More unravelling

I'm sorry to post only links to news items, but they are coming thick and fast, and showing how Iain Duncan Smith's grand plans continue to unravel.
First, there's an article on the Guardian's website with more evidence that the "There are no targets and no league tables" claim doesn't hold water.  It includes a link to the "scorecard" - a league table by any other name - and full accounts by two different JCP staff on how the system works.  The figures are interesting; 85,000 sanctions in January alone, with 24,000 of these coming from Work Programme providers.  So are Duncan Smith, Mark Hoban, Lord Freud and Neil Couling (the Jobcentre Plus manager) knowingly telling porkies?  Probably not.  They have never issued an instruction explicitly saying, "You must punish at least x per cent of claimants to get them 'off-flow'".  The pressure is more subtle than that.  But the effect is the same.  What's needed now is a full response from Duncan Smith
Universal Credit is also in trouble.  A report tonight (see the Independent) says that the trial of this will be scaled down.  There were going to be 4 areas piloting it in a month's time; now it's going to be just one, a jobcentre in Ashton under Lyne.  They don't have the experience, training or computer programmes in place to do any more at present.  Embarrassing.
And with the bedroom tax starting on Monday, the National Housing Federation, representing 1,200 housing associations, says that it will hurt the most vulnerable (also in the Independent).  There's no need for it in many areas, and nowhere for the displaced to move to.  They also point out that where disabled people have to move out of specially adapted homes, it will cost millions more to adapt their new homes.  This all comes on top of Frank Field MP telling councils to brick up doors or knock down walls to avoid the tax, and Nottingham apparently re-designating lots of properties as one-bedroom.
One wonders whether any of the media have invited Iain Duncan Smith to be interviewed, particularly by someone who knows the subject.

The drip, drip of bad publicity

I've congratulated the Guardian on its coverage of the wreckage of welfare "reform"; and now we have to add the BBC to the roll of honour.  The TV news may not carry much, but its website has several items of interest.  The first was a story yesterday by the excellent Mark Easton, headlined "Foodbanks used by thousands of jobless, figures show".  The jobcentres have referred about 6,000 people to the foodbanks in the last year.  You would think that would be a matter of some shame for Iain Duncan Smith, but no.  "Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said directing people to food banks was a short-term method of alleviating their financial problems.  'I've said to Job Centres, sort their problem out. If it is a case of food banks, Job Centres are meant to help passport people through to that so they can get them stable, so they can deal with their problems.'"  He also said that he's proud of the fact that his government changed the law to allow the jobcentres to refer people to the foodbanks.  "What would you prefer?" he asked.
Also yesterday, the Guardian reported that an attempt to get the issue of targets for sanctions included in the forthcoming enquiry into the sanctions regime was defeated in the House of Lords.  The article is well worth reading for the peculiar argument of Lord Freud.
An even more worrying report in the Guardian says that "food stamps" will arrive in Britain next month.  Vouchers in the form of payment cards will replace emergency loans.  For those who don't know the history, there was once something called an emergency grant, for those on benefits who needed one-off items like a bed or a cooker.  They were replaced by loans, thus shattering the notion that there was a minimum income which people needed to live on.  Now even that is gone, replaced by these "vouchers" which will block their exchange for alcohol, cigarettes or gambling.  Perhaps this is why Alec Shelbrooke was persuaded to withdraw his private member's bill to pay all benefits via such cards.  "Don't worry, Alec," the minister might have said.  "We're bringing it in gradually."
The BBC reports a pronouncement by Frank Field MP.  He used to be a welfare minister in the Labour government, and came up with some pretty drastic ideas for welfare reform which were never implemented.  Now, he's advising social housing landlords to brick up doors and knock down walls to get rid of spare rooms, and so get round the "bedroom tax".  It's an interesting idea.
Today the BBC has published an excellent article on its website detailing all the new benefit changes.  Essential reading.  It also reports that a judicial review of the housing benefit changes is to go ahead after the government lost an attempt to stop it.
Finally, Iain Duncan Smith attended an event in Edinburgh hosted by Capita to deliver a speech on pensions reform.  He was heckled by a determined protester, Willie Black, who called him a "parasite" and a "ratbag".  You can read about it in the Guardian or watch it on the BBC's website.  Enjoy.
I wonder if the BBC's coverage has sparked more formal complaints from Mr Duncan Smith.

Sanctions - shocking story

I'm obliged to an anonymous comment which gives a link to an interview in a phone-in programme on Radio Merseyside.  It can be found 2.06.50 in.  A caller said that he is on the Work Programme with A4e and was supposed to be doing jobsearch today with them.  But he got a phone call from his son's school to say that the 10-year-old was ill, feverish.  As he collected his sick child from school he got a phone call from A4e to say that he would be sanctioned.  The interviewer established that this meant he would lose his JSA but he didn't know whether it would be for weeks or months.  The woman from A4e, said the client, was almost sympathetic, but said she had no choice.  This accords with the provider guidance issued by the DWP which says that a "sanction doubt" must be raised whenever someone fails to comply, e.g. misses an appointment, and cannot be rescinded if the explanation is accepted.  The interviewer, Roger Phillips, said that it was the responsibility of the DWP and the minister, and they would be following it up.  I hope we get to hear the response.

Earlier I had heard a short report on the BBC news by Mark Easton on the implications of Universal Credit. He spoke to a man in Glasgow who had been sanctioned (and is therefore destitute) because he failed to do jobsearch by computer; he can't use a computer.  Easton pointed out that under UC all clients will have to use a computer.  He put the problem to Iain Duncan Smith, who said that 90% of people can now use a computer.  A worker in the constituency (I didn't catch from what organisation) said that two thirds of the people there can't, and anyway using one in a public place like a library was not acceptable for such private business.  Cut back to IDS who said that they will discuss it with councils and if necessary "make adjustments".

Who cares?

If it weren't for the Guardian we would know nothing about the retroactive legislation to save Iain Duncan Smith's face, nor the mealy-mouthed response of Labour.  We wouldn't have heard about the argument about sanctions.  Today, for instance, we read that the head of Jobcentre Plus, Neil Couling, has sent a letter to staff reminding them that "there are no national targets for applying sanctions and individual targets should not appear in performance agreements."  The article says, "Numerous jobcentre staff have contacted the Guardian since last Friday's story on targets for sanctions to claim such targets are part of the jobcentre culture. There may be a dispute about definitions that is fuelling the disjuncture about what is being said at national level, and what is reported at local level."  

But we learn that 40-odd Labour MPs had the gumption to vote against the bill – good for them. Labour's line is that they have secured an enquiry into sanctions. Well, unless they ask the people who have been, and are being, affected by these punishments, any enquiry will be at best pointless and at worst a whitewash.

Why are the rest of the media so silent on the issue?  I did hear the legislation raised briefly on BBC Radio 4's The Westminster Hour last night, but it was skated over very quickly.  The rest of the press has no interest at all.  I think it's because it's complicated.  The Guardian has a political editor, Patrick Wintour, who  knows the subject; and the Guardian is "left wing".  Occasionally the Independent publishes a considered story.  But that's about it.

Targets - what about the Work Programme?

The revelations about targets for punishing the unemployed were raised in Parliament yesterday, as the Guardian published more evidence.  They've been receiving information from Jobcentre staff around the country showing how widespread the practice is.  "It was also reported that staff in a jobcentre in the West Midlands were this week told that the team who submitted the most Stricter Benefit Regime 'Refusal of Employment' referrals would be rewarded with Easter eggs. The staff were told there was drive on this particular type of sanction."
Labour's Liam Byrne asked about all this in the Commons.  Now, Labour is in a difficult position.  They are refusing to oppose the retroactive legislation to legitimise the £130m wrongly taken from people in sanctions.  Apparently the DWP is setting up an independent enquiry into the use of sanctions in return for this co-operation.  But Byrne asked the question, and Iain Duncan Smith repeated that there are no targets; and the head of JCP has issued reminders.  The original leaked email came from Walthamstow, and the MP for that area, Stella Creasey, after reading it out, asked who was responsible?  IDS repeated that there are no targets.  Another Tory, David Gauke, congratulated IDS on cutting the benefits bill.
So far this has all been about Jobcentres.  No one has mentioned Work Programme providers.  There will be no official targets, of course.  But if staff at the DWP have been ignoring their ministerial bosses and issuing league tables and incentives to make people destitute, it seems unlikely that they've confined this practice to Jobcentres.

More from the Guardian on targets for sanctions

Well done to the Guardian for keeping on the case of the sanctions targets and league tables, because no one else seems to be interested in what should be seen as hugely important.
Yesterday the paper revealed a leaked email from a Jobcentre manager proving that there were targets for punishing people by stopping their benefits.  Mark Hoban denied there were any such targets.  Today the Guardian follows this up with a denial from Iain Duncan Smith.  "There are no targets for any sanctions whatsoever", he says, and staff will be reminded of that.  He said that "the order not to employ targets had gone out to jobcentre staff on innumerable occasions".
There's a sense of deja vu about this.  A full year ago the Guardian revealed that there were targets for sanctions.  IDS said that the report was "claptrap" but then the DWP admitted that it was happening.  So twelve months on, it's still happening.  And Duncan Smith and Hoban either know it is and are not telling the truth; or they genuinely didn't know and their civil servants are running rings round them.  Either way, the victims are ignored - except by the Guardian, which has a short film about what happens to them.
There's a parallel with the denials that there are targets for Atos to get people onto ESA, despite all the evidence to the contrary.  Maybe there's a problem with IDS's definition of "targets".

Targets for sanctions

I've just seen this article on the Guardian website, headlined "Jobcentre was set targets for benefits sanctions".  A leaked email proves that, despite Mark Hoban's denials, there are league tables for Jobcentres' "success" in punishing people, and the information to compile these tables could only have come from the DWP.  The author of the email, a JC manager, says that she has been warned to "show an improvement", and that sanctioning only 6 people out of 300 is "not credible".
It's embarrassing for the DWP and for Hoban.  But, as usual, only the Guardian has published it.  Do tweet the article if you can.