Tag Archives: activity

The Tories want the UK to become a criminal state – for the sake of some money?

A lamppost sticker promoting boycott, divestment and sanctions. Note that it demands “justice for Palestine” and makes no anti-Semitic statements.

Conservative government legislation will turn the UK into a criminal state in the international community – and it seems certain that it is being done so some Tories and their friends can make some money out of it.

Does that make you feel dirty – slimily, greasily, grubbily, maggots-in-your-food dirty?

It should.

The Bill that has caught public attention most vividly today is the innocently-titled Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill that specifically forbids public bodies like local councils from taking into account human rights abuses committed by foreign governments when making decisions, including on procurement of goods and services.

The Bill specifically forbids such public bodies from ever refusing to take goods and services from Israel, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and/or the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, no matter what atrocities are committed there.

Here’s an atrocity that was committed there yesterday (Monday, July 3, 2023). During an apparently-unprovoked attack on the Palestinian city of Jenin, which contains a refugee camp that crams 14,000 people into a space less than half a square kilometre in size, this happened:

The Economic Activity… Bill makes it illegal for public bodies to protest against atrocities like this in the only meaningful way available to them – by refusing to do business with firms from Israel or operating as Israeli firms in the occupied territories.

Legal opinion shows that the Bill is so badly-constructed that it will make the UK an internationally criminal state, with all the possible consequences this may create.

So why inflict it on a nation that doesn’t want it (we demand our right to oppose injustice wherever we see it, including in the actions of a rogue state like Israel) and will suffer for it internationally?

The only reason This Writer can find is that the trade it will generate will bring money to Conservative MPs or their friends – bosses of firms that will then donate money to them.

I wonder whether discussions to that effect have taken place between UK government or Conservative Party representatives and government or business people in Israel.

Let’s put some flesh on the bones of this argument.

Lisa Nandy, Labour’s Shadow Levelling-Up Secretary, together with Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy, commissioned legal advice on the Bill from one David Hermer KC. His response was lengthy but I will try to distil it into the essentials:

This very poorly drafted Bill is likely to have a detrimental impact on the United Kingdom’s ability to protect and promote human rights overseas, is in certain respects inconsistent with our obligations under international law, will stifle free speech at home (in a manner incompatible with Article 10 of the ECHR), will take powers long exercised by local authorities into the hands of the Secretary of State and will likely lead to an array of illogical outcomes.

Many of the key provisions of this very poorly drafted Bill are deeply troubling from both a domestic and international law perspective. The implications for local democracy, for the proud history in our regions of campaigning for global human rights, for using our economic clout for the promotion of human rights, for free speech in this country and for compliance with our international law obligations are potentially profound.

The driving force behind the Bill is to address the ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ campaign (hereinafter ‘BDS’) directed against Israel. The Bill is objectionable irrespective of whether one considers BDS to be thoroughly reprehensible or conversely a legitimate form of non-violent protest.

Irrespective of whether this Bill is enacted, all public bodies are already prohibited in law from pursuing policies, or taking any actions that are directly, or indirectly, antisemitic or otherwise discriminate against Jewish people. These protections… are all enforceable by the Courts.

So the Bill does nothing to counter anti-Semitism; protections against that are already in place.

There would appear to be at least two possible interpretations of what conduct is intended to be prohibited:

Interpretation 1 is that the Bill is directed at the policies of foreign governments only in so far as they relate to territorial disputes, or disputes limited to particular territories, whether they be internal or external territories to the foreign government.

Interpretation 2 is that it the Bill prohibits any relevant decisions based on moral or political disapproval of a foreign government. On balance, I consider that a court would determine that this is the correct interpretation of the clause… This … is supported by the fact that Israel (i.e. an entire country) is specified … in addition to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (hereinafter the ‘OPT’) and the Golan Heights.

Assuming Interpretation 1 applies then it would create an artificial distinction between acts borne of moral/political concerns arising out a territorial dispute (prohibited) and acts motivated by non-territorial based moral/political concerns (untouched by the Act). By way of example, the Bill would not impact a decision to refuse to buy certain goods from China because of its general disregard for human rights but would render unlawful a decision not to buy cotton goods from Xinjiang because of the crimes against the Uighur people2. That is because only the latter decision would be based on a consideration ‘relating to a territory’.

This is utterly illogical and exemplifies the dangers of seeking to introduce legislation of general effect in order to address a specific discrete concern. Even more starkly, the Bill would not prevent a local authority from refusing to buy any Israeli products for reasons unconnected to a territorial consideration – for example, because of discriminatory practices against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship living within the Green Line. That is because the discrimination is not one based on a territorial consideration but rather once based on race. Ironically therefore, the Bill (if Interpretation 1 applies) would in reality increase the prospects of public authorities making decisions based on the internal domestic policies of Israel rather than concerns about treatment/status of Palestinians in the OPT.

Assuming that Interpretation 2 applies, then … it will preclude public authorities from having regard to any human rights violations of a foreign government when making relevant decisions. Save for the limited exceptions provided for in the Schedule, it would at a stroke preclude public bodies from taking into account a range of deplorable conduct of a foreign state from genocide, unlawful military invasions, war crimes, other crimes against humanity and racial discrimination etc. On the face of the Bill this would preclude a council from refusing to purchase goods from Russian occupied Ukraine, or from Myanmar, or North Korea or any country on the basis of disapproval of their systemic human rights violations. Had legislation of this nature been in effect in the 1980s it would have rendered it unlawful to refuse to source goods from apartheid South Africa.

The enactment of the Bill would seriously hamper any public body exercising an ethical approach to (at least) its purchases and investments.

So if Interpretation 1 applies, then the Bill encourages public bodies to refuse goods from Israel on the grounds of any ill-treatment of non-Jewish people living within the internationally-accepted borders of that country. This would not be hard as a relatively-recent law there has turned everybody who isn’t Jewish into a second-class citizen.

And if Interpretation 2 applies (which is more likely), then the UK becomes a supporter of genocide, unlawful military invasions, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and most reprehensibly racial discrimination – the very behaviour that the Bill ostensibly seeks to curtail.

Many would be proud of the role played by local authorities in this country to oppose the South African apartheid regime. These acts have been propelled not simply by morality but by the perception that boycotts and other economic measures can have a positive impact on the promotion of human rights globally.

The prohibition … cannot logically be justified on the basis that it will always be inappropriate per se for public bodies to base their decisions on disapproval of a foreign country’s conduct. That is because the Bill itself recognises that in certain specified circumstances (i.e. those provided for in the Schedule) it will be entirely appropriate to take such steps.

What the Bill does … is remove the power of local authorities to make those decisions for themselves. Rather the decision is now vested solely in the hands of the Secretary of State although even then s/he is absolutely barred from making an exception in respect of Israel, the OPT or the Golan Heights.

In placing the power of exemption solely in the hands of the Secretary of State the Bill effectively infantilises all other public bodies, many of whom have a long history of using their economic purchasing powers in order to avoid supporting human rights violations and/or to pressurise foreign countries to adopt change. This would seem at odds with the general tenor of Government policy to decentralise power. It would also seem impervious to the democratic and legal restraints that already operate on public bodies such as local authorities. Not only are voters able to influence decision making processes in local government (often in a far more direct way than permitted in our parliamentary system) but they are also able to effect change through the ballot box. Similarly, decisions of local authorities which are discriminatory, or outwith their powers, or unreasonable are subject to reversal through judicial review and legal campaigning.

So – again – there are already protections against public bodies misusing their powers.

The ultimate sanction of effecting change through the ballot box is one that should have given the Tories who drafted this Bill cause for serious reconsideration. That it did not suggests an extremely cavalier attitude to election results.

History has shown the capricious consequences that flow when powers of this nature are removed from hundreds of public bodies and placed exclusively in the hands of one decision maker. During the apartheid regime local authorities in the UK played a prominent and powerful role in the South Africa boycott campaign. Had this Bill been in force during the 1980s this would have been very likely deemed unlawful and no exemption granted in light of the position of the then Prime Minister that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist and the apartheid regime was an ally.

In other words, if enacted in the 1980s, this Bill would have made the UK a staunch supporter of the racist regime in South Africa. It is even possible that, with such tangible support from Thatcher, apartheid may have remained in place to this day.

Whilst the Schedule provides some very limited … exemptions (labour rights, bribery and environment) it does not include other human rights abuses such as genocide, the systemic use of torture, other crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention. From an international law perspective these are distinctions without any logical basis.

It would seem odd in the extreme that the Secretary of State is vested with powers to make exemptions for any country in the world except Israel, irrespective of what the ‘facts on the ground’ at any given time might be. Israel could only ever be included by amendment through primary legislation. In circumstances in which, if enacted [the Bill] would automatically render a BDS motivated relevant decision unlawful, [it] seeks [to] ‘double lock’ the position and tie the hand of the Secretary of State in respect of one country, and one country alone.

So Israel is given special status.

[The Bill is] rendered even more alarming, certainly from a legal and international relations perspective – by the inclusion [in the exemption] of the OPT and the Golan Heights in addition to Israel. This accords to territories occupied since 1967, (and deemed an unlawful occupation in international law) the precise same specially protected status as Israel itself. This effectively equates the OPT with Israel itself and is very difficult to reconcile with the long-standing position of the United Kingdom which supports a ‘two-state solution’ based on ‘1967 lines’ in which the security and right to self-determination of both Israelis and Palestinians are protected.

So the Bill contradicts the UK’s stated policy on Israel and Palestine.

The effect … is that no exemptions can be made, even by the Secretary of State, to permit any decision maker to ever take into account the status in international law of the OPT or human rights abuses occurring there.

The terms of this exemption … are also very difficult to reconcile with our obligations under international law… Legislation prohibiting local authorities from taking steps to promote Palestinian self-determination within the OPT, taken with the terms of the exclusion… would likely place the United Kingdom in breach of international law obligations.

The UK’s support of Israel would make it a criminal state.

The fact that the clauses would put the United Kingdom in breach of its international law obligations is likely to give rise to early legal challenge to the Bill should it be enacted. That is not least because [the Bill] (rightly) provides that nothing in [it] should prevent the decision maker from acting if it would otherwise place the UK in breach of its international law obligations. One can readily foresee a public body reasonably deciding that purchasing goods made in illegal Jewish settlements in the OPT would place the United Kingdom in breach of its international law obligations. Such public bodies may well consider it prudent to test the issue through judicial review before exposing itself to the risk of penalties. Accordingly, an unforeseen consequence of this Bill might therefore be that the English courts will be required to adjudicate upon the legality of the occupation of the OPT in order to ascertain whether a decision not to purchase goods was justified … so as to avoid placing the UK in breach of its international law obligations. Whereas domestic courts to date have been reluctant to adjudicate upon issues relating to the OPT, the terms of the Bill may well require them to do so.

The Bill is likely to lead to decisions making it clear that Israel is a criminal state, according to UK law – and in contradiction of the intentions of its authors.

[The Bill] prohibits public bodies not simply from saying that they intend to act in a manner prohibited by [it] but (even more controversially) that they would have done so but for the prohibition. This is a legally unprecedented restriction on the ability of relevant bodies, many of them directly elected, to express a view on their own decision-making process. Indeed, the law would have the extraordinary effect of making it illegal for a decision-maker who has complied with the [Bill’s] requirements … to state that the only reason they have taken that decision is because they were required by the law to do so, and that – were the terms of the law different – … they would have acted differently. A relevant body would be prohibited, for example, from explaining to constituents that they did not want to purchase goods from North Korea but were prevented from not doing so by the Bill/Act. This is an extraordinary gagging clause on democratically elected politicians and public bodies.

What would be the purpose behind this? Is it to make it seem that public bodies in the UK actually support Israeli atrocities when they don’t? Would this not have a chilling effect on people wanting to take part in local democracy? Would they step aside on the grounds that this is against their principles? And would this leave space for people who do support atrocities – exactly the sort of people who should be nowhere near public power – to step in and take over?

This is not just an attack on free speech but on democracy itself – as Mr Hermer makes clear:

Freedom of expression has long been recognised as one of the essential foundations of a democratic society and the rule of law. It is applicable not only to information or ideas that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also those that often, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population… Here under the terms of the Bill, if a Council Leader was asked whether she was in favour of the local authority procuring goods from Xinjiang in the face of genocide she would have to refuse to reply, perhaps stating “I am prohibited by s.4 of the 2023 Act from answering that question or providing any indication (be it by words, statements or any indeed any facial expression) as what the council would do if not prohibited”

[The Bill] if enacted is highly likely to be deemed incompatible by the Courts with Article 10 of the ECHR, in particular (i) the relevant public official’s right of freedom of expression and (ii) the right of the public to receive information on matters of public interest/importance… It is vanishingly unlikely that the terms … could fall within an established Article 10(2) justification. This means that any the Bill, if enacted into law, would be readily amenable to a challenge, pursuant to section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998, on the basis that it is incompatible with a Convention right.

So the Bill would lay the government open to court action for inhibiting free speech.

The ‘Enforcement Authority’ (Secretary of State or Treasury, or Office for Students) [would have] a power to issue written notices requiring a person to provide a wide array of information and to penalise breaches and non-performance. The grounds on which their powers can be exercised are very wide indeed – a person merely needs to be suspected of being in the process of making a prohibited decision or about to make a prohibited statement. For example, if a person is served with a notice … they are obliged to hand over all information ‘likely to be useful’ to the enforcement authority in determining whether an offence has, or is likely to be, committed. The powers provided … to compel the production of documents are particularly troubling from a legal perspective. On their face, they appear to provide unprecedented powers to compel a person to hand over materials that would otherwise be protected by legal professional privilege. Remarkably broad, this would therefore be handing the enforcement authorities more powers than those enjoyed by anti-terrorism police and the security services. The Secretary of State [is also provided] with what is commonly referred to as a “Henry VIII power” giving her/him unchecked powers to change an enforcement authority (including that there not be one) in respect of particular types of decisions or statements.

In other words, public authorities may be penalised for even considering (for example) refusing a contract with an Israeli company working out of Palestine. And the government would be permitted to decide who to penalise or whether to penalise them at all, giving rise the possibility of favouritism. Or am I misreading that part?

As you can see, the legal advice is that the Bill is defective and should not be enacted in any way.

Ms Nandy, a staunch supporter of Israel who is not one to take sensible advice well, ignored it.

She spoke against BDS during the debate – in misleading terms:

And then she abstained on the vote (along with almost all of the 195 Labour MPs in the House of Commons. This means they allowed it to pass on to its Committee Stage by a vote of 268 in favour to 70 against.

This is because Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader and another staunch supporter of Israel no matter what it does, demanded the abstentions:

Still, some Labour MPs did oppose the Bill, but even this has led to division:

Zarah Sultana had previously stated that she was unable to attend the debate but would have voted against the Bill:

Taking all of the above into account, it seems unreasonable for any UK government to have brought a Bill as flawed as this before Parliament at all.

It is unnecessary because protections already exist to stop anti-Semitic discrimination against Israeli goods and businesses (and indeed any unreasonable discrimination against goods and businesses from another country).

It is undemocratic because the right to boycott goods and firms from a foreign country based on that country’s actions is also enshrined in law, and the measures proposed by the Bill to enforce its restrictions contradict other UK and international laws.

It is counter-productive because, if enacted into law, it is likely to generate court proceedings that will expose Israel’s behaviour towards Palestine as illegal according to international law, and its own provisions as unlawful in the UK.

In short, it will create a multitude of problems without solving any at all.

The only reason for the attempt to enshrine it in law, then, is financial. Or so it seems to me. Can anyone suggest an alternative?


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Tory benefit changes mean around 1m people may be forced into work they can’t do

[Image: Black Triangle Campaign].

The Tories are bringing this nightmare back again.

Jeremy Hunt’s Budget announcement that he is ending the Work Capability Assessment has turned out not to be the relief so many benefit claimants with long-term illnesses thought it would be.

He is ending the Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity element of Universal Credit, meaning that people who received it may now have to seek work under the new Personal Independence Payment system.

They’ll need to claim the new UC health element, and to do that they must also be eligible for Personal Independence Payment – and under this system they may also be required to seek work or accept job offers.

Additionally, assessments will now be carried out by work coaches from the Department for Work and Pensions, rather than the (so-called) health professionals who currently carry out the much-maligned WCAs.

There are fears that these civil servants will not have the proper training to identify claimants’ conditions and needs, and may be set target numbers of people they have to try to force into work, which they will impose on disabled people.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies think tank has estimated that a million people could be forced into work and 600,000 could lose an estimated £350 per month in support as a result of the change.

Hunt has been up-front about the intention behind the change: it’s to push people into work who would not otherwise have sought it.

The problem is that it may push people into work who simply cannot do it.

Experience has shown us what happens when the government forces people with long-term illnesses and disabilities to seek work:

They are rejected by employers – or find that they simply cannot do the work. Unsuitable for employment, and unable to claim benefits, they either starve to death or die of their health conditions.

We have seen it before – many times, in the years since the Tories came back into office in 2010.

It is scandalous that Jeremy Hunt is talking up a change that may make unendurable the lives of people who are already among the UK’s most vulnerable.

Source: Disability benefit changes: ‘My disability means I cannot work but I worry I’ll be forced to by the new rules’


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Here’s hard evidence that sickness benefits are causing severe hardship rather than helping

Kevin and Amanda Stannard [Image: Daily Gazette].

Long-term disability campaigner Samuel Miller sent me the article quoted below, with the following words:

“The news story that I just brought to your attention is solid evidence that seriously ill and disabled people in the ESA WRAG are suffering immense hardship—and validates my tireless campaigning against these life-threatening cuts.”

He is absolutely right, of course.

And he quoted the following, from the Huffington Post:

“Nor are we dealing here with people with minor illness. Charities report that 45 per cent of people who put in a claim for ESA, and had Parkinson’s, Cystic Fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, or Rheumatoid Arthritis, were placed in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG).

“Around 700,000 apply each year for ESA, of which number around 60 per cent proceed to full assessment (the others generally return to work before the process is complete). Currently around 14 per cent of these go into the WRAG. That’s around 60,000 people affected every year.”

A survey of people claiming ESA shows 60 per cent of 1,755 respondents say the amount they receive is not enough to live on.

When asked about the consequences of this, 62 per cent said they struggled to stay healthy, while 49 per cent said they could no longer pay their bills.

For most people, the news that you have Parkinson’s Disease is earth-shattering enough.

But for sufferer Kevin Stannard, 62, the worst was yet to come.

In 2010, he was made redundant from the blind-fitting firm [where] he had worked for … 40 years due to his worsening symptoms.

He was forced to begin claiming disability benefits or Employment and Support Allowance.

For the next few years, he and his wife, Amanda, struggled financially as part of the ESA Wrag group – which was set up especially for people who may be fit for work in the future.

Unfortunately for Kevin and Amanda, 60, from Colchester, the allowance was not enough to cover the cost of living.

The stress of working while dealing with the “confusing” process of claiming ESA for her husband led to Amanda suffering a minor stroke, which meant she also had to give up her part-time work as a director with a housing association.

The struggle experienced by Kevin and Amanda is not uncommon, according to the latest findings of the Disability Benefits Consortium, a national coalition of more than 80 different charities and organisations.

Source: ‘Sickness benefits just aren’t enough to live on’ says family of Parkinson’s sufferer


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New minister for the disabled LIES to Parliament about genocidal cuts to benefits

Sarah Newton: The Conservative government’s new Liar of State for Disability-based Genocide.

Sarah Newton must have a very short memory – or perhaps she lacks intelligence.

The new minister of state for disabled people, who was installed on November 9, had the following exchange with SNP fair work and employment spokesperson Deirdre Brock just four days later (November 13):

Ms Brock said “Changes to benefits are actually resulting in huge cuts to the money that people with disabilities have to live on… Does the Minister agree that starvation does not encourage anyone into work and that cutting off funding to people in need does not help to end that need? Will she commit to reversing these invidious cuts?”

To this, Ms Newton replied: “There are no cuts for people on those benefits.”

What? Does she not remember voting to remove the “work-related activity component” totalling £29.05 per week, from payments of Employment and Support Allowance to people in the Work-Related Activity Group receiving that benefit?

In fact, Judy Hamilton is mistaken – Ms Newton a teller at the vote in 2015.

She did vote at a division in 2016, though – and fully supported the cut. Read about it here.

Her voting record as a whole shows that she has wholeheartedly supported cuts in social security benefits wherevery possible. Read about that, here.

So we have yet another filthy liar, shovelling falsehoods at us from the government benches of the House of Commons.

How much longer must we put up with this contempt from our so-called elected “representatives”?

Sarah Newton doesn’t represent sick people – she doesn’t represent the disabled.

She represents the interests of rich people who don’t want to pay their taxes.

And that’s strange, because many people who are claiming benefits have been forced onto social security because of illnesses or disabilities sustained while working for the same rich people who don’t want to pay their taxes.

So perhaps we should call for Ms Newton’s job title to be amended. She clearly is not a minister of state for disabled people.

Considering Ms Brock’s comment about starvation – a comment that is easily proved accurate with reference to the multitude of deaths since the Conservatives started cutting benefits, one title presents itself.

Ms Newton should be known as the Liar of State responsible for Disability-based Genocide.


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Vote Tory for a tiny economy, terrible jobs and no welfare state

150211economic-downturn

No doubt some of you will scream that this post is overdramatizing, but the consequences of further fiscal consolidation (that’s austerity to most of us), as laid out in Professor Simon Wren-Lewis’s latest Mainly Macro article, seem undeniable.

He tells us the National Institute has used the model NIGEM to analyse the macroeconomic impact of the different political parties’ fiscal plans post-2015, which is published in the latest Review. (Chris Giles has a FT write-up.) The result: The more fiscal austerity you undertake, and if monetary policy fails to perfectly offset the impact on demand, the lower output will be.

You don’t need a crystal ball to see what this means, if we get another Conservative, or Tory-led, government. Lower output means a lower tax take, therefore less money to spend on the NHS and welfare benefits (areas like Defence and International Development will always have funds – we can’t let ourselves go defenceless and we must continue our programmes of cultural imperialism, after all).

So further Tory austerity instantly implies the imposition of even harsher standards of qualification for state benefits, pushing even more vulnerable, sick and disabled people off the books and into their graves. We’ve all known that voting Tory is an endorsement of state-sponsored suicide but it’s time we all owned up to it.

It means the sale of the National Health Service in England to private companies will be accelerated, with consequent impacts on the amount of grant funding for the health service in the other UK countries; the service will continue to worsen and even more deaths will be the result.

But the Tories will want to pretend to the media that all is well, which means an increased push to get people into part-time, temporary or zero-hours work, and an increased number of benefit claimants being funnelled into work activity programmes that, in fact, reduce the number of available jobs. The resulting low-pay economy is exactly what the Conservatives want; the workers will be kept down and the employers can pocket the profits.

Nobody in the government or even the Bank of England will tell you this because, it seems, they haven’t done any analysis and won’t make any such forecasts.

The Office for Budget Irresponsibility is not allowed to look at alternative fiscal policies in the short term and must therefore put the bravest possible face on what is offered to it – that is why every single forecast to come out of that organisation has been hopelessly optimistic.

We’re back to evidenceless policies again. The Tories are saying “everything will be okay”, because – for them – it will be. They and their rich friends will have loads of cash. Who cares that the entire infrastructure of the United Kingdom – and the British way of life – will be dismantled and disappearing from under them?

Think this is overexaggerating? Let’s go back to Prof Wren-Lewis and examine the Tories’ record. He writes: “If you go back to 2010, the OBR’s main forecast didn’t look too bad: the recovery was continuing, and interest rates were able to rise as a result.

“But good policy does not just look at central projections, but it also looks at risks. Then, the risks were asymmetric: if the recovery became too strong, interest rates could always rise further too cool things, but if the recovery did not happen, interest rates would be stuck at their lower bound and monetary policy would be unable to keep the recovery on track.

“In 2010 and beyond that downside risk came to pass [bolding mine], and the recovery was delayed. Fiscal policy put the economy in a position where it was particularly vulnerable to downside risks, which is why it was an entirely foreseeable mistake.

“Exactly this point applies to 2015 and beyond. The problem with further fiscal consolidation while interest rates remain at their lower bound is that it makes the economy much more vulnerable to downside risks.”

In other words, it seems Conservative policy, as set down by History graduate and towel-folder George Osborne, deliberately weakened this country’s ability to recover from the crash of 2008 and afterwards.

How secure is you job? How safe are your savings?

Do you really want to risk them on more Tory bungling?

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Fall in unemployment = number of people on sanctions

[Image: Drew (Andrew Fraser) http://www.cartoonsidrew.com/]

[Image: Drew (Andrew Fraser) http://www.cartoonsidrew.com/]

Has anybody else noticed the eerie similarity between the drop in unemployment over the last three months, recorded by the Office for National Statistics (132,000), and the number of jobseekers put on sanction by the Department for Work and Pensions every month (170,000)?

According to a Guardian report, the Lib Dems said the number of sanction referrals has increased from around 60,000 a month in the early part of the last decade to around 170,000 today – and went on to state that around 15 per cent of these sanctions were overturned on the grounds that the decision was flawed.

That means 144,500 jobseekers would be off-benefit at the moment. If the figures show a drop of only 132,000, then unemployment has in fact risen by 12,500 people!

People claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance who have their benefits sanctioned by DWP staff are not included in unemployment counts. Nor are those who have been sucked into mandatory work activity schemes, for that matter…

The Liberal Democrats, you see, want to introduce a “yellow card” system – well they would; yellow is their colour – to give rule-breaking jobseekers a final warning before sanctions are imposed, and DWP bosses a chance to check the facts and avoid mistakes.

On the face of it, this might seem like a good idea – and it would be very interesting to monitor such a scheme, if implemented.

If the claimant count were to rise, we would have proof that the Conservatives have been using sanctions to manipulate the figures.

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Housing benefit bombshell has been building up for decades

housing-benefit-graph

Why are we being asked to believe it is such a surprise that the number of working people who have to rely on housing benefit has doubled in the last five years – at huge cost to the taxpayer?

It is all part of the “long-term economic plan” that the Conservatives keep mentioning, every chance they get.

That plan is to provide government support to major employers and to private landlords rather than the people who need it.

We know that the Conservatives have spent almost 40 years working to undermine working people, with policies designed to increase financial insecurity among those who have to work for a living. For example, the humbling of the unions ensured that increasingly meagre pay settlements would contribute to an ever-widening gap between the lowest and the highest rates of pay. Huge amounts of wealth have been transferred from the masses to an ever-smaller ‘elite’, guaranteeing their support for the Tories.

Ever-diminishing pay and rising living costs have meant that increasing numbers of people have had to claim benefits, even though they have been in full-time work. Again, this attacks people on low and middle incomes, rather than those who are paid the most; people in the highest tax brackets have been able to take advantage of legal tax avoidance schemes, some of which have been created by the current Chancellor, George Osborne. That has left those on lower pay scales to subsidise housing benefit through the taxes they pay – another drain on their resources.

Depressed rates of pay for those in work have necessitated government action on benefits for the unemployed, in order to justify claims that the Coalition has been “making work pay”. This has meant below-inflation increases in out-of-work benefits that have made them inadequate to cover living costs, forcing the unemployed to face the possibility of losing their homes and possessions to the bailiffs as their debts mount up. In order to avoid this, they find themselves forced to accept work at ridiculously low rates of pay, if they can find it.

This in turn has made it possible for employers to refuse calls for pay increases – anyone making such a request may be told that an unemployed person would happily do their job for even less – and so the wheel turns back to its starting point and the cycle begins all over again.

A consequence of all this is that private landlords benefit from increased inflows of housing benefit into their pockets. The law allows them to increase their rents in line with the going rate, with no reference to tenants’ ability to pay; housing benefit is then used to help tenants achieve that amount, but it is the landlord who benefits from the increase – not the tenant. These are people who are already, by definition, well-off – otherwise they would not have been able to buy the property and make it fit to rent out.

The Conservatives’ “long-term economic plan” is to leech wealth from anybody poorer than them and create a new feudalism, with themselves as lords and everybody else as vassals, only able to make a living under conditions granted by the moneyed few; a modern slave-state.

According to The Independent, the cost to the taxpayer of in-work benefits will be £6 billion by 2018-19, nearly triple the £2.2 billion it cost in 2009-10. LabourList reckons the total cost of in-work poverty by 2019 will be more than double that amount, at £12.9 billion.

The total cost of housing benefit has already almost tripled, from £8.8 billion in 1990 to £24.4 billion now – despite the apparent efforts of Iain Duncan Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions. This is because all their cost-cutting efforts have been about finding ways of denying the benefit to people who deserve it.

Helping people earn enough to obviate the need for housing benefit runs contrary to the “long-term economic plan”, you see.

And what do you think this says about where the benefits of economic growth are going?

The Independent article states that the Department for Work and Pensions has claimed the number of unemployed housing benefit claimants has fallen since 2010, arguing that it is better for people to be employed, paying taxes and contributing towards their rents than to be “languishing” on out-of-work benefits, living on government payouts.

Technically, this may seem like a good argument. The minimum wage for full-time work is £11,700 per year, more than the increased tax threshold introduced by the Coalition government – but this means that, with Income Tax at 20 per cent, a full-time worker would lose one-fifth of everything earned above the £10,000 threshold, passing just £340 on to the government. They are likely to receive more than that in housing benefit. And the level of pay is still a pittance.

Worse still, a drop in the number of unemployed claimants does not mean they have all found jobs. Some will have been pushed off the system by the Bedroom Tax, which has made it impossible for some households to meet their rent commitments.

And there is no guarantee that the extra working people are paying taxes either – they might be self-employed (or claiming to be self-employed – see earlier VP articles on the subject) who are not earning anything like enough money to provide for themselves; they might be on zero-hours contracts – technically in work but on health-endangering wages; they might even be on a government-mandated Workfare scheme, in which case their only pay will be state benefits.

Mark Harper, Minister for Disabled People, claimed that the Coalition government had taken action to get the system under control by capping benefits “so no family can claim more than the average family gets by going out to work and we’ve put an end to unlimited housing benefit”.

He added that Labour voted against the cap, and against a general limit on benefits.

But this is disingenuous. The Tory/Coalition benefit cap was set at a level more than £5,000 below the income an average family receives – because it didn’t take into account what such a family would get in benefits! It seems likely that level was pegged lower because the Tories realised that a cap at the proper level would mean almost nobody would be disqualified from receiving benefit.

Harper’s claim that the system under the previous Labour administration “saw some people claiming £104,000 a year,” is also disingenuous as it related to a handful of people in specific circumstances. None of them are receiving anything like that amount now, and it is unclear whether this had anything to do with Coalition policies.

Labour, on the other hand, has hit the nail squarely on the head by pointing out that the rise in benefit claims is entirely due to the Tory-led Coalition’s failure to tackle low pay, insecure work and the cost of living crisis – although the opposition party stopped short of actually claiming that this was the plan all along.

The party has said that, if elected into office, it would build more homes and cap rents, easing the excessive demand that has made it possible for landlords to demand more and preventing abuse of the rental market.

Labour would raise the minimum wage and introduce contracts for the living wage – at which an employee earns enough not to need benefits – wherever possible.

Both sides are treating housing benefit like a disease.

The difference is that the Conservatives want to cure it by attacking the victim, while Labour want to attack the cause.

Which would you prefer to have as your doctor?

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Why are Lib Dems facing a Euro election ‘bloodbath’ – and not the Tories?

140428bloodbath

Senior Liberal Democrats have been warned they might end up with no MEPs after next month’s European Parliament elections, due to the party’s current electoral unpopularity (according to the Daily Telegraph).

The electorate certainly has plenty of reasons to punish the party that has become known as the ‘Tory Democrats’ due to its adherence to Conservative Party policies in the Coalition government.

But here’s an interesting point: Conservative support has not dropped off in the same way.

Sure, the LDs are Tory enablers who betrayed their own pledges before the first votes were cast in the 2010 election, but the Conservatives betrayed their promises too. And the Conservatives were behind most of the policies that have caused the damage.

The Liberal Democrats voted the Bedroom Tax onto the statute books, but it’s not their policy – it’s a Conservative scheme.

The Liberal Democrats had very little to do with the changes to Employment and Support Allowance that have led to the deaths of so many people with long-term illnesses and disabilities – Conservative ministers pushed them into practise.

The Liberal Democrats had little to do with the increased sanctions regime that has been foisted on the unemployed in order to cook the benefit books – that was a Conservative idea.

The Conservatives are responsible for the plan to cut back access to Legal Aid, so rich criminals can walk free while the innocent poor are told to admit offences they have not committed and go to prison.

The Conservatives introduced mandatory work activity (colloquially known as Workfare) for people on benefits – both unemployment and sickness, meaning companies get free labour and there are fewer paying jobs in the economy.

The Conservatives introduced the Workplace Pension, which has led to employers encouraging their workforce to take out private pensions that they cannot afford, in a bid to avoid paying their own part of the scheme.

The Conservative Party’s answer to the immigration question was to send vans around London encouraging people who were in the UK illegally to “go home”. This scheme led to the victimisation of British citizens because other people thought they looked foreign.

The Conservatives told us all they would protect the National Health Service and then started a process of privatisation that has led to billions of pounds worth of services being ‘outsourced’ to private health firms – who pay handsome donations to the Conservative Party – at huge cost to the taxpayer (because private firms need to make a profit, don’t forget).

The Conservative Party has fed the public one lie after another, using its puppet right-wing press to brainwash people into believing its nonsense. When these falsehoods have been exposed, ministers have tried to bluster their way out of the blame.

The Conservative Party has engineered the feeblest economic recovery in British history, ensuring that only the very rich have been able to benefit while the poorest – who actually made it happen – are set to be thousands of pounds worse-off in 2015 than they were in 2010.

And yet it is the Liberal Democrats who have lost the most support.

Why?

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Conservatives: Exploiting hardworking people

140214intern

Exploitation: The logo on the cups says, “Conservatives – for the privileged few” – and the intern carrying them isn’t included.

“We’re all in it together” are we, George?

The Conservative Party represents “fairness”, “for hardworking people”, does it, David?

It seems not – if we are to judge the Conservative Party by its actions, rather than its words.

Yesterday a website focusing on graduate careers blew the full-time whistle on these deceptions, exposing how the Tories have been briefing MPs and candidates on ways to avoid paying the minimum wage by exploiting the perceived differences between volunteers, interns and paid employees.

The article on Graduate Fog said a memo circulated to Party members was advising them to start calling their unpaid interns ‘campaign volunteers’, in order to evade “potential hostile questioning” about exploitative business practices.

The Conservative Party has denied doing anything wrong by providing advice on ways its members may avoid paying the minimum wage.

It would have been better for the Party spokesperson to deny that Conservatives have been wrongly recruiting people as employees – under the umbrella title of ‘interns’ (which means nothing in UK law), while treating them – for payment purposes – as volunteers.

But that was impossible because it is exactly what has been happening – as the memo makes clear.

Look – here it is:

140214interns1

140214interns2

Graduate Fog kindly published it for us all to examine.

The part that blows the gaff is a “suggested template reply” for “hostile questioning” about the issue of “recruiting unpaid interns”.

Clearly, this is what Conservative chiefs want to avoid.

Clearly they would not have gone to the effort of circulating a memo if NOBODY was “recruiting unpaid interns”.

So there is a clear implication that some Conservative Party MPs and prospective Parliamentary candidates, in fact, have been “recruiting unpaid interns” – and illegally exploiting them by demanding that they carry out the duties of employees.

The tone is clear from the get-go: The Conservative Party is running scared.

Members are told that people working in an unpaid capacity are no longer to be described as ‘interns’ – they are ‘campaign volunteers’ from now on because, that way, there is no obligation to pay them.

Conservatives are advised not to pay anything at all to these ‘volunteers’ – even expenses – as this could lead to them being classed as ‘workers’ and establishing ‘mutuality of obligation’. This would be equivalent to payment for services rendered – and the ‘volunteer’ would therefore be classed as a ‘worker’, requiring payment for services rendered, at the minimum wage or higher.

From now on, the memo states, recruitment adverts should be “appropriately worded” – meaning there must be nothing resembling a “formal job description”. This means references to “work”, “worker”, “hours” of work, “tasks” the ‘Volunteer’ will be “expected” to perform, and “expenses” are all out.

Instead, Party members are advised to use words like “volunteering”, “volunteer”, “campaigning administration”, and “help” – and to describe functions carried out by the “volunteer” as “the kind of activities it would be great to get some help with”.

This advice would not be necessary if Conservative Party MPs and prospective Parliamentary candidates had not been illegally “recruiting unpaid interns”.

For the interns themselves, this should be terrific news: There can be no requirement for them to turn up to work, and no disciplinary measures may be taken against them if they don’t. They may come and go as they please and do not have to conform to any set working hours. Nor may they be expected to perform any specified duties.

If the Tories want people to do that kind of work, they can pay for it like everybody else.

… although the minimum wage probably won’t be enough.

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RTU’s breakfast – a ‘Soundbite Britain’ supplement

IDSbreakfast

Here’s the first ‘political blipvert’ created by Vox Political‘s fellow blogger at Another Angry Voice, on the subject of Iain ‘Returned To Unit’ Smith and the hugely expensive breakfasts he has claimed from taxpayers’ money.

It’s ironic that this should come on the day I find that Mrs Mike’s ESA has been terminated without notification.

Readers may recall she appealed against the decision to put her into the work-related activity group back in January this year, after being advised by a work programme provider that it was not possible to help her, in her current condition. The DWP says it is in receipt of that appeal. Clearly its officers have done nothing about it.

Now we’ve been told to claim Income-Related ESA and I’m printing out the forms as I write this article. It will be accompanied by a sternly-written letter of complaint which I will also forward to my MP, in the hopes that it might do some good.

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