Tag: Work and Pensions Committee

Misleading DWP letter to GPs is depriving disabled people of lifeline support

March 19, 2019March 19, 2019 · 7 Comments ·

Credit: PA Images

Last month I reported about the issues raised by the Department for Work and Pensions’ ESA65B GP’s letter template, which was only recently placed on the government site, following a series of Parliamentary Written Questions.

Campaigners and MPs have called for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) standard letter to GPs to be scrapped after it emerged that ill and disabled appealing against unfair work capability assessment (WCA) decisions were left in near destitution after their GPs refused to provide further ‘fit notes’, because they were advised they did not need to by DWP officials.

It emerged that ministers ordered changes to the standard-issue letter to remove references that made it clear to GPs they may have to issue a medical statement if their patient wished to appeal against a WCA decision. The DWP claims this was not intended to dissuade GPs from issuing fit notes.

Those people who challenge WCA decisions are entitled to continue to receive employment and support allowance (ESA) at basic rate, worth £73.10 a week while they await their appeal hearing, but to do so they must obtain fit notes from their GPs to prove they are too ill to work.

They must also await the outcome of a mandatory review. Before a claimant may lodge an appeal, the must first ask the DWP to ‘reconsider’ their original decision. However, the DWP has a stated target of upholding 80% of their original decisions, so the majority of people then have to appeal following the review outcome. The law says that the claimant may claim basic rate ESA following mandatory review if they wish to proceed with an appeal.

So the misleading change to the template letter routinely sent from the DWP to GPs has led to people who have lodged an appeal against an unfair decision being blocked from claiming ESA while awaiting the appeal hearing. This prevents many low-income disabled people from accessing financial support while they wait for months on end to go to tribunal. Furthermore, we know that catastrophically inaccurate assessments within the DWP are pretty much the norm. Nationally, 72% of people who appeal against their work capability assessment decision are successful.

Entitlement to ESA pending appeal is enshrined in the ESA Regulations to cover the whole of the period leading up the hearing. It is also possible to have the payment backdated to cover the Mandatory Review waiting period too – it can take over six weeks for the DWP to review their original decision, over which time people are left without welfare support.

ESA pending appeal is not paid automatically – people usually have to ask for it, and must provide fit notes from their GP, presenting these along with their appeal acknowledgment letter from the Tribunal Courts to their local Job Centre. The Job Centre should report back to the DWP who will arrange for ESA pending appeal to be paid.

From last year, then minister for disabled people, Sarah Newton, responded to one of several Written Questions from Emma Dent Coad, saying: “The ESA65B letter is issued to GPs in every case where an Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimant has been found ‘fit for work’. This process was built into the IT system as part of the introduction of ESA in October 2008.

“Following a Ministerial requirement by the Cabinet Secretary, which was endorsed by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the content of the ESA65B letter has been improved in order to explain to GPs the type of support customers can expect to receive from their local Jobcentre, and to ask GPs to encourage customers in their efforts to return to work.” [My emphasis].

The decision to change the letter template was made without any scrutiny from or consultation with parliament or the public.

The standard letter, titled “Help us support your patient to return to or start work.” says: “We assessed [Title] [First name] [Surname] on and decided that [select] is capable of doing some work, but this might not be the same type of work [select] may have done before.

“We know most people are better off in work, so we are encouraging [Title] [First name] [Surname] to find out what type of work [select] may be able to do with [select] health condition or disability through focused support at [select] local Jobcentre Plus.

“In the course of any further consultations with [Title] [First name] [Surname] we hope you will also encourage [select] in [select] efforts to return to, or start, work

“Please do not give [Title] [First name] [Surname] any more fit notes relating to [select] disability/health condition for ESA purposes.

Minister for disabled people, Sarah Newton, responded to one of several Written Questions from Emma Dent Coad, saying: “The ESA65B letter is issued to GPs in every case where an ESA claimant has been found ‘fit for work’. This process was built into the IT system as part of the introduction of ESA in October 2008.

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, the chair of the Royal College of GPs (RCGP), said the lack of clarity over when GPs should issue fit notes could put patients’ finances and health at risk. “No GP wants that, and it only serves to threaten the long-standing trust that patients have in their family doctor.”

Until 2017 the standard letter advised GPs that if their patient appealed against the WCA decision they must continue to provide fit notes.

However, on (undisclosed) ministerial orders, the letter now states that GPs “do not need to provide any more fit notes for ESA purposes”. It does not mention the possibility that the patient may appeal, or that a fit note is needed for the patient to obtain ESA payments until the appeal is heard.

Frank Field, the chair of the work and pensions select committee, has also raised the issue with the then disability minister Sarah Newton back in January. Newton replied that the wording was amended “to make the letter simpler and clearer”, adding that DWP communications were intended to be “clear, understandable and fit for purpose”.

Field replied that the wording was “not having the desired effect”, and urged her to revise it to make clear ESA claimants on appeal were entitled to fit notes. “This simple step could greatly ease the stress and worry that people who are awaiting an appeal experience.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “These letters simply inform GPs when a claimant has been found fit for work and are not intended to dissuade them from issuing fit notes for ESA appeal purposes, to claim otherwise is inaccurate.”

However, there is a hint the letter may be changed. Newton told Field: “We are committed to ensuring our communication is clear, which is why the wording of this letter was cleared by both the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). However, we will of course consider feedback when revising the letter.” Newton tends to stick to a script in her responses, though. She told Emma Coad Dent exactly the same thing, almost word for word last year, in her response to a Written Question.

It remains very unclear on what basis the RCGP agreed to the new wording as the change was agreed at a DWP stakeholder meeting for which, according to Newton, there are no formal minutes. Newton confirmed this in the correspondence between herself and Field, as well as in her responses to Emma Coad Dent’s long series of Written Questions on this issue.

Firstly, on 16 May, last year, Newton says: “The Cabinet Secretary first issued the requirement to revise the ESA65B letter in November 2014.

“The wording of the ESA65B was changed to emphasise the benefits of work and to ask GPs to encourage their patients in their efforts to return to some form of work.”

Then, according to Newton: “The British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners agreed to the revised wording of the ESA65B on 4 August 2016.”

However, in June last year, she also said, in response to a Written Question from Emma Dent Coad: “DWP’s Legal Service cleared the revised wording on 29 July 2016 and the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions subsequently authorised the changes.”

Yet when asked in November last year what written evidence her Department holds on the British Medical Association and Royal College of General Practitioners agreement to the revised wording of the ESA65B letters sent to claimants’ GPs when they fail the work capability assessment, she replied: “There is no written evidence relating to the agreement obtained from the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners on the revised wording of the ESA65B letter.

“In accordance with the Answer of 30 May 2018 to Question 146987, agreement on the final wording of the ESA65B was obtained via the regular meetings DWP holds with both organisations.”

Newton had previously also said: “In accordance with the Answer of 3 July 2018 to Question 155402, the information is not available as there is no written minute of the meeting between officials from this Department and representatives from the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners on the revised wording of the ESA65B letter.”

In June last year, Dent Coad asked Newton who attended the meetings between officials in her Department and the (a) British Medical Association and (b) Royal College of General Practitioners on the revised wording of the ESA65B; and if she would place in the Library a copy of the minutes of those meetings. Newton responded on 03 July 2018:

“The names of the participants representing the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners who attended the meetings referred to constitute their personal data and in accordance with data protection principles, they will not be disclosed without informed consent. DWP officials did not take minutes of these meetings.”

And: “No other external stakeholders were consulted on the development of the revised ESA65B letter.”

Newton has also said in response to Written Questions: “The Department is committed to ensuring all of its communications are clear, accurate and understandable and we continuously improve our letters. We engage regularly with the welfare benefits advice sector and disability charities and take into account all of the feedback we receive.”

“We have received comments from a number of sources including MPs, stakeholder organisations and GPs on the current version of the ESA65B letter and will take all of their feedback into account when revising it.”

I should hope so. The idea of the state persuading doctors and other professionals to “sing from the same [political] hymn sheet”, by promoting work outcomes in social and health care settings is more than a little Orwellian. Co-opting professionals to police the welfare system is very dangerous.

In linking receipt of welfare with health services and “state therapy,” with the single intended outcome explicitly expressed as employment, the government is purposefully conflating citizen’s widely varied needs with economic outcomes and diktats, isolating people from traditionally non-partisan networks of relatively unconditional support, such as the health service, social services, community services and mental health services.

Public services “speaking with one voice” as the government are urging, will invariably make accessing support conditional, and further isolate already marginalised social groups. Citizens’ safe spaces for genuine and objective support is shrinking as the state encroaches with strategies to micromanage those using public services. This encroachment will damage trust between people needing support and professionals who are meant to deliver essential public services, rather than simply extending government dogma, prejudices and discrimination.

GPs told to consider making fit notes conditional on patients having appointment with work coach

Let’s keep the job centre out of GP surgeries and the DWP out of our confidential medical records

I don’t make any money from my work. I’m disabled through illness and on a very low income. But you can make a donation to help me continue to research and write free, informative, insightful and independent articles, and to provide support to others going through Universal Credit, PIP and ESA assessment, mandatory review and appeal. The smallest amount is much appreciated – thank you.

Select Committee launch inquiry into ‘effectiveness of welfare system’ as UN rapporteur condemns Conservative policies

November 17, 2018December 5, 2018 · 9 Comments ·

The Work and Pensions Select Committee have launched an inquiry into ‘effectiveness of welfare system.’ The Committee say the inquiry was launched as the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty makes an investigative visit to the UK, and it will consider how effectively our welfare system works to protect citizens against hardship and chronic deprivation.

The Committee have noted that the UK’s welfare system is currently undergoing fundamental reform, in the transition to Universal Credit alongside other major and largely untested reforms like benefit sanctions and the benefit cap.

The Committee’s latest work on Universal Credit examined how Government will (or won’t) safeguard some of the most vulnerable members of our society as it implements this huge programme of change.

After the recent Budget, Members from across the House expressed concerns on this issue, including some senior MPs telling the Government that continuing the freeze on benefits in place since 2010 was “immoral”.

Previously, the Work and Pensions Committee inquired into the local welfare safety net in response to changes in the Welfare Reform Act 2012—which replaced several centrally administered schemes with locally run provision—and further changes in the Summer 2015 Budget.

The Committee looked at whether these changes represented “localism in action” as claimed, or rather, created a postcode lottery of service provision, with people falling through the gaps or “holes” in the welfare safety net and the costs shunted on to local authorities, services and charities.

The Committee concluded that welfare ‘reforms’ risk leading people into severe hardship and called on the government to:

Ensure reforms such as the benefit cap do not inadvertently penalise groups who cannot actually adapt to it or offset its effects, and that appropriate mitigation strategies are in place.

For example, some people cannot find or move to cheaper housing, because none is available, or cannot move in to work because they are a single parent and there is no appropriate childcare in their area.
Conduct robust, cross-departmental evaluation on the impact of local schemes on the most vulnerable households
Co-ordinate with local government better to ensure more consistent quality of provision

Since then indicators strongly suggest that chronic deprivation is on the rise. These include numbers of households in temporary accommodation, rough sleepers, and people referred to foodbanks, says the Committee.

Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee, said:

“We are now seeing the grim, if unintended, consequences of the Government’s massive welfare reforms across several major inquiries. Policy decision after policy decision has piled the risks of major changes onto the shoulders of some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and then onto local authorities, services and charities scrambling to catch them if and when they fall.

The welfare safety net ought to be catching people before they are plunged into debt, hardship and hunger. Instead it appears to be unravelling before our very eyes. The Committee now wants to find out whether the Government’s policies are sufficient to save people from destitution—and, if not, what more needs to be done.”

We do have to wonder how much evidence it will take before the government concedes that its draconian welfare policies are discriminatory, ideologically driven, empirically unverified in terms of their efficacy and profoundly damaging; creating poverty and extreme hardships for historially marginalised groups.

Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has discussed a ‘Government in denial’ in his scathing report. He draws pretty much the same conclusions that many of us have over the last few years. He says that “key elements of the post-war Beveridge social contract are being overturned.”

Much of the contract has been dismantled, including access to justice via legal aid, as well as universal welfare, health care, social housing and many other social gains and safety net provisions that were a fundamental part of the post war democratic settlement.

This is a consequence of the Conservative’s coordinated and sustained attack on democracy, public services and establised ideas about universal rights and citizenship, since 2010. It’s very difficult to see this as anything else but an ongoing and intentional attack.

The government’s ‘mean spirited’ welfare policies have intended outcomes. They are codified expressions of how a government thinks society ought to be structured.

Alston draws the same conclusions as I have since 2012; that the harms and suffering being inflicted on the most politically disadvantaged citizens is part of “a radical social re-engineering’, and nothing to do with any economic need for austerity.”

In other words, the all too often devastating consequences of Conservative welfare policies are deliberate and intended.

Alston says that the government’s policies and drastic cuts were “entrenching high levels of poverty and inflicting “unnecessary” hardship in one of the richest countries in the world.

“When asked about these problems, Government ministers were almost entirely dismissive, blaming political opponents for wanting to sabotage their work, or suggesting that the media didn’t really understand the system and that Universal Credit was unfairly blamed for problems rooted in the old legacy system of benefits,” he said.

Yet another example of the government’s strategy of loud and determined denials and sustained use of techniques of neutralisation.

When it was announced that the UN was investigating the impact of government policies and severe poverty in the UK, Conservative Minister for the 17th Century, Jacob Rees-Mogg, said: “Surely the UN has better ways of wasting money?”

A government ~~gaslighting~~ spokesman said: “We completely disagree with this [Philip Alston’s] analysis. With these Government’s changes, household incomes have never been higher, income inequality has fallen, the number of children living in workless households is at a record low and there are now one million fewer people living in absolute poverty compared with 2010.

“Universal Credit is supporting people into work faster, but we are listening to feedback and have made numerous improvements to the system including ensuring 2.4 million households will be up to £630 better off a year as a result of raising the work allowance.

“We are absolutely committed to helping people improve their lives while providing the right support for those who need it.”

Of course, the empirical evidence does not support this government statement.

Send the Committee your views

The Committee is now inviting evidence, whether you are an individual, group or organisation, on any or all of the following questions.

Please send your views by 14 December 2018.

How should hardship and chronic deprivation be measured?
What do we know about chronic deprivation and hardship in the UK?
Is it changing? How?
Why do some households fall into poverty and deprivation?
What factors best explain the reported increases in indicators of deprivation like homelessness, rough sleeping and increased food bank use?
What about the local variations in these markers of deprivation?
Do Jobcentre Plus procedures and benefit delays play a role?
What role does Universal Credit play in in relation to deprivation, or could it play in tackling it?
Is our welfare safety net working to prevent people falling into deprivation?
If not, how could it better do so?
What progress has been made on addressing the issues identified in the Committee’s 2016
Report, (described above / link)?
What are the remaining weaknesses, how should these now be addressed?

Send a written submission

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Devastated mother whose children were murdered fears eviction due to cut benefit

June 27, 2018July 3, 2018 · 5 Comments ·

Image result for pip esa inquiry

Thousands of disability assessments deemed ‘unacceptable’ under the government’s own quality control scheme

A mother of two children who were murdered by her husband says she fears being made homeless, after the heartless Department for Work and Pensions stopped her disability benefit support, despite being aware of the severe trauma she had experienced and the devastating impact it has had on her mental health.

June Martin, who has been diagnosed as suffering with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, was considered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to be ineligible for Personal Independence Payment (PIP), following an assessment by Independent Assessment Service – formerly known as Atos Healthcare.

June has challenged the accuracy and fairness of the PIP assessment process. She told the Sunday Post that the assessor only “wanted to know if I could spell ‘world’ backwards and hold my arms above my head.”

She said “I’ve been treated like some kind of scrounger and put on trial, although I’ve done nothing wrong.

“My former husband, who murdered our children, doesn’t have to worry about keeping a roof over his head or where his next meal is coming from but now I do.

She added, tragically: “I’ve been made to feel a burden on society. Maybe it would be better if I wasn’t here.”

On Saturday, May 3, 2008, June walked into her home in Buckhaven, Fife, and found the bodies of disabled Michelle and her little brother Ryan while their father, who had stabbed them 26 times, lay on his bed, pretending to be dead. June’s former husband, Rab Thomson, was found guilty of stabbing 25-year-old Michelle and 7-year-old Ryan and given a life sentence in 2008.

However, despite her struggle to cope with the terrible trauma, the benefits assessment report describes her mental state examination as “unremarkable”.

She said: “I’m now terrified I will lose my rented flat because I can’t keep up the £35 a week I have to find to make up the difference to housing benefit.

“I must have moved over a dozen times because I haven’t been able to settle somewhere I feel safe.

“Just when I finally found a little peace and somewhere I can feel safe, I fear it’s all going to be taken from me now.

“I’ve tried far too many times to take my own life because I just feel there is nothing for me to live for and this has left me feeling like that again.”

MP Patricia Gibson described the case as “shocking” and said: “This is yet another example of the DWP letting down vulnerable people when they most need support. Those living with mental health challenges are poorly understood by DWP assessor and this has to change.”

Left bereft, extremely distressed and suicidal, June has struggled to rebuild her life. She has never recovered from her ordeal, which is absolutely understandable. She had been in receipt of £55.10 a week in disability benefits before being reassessed for PIP.

However, an independent tribunal has unbelievably upheld the DWP decision.

A spokesperson said: “Whilst the tribunal accepts Ms Martin has mental health problems and balance problems, the nature and extent of the resulting limitations are insufficient to score the required number of points.

“As a result Ms Martin does not qualify for either component of Personal Independent Payment.”

That someone who has faced such a deeply traumatic event as the murder of her children has to then “score a required number of points” to be considered eligible for lifeline support indicates just how profoundly dehumanising and utterly unfit for purpose the disability benefit assessment process is.

June said “Neither the assessor or the tribunal last week seemed to want to know about the trauma I suffer daily reliving finding my children posed as if they were asleep in their beds, or pulling back the covers to find them stabbed to death,” she said.

“I’ve battled so very hard to try and go on, but I’ve had to accept I’ll never get over finding my babies murdered, their blood on the walls and over their toys and teddy bears.

“My disabilities are invisible. They cannot be tested by spelling a word backwards or holding my arms above my head.

“Questions were thrown at me, one after the other. I couldn’t think straight to answer them properly. I’m a mess. I don’t stand up well to questioning. I just blurt things out and I panic.

“I’d written on the official forms that my children were murdered and I found them, but I don’t remember being questioned about that or my inability to live anything like a normal life.”

June also said that the assessor and DWP failed to take into account how her mental health fluctuates from day to day.

June continued: “I don’t know from one day to the other how I will feel, sometimes from one hour to the other”, she said.

“I can get up and go to the supermarket for a loaf of bread one day, but if I hear a child crying it takes me back to the murder scene.

“A smell, a song, someone laughing like my Michelle used to laugh, brings it all back and I have to run away from it.”

A DWP spokesperson offered the usual meaningless and standardised platitudes, saying: “This is a sensitive and distressing set of circumstances and our thoughts remain with Ms Martin.

“We will continue to ensure Ms Martin is receiving all the benefits she is entitled to and gets the support she needs.”

The support that June needs is the reinstatement of her Personal Independence Payment, and an adequate level of support to meet her housing costs, not gaslighting from the DWP.

We live in an age of ubiquitous measurement, where our health and eligibility for support is defined and decided by metric based judgments, and our behaviours and expectations are expected to conform to the government’s notion of an overarching competitive model of the market. In this horrifically cruel, impersonal and dehumanising neoliberal world, eligibility for support depends on whether you score enough points that measure arbitrary criteria of what the state thinks should be measured.

Can you say a “world” backwards? Can you touch your knees? Can you raise an arm? This framework of meaningless tick box criteria bears little resemblance to the many actions and decisions you have to make during your everyday life, and it doesn’t show anything of how someone copes or doesn’t cope. It doesn’t indicate if someone has a network of support, help from other agencies, or if they are completely isolated.

It tells us nothing of whether or not someone can consistently perform one of these prescribed and contradistinctive tasks at an assessment for lifeline support in real life. The more of these meaningless and detatched-from-everyday-living tasks you are perceived as able to perform, the less points you are awarded. If you fail to score enough points, you aren’t considered ‘eligible’ for support, regardless of how much you happen to need it.

The accounts presented in disability assessment reports based on the rigid, inadequate point scoring system and the actual realities of disabled people’s lives are incommensurable.

The Commons Work and Pensions Committee said earlier this year that it had an “unprecedented” response when it asked members of the public to get in touch with their experiences of being assessed.

Some people said reports of their assessments included the results of physical examinations that hadn’t happened. Some reports left out crucial information provided during the interview, and some seemed to refer to entirely different people. Publishing their findings, the MPs said the number of ‘mistakes’ taking place, and the number of decisions eventually overturned on appeal, had created “a lack of trust in both benefits” and led to fears the system is deliberately rigged against claimants.

It is. The system is rigged to disallow social security awards to disabled people who need support.

Stephen Brown, head of North Ayrshire Council’s health and social care partnership, said: “The benefits system often fails to recognise the impact of trauma and its long-term debilitating nature. Our psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers have known this for years and much of their time is spent supporting people to rebuild their lives.”

To rebuild lives, we must first ensure people can meet the costs of their basic living needs – such as for food, fuel and keeping roof over their head.

Frank Field’s letter regarding the DWP’s non-existent/existent data: a Schrödinger kind of paradox

The PIP & ESA inquiry report from the Work and Pensions Select Committee – main recommendations

Fear of losing disability support led a vulnerable man to a horrific suicide

DWP spent £100m on disability benefit appeals over 2 year period

Government guidelines for PIP assessment: a political redefinition of the word ‘ob jective’

New discriminatory regulations for PIP come into effect today

Disabled mum took fatal overdose after she was refused PIP

Thousands of disabled people have already lost their specialist Motability vehicles because of Conservative PIP cuts and many more are likely to be affected.

PIP and the Tory monologue

Government plans further brutal cuts to disability support

Consultation as government seek to limit disabled people’s eligibility for Personal Independence Payment

Second Independent Review of Personal Independence Payment assessment

Department for Work and Pensions Recruits Staff to Reduce ESA and PIP Appeal Success Rates

Theresa May euphemizes savage cuts to PIP when confronted by an angry disabled person demanding democratic accountability

Tory MP says PIP should only go to ‘really disabled’ people, not those with anxiety ‘taking pills at home’

I don’t make any money from my work. I am disabled because of illness and have a very limited income. But you can help by making a donation to help me continue to research and write informative, insightful and independent articles, and to provide support to others. The smallest amount is much appreciated – thank you.

The DWP are being Conservative with the truth, yet again

March 26, 2018April 6, 2018 · 25 Comments ·

Sarah’s story: Turned out to be fiction rather than fact

In 2015, Welfare Weekly exposed the Department for Work and Pensions for using fake testimonies from fake characters via a well-placed freedom of information (FoI) request, revealing that the lengths that the government is prepared to go to justify extremely punitive policies. Remarkably, even the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) were alarmed at the level of deception, and said it had written to all of its members who work at the Department to find out whether they had played any part in putting the leaflet together.

Sarah Pinch, the CIPR’s president, said: “Falsely creating the impression of independent, popular support is a naive and opaque technique which blatantly disregards the CIPR’s standards of ethical conduct. It is deeply disappointing if public relations professionals allowed it to be published.”

This happened during the same month that the it was only this month that the UK statistics watchdog censured the DWP for “understating the scale” of its sanctions regime – essentially failing to release adequate data to give jobseekers or the public a genuine picture of the way it’s imposing sanctions, and of monitoring the real impact of this draconian policy. The revelation that the DWP has faked information to distort the reality that so many citizens face is reflective of how deep the rot is in the entire system.

Then there are the fictional statistics. Iain Duncan Smith was rebuked by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for the ‘misuse’ of benefit statistics – his claim that 8,000 people moved into work as a result of the benefit cap is “unsupported by the official statistics”, says the UK Statistics Authority.

In letter to Duncan Smith, Andrew Dilnot writes: “In the manner and form published, the statistics do not comply fully with the principles of the Code of Practice, particularly in respect of accessibility to the sources of data, information about the methodology and quality of the statistics, and the suggestion that the statistics were shared with the media in advance of their publication.”

Another claim by Duncan Smith later in the same month also drew criticism and a reprimand. The (then) minister said around 1 million people have been stuck on benefits for at least three of the last four years “despite being judged capable of preparing or looking for work”.

However, the figures cited also included single mothers, people who were seriously ill, and people awaiting testing. Grant Shapps was also rebuked by UK Statistics Authority for misrepresenting benefit figures – the Tory chairman claimed that “nearly a million people” (878,300) on incapacity benefit had dropped their claims, rather than face a new medical assessment for its successor, the employment and support allowance.

The figures, he claimed, “demonstrate how the welfare system was broken under Labour and why our reforms are so important”. The claim was faithfully reported by the Sunday Telegraph but as the UK Statistics Authority confirmed in its response to Labour MP Sheila Gilmore, it was entirely fabricated.

In his letter to Shapps and Duncan Smith, UKSA chair Andrew Dilnot wrote that the figure conflated “official statistics relating to new claimants of the ESA with official statistics on recipients of the incapacity benefit (IB) who are being migrated across to the ESA”. Of the 603,600 incapacity benefit claimants referred for reassessment as part of the introduction of the ESA between March 2011 and May 2012, just 19,700 (somewhat short of Shapps’s “nearly a million) abandoned their claims prior to a work capability assessment in the period to May 2012.

The figure of 878,300 refers to the total of new claims for the ESA closed before medical assessment from October 2008 to May 2012. Thus, Shapps’s suggestion that the 878,300 were pre-existing claimants, who would rather lose their benefits than be exposed as “scroungers”, was entirely wrong. Significantly, there is no evidence that those who abandoned their claims did so for the reasons ascribed by Shapps.

Now the DWP have been found out submitting fake claims to the Work and Pensions Committee. The DWP claimed the Institute for Fiscal Stdies (IFS) had reviewed its data which asserts that UC will help more than 250,000 people into employment, once the flagship welfare reform is fully implemented across the UK. However the IFS have contradicted the claim, leading to heavy criticism regarding the DWP’s statement and ‘evidence’ regarding Universal Credit’s ‘causal relatonship’ with employment.

The Committee says:

“A central part of the Department for Work and Pension’s (DWP) case for the benefit of Universal Credit (UC) is their assertion of its effect on employment. In to a request for an estimate of the magnitude of that effect, DWP stated it has “determined” that UC will result in 250,000 more people in employment once it is fully implemented.

How the Department ‘arrived’ at these figures

In a follow up letter to Employment Minister Alok Sharma ( PDF 1.38 MB) the Chair asked a set of specific questions about how the Department had arrived at each of the stated constituent parts of that figure:

150,000 more due to “increased financial incentives to work”
50,000 more due to “increased conditionality”
60,000 due to “simplification of the benefit system”

(That’s basically euphemisms for cuts, sanctions, and more cuts and sanctions)

The Department’s response ( PDF 800 KB) did not answer any of the Chair’s specific questions, although it did supply an account of academic research papers that have informed the Department’s work on UC, and restated the principles underlying those three ostensible benefits of the reform.

DWP concluded by stating: “The approach to our analysis underpinning these estimates was reviewed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.”

Accordingly, the Committee wrote to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) ( PDF 141 KB) asking if, in that review, it had found those three estimates reasonable, and what the margin of statistical error might be on the numbers.

The IFS’ reply ( PDF 197 KB) starts out “clarifying the role we had in reviewing DWP’s approach” in coming up with the numbers:

“Note that at no stage did we review their approach to estimating the impact of increased conditionality or simplification, to which they attribute 50,000 and 60,000 respectively of the overall 250,000 forecast effect on employment”.

The employment impact of Universal Credit is highly uncertain

The IFS goes on to say: “Neil Couling’s letter to Baroness Hollis on 16 November states that the 250,000 figure is based on the same methodology we reviewed in 2012. For the reasons given above, that can only be true of the element (150,000) which is a result of changes to financial incentives. And we are not in a position to confirm whether and to what extent DWP took on board our comments and implemented our recommended improvements before applying the methodology….”

“The employment impact of UC is highly uncertain. The move to UC involves a number of changes for which it is hard to find comparable precedents (especially UK precedents)” — casting doubt on DWP’s use of academic evidence to substantiate its estimates — “It is not even possible to produce statistical margins of error for estimates of the employment impact, as the nature of the uncertainty is not conducive to standard statistical analysis…”

“Sadly, it will be difficult even after the event to produce convincing estimates of the overall employment impact of UC. The early impact estimates that DWP have published – cited in the Minister’s letter of 12 March – apply only to a small group of claimants who are not affected by UC in the same way as most other claimants […]” and;

“We emphasise that the overall employment impact of UC will conceal very different effects for different groups in the population, with employment rates likely to rise for some and fall for others.”

The last point contradicts what DWP have previously told the Committee when asked about the impact on other groups:

“We remain committed to producing robust comparative analysis of the employment impacts of Universal Credit. As we informed the Committee we are planning to expand the analysis for single cases in the Live Service to couples and families in both services.

This analysis will estimate a labout market impact for these broader claimant groups. In this instance it is misleading to draw a distinction between two services. The underlying policy for both is the same so any comparative analysis will hold true for both systems”.

Lack of evidence

Rt Hon Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee, said:

“The ongoing lack of evidence to back up the much-vaunted employment impact of Universal Credit was already extremely disappointing. But to have our specific queries about basis of this claim answered with airy, irrelevant and, it appears, plainly inaccurate assertions adds insult to injury.

The IFS’ letter shows that Old Mother Hubbard hasn’t got much in the cupboard, despite the bragging of the Department. This clumsy and ill-judged attempt to piggyback on one of the most trusted, unimpugnable authorities on public policy and finance would be farcical if it was not so deeply worrying.”

Call it what it is, Frank. It’s just more glib, ideologically driven lies.

Image result for Universal credit criticism

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Disability Income Guarantee abolished under Universal Credit rules – a sly and cruel cut

March 1, 2018March 3, 2018 · 23 Comments ·

Many of us have said previously that the government’s ‘flagship’ policy, Universal Credit (UC), is about implementing further cuts to welfare support by stealth. However, the loss of income to disabled people through hidden cuts has been under-reported.

Despite the systematic cuts to support that was originally calculated to provide sufficient support to meet the costs of citizens’ basic living needs, UC is on course to deliver only marginal taxpayer savings despite driving through the huge cuts in benefit payments to many claimants, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), last month.

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Disabled people who qualified for the support component of income-related Employment and Support Allowance and (ESA) are also eligible for a disability premium. This is also called the Disability Income Guarantee. However, as a result of the abolition of both the severe disability premium (SDP) and enhanced disability premium (EDP) under UC rules, according to the disability charity, Scope, the cut to the disability income guarantee will see disabled people lose as much as £395 a month.

The UC system has made an estimated £11bn in savings, mainly through Treasury cuts to the original set level of universal credit rates – most notably through reductions to work allowances, which will save around £3bn, and the removal of £2bn in disability premium payments – but UC planning and delivery has also incurred £8.5bn in expenses.

Legal challenge

A terminally ill man is challenging the government regarding their catastrophic universal credit (UC) policy. Known only as ‘TP,’ a 52-year-old ex-City worker – who has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and a condition called Castleman disease which affects the lymph nodes – is launching a landmark challenge at the high court after becoming worse off under the new benefit system. The outcome of the legal challenge could have widespread implications for an estimated 230,000 disabled people who will be hit by the removal of disability premiums under UC rules.

TP discovered his illness is terminal in 2016 and he moved to London to receive treatment, but as it was an area where UC had already been rolled out in the capital, his lifeline support was cut by £178 a month.

The government has previously claimed that disabled people will be protected by ‘top-up payments’ as they transfer to UC but such payments are not planned to be implemented until July 2019. Transitional Protection will only be available to people who are moved over to Universal Credit from ‘legacy’ benefits (even though nothing has happened which makes them need to start a new benefit claim). The government calls this process ‘managed migration’. There will not be any managed migration until the Universal Credit full digital service is available in all areas – July 2019 or possibly later. No further details, as yet, have been published by the government regarding transitional protection.

The Department for Work and Pensions have claimed UC means that support is “focused on those who need it most”, but a government removing SDP and EDP, which is support designed to help severely disabled people who live without a carer – is pulling a basic safety net from citizens with the greatest needs.

This cut will also affect disabled lone parents who may rely on their benefits to pay for support to shop, cook and wash, for example. The cut may mean that they will be forced to rely on their own children as carers.

This exceptionally cruel cut will affect a social group that have already been hit the hardest by austerity. It’s difficult to imagine that these further targeted withdrawals of support are not deliberate.

facade welfare
Furthermore, councils hit by government funding cuts are increasingly charging disabled people for social care – and those who need to claim SDP don’t have a family carer, and so often have a greater need for council social care support. Scope found earlier this year that disabled people have to pay on average an extra £570 a month for the costs of disability for anything from specialist equipment and treatments excluded from charge exemptions on prescription, to taxis and a special diet, with one in five paying more than £1,000 extra per month.

As Frances Ryan says “Since its rollout, UC has become synonymous with hardship, often heaped on the most disadvantaged families: from an increase in food bank use and rent arrears, to now one million children set to miss out on free school meals because of UC’s new earnings threshold. But the threat to disabled and chronically ill people has up until now gone largely under the radar.

“Yet severely disabled people will collectively lose £2bn in disability premium payments (a fraction of what the government is spending on UC’s delayed rollout). Or to put it another way, a mother with multiple sclerosis won’t be able to afford to put the heating on or pay for a carer to help her wash.”

Universal Credit doesn’t meet the aims stated by government and lacks a political consensus of support

Last October, the Resolution Foundation said that a spree of Treasury-driven welfare cuts since 2015 has left UC unable to meet its original aims of ‘strengthening work incentives’ and supporting the incomes of low-income families.

The Foundation warned that the current fragile political consensus in support of universal credit risks breaking down unless ministers refinance the reform and fix multiple design and implementation problems.

At the time, Conservative MP Wendy Morton, David Gauke and other Conservatives responded by claiming that Universal Credit ‘helps’ people into work and criticised opposition MPs for ‘scaremongering.’ However, the new benefit has pushed people into debt and rent arrears, with some forced to rely on food banks to survive. It’s difficult to see precisely how a social security benefit that creates those extremely challenging circumstances could possibly help people into work.

The leader of the House of Commons, Andrea Leadsom, was accused by senior Conservatives MPs of “paving the way for tyranny”, after the government whipped its MPs to abstain on a Labour motion on universal credit. Labour’s motion passed unanimously despite the concerns of several Conservative rebels, but some Tory MPs were infuriated at being urged by their own party to ignore it.

Leadsom faced criticism from some Conservative MPs because she said the government was not bound by the reasonable resolution, which called for the rollout of the controversial welfare changes to be paused.

Sir Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, said: “The road to tyranny is paved by executives ignoring parliaments.”

He went on to say: “I do urge my right honourable friend to listen to parliament, and I urge the secretary of state to come to parliament and make a statement, and it should be a statement full of meat. His own party would be outraged if a future Minority Labour government ignored parliament in this way”.

Heidi Allen fights back tears after Frank Field describes impact of Universal Credit

Yet despite the Information Commissioner ruling the documents should be fully published, the government still refuses to release them to the public. As ministers appealed the decision, the documents remain under wraps, at least until the case is heard at tribunal in April.

Government’s private assessment of Universal Credit is completely inept

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) agreed to provide the reports to the work and pensions committee just before Christmas on the basis that they would remain confidential. The committee, while not publishing the reports in full, quote selectively from them.

The MPs’ report assesses 10 reviews compiled by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) between 2012 and September 2017. The IPA was established by the Treasury and Cabinet Office to oversee major government projects.

The committee say that Conservative ministers’ central claim that UC helps people into work is “highly uncertain” because the estimate relies only on single, childless, unemployed claimants, the committee said. Those who face complex barriers to emloyment, such as lone parents needing child care provision, those with chronic illness and disability and those responsibilities for providing for families are not included in the estimate.

The committee conclude that there is no full business case presented by the Government for UC even now, eight years after it launched.

Committee chairman Frank Field said: “They have produced no evidence to back up the key, central economic assumption of the biggest reform to our welfare system in 50 years.

“William Beveridge will be rolling in his grave.”

The committee goes on to say: “Many millions of pounds of public money were wasted” on UC in its early stages, and they declared: “By 2013, the UC programme was on the brink of complete failure.”

The committee’s report is also scathing about the jargon-ridden IPA reports, describing the style as “a combination of the cryptic and the cliched”, dense with phrases such as “operational cost burners” and “developer stand-ups”. It concludes that they are “no loss to the canon of published prose”. However, serious challenges remain, and the committee have said recent IPA reviews have noted that the criteria by which the operational progress of universal credit should be judged should include customer experience, such as payments delays, for which the DWP has been consistently criticised.

The committee report says: “The DWP has consistently been unable or unwilling to share statistics with us regarding the functioning of UC.154 Similar concerns were evident in the IPA reviews.155 In his sole comments on the September 2017 HC, Neil Couling quoted the Living Bible: “If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done”.156

“Mr Couling told the Chair of the PAC that UC “still represents a value for money programme” and that, in any revision of the business case, its net present value “will remain substantially positive”.157 In scrutinising the UC programme from the outside there is, however, a danger we are being asked to take too much on faith.”

We really do need to worry when Conservative MPs are calling out Conservative ministers regarding their own ingrained authoritarian tendencies. The public don’t want a government that reduces debate about the catastrophic impacts of their policy to basic strategy, crib sheet responses and political role play. The report released by the government to the work and pensions committee does not examine Government policy or the consequences of policy for claimants. They do not, for example, include a single statistic of whether people were receiving their payments on time.

The road to tyranny is mostly paved by executives ignoring citizens’ accounts.

Work and Pensions Committee publishes “damning” evidence of the impact of Universal Credit

The connection between Universal Credit, ordeals and experiments in electrocuting laboratory rats

It’s the design of Universal Credit and not the delivery that presents the biggest concern: from striking to altercasting

Disabled people ‘worse off’ under universal credit

Frank Field’s letter regarding the DWP’s non-existent/existent data: a Schrödinger kind of paradox

February 14, 2018February 15, 2018 · 9 Comments ·

cat schro

The data is only real when someone looks for it

Following on from the article yesterday, (DWP spent £100m on disability benefit appeals over 2 year period), I have copied Frank Field’s letter to Esther McVey below, which highlights the discrepancy between what McVey informed the Work and Pensions Committee when they asked her to provide evidence regarding the costs of disability benefit appeals and mandatory reconsiderations in an inquiry into disability benefits, and the details provided, following a timely Freedom of Information request.

Key facts

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spent £108.1 million on Personal Independent Payment (PIP) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) reviews and appeals since October 2015
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) spent £103.1 million on social security and child support tribunals in 2016/17
Around two-thirds of PIP and ESA tribunals have been won by claimants this year
More than 300,000 PIP and ESA decisions have been changed at review or appeal since October 2015

Figures obtained by the Press Association through a Freedom of Information (FoI) request show that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has spent £108.1 million on direct staffing costs for ESA and PIP appeals since October 2015. The cost covers mandatory reconsiderations, an internal DWP review, and appeals to tribunals run by HM Courts and Tribunals Service.

This staggering amount of money is being spent on the administrative costs of a Department fighting to uphold the outcomes of its own incompetent and deeply flawed decision-making. This is unacceptably leaving thousands of ill and disabled people having to fight to receive lifeline support to which, as the high proportion of successful appeal outcomes informs us, they are legally entitled. Furthermore, when provided with a second chance to remedy incompetent decision-making at mandatory review, the Department has persistently continued to uphold the original flawed decision in many cases.

Since October 2015, 87,500 PIP claimants had their decision changed at mandatory review, while a further 91,587 claimants went on to win their appeals at tribunal. In the first six months of 2017/18 some 66% of 42,741 PIP appeals went in the claimant’s favour, highlighting that both the original decision-making process and mandatory review are failing to effectively ensure eligibility for support is fairly and accurately assessed.

The figures for ESA since October 2015 show 47,000 people had decisions revised at mandatory reconsideration and 82,219 appeals went in the favour of those let down by the current system of assessment and DWP decsion-making.

It’s as if the system is weighted to refuse as many people as possible their lifeline support.

So far in 2017/18, 68% of 35,452 ESA appeals have gone in favour of the claimant.

Conservative peer Baroness Altmann, a former minister at the DWP, said the money could be spent on benefits for those who need them, rather than on the costs of fighting their claims.

“Disability benefits need an overhaul and, of course, we must not let people make bogus claims, but the extent of the appeals we are seeing clearly indicates that something is seriously wrong with the system,” she said.

Figures released to the select committee’s inquiry show further costs to taxpayers.

The Ministry of Justice says it spent £103.1 million on social security and child support tribunals in 2016/17, up from £92.6 million the year before and £87.4 million in 2014/15.

Around 190,000 cases were cleared with or without a hearing in 2016/17, the Ministry told the committee.

The select committee is due to publish the results of its inquiry into PIP and ESA on Wednesday.

Chair Frank Field has written to Esther McVey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, in the wake of the figures to question why MPs were not given such information.

DWP gave the committee the average costs of a mandatory reconsideration and appeal for PIP and ESA.

However, Field, a Labour MP, said the committee was unable to work out the full cost of the appeals process.

This was because it was told information on PIP appeals was not available on whether they were appeals from new claimants or those being reassessed, which have different costs.

The information released to the Press Association was broken down into costs for new claims and those undergoing reassessments.

Here is Field’s letter:

letter head

From the Chair
9 February 2018
Rt Hon Esther McVey
Secretary of State
Department for Work and Pensions

PIP appeal data

During our inquiry on PIP and ESA assessments, your Department kindly provided to us estimated unit costs of MRs and Appeals. This indicated that different costs are attached to PIP appeals depending on whether they relate to new or reassessed claims.

Seeking to understand the financial implications of appeals for the Department, Committee staff inquired on 30 January:

Of the 170,000 PIP appeals since 2013, how many were for new claims and how many were reassessments?

We were duly informed:

The information on the number of PIP appeals is from HMCTS published statistics and this information is not available from HMCTS for new claims and reassessments separately.

We were therefore unable to estimate the full cost of appeals to your Department, although the Ministry of Justice informed us that in 2016/17 its appeals expenditure was £103 million. 1

It was with some surprise, therefore, that we today received data released in response to an FOI request. This provided estimated costs per month spent on PIP appeals—broken down by new and reassessed claims.

You will be aware that we are shortly due to publish our report. That this data was provided in response to an FOI request, but not for our Report, is doubly regrettable since the key theme of our report is the need to introduce much greater trust and transparency into the PIP and ESA systems.

Might you please explain how this occurred?

1 Cost of Social Security and Child Support appeals, of which the majority relate to PIP/ESA. Franks sig

DWP spent £100m on disability benefit appeals over 2 year period

Thousands of disability assessments deemed ‘unacceptable’ under the government’s own quality control scheme

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Work and Pensions Committee publishes “damning” evidence of the impact of Universal Credit

October 28, 2017 · 12 Comments ·

Image result for universal credit critical

Committee Chair Frank Field MP calls evidence submitted to the Committee by Halton Housing Trust the “most damning” he has ever read on what he describes as Department for Work and Pensions “maladministration.”

Food bank referrals double

The Halton Trust has accumulated over £400,000 of arrears as a direct result of the rollout of Full Service Universal Credit. This means that just 18% of its tenants owe 55% of all its arrears. Over the last 12 months the number of referrals the Trust has made to local food banks has more than doubled.

The Trust reports on the frequent wrong categorisation of benefit claimants’ eligibility for Advance Payments while Universal Credit is being processed.

In a sample of 1,252 tenants the Trust found that the majority of claimants were eligible for a Benefit Transfer Advance as they were moving from a so-called legacy benefit (like Jobseeker’s Allowance) onto Universal Credit. This is paid back during the first 12 months of a Universal Credit claim.

Advance payments issues

Those claimants who were offered Advance Payments were offered a New Claims Advance that had to be paid back within 6 months: the submission details the even bigger financial problems this caused for families. In addition, the evidence reports:

The Department for Work and Pensions refuses to amend the recovery period of the Advance Payment, from 6 months to 12 months, even in the instances where they acknowledge that the claimants should have had a Benefit Transfer Advance.
Recovery of the Advance Payment commences immediately with the first Universal Credit payment. This means claimants are continuously playing catch up and are instantly put in debt when the repayment is deducted.
As the Advance Payment of either kind are recovered directly from the Universal Credit award, they are being given priority over other essential/actual priority outgoings.
When Advanced Payments have been provided there is a lack of any explanation to the customer that this includes a personal allowance and housing cost element. In many cases customers are unsure as to what the money they are receiving is for or what the levels of Advance will be.

Personal budgeting advice unavailable

Despite the Department for Work and Pensions advertising the availability of personal budgeting advice:

Halton Housing Trust found that this advice was not available to the vast majority of applicants. This is despite it being an essential element for many applicants at the start of the Universal Credit application process.
Local Authorities have been awarded funding to offer Personal Budgeting Support. Despite this, the number of referrals made by the Department locally in Halton has been very low.

Lack of coordinated approach

Further examples cited by the Trust include:

Many employers choose to pay their employees early before the Christmas period. The Universal Credit regulations consider this as an increase in income and not an early payment. This triggers a review of their claim, with no payments being made until the end of the subsequent month (January).
A lack of coordinated approach between the NHS and DWP. The Trust has recently supported a tenant who received a £50 fine for ticking the “JSA” box on a prescription form, because the form has not been updated with a “Universal Credit” option for receiving free prescriptions, and there are no plans to do so
The Universal Credit application prompts a cessation of Healthy Start vouchers if the claimants were previously in receipt along with their legacy benefit. The Healthy Start system does not yet recognise Full Service Universal Credit.

‘Throwing claimants’ finances into chaos’

Committee Chair, Rt Hon Frank Field MP, said:

“It would be difficult to think, in all my period of Chair of the Select Committee, of a piece of evidence that is so damning on the DWP maladministration which is mangling poorer people’s lives. This maladministration is throwing Universal Credit claimants’ finances into chaos.”

See:

Inquiry into Universal Credit rollout re-launched

Government told Universal Credit roll-out plans are “not credible”

Cuts under Universal Credit are discriminatory and may be illegal

It’s the design of Universal Credit and not the delivery that presents the biggest concern: from striking to altercasting

“Gig economy” companies exploit workers and are free-riding on the welfare state

May 2, 2017May 2, 2017 · 6 Comments ·

Image result for gig economy uk

Deliveroo couriers plan legal action against the food delivery firm to claim better employment rights including the minimum wage, sick pay and holiday.

The 20 delivery riders say they are employees and not, as the company argues, self-employed contractors. In the latest challenge to employment conditions in the gig economy, they are seeking compensation for not receiving holiday pay and for being paid wages below the legal minimum for employees.

The Deliveroo worker’s move follows successful employment tribunal cases brought by cycle couriers at CitySprint, Excel and drivers for taxi app Uber. All three cases found the riders were workers, meaning they are entitled to basic employment rights including holiday pay and the minimum wage, rather than self-employed contractors with no employment rights.

Uber claimed that its 40,000 drivers in the UK are self-employed, and therefore not entitled to pensions, holiday pay, or other basic employment rights. An employment tribunal in London disagreed, calling Uber’s argument that it was simply a technology company “ridiculous”, and they were relying on “fictions and twisted arguments.”

HMRC is investigating delivery giant Hermes for paying workers less than the minimum wage. Staff receive no holiday or sick pay, and risk losing work if they can’t make their rounds due to illness or lack of childcare.

Some 78 couriers working for Hermes, a company that describes itself as “the UK’s largest nationwide network of self employed couriers”, have subsequently made complaints to Frank Field, the chairman of the House of Commons work and pensions select committee.

It is estimated that falsely classifying workers as self-employed is costing the UK up to £314m per year in lost tax and national insurance contributions.

A recent study has found that the average self-employed contractor is now paid less than in 1995.

The Resolution Foundation – a think tank that aims to improve pay for families – partly has blamed the changing nature of the self-employed workforce. Their report says: “With the introduction and growth of the [so-called] New Living Wage, by 2020 more than 1 in 7 are expected to be paid at or only just above the legal minimum. This increases the need for employers and government to provide personal progression opportunities to get people beyond the wage floor.”

Currently, the government expects individuals to make in-work progression without support, or face financial penalties (sanctions) to their top up Universal Credit. This draconian approach forces unreasonable responsibility onto individuals and their familes, because the problem of low pay is one of exploitative employers and government policy rather than of individual behaviour.

Employers are responsible for setting pay levels and terms. The problem is more broadly one of the key features of neoliberalism, which has led to increasing employment precarity, characterised by insecure, exploitative forms of work. Meanwhile, the organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are being portrayed as “market distortions” by a government (and a party) that has legislated mercilessly to undermine the basic rights and fair levels of pay for employees.

The Labour party have pledged to reverse the Conservative’s anti-union laws if they are elected June.

The political logrolling of the profit incentive presents us with the most unedifying and hard face of neoliberalism, in which human need is profoundly devalued; the employee is merely availed of as an object of value extraction. The Conservatives certainly don’t value the idea of “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work”, despite all their rhetoric about “making work pay”. Over the past six years, we learned that this slogan was only a semantic decoy: a cover for the dismantling of our welfare state by a creeping, unremitting stealth.

The report went on to say that many more people had taken up lower-paid jobs in the so-called “gig economy“, essentially self-employed workers taking on a variety of different roles, while the proportion of self-employed business owners with their own staff had fallen. The number of hours worked by the self-employed had also declined.

The foundation said this had limited wage growth before the financial crash, but that pay had been “squeezed” in real terms more recently, falling £100 a week by 2013-14.

Last year, TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Britain’s new generation of self-employed workers are not all the budding entrepreneurs ministers like to talk about.

“While some choose self-employment, many are forced into it because there is no alternative work. Self-employment today too often means low pay and fewer rights at work.”

The Resolution Foundation’s most recent briefing looks at the final quarter of labour market data for 2016. It says: “Most importantly, inflation has risen rapidly in recent months, weighing heavily on real pay growth – though published pay statistics will take some time to fully reflect this. Well over a third of the workforce are experiencing shrinking pay packets according to the latest figures, in sectors ranging from accommodation to finance and the public sector. Many more will join them in the coming months as inflation continues to rise, with pay across the economy as a whole set to have fallen in the first three months of 2017.

Indeed, our ‘Spotlight’ article notes that real pay in the public sector has likely now begun a fall that could well last for several years. Conversely, private sector pay growth will continue to outpace the headline average earnings figures.”

A Department for Business spokesperson said the government was “committed to building an economy that works for everyone”.

Last year, Damian Green said, in a speech at the Resolution Foundation, that the private sector and voluntary sector “should be more involved in the provision of welfare services”. Green’s endorsement of the “exciting” gig economy and the “huge potential” that it offered came just the month after an employment tribunal found that drivers for the Uber car service should in fact get the minimum wage and paid holiday.

Green also said: “The Government is a necessary, but not sufficient provider of welfare.”

Shadow Digital Economy minister Louise Haigh tabled an amendment to the Government’s Digital Economy Bill, New Clause 24, following the tribunal ruling against Uber.

She said there was still a danger that despite the ruling, Silicon Valley multinationals and other employers could use “loopholes” to break the rules and get around workers’ protections.

Haigh said: “This is a landmark ruling for workers in the digital economy, and a great victory for the GMB and its members.

“The digital economy was supposed to promise choice and flexibility, but the reality for too many in the sector is that they are overworked, underpaid and exploited by bosses they never meet and who do not even fulfil their basic duties as an employer.

The Work and Pensions Committee report

In a new report the Work and Pensions Committee also concluded that the government must close the loopholes that are currently allowing “bogus” self-employment practices, which are potentially creating an extra burden on the welfare state while simultaneously reducing the tax contributions that sustain it. Increasingly, some companies are using self-employed workforces as cheap labour, excusing themselves from both responsibilities towards their workers and from substantial National Insurance liabilities, pension auto-enrolment responsibilities and the Apprenticeship Levy.

In an inquiry that has had to be curtailed because of the election, the Committee heard from “gig economy” companies like Uber, Amazon, Hermes and Deliveroo, and from drivers who work with them. The evidence taken painted starkly contrasting pictures of the effect and impact of “self-employment” by these companies.

Companies utlilising self-employed workforces frequently promote the idea that flexible employment is contingent on self-employed status, but the Committee says this is a fiction.

The report

The Committee says:

The apparent freedom companies enjoy to deny workers the rights that come with “employee” or “worker” status fails to protect workers from exploitation and poor working conditions. It also leads to substantial tax losses to the public purse, and potentially places increased strain on the welfare state.
Designating workers as self-employed because their contract offers none of the benefits of employment puts the cart before horse. It is clear, though, that this logic has taken hold, enabling companies to propagate a myth of self-employment. This myth frequently fails to stand up in court, but individuals face huge risks in challenging their employment status that way.
Where there are tax advantages to both workers and businesses in opting for a self-employed contractor arrangement, there is little to stand in the way.
An assumption of the employment status of “worker” by default, rather than “self-employed” by default, would protect both those workers and the public purse. It would put the onus on companies to provide basic safety net standards of rights and benefits to their workers, and make the requisite contributions to the social safety net. Companies wishing to deviate from this model would need to present the case for doing so, shifting the burden of proof of employment status onto the better resourced company.
Self-employed people and employees receive almost equal access to all of the services funded by National Insurance, especially with the introduction of the new state Pension, yet the self-employed contribute far less. The incoming government should set out a roadmap for equalising employee and self-employed National Insurance Contributions.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) needs to ensure that its programmes and resources reflect the positive contribution that self-employment can make to society and the economy. This may require an expansion of specialist support in JobCentre Plus.
The DWP is seeking to support entrepreneurship without subsidising unprofitable self-employment. The existing Minimum Income Floor (MIF) in Universal Credit (UC) does not get this balance right and risks stifling viable new businesses. The incoming Government should urgently review the MIF with a view to improving its sensitivity to the realities of self-employment. Until this is complete, the MIF should not apply to self-employed UC claimants.

Chair’s comments

Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee, said;

“Companies in the gig economy are free-riding on the welfare state, avoiding all their responsibilities to profit from this bogus “self-employed” designation while ordinary tax-payers pick up the tab. This inquiry has convinced me of the need to offer “worker” status to the drivers who work with those companies as the default option. This status would be a much fairer reflection of the work they undertake which seems to fall between what most of us would think of as “self-employed” or “employed”.

It would also protect them from some of the appalling practices that have been reported to the Committee in this inquiry. Uber’s recent announcement that it will soon charge its drivers for sickness cover is just another way of pushing costs onto the workforce, to reinforce the impression that those workers are self-employed.

Self-employment can be genuinely flexible and rewarding for many, but “workers” and “employees” can and do work flexibly. Flexibility is not the preserve of poorly paid, unstable contractors, nor does the brand of “flexibility” on offer from these gig economy companies seem reciprocal. It is clearly profit and profit only that is the motive for designating workers as self-employed. The companies get all the benefits, while workers take on all the risks and the state will be expected to pick up the tab, with little contribution from the companies involved.

It is up to Government to close the loopholes that are currently being exploited by these companies, as part of a necessary and wide ranging reform to the regulation of corporate behaviour.”

Uber

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Inquiry into Universal Credit rollout re-launched

March 16, 2017March 16, 2017 · 18 Comments ·

Following compelling evidence of the problems in the rollout of Universal Credit in its recent follow ups the Work and Pensions Committee has re-launched its inquiry and is accepting written submissions.

However, the inquiry was relaunched last month, on 21 February, and the deadline for written submissions is Monday 20 March 2017.

You can submit your views through the Universal Credit inquiry page.

Call for written submissions

The Committee invites written submissions addressing one or more of the following points:

How long are people waiting for their Universal Credit claim to be processed, and what impact is this having on them?
How are claimants managing with being paid Universal Credit monthly in arrears?
Has Universal Credit improved the accuracy of payments?
Have claimants reported making a new claim for Universal Credit, and then found that the system has not registered their claim correctly?
What impact is Universal Credit having on rent arrears, what effect is this having on landlords and claimants, and how could the situation be improved?
Would certain groups benefit from greater payment process flexibility and, if so, what might the Government do to facilitate it?
Does Universal Credit provide people in emergency temporary accommodation with the support they need, and how could this be improved?
What impact is Universal Credit having on the income and costs of local authorities, housing associations, charities and other local organisations?
How well is Universal Support working, and how could it been improved?
What impact has the introduction of full Universal Credit service had in areas where it has replaced the live service?

Chair’s comment:

Frank Field MP, Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee said:

“Huge delays in people receiving payments from Universal Credit have resulted in claimants falling into debt and rent arrears, caused health problems and led to many having to rely on food banks. It is bad enough that UC has a built-in six-week wait between someone applying and them receiving their first payment, but we have heard that many have to wait much longer than this. The adverse impact on claimants, local authorities, landlords and charities is entirely disproportionate to the small numbers currently claiming UC, yet Lord Freud has told us he thinks it will take decades to optimise the system. We have therefore felt compelled to investigate UC yet again. We will examine what its impact is on claimants and those local bodies which deal with them, and what Government needs to do to ease the pressure on those worst affected.”

Further information

Guidance: written submissions
About Parliament: Select committees
Visiting Parliament: Watch committees

Don’t forget the deadline for written submissions is Monday 20 March 2017.

Submit your views through the Universal Credit inquiry page.

Report shows significant challenges facing the Universal Credit system

May 13, 2016May 13, 2016 · 11 Comments ·

It’s disappointing and very worrying that a published report from the Work and Pensions Committee says: “The employment support service for in-work claimants of Universal Credit (UC) holds the potential to be the most significant welfare reform since 1948, but realising this potential means a steep on-the-job learning curve, as the policy appears to be untried anywhere in the world.”

The Work and Pensions Committee recommendations in the report are:

Given there is no comprehensive evidence anywhere on how to run an effective in-work service, the DWP will be learning as it develops this innovation. The Committee says:

for the reform to work, it must help confront the structural or personal barriers in-work claimants face to taking on more work, such as a lack of access to childcare and limited opportunities to take on extra hours or new jobs
the question of applying proposed sanctions is complex: employed people self-evidently do not lack the motivation to work. The use of financial sanctions for in-work claimants must be applied very differently to those for out-of-work claimants
a successful in-work service will also require partnership between JCP and employers to a degree not seen before.

Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee said:

“The in-work service promises progress in finally breaking the cycle of people getting stuck in low pay, low prospects employment. We congratulate the Government for developing this innovation. As far as we can tell, nothing like this has been tried anywhere else in the world. This is a very different kind of welfare, which will require developing a new kind of public servant.”

This imprudent comment from Field implies that individuals need financial punishments in order to find work with better prospects and higher pay. Yet there are profoundly conflicting differences in the interests of employers and employees. The former are generally strongly motivated to purposely keep wages as low as possible so they can generate profit and pay dividends to shareholders and the latter need their pay and working conditions to be such that they have a reasonable standard of living. It’s not as if the Conservatives have ever valued legitimate collective wage bargaining. In fact their legislative track record consistently demonstrates that they hate it, prioritising the authority of the state above all else.

Workplace disagreements about wages and conditions are now typically resolved neither by collective bargaining nor litigation but are left to management prerogative. This is because Conservative aspirations are clear. Much of the government’s discussion of legislation is preceded with consideration of the value and benefit for business and the labour market. They want cheap labour and low cost workers, unable to withdraw their labour, unprotected by either trade unions or employment rights and threatened with destitution via benefit sanction cuts if they refuse to accept low paid, low standard work. Similarly, desperation and the “deterrent” effect of the 1834 Poor Law amendment served to drive down wages.

In the Conservative’s view, trade unions distort the free labour market which runs counter to New Right and neoliberal dogma. Since 2010, the decline in UK wage levels has been amongst the very worst declines in Europe. The fall in earnings under the Tory-led Coalition is the biggest in any parliament since 1880, according to analysis by the House of Commons Library, and at a time when the cost of living has spiralled upwards.

It’s worth considering that in-work conditionality and sanctions may have unintended consequences for employers, too. If employees are coerced by the State to find better paid and more secure work, and employers cannot increase hours and accommodate in-work progression, who will fill those posts? Financial penalties aimed at employees will also negatively impact on the performance and reliability of the workforce, because when people struggle to meet their basic physical needs, their cognitive and practical focus shifts to survival, and that doesn’t accommodate the meeting of higher level psychosocial needs and obligations, such as those of the workplace. It was because of the recognition of this, and the conventional wisdom captured in the work of social psychologists such as Abraham Maslow that provided the reasoning behind the policy of in-work benefits and provision in the first place.

In-work conditionality reinforces a lie and locates blame within individuals for structural problems – political, economic and social – created by those who hold power. Despite being a party that claims to support “hard-working families,” the Conservatives have nonetheless made several attempts to undermine the income security of a signifant proportion of that group of citizens recently. Their proposed tax credit cuts, designed to creep through parliament in the form of secondary legislation, which tends to exempt it from meaningful debate and amendment in the Commons, was halted only because the House of Lords have been paying attention to the game.

Last month I wrote about the Department for Work and Pensions running a Trial that is about “testing whether conditionality and the use of financial sanctions are effective for people that need to claim benefits in low paid work.”

The Department for Work and Pensions submitted a document about the Randomised Control Trial (RCT) they are currently conducting regarding in-work “progression.” The submission was made to the Work and Pensions Committee in January, as the Committee have conducted an inquiry into in-work conditionality. The document specifies that: “This document is for internal use only and should not be shared with external partners or claimants.”

The document focuses on methods of enforcing the “cultural and behavioural change” of people claiming both in-work and out-of-work social security, and evaluation of the Trial will be the responsibility of the Labour Market Trials Unit. (LMTU). Evaluation will “measure the impact of the Trial’s 3 group approaches, but understand more about claimant attitudes to progression over time and how the Trial has influenced behaviour changes.”

Worryingly, claimant participation in the Trial is mandatory. There is clearly no appropriate procedure to obtain and record clearly informed consent from research participants. Furthermore, the Trial is founded on a coercive psychopolitical approach to labour market constraints, and is clearly expressed as a psychological intervention, explicitly aimed at “behavioural change” and this raises some very serious concerns about research ethics and codes of conduct, which I’ve discussed elsewhere. It’s also very worrying that this intervention is to be delivered by non-qualified work coaches.

Owen Smith MP, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, commenting on the Work and Pensions Select Committee’s report into ‘in-work progression’ in Universal Credit, said:

“This report shows there are significant challenges facing the new Universal Credit system, not least how to ensure work pays and people are incentivised in to jobs. As a result, it is deeply worrying that at the early part of the rollout, huge Tory cuts to work allowances will undermine this aim, as 2.5 million working families will left over £2,100 a year worse off.

“If Universal Credit is to be returned to its original intentions of supporting and encouraging people in to work then Stephen Crabb needs to change his mind and reverse the Tory cuts to working families urgently.

“It’s also problematic that the committee found there is insufficient information available after a year of piloting in-work conditionality, especially given the complete mess that has been made of the existing sanctions regime. The DWP should move quickly to make available as much information as possible, to ensure the roll out of Universal Credit is properly scrutinised.”

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Pictures courtesy of Robert Livingstone

Study of welfare sanctions – have your say

The politics of punishment and blame: in-work conditionality

It’s time to abolish “purely punitive” benefit sanctions

This post was written for Welfare Weekly, which is a socially responsible and ethical news provider, specialising in social welfare related news and opinion.

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How the Department ‘arrived’ at these figures

The employment impact of Universal Credit is highly uncertain

Lack of evidence

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Key facts

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The Work and Pensions Committee report

The report

Chair’s comments

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Call for written submissions

Chair’s comment:

Further information

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