for themselves.  The system lasted well into the 20th century, and most of us have ancestors who died in the workhouse.  When I was a child, old people would still talk about claiming benefits as "going on the parish".
The start of change came in 1908 with the Old Age Pensions Act.  Some, but by no means all, elderly people were given small pensions which kept them out of the workhouse.  In 1911 came the National Insurance Act.  People in work paid their "stamp" to ensure that, for a limited period, they would be paid if they were sick or unemployed.  As the century went on, a system of social security grew.  There were means-tested payments for those who didn't qualify for the NI-based, or contributory, benefits.  This means-testing wasn't just about any money you had in the bank.  Inspectors would come to your home and assess what assets you had, even down to the quality of the clothes you were wearing.  Sickness benefits grew up separately.  For some reason, it was always thought that a sick person needed more money to live on than someone who was simply out of work.  These higher payments provided an incentive to "go sick" rather than claim unemployment benefit, and this suited governments at times because the sick were not counted in the unemployment figures.  Disability benefits also grew piecemeal.
The last Conservative government (which fell in 1997) tried to make some changes.  The contributory benefits were kept low while the non-contributory "income support" rose, thus destroying the whole concept of contributory benefits.  They introduced tests for people on disability benefits; and they were planning to stop housing benefits for single people living alone.  The incoming Labour government stopped this.  Labour brought in tax credits for some categories of workers, to top up poor wages (with much the same effect as the Speenhamland system); but they also chipped away at the concept of "income support" as the minimum which anyone needed to live on, by turning emergency grants into crisis loans.  The current government has ditched the concept altogether.  I don't need to go into what else the current government has done.

I hope this quick gallop through history sets the scene for considering the future of social security.

Merry Christmas, Mr Shelbrooke

With the season of good cheer almost upon us, there's a wonderful example of exactly the opposite in a story which has just popped up on the news feeds from the Express.  The MP Alec Shelbrooke (Tory, Elmet and Rothwell) tells us that "Benefits claimants should be banned from spending their state handouts on cigarettes and booze".  Later in the piece he says, "Introducing a welfare cash card on which benefits will be paid, claimants will only be able to make priority payments such as food, clothing, energy, travel and housing. The purchase of luxury goods such as cigarettes, alcohol, Sky television and gambling will be prohibited."

It's not new but it's exceptionally stupid.  And note something else important - the Express's determination to talk about "state handouts" rather than benefits.  It's all part of the ugly propaganda campaign jointly being waged by the far-right media and their MP chums.  All the buzz words are there: "something for nothing culture", "striving low-paid workers", "idleness of the shirkers", "hard-working families".  It's so tedious and so offensive.

If you want to let Mr Shelbrooke know your opinion, he has his own website.

£10bn cuts

If you are unemployed you will be aware by now that it's your fault.  You lounge about at home in the lap of luxury while your neighbours go out early every morning to work for their living.  You need to be forced to work.  Ridiculous, isn't it?  But instead of having a rational debate about the reform of welfare, the Conservatives have decided to cut benefits piecemeal.  Having spent at least a decade in collusion with the right-wing press to demonise benefits claimants, they can now conduct polls and focus groups to show how popular it is to cut benefits.  Surprise, surprise.  There's no point in debating the rights and wrongs of this, because it's going to happen.  What is worth talking about is a radical rethink of the whole basis of welfare.  If you have any thoughts on this, please comment.

There have been a number of interesting reports in the last few days, both factual and speculative.  A piece in the Telegraph tells of the views of a group of Tory MPs.  They want to cut JSA by 10% after 6 months of unemployment and by another 10% after 12 months.  Another far right group, the think tank Policy Exchange, has come up with a report that shows that nearly a third of people leaving JSA are back "on the dole" (their words) within eight months.  Now, the conclusions they draw from this are bizarre.  Jobcentre Plus should have the same incentives as WP providers (despite the fact that there are as yet no published results for the WP).  Nasty things should happen to claimants of top-up benefits who are not doing all they can to find higher-paid or full-time work.  It seems to be about penalising people for the economic reality they can do nothing about.

Another interesting snippet comes from a BBC news piece about a disability rights campaigner at the Tory conference.  G4S has raised concerns about the number of referrals they are getting.  They have halved in recent months.  This is not contradicted by a DWP spokesman, who says that the number of referrals was always predicted to fall after the first year.  This is puzzling because it doesn't square with what we've heard about at least one A4e office, where the first appointment for someone referred was 7 weeks after the first phone call, and staff said they were overwhelmed by the numbers.  Was that unusual?