Society & Welfare — Page 2

  • Society & Welfare

    UK Statistics Authority upholds TUC’s complaint about DWP’s misuse of statistics

    9th May 2013 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Nicola Smith Nicola Smith

    In a formal response to a letter the TUC recently sent to the UK Statistics Authority, Andrew Dilnot CBE (the Authority’s Chair) today replied confirming that:

    We have concluded that the statement attributed to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that ‘Already we’ve seen 8,000 people who would have been affected by the cap move into jobs. This clearly demonstrates that the cap is having the desired impact’ is unsupported by the official statistics published by the Department on 15 April.

    The incident also prompted a response from the UK Statistics Authority directly to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in which Andrew Dilnot remarks that:

    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 the 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.

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  • Politics

    Queen’s Speech immigration measures: objectionable and unworkable

    8th May 2013 — Filed under: Politics, Society & Welfare

    Rosa Crawford Rosa Crawford

    The Queen’s Speech today announced details of the Government’s new Immigration Bill.  The precise details of the bill remain sketchy, but details the Government has released so far include proposals to regulate migrants’ access to the NHS, increase fines against businesses using illegal labour, require private landlords to check tenants’ status, and prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining driving licenses.

    The economics behind this is utterly flawed.  Migrants already contribute more in tax than they take in services as the Business for New Europe report released today notes, and EU migrants are proportionately less likely to claim benefits than the resident population.

    But we know that the Government is not pursuing this line on migration due to economic demand. Instead they are making a cynical move to fend off accusations by the right of the Conservative Party that they had no credible response to UKIP. who captured so many votes last week with a stridently anti-migrant message.

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  • Society & Welfare

    Universal Credit is not going to be the coalition’s poverty fig-leaf

    7th May 2013 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Richard Exell Richard Exell

    A new report published today shows that Universal Credit is not the answer to rising poverty the government hoped. The evidence that poverty and inequality are set to rise substantially by the next election has been accumulating for some time: in 2011, the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated that, by 2015-16, the coalition’s policies would have increased the number of children in relative poverty by 200,000 and the number of working age adults by 200,000.

    Since then we have had the Welfare Benefits Uprating Act and the government itself estimates that the 1 per cent uprating cap in 2013/14 – 2015/16 “will result in around an extra 200,000 children being deemed by this measure to be in relative income poverty compared to uprating benefits by CPI (consumer price index)”.

    In response, coalition politicians have two defences: Universal Credit and the increased income tax personal allowance. Will Universal Credit Work?, written for the TUC by Lindsay Judge of the Child Poverty Action Group, is an honest and open look at Universal Credit.

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  • Society & Welfare

    Winter deaths are too serious for political football

    29th April 2013 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Craig Berry Craig Berry

    There is apparently no benefit that riles the right, nor those across the political spectrum campaigning for intergenerational justice, more than the Winter Fuel Payment (WFP) for pensioners. The benefit costs the Exchequer just over £2 billion per year (compared to around £76 billion on state pensions).

    Iain Duncan Smith argued at the weekend that wealthy pensioners who do not need their WFP should voluntarily give it back. He has described the policy previously as a ‘bribe’.

    As such, the Work and Pensions Secretary continues to use WFP for political points-scoring.

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  • Society & Welfare

    Benefit caps – a sledgehammer to crack a nut

    29th April 2013 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Richard Exell Richard Exell

    The government’s starting to get a reputation for slyly using an argument for one policy as cover for something much bigger. They are doing this on a grand scale, of course, using the near universal agreement that the deficit has to be addressed (the disagreement is about timing and who should bear what burdens) to justify a permanent shift to a smaller welfare state.

    And they’re using the same trick to justify individual policies. In his speech to Morrisons’ staff three weeks ago the Chancellor said

    “When I took this job, I discovered there were some people who got £100,000 a year in Housing Benefit. £100,000 a year in benefit.”

    That was why, he added

    “We’ve made sure that you can’t get more than £400 of Housing Benefit a week in this country.”

    There, in one passage you have two examples of the trick I’m talking about.

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  • Society & Welfare

    How much do you need for food?

    27th April 2013 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Richard Exell Richard Exell

    Another sign of the times is the debate about how much people on benefits need to spend on food. The BBC says you can have “a healthy diet on £15 a week”, Conservative MP Alec Shelbrooke thinks the problem is they spend their money on fags and booze and the Daily Mail says you can ‘survive’ on a pound a day.

    Of course, most of us could take a holiday to poverty and get by for a day or two or even a week or two. Polly Toynbee is spot on about this, it’s the grinding effect that makes poverty different – the longer it lasts, the fewer resources you have and the more difficult it is to cope with an emergency or unexpected bill. Just as important, the longer it lasts, the greyer life becomes, the more depressing. That’s bad enough to live through, but to watch its impact on those you love must be unbearable.

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  • Society & Welfare

    VIDEO: Why is the Bedroom Tax unfair?

    23rd April 2013 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Richard Exell Richard Exell

    The Bedroom Tax is unfair because it will force children and disabled people into poverty. It will make it harder for unemployed people to get work and, as this short video shows, it is impossible for everyone to obey it. The Bedroom Tax will make Britain a harsher, more unequal place and unions want you to join us in saying NO to it.

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  • Society & Welfare

    The Benefit Cap and Children

    22nd April 2013 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Richard Exell Richard Exell

    I have a post up at politics.co.uk, looking at the Benefit Cap. I point out that the vast majority of the families that will be hit by this policy have children, that on average they will lose more than £60 a week and twenty thousand families will become homeless. Large families will be harder hit – three quarters of the families that lose have three or more children. Large families are already more likely to be poor, so this policy will increase the number of children in poverty.

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  • Society & Welfare

    Is the benefit cap encouraging people into work?

    12th April 2013 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Nicola Smith Nicola Smith

    Is the benefit cap encouraging people into work? ‘Officials’ at the DWP think so, having told the Press Association on Friday afternoon that as a result of the impending cap 8,000 people have found jobs while others have moved to cheaper properties. The Secretary of State agrees and is glad that ‘…even before the cap comes in we are seeing thousands of people seeking help and moving off benefits’.

    These latest claims appear to derive from this ad hoc analysis (identified by Declan Gaffney) which sets out why official estimates of the number of households who will be affected by the cap have been revised down. Its findings directly contradict the assertions the Department has made to PA. It turns out that changes in eligibility for the cap, normal claimant flows and reductions in the generosity of benefits as a result of uprating are responsible for the lower numbers, and that ‘behavioural change’ is definitely not driving the trend. While it might be politically convenient to claim that the benefit cap is incentivising work, the facts don’t back this up.

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  • Society & Welfare

    Reinventing the Poor Law

    12th April 2013 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    Richard Exell Richard Exell

    I’ve just been reading the excellent report on Local welfare provision, low-income households, and third sector financial services provision, written by Damon Gibbons  for Inclusion and the Centre for Responsible Credit.  The report looks at the abolition of the Discretionary Social Fund and the local schemes local authorities are required to set up to replace it.

    One thing that comes across clearly is that (as some commentators said from the start) this policy is all about disguising cuts. But the other point that jumps out at you is the new emphasis in these schemes on the objective of (re-)establishing yourself in the community. That has been there since the Social Fund was created in the 1980s to replace the old (and better) system of Single Payments, but in practice the Fund has been used to help people who would need support getting back on their feet regardless of which community they would be in.

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