The battleground

Issues of welfare and low pay are set to become the battleground in the 2015 election.  Opening shots have been fired this week, and, as always, factual reports quickly get countered by ideological nonsense.

The stories about zero hours contracts started a little while ago.  The numbers of people estimated to be trapped on these contracts rapidly rose, while noises from government about what they were prepared to do about it petered out.  Then came a report that a relatively sensible Tory strategist has said that his party won't make any headway in poorer areas of the country unless it is prepared to raise the minimum wage and work towards the living wage.  A detailed story in the Independent shows how nervous the Tories are about this.  Naturally their paymasters don't want to pay higher wages; they would much prefer to be subsidised by the taxpayer (which is all of us).  While Labour and the Lib Dems have more or less committed to this, the Conservatives remain ideologically bound to the concept of an untrammelled free market in wages.  Today the BBC news website published some interesting figures from the Resolution Foundation, showing that 20% of all workers earn less than the living wage.

But any attempt to have a sensible discussion on such issues is derailed by far-right pressure groups like the odious Taxpayers' Alliance, which often puts out press releases like a brattish child demanding attention.  As the BBC site headlined it, "Force claimants to work for benefits, government urged".  It displays the TPA's usual ignorance of the current system, but it got the publicity they wanted, not least from the Express.  In a typically hate-filled and untruthful report, the paper repeats the TPA's made-up figures of a saving of £3.5bn a year.  It accompanies this with a photograph, apparently authentically taken outside a jobcentre of the most unprepossessing youths they could find.  The Express also has a piece, complete with maps, to show where the highest numbers of households without work are.  Again, with criminal disregard for truth, all of these households (which include disabled people and their carers, for example) are labelled "work-shy".  And the areas where most people are out of work are called unproductive, as if they could be thrown away.

So, while we need a genuine debate on welfare and wages, we need to base it on truth.  And that will probably be impossible.

Finally, I couldn't resist this from an American website.  Iain Duncan Smith is giving a lecture later this month to a right-wing organisation on "21st Century Welfare Reform".  "He explains how transforming the country's welfare system goes hand in hand with transforming people's life chances - continuing a historic mission that Conservatives from William Wilberforce, Lord Shaftesbury and Abraham Lincoln have always had to help people improve the quality of their lives."  What?????  I don't know much about Lincoln but I know a great deal about Wilberforce and Shafesbury.  IDS, you are no Wilberforce and you are no Shaftesbury.

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.

Round-up

I'm sure we were all looking forward to hearing Iain Duncan Smith questioned about his and his department's use of statistics on 4 September.  But according to a blog, this is not now going to happen.  The writer quotes Sheila Gilmore MP, a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee as saying that the Department's Annual Report isn't ready, and since the main purpose of the meeting was to examine that, it's had to be postponed.  How fortunate for IDS.  As fortunate, perhaps, as the fact that they're still examining the quality of the sanctions data, so can't publish that either.  At what point do we conclude that facts are being deliberately suppressed?

One fact that hasn't been suppressed (it's been leaked) is an internal survey of civil servants working on Universal Credit.  The Guardian has the details.  Staff talk about terrible management, poor decision-making, no communication and dishonesty.  It's utterly damning.

Then there's ATOS.  It's been disclosed that the company has been paid £754 million for its sickness and disability testing since 2005.  £754m.  That's your money and my money.  The Independent reports that Lord Alton has got the National Audit Office to investigate the contracts, calling them "a licence to print money".

So-called zero hours contracts are not IDS's responsibility, but the consequences of them are.  Yet it's only the Lib Dems, including Nick Clegg and Vince Cable, who are expressing concern.  The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has just upped its estimate of how many people are working on these terms to 250,000, but this is almost certainly too low.  Are people being forced to apply for, and take, these jobs under threat of sanctions?  

Finally, an unusual reference to A4e in a regional paper.  The company still occasionally gets PR pieces in local papers, but this one, in the Oxford Mail, won't please them.  It quotes a 27-year-old woman who says that the WP wasn't very effective for her, and her adviser had no time to spend with her.  She got help from the charity Crisis Skylight, whose CE says that the WP has been a huge disappointment, offering minimal support.  Strangely, the county's Tory MP, Sir Tony Baldry, doesn't completely disagree.  He acknowledges that the need in the area is for people with skills and qualifications, and they are not getting those.