Dear Claire,
Yup, it’s IBS again!
I’m going to refer back to a letter I wrote to you back in June 2014 about the catastrophic failures of IBS’s welfare reforms. You did reply, telling me how wrong my assertions were. Subsequently I wrote again, providing more evidence, and heard nothing back.
In your letter to me of 2nd July, you said this:
"Thank you very much for your communication. I have to say that I profoundly disagree with you (on this issue re: DWP). Your assertions are, I’m afraid, not backed up by the facts.
"On your point of welfare reform, I’m afraid to say that you cannot be more wrong. Our welfare reforms are what every government has wanted to do for decades, which is to collapse a whole series of ill thought-out and ill targeted benefits into one very simple stream that ensures that those in work are better off than those on welfare. I too visit Jobcentres and indeed deal with people on the Work Programme and see every day the huge efforts being made to get people back into work, with the result that unemployment is tumbling in the Constituency and across the UK."
Let’s put this into perspective: If you visit a Jobcentre, everyone there will know you’re coming along. The management at the Jobcentre will ensure that you see only the nice things. Anyone even vaguely ‘off-message’ will be hidden well away from view. Anything contentious will be placed a long way away from your line of sight or earshot. What you will see will be a carefully choreographed piece of strictly good news, including a cast of people who are all well-rehearsed and briefed as to exactly what they need to say and do, in order to present nothing other than overwhelming evidence of a success story. No Jobcentre employee wants to be the one that showed our local MP that things were, perhaps, not an unalloyed success.
You say that unemployment is tumbling across the UK. These figures are largely as a result of zero-hours contracts, and people being sanctioned and cut off from benefits. Once sanctioned, they are removed from the benefits statistics, hence the jobless total falls. My letters included a number of statements taken directly from people working within various job centres, recounting the pressure they are coming under to intimidate people and remove them from benefits. I enclose a few quotes from it:
• Jobcentre Adviser: “I am unable to emphasise enough, what a massive con and waste of taxpayer’s money the Work Programme is.”
• “This (Sanctioning) is the type of thing that would not be out of place in the novel ‘Catch 22’. We are constantly told by managers ‘there are no targets, only expectations.’ However, the expectations are based on the highest performing local offices or Districts.
• Some staff are getting scared that they aren’t doing enough to sanction people and they will be marked in the ‘must improve’ category. Enough warnings and you could be out of a job.
• So IDS will tell you that there are no targets and if any manager is still using the term target they will get a reprimand. However, I have seen the District tables which clearly show the direction an office is travelling in with regards to sanctions and referrals. Offices which are lower than the highest performing office will be told they must aim towards similar numbers or else. They are too crafty to put anything in an email, or at least most of them are.”
When I visit a Jobcentre, usually as part of a protest against the iniquities of the scandalous decisions taken by Atos, I get one person after another approaching me after leaving the Jobcentre, with stories such as: “They changed my appointment without telling me, and because I didn’t attend, they stopped my benefits” or “I am recovering from a nervous breakdown and they’re telling me I’m fit for work” or “They have stopped my carer’s allowance for my wheelchair-bound son who has major learning difficulties because they say he is fit for work. I have appealed against the decision, but in the meantime my benefits have been stopped and we have had no money for several weeks”. These three statements were made to me on one day, whilst standing outside Swindon Jobcentre for a couple of hours handing out leaflets. These are the statements I can remember, but there were plenty more.
Yes, there are people that believe they are entitled to a life on benefits, and these people should definitely be challenged, but the evidence I have seen, heard and read about, tells me that a lot of the policies are targeting the wrong people, time and time again.
For more evidence, read this report published by the charity Just Fair just-fair.co.uk/hub/single/dignity_and_opportunity_for_all/ . In summary, the report states:
• A report published today by Just Fair finds that the UK government is in breach of its legal obligations to respect, protect and fulfill the human rights of disabled people.
• Combining legal analysis with testimony-based evidence, the report concludes that government policies are compromising disabled people’s enjoyment of these fundamental rights, causing significant hardship.
More proof, were it needed, of Iain Duncan Smith’s disastrous policies include:
• A second visit from UN special reporter, Raquel Rolnik, highlighting the government’s failure to provide adequate housing. Of course, that bastion of unbiased reporting, The Daily Mail, has published a damning report of Rolnik’s findings, and Iain Duncan Smith himself has tried suggesting that Rolnik’s visit was somehow illicit.
• The National Office for Statistics has issued approximately forty four reports to the coalition government since it took office, highlighting inaccurate statistics. Sixteen of these reports have been aimed at Iain Duncan Smith’s department. One recent report stated that ‘the statistics quoted by Iain Duncan Smith in a press briefing are not supported by statistics available from within his department’
• Iain Duncan Smith has tried to suppress the publication of reports on his disastrous attempts at welfare reform, including the failure of the new benefits IT system. His attempts were overturned by the appeal judge.
• Iain Duncan Smith’s refusal to acknowledge that increased use of Trussell Trust’s Food Banks might be linked to his disastrous policies. 31% of people using Foodbanks do so because of delays to their receiving benefits. 17% do so because of changes to their benefits. Thus, a staggering 48% of Foodbank customers do so as a direct result of Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms. (figures taken from http://www.trusselltrust.org/stats) Why will he not enter into dialogue with them?
“The whole idea is punishment,” one benefits adviser was secretly filmed saying. “They’ve got to suffer.”
More tomorrow.
Kind regards
Polly
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