ESA proves that Labour has betrayed its core values

I spent this evening watching a black labrador slurpily lapping the shoes of a major think-tank director whilst its owner thought up ways to lie to me about his party’s attitude to the poor and needy. In a speech given in conjunction with Progress, David Blunkett MP set out to demonstrate just why the Tories are so very, very different from New Labour. The former Home Secretary quoted Aneurin Bevan, who described the Conservative party’s habit of using government policy to shore up the assets of the privileged as “sucking at the teats of the state”.

“That sums it up pretty well”, said Blunkett, who went on to describe how the evil, ghoulish Tories, are planning to reduce the size of the state by selling off central and local government functions to private companies in an effort to save money, because they, unlike Labour, care about money more than about people.

Mr Blunkett omitted to mention the small matter of the Welfare Reform Bill 2008, with its stated aim of saving cash by getting a million people off sickness benefits and back into work whether they are up to it or not.This week, the BBC has exposed the inhumanities of the new ESA (Employment and Support Allowance) system, which requires all claimants of incapacity and other benefits to attend a ‘compulsory work-focused interview’ in order to assess their capability for work. In almost all cases, the BBC found, after a series of humiliating interviews in which patients with terminal cancer have been asked to demonstrate how far they can walk, applicants were told that they were ineligible for state support and ordered to seek full-time paid work immediately.

After nearly a year of ESA, the government still cannot say how many people this brutal and dazzlingly expensive system has helped back into work, but it can say for sure that 44,000 people are currently waiting for the results of their appeals, costing the taxpayer additional millions.

Dr Chris Johnstone, whose work helped shape the ESA policy, criticised the system, saying,”I have no problem with a rigorous medical assessment done in a supportive fashion, but I think if you have a slipshod one done, as it appears to be anecdotally, that’s unfair for the people going through the system. It feels like some of it is done inappropriately and it’s almost being done to save money rather than to look after people.”
So here we have a Labour policy that involves …well, it involves contracting out functions of the welfare state to private companies, with the explicit purpose of forcing a million people who are sick off state benefits, in order to save money. Which, by the way, they’re not even doing.

When I raised this inconsistency more-or-less politely with Mr Blunkett, he stammered for a moment before claiming that people attending compulsory medical assessments “should be entitled to a choice of providers” of this “service”. This is an outright fabrication. Even where more than one private company does offer ESA assessments in an area, welfare claimants are not informed of their right to a second ‘medical’ opinion. But that’s not the clever bit. The clever bit of ESA, the really nasty, vindictive thing about this scheme, is that accessing the money one is entitled to now involves a fight, a fight that, according to Atos doctors, one is designed to fail:

“When doctors go in for the day’s assessments, they pretty much know the clients are going to be turned down…It’s really tough to qualify for ESA.” Sam, 32, a former research scientist, described his experience of applying for ESA, which was far from ‘empowering’:

”Jumping through the hoops to access my benefits took me six months, during which I was peniless and despairing. It’s not about ‘what you can do’ – what the DWP want to find out is just how incompetent and incapable you are. If you’re to stand any chance of getting the support you need, you have to fail hard enough to satisfy them. And if there’s ever anything calculated to institutionalise failure, that’s it.”

After Blunkett had finished pontificating about ‘choice’ and ‘empowerment’ and how much Labour ‘cares about people’, I waited for the red-eye to subside, made tea, and turned on my computer. Where I found that another friend of mine, Laura, 23, who suffers from severe mental and physical health problems, had received a letter from the DWP telling her that she no longer fulfils their criteria for being unwell:

“… and therefore, I am no longer entitled to my Employment and Support Allowance. And as such I have no income whatsoever.

“Now, when I read the letter I cried for half an hour. Cried so much my throat hurt. But now, now I’m just angry. I’ve spent months in psychiatric institutions, and I struggle every fucking day with feeling like a failure, and what this letter essentially says is, ‘you’ve failed a test you didn’t even know you were taking, and no, we didn’t consult your doctors, but as far as we’re concerned there’s nothing wrong with you, get back to work and stop sponging.”

“Tomorrow I’m going to have to phone some faceless telephone person who I’m either going to shout it, which they don’t deserve, or cry at, which doesn’t help. This seems like a system that discriminates against those who are most vulnerable.”

You can read the whole of Laura’s post here. It’s important to remember that Laura, Sam and people like them are not just recieving rejection letters, shrugging their shoulders and getting on with it. This is a policy that destroys lives, sometimes literally, sometimes inexorably, and always with the tepid tang of faceless beauracracy. If Labour’s only election strategy is to accuse the Tories of not caring about ordinary people, something is badly amiss. It’s not merely a lie: it’s an untruth so fundamentally at odds with the last five years of policymaking that one suspects the cabinet of some terrible mass hallucination of integrity.

In its belated return to the rhetoric of privilege and class, Labour forgets that a significant proportion of its voters and former voters no longer fit the worn Labour image of ‘working class’, because they are not able to work for a living in this stress-inducing, punishing service economy, if indeed they ever were. Labour forgets that people who have the cheek to need state support have votes too, and that their votes matter – indeed, they are, all too often, precisely the disenfranchised ‘urban block vote’ that Blunkett accused the Tories of forgetting.

Labour’s callously outsourced welfare solutions demonstrate that the party has betrayed its core values of decency, fairness and support for ordinary people. In doing so, it has sold the ordinary people of this country, working-class and middle-class, skilled and unskilled, the Sams and the Lauras and you and me, into what could be a generation of failure to thrive.

Taken from Penny Red

Sunderland’s jobless total dips

Sunderland was the only part of the North East to see the number of jobless claims continue to fall last month.

The number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance across the region rose by 1,226, but the claimant count in the Sunderland City Council area was down 62 from 10,305 to 10,243.

City council leader Coun Paul Watson said: “Since May last year, Sunderland has seen a fall in the number of residents who are claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance. This is encouraging news when compared to the national figures and other parts of our region, but I would not want anyone to think that anybody is complacent.

“Sunderland’s economy is now far more robust and resilient, and we have a diversified business base that is better able to withstand shocks.

“The city council and organisations across the city and North East continue to do all they can to help create employment opportunities, and to help people into work.”

The employment picture is not so rosy across the rest of the region.
Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton have seen the biggest increases in claimant numbers over the past year.

Middlesbrough has the country’s fifth highest proportion of working age people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, Hartlepool is joint seventh and South Tyneside is eighth.

The most popular occupations sought by jobseekers in the region are sales and retail assistants, goods handling and storage occupations and labourers in process and plant operations.

Taken from Sunderland Echo

New jobless figures will offer ‘verdict’ on youth policy

Crucial new figures will show whether the government’s investment in keeping young people off the dole has been paying off, the TUC has said.

Total unemployment is expected to increase again, to around 2.5 million, but the union organisation said it would be studying the data to see how many young people were out of work.

Young people have been the “big losers” throughout the recession, said the TUC, with an unemployment rate for people aged 18-24 at 18.4 per cent – which is far higher than the 6.3 per cent rate for those aged 24-49.

TUC general secretary Branden Barber warned that another increase over 10,000 would indicate that it will be a long time before the youth recession ends.

He added: “Today’s figures will be a key indication of whether the encouraging signs in last month’s statistics were just a blip or a sign that government investment is really paying off.

“It would be madness to cut the resources dedicated to helping the unemployed, as some are suggesting, when the medicine is slowly beginning to have an impact.”

Taken from Morning Star

Seriously ill patients ‘told to work’

A BBC investigation has heard claims of seriously ill patients being told they are fit enough to work and denied benefit payments.

Two former doctors for the private healthcare company Atos, which carries out the medical assessments have expressed concerns that the checks are being done too quickly and that the system is biased towards declaring people fit for work.

BBC Scotland’s Social Affairs Reporter, Fiona Walker, has been investigating why some of those who had high hopes for ESA say it has been a failure

Employment Support Allowance, or ESA, is replacing Incapacity Benefit. It’s supposed to support the very sick, and as people get better, help them get back into the workplace.

The government said it wanted to get a million people back to work by 2015 but more that one year after introducing ESA, it says it can’t measure how many people the scheme has got back into the workplace.

During the investigation, we’ve heard claims that terminally ill patients are being told to attend back-to-work interviews while they apply for the new benefit.

We also heard concerns that the medicals are declaring seriously ill people as fit enough to go to work.

One of the patients we spoke to was Maureen Leitch. She says she was called in for a medical assessment just a few weeks after undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy for vulval cancer.

She was declared fit for work and told she wasn’t entitled to ESA.

She said: “I was struggling terribly with the whole cancer. I was in extreme pain… It was a whole load of hassle, and aggravation that I didn’t need at the time I was going through the journey of the cancer… I feel insulted and badly let down, with the system.”

Maureen appealed the decision and it was overturned, meaning she was eventually awarded the benefit.

Currently, there are 44, 000 people waiting for their appeals to be heard. More than a third of people are winning their appeals.

Charities and organisations including Citizens’ Advice Bureau, say they’re worried that thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being wasted because of the number of people going to appeal.

Everyone we’ve interviewed for this investigation agrees that getting people back to work can be good for them.

Frequent appraisals

What they’re concerned about is the way the system is working in practice.

Dr Chris Johnstone is a GP in Paisley. His work to help his patients back to work helped shape the ESA policy.

He said: “I have no problem with a rigorous medical assessment done in a supportive fashion.

“But I think if you have a slipshod one done, as it appears to be anecdotally, that’s unfair for the people going through the system. It feels like some of it is done inappropriately and it’s almost being done to save money rather than to look after people.”

Ultimately the decision on whether you get benefit or not is down to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), but they have contracted a private healthcare company called Atos to carry out the initial medical assessments.

I’ve spoken to two doctors who used to work for Atos. They say they are concerned about the way checks are being done. They both say they are worried that speaking out will affect their medical careers so we’ve agreed not to reveal their names.

This is what one of the doctors told me: “We would frequently have appraisals. They were all about how many clients you had seen and the average length of time it took to complete each assessment and write the reports.

“I wanted to know if they were happy with the quality of the reports I’d done but they hadn’t even looked at my reports, only at the time it had taken. It’s really tough to qualify for ESA.

“When doctors go in for the day’s assessments, they pretty much know the clients are going to be turned down.”

The other doctor I spoke to backed up those claims.

We asked to do an interview with Atos, but they refused.

Gaining skills

Instead they gave us a statement saying: “We are continually monitored and audited by the government to ensure that it completes the highest standard of assessment and that medical advice is correct.

“Atos Healthcare and its employees are not advised of the result of the assessment and the outcome has no bearing on Atos Healthcare targets or remuneration.”

Helping people back to work is one of the key aims of ESA. But the government can’t tell us how many people this new scheme has got back into work.

The minister for Disabled People at Westminster is Jonathan Shaw, MP. I asked him why his department couldn’t tell us how many people ESA had successfully got back to work.

He said: “What’s essential is that we are providing a programme, across the board, not just for ESA claimants but for youngsters, for disabled people for elderly people, to try and gain the skills that they can to stay in the labour market and return to work.

“We’ve got the pathways to work programme, which as I say is helping thousands of people who I’ve met up and down the country… this is early days, for the Employment Support Allowance.”

Mr Shaw also said he would be looking into the way cancer patients are treated.

Taken from BBC News

Credit crunched pensioners turn to crime

Nearly 80 pensioners have been arrested in Sunderland and East Durham for shoplifting in the last two years.

In total 300 have been nicked on various charges and charity workers suggest the recession is driving them to crime.

Age Concern spokesman Les Young said: “The basic state pension of £92 a week is too low for people to live on.

“Basic foodstuffs, utility bills, transport and other daily costs have risen with no proper increase in benefits for those who need them most.

“We are starting to see older people shoplifting to get by.”

However, Alan Patchett, director of Age Concern Sunderland, said the number arrested for shoplifting was a very small minority of Wearside’s elderly population.

He added: “My message would be that if people are that desperate, come and talk to us.

“We can offer help with benefits, keeping homes warm, and have all sorts of support mechanisms.”

New figures have revealed that seven octogenarians were among those who had their collars felt in Sunderland, with the oldest being an 86-year-old suspected of shoplifting.

Taken from Sunderland Echo

Pensioners left out in the cold

OAPs will be given pittance to stay warm during Britain’s big freeze

Pensioners have been left out in the cold after the government offered a miserable sum of money to heat their homes.

With freezing temperatures across much of Britain and high fuel bills hitting working people and the elderly hardest, the government offered a mere £170 million as a one-off cold-weather payment.

Work and Pensions Minister Helen Goodman tried to reassure pensioners that help was “on the way” and that they should not worry about turning their heating on.

However, National Pensioners Convention (NPC) general secretary Dot Gibson said that payments were not automatic and only available to a lucky few.

“You have to be on means-tested support to qualify, which excludes the vast majority of older people, and you have to endure seven days of freezing temperatures before being able to receive any payment,” she said.

One of the conditions for receiving a payment is that the temperature must be 0 degrees Celsius or less for seven consecutive days.

About 12.3 million older people will receive winter fuel payments between £250 and £400.

The Conservative Party has in the past attacked the government over the whole concept of winter fuel payments, suggesting that they should be scrapped altogether.

Ms Gibson said there was a much more efficient way of ensuring older people get the help they deserve when they need it than a cold-weather payment.

“We would prefer to see the winter fuel allowance that reaches every pensioner household increased to £500 and paid across the board,” she demanded.

“The NPC thinks this is a more effective way of dealing with cold weather and the drop in temperature that we are currently experiencing.”

The government has also been heavily criticised for not exerting enough pressure on private energy companies which have not ruled out price rises.

Ms Gibson said that the NPC “would like to see an industry-wide social tariff where a set amount is paid per measure of energy with a lower amount for more vulnerable people.”

Twenty thousand mainly older people needlessly die from the cold each year, while many more become seriously ill.

According to recent National Housing Federation figures, some seven million households are currently in fuel poverty.

Despite wholesale electricity and gas prices more than halving, fuel bills only fell by a miserly 4 per cent in 2009, averaging £1,239 a year.

Green campaigners also stepped up calls for a “bold” approach to tackle fuel poverty – and in doing so, meet climate change targets for reducing carbon emissions.

WWF Scotland organiser Elizabeth Leighton urged the Scottish government to build on Westminster’s Warm Front scheme in England which offers grants of up to £6,000 for pensioners and single parents on benefits to insulate their homes.

And she insisted: “A bold, local authority-led, street-by-street approach with free loft and cavity wall insulation for all is the most effective means to make all homes low-carbon.”

Taken from Morning Star

Don’t lose out if you are a carer

The search is on for Wearside’s “hidden carers” to make sure they get the financial state help they are entitled too.

Research by Mori shows one-in-six carers either gives up or cuts back work to look after a loved one.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Work and Pensions, said: “Carers contribute a lot to our society and we want to make sure they are looked after as they look after others.

“They could be missing out on vital financial support they are entitled to.

“Receiving the right benefits can help carers to make ends meet, and getting practical support can help to prevent the physical and mental stresses of caring taking too much of a toll.”

Future financial security might not be at the top of many carers’ “to do” lists, but the state pension system is changing so that people’s financial security in later life can be better protected.

From April, people caring for someone for more than 20 hours a week could get National Insurance credits to help them build up entitlement to state pension.

The spokeswoman added: “We need help to find hidden carers out there who probably don’t even think of themselves as carers.

“Instead, they are just trying to be good to a parent, or a good parent to their child, but they may be able to get state pension help from April.”

If you are looking after a sick or disabled loved-one, get a benefits check and to explore options to protect your pension.

Call Carers UK’s adviceline, tel. 0808 808 7777 for expert advice.

Taken from Sunderland Echo

Benefits changes force tenants into poverty

A leading charity has criticised the government’s local housing allowance saying it is plunging claimants into poverty.

Housing charity Shelter said the local housing allowance (LHA), a new way of paying housing benefit which was introduced last year, has left thousands of tenants struggling to manage their finances – with many now in danger of losing their home.

LHA was intended to promote fairness, choice and personal responsibility among claimants by paying the money directly into their bank accounts rather than to their landlord.

But a survey of 450 people carried out by the charity found that for 81 per cent it had been “fairly” or “very difficult” to find a home that was affordable.

Six in 10 said they had had to make up shortfalls in their rent themselves.

Many respondents claimed that they had only been able to find the extra money by going without essentials such as food and heating.

Shelter said part of the problem was that the boundaries used to calculate the levels of the allowance people receive – known as broad rental market areas (BRMA) – were too large.

As a result, people in expensive parts of the BRMA were being forced to move to cheaper areas or find the shortfall in rent themselves.

But it warned that in cheaper areas, anecdotal evidence suggested some landlords were raising their rents as they knew the LHA would pay out more than they were charging.

Ninety-five per cent of people receiving the LHA said they were struggling to manage their finances, while the new system had contributed to more than a quarter of people falling behind with their rent.

A growing number of landlords are allegedly refusing to accept LHA claimants as tenants, with 60 per cent of people receiving the benefit saying they had struggled to find a landlord who would let them a property.

Shelter director of policy and campaigns Kay Boycott said: “Under this system tenants have no choice about whether their benefit is paid to them or to their landlord.

“Many claimants are already struggling financially, so when they get rent money paid into their bank account there is a huge temptation to spend it on necessities such as food or bills rather than paying their rent.

“It is vital that the government makes urgent changes to LHA to ensure claimants do not continue to be disadvantaged.”

Taken from Morning Star

Benefits cruelty of cancer patients

Seriously ill cancer patients are being forced to undergo “cruel” back-to-work interviews despite the fact they should be exempt, charities have warned.

Those who are terminally ill or undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy are being threatened with benefit cuts if they do not attend the meetings, according to Macmillan Cancer Support and Citizens Advice.

The “fit for work” interviews are for people seeking the employment and support allowance (ESA), which replaced incapacity benefit and income support in October 2008.

The drive behind ESA is to focus on what people can do rather than what they cannot do, as a means of getting them back to work.

However, cancer sufferers undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy or who are terminally ill are automatically exempt from the interviews.

Macmillan and Citizens Advice condemned the ESA process, saying it was “failing seriously ill and disabled people”. Macmillan’s benefits helpline has taken more than 600 calls about the issue since May.

A joint report – Failed by the System – found evidence of cancer patients with just months to live being told they had to undergo medical examinations and be questioned. Others having radiotherapy and people in hospital have also been refused ESA when they should automatically get it, the study found.

It also noted examples of people with cancer being told they are fit for work even when they are suffering from the long-term effects of the disease.

The charities said poor knowledge of ESA rules among Jobcentre Plus and Department for Work and Pensions medical staff is resulting in claims being handled badly. Poor administration systems and a lack of understanding about cancer are fuelling the problem, they said.

Mike Hobday, head of campaigns at Macmillan, said: “It’s cruel and completely unacceptable that people who are terminally ill or going through gruelling treatment are being made to jump through hoops to get money they should receive automatically. The safeguards to protect cancer patients clearly aren’t working, and the ESA system is riddled with problems.”

Taken from guardian.co.uk

Tory benefit cuts ‘not the answer’

Conservative leader David Cameron outlined plans on Monday for benefit cuts that would plunge more than half a million disabled and mentally ill people into deeper poverty.

If elected his party would retest all 2.6 million people on £90-a-week incapacity benefit and switch them to the £64-a-week jobseeker’s allowance if found fit to work, he said.

The Tory claimed that the proposal – which he expected would hit one in five incapacity claimants – would save £1 billion over five years.

However it would also mark a multimillion-pound bonanza for the private sector.

Mr Cameron revealed that some of the cash saved in benefit bills would be channelled into firms paid for getting people back into work.

His announcement was swiftly condemned by left economists.

Left Economics Advisory Panel co-ordinator Andrew Fisher dismissed the Tory proposals and called for the creation of new jobs specifically tailored for those who could make an economic contribution to society.

He said: “A more ambitious scheme would be to invest in secure and supported working environments with decent pay and pensions – on the Remploy model – to support people back into work if they are able.

“In the long term, the only cost-effective model of reducing welfare costs is to create jobs for those who need them.”

Mr Fisher added that the Tory proposals were not cost-effective and would not tackle the underlying discrimination that disabled people face.

“Cameron’s scheme will cost more to implement than it saves and will not create a single job, raise a single income or do anything to tackle the discrimination faced by people with disabilities from employers,” he said.

“This mean approach has obviously earned David Cameron the Sun’s support, but it will hopefully cost him some votes.”

The government claims that a recent pilot scheme showed that one in five people on incapacity benefit could work – figures which the Conservatives twisted to argue for their own proposals which would hit all claimants.

Employment Minister Jim Knight labelled the Tory plans “callous.”

“This is unfair on the genuinely sick, who should not suffer a £25-a-week cut in benefit,” he said.

Taken from Morning Star