Last week, film Director Ken Loach deemed the government approach to social security and welfare as ‘conscious cruelty’. Below we look at some examples of destructive policies that have contributed to deepening poverty and inequality in the UK, and highlight how the government was ‘conscious’ of these results.
What is it: A child is defined as in poverty in the UK, if they live in a household with below 60% of the average income.
What has happened: During austerity, welfare cuts, benefit caps and the recent cuts to housing benefit have affected millions of children. 3.5m children (or 1 in 4) were living in poverty by 2014. Save The Children warned that there could be 5m children in poverty in the UK by 2020.
Two thirds of children living in poverty in the UK are in working households.
What the government knew: In response to 1 in 4 children living in poverty in 2014, the DWP said “Our reforms are improving the lives of some of the poorest families by promoting work and helping people to lift themselves out of poverty.”
In 2015, Alison Garnham of Child Poverty Action Group warned that progress was being undone on child poverty, adding “It is no good pulling bodies out of the river, without going upstream to see who is throwing them in – especially, if it turns out the culprit is government policy.”
One response by government was to attempt to change the definition of child poverty (under David Cameron).
New housing benefit cuts are looking to affect 250,000 children – from the DWP’s own figures, ‘That’s enough kids to fill 350 primary schools, all facing homelessness.’
What is it: Workfare is unpaid work for people who receive welfare. In the UK it has in many cases become a requirement through threat of sanctions.
What has happened: The government has rolled out numerous schemes under different titles that involve free work as a condition for benefits.
What the government knew:Workfare schemes have been tried out in countries such as Australia, USA, Canada and places in Europe since the 1990’s, with dismal results. Research in Australia found that workfare had an insignificant effect on reducing long-term unemployment and was “ineffective” in finding sustainable employment.
The UK government commissioned it’s own international research into workfare before introducing the schemes and the findings were as follows:
“There is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers”
“Workfare is least effective in getting people into jobs in weak labour markets where unemployment is high.”
Despite the fact workfare does not lead to gainful employment and has a negative effect on workers through depressed wages and diminished rights, workfare schemes have been pushed through and are still alive in the UK. The government even fought to keep names of companies using workfare secret because of reputational damage, despite several rulings to release the data. However, these have been successfully combatted by the hard work of groups like Boycott Workfare.
What is it: Sanctions are the removal of benefit payments for up to 3 months. Though, there have been reports of claimants receiving longer sanctions.
What has happened: The increase in the number of sanctions since the Conservative government came to power has been unprecedented. Since 2009, sanctions have more than doubled with one in five jobseekers affected in 2013-2014.
Sanctions are being used even more severely on those with mental illness, with figures this year revealing an increase of nearly 700% since 2012.
There is evidence that there are targets for these sanctions, and along with increases this has lead to claimants being regularly sanctioned for fabricated and trumped-up reasoning such as missing your job centre appointment because you’re at a job interview.
What the government knew: Ex-Minister of employment Esther McVey claimed the use of sanctions was to act as a deterrent and incentivise work. However, in 2014, figures revealed five times as many people were sanctioned as found work – revealing the punitive use of sanctions far outweighed the effectiveness or availability of work for the claimants it was prescribing to ‘deter’.
Government are also aware of how sanctions are acutely prescribed on those suffering with mental or physical ill health. Still, many politicians continue to spread rhetoric about claimants.
In January of 2014, Conservative MP Phillip Davies (apparent ‘flatmate’ of Esther McVey) took an opportunity in Parliament to lament the characterisations of those seen in Channel 4’s Benefit Street. Rosswyn Jones of the Mirror reported;
“All the while, on real-life Benefits Street, a mile or so from Davies’s West Yorkshire constituency, a man lay dead.
“He died alone in a freezing cold flat, wearing several layers of clothes and two dressing gowns – waiting for benefits that had been stopped for months by the DWP.
Evidence of targets has been repeatedly raised with government. One ex-advisor in Salford claimed that staff were told to ‘look at every engagement with the customer (claimant) as an opportunity’ to take sanction action;
“Managers at both district level and in the local office created a culture which encouraged staff to view the customer (benefit claimant) as an obstacle to performance. The Jobcentre operations became wholly performance led. Sanctions of customers were encouraged by managers daily, with staff being told to look at every engagement with the customer as an opportunity to takesanction action. I was personally told by a manager to “agitate” and “Inconvenience” customers in order to get them to leave the register. The staff performance management system was used inappropriately in order to increase submissions to the Decision Maker and therefore to increase sanctions on customers. Senior HR managers condoned this behaviour by refusing to issue guidelines on appropriate time limits on performance, which encouraged managers to look at short-term targets above staff development, fairness to customers and appropriate behaviour as set out in the departments own values.”
What is it: There are lots of common misconceptions about welfare that skew public view about the welfare system and claimants who need it. This can have stigmatising and even abusive results.
What has happened: These misconceptions have gained greater ground during austerity with the rise of poverty porn, benefit cheat sensationalism and rhetoric. For example the public believe that 24% of welfare spending is lost to fraud. The real figure is 0.7%.
What the government knew: Ex-work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith was repeatedly reprimanded by the UK stats authority for using false statistics in order to push through deeper cuts for the disabled and benefit caps. He also encouraged unfounded rhetoric such as the idea of generations of worklessness in households.
What is it: The ability of benefit claimants and those receiving welfare to challenge bad, unfair, unjust decisions.
