Faceless: Universal Credit is an attempt to avoid treating benefit claimants as people. It is easier to deprive you of everything if they don’t have to think of you as a person.
It took This Writer a while to understand this.
Not only did the Department for Work and Pensions – through its function (you can’t call it a benefit) Universal Credit – penalise a woman who has had several strokes, including a rare spinal cord stroke resulting in lack of mobility which means she needs to use a wheelchair…
Not only did it take so much away from Carol Brice of Bridgwater that her Christmas dinner was a sandwich…
Not only was it pilloried by public opinion after this treatment became commonly-known…
But it hasn’t responded to that bad publicity at all, and Ms Brice has been forced to write to supermarkets, begging for food.
And…
Worst of all…
Those supermarkets have, in effect, told her to get lost.
They told her they only work with charities and she should go to a food bank.
Tory Britain, 2020.
They bury you in bureaucracy and when you try to dig yourself out, they ignore you altogether.
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The story of David Strong, a Universal Credit claimant unable to work due to epilepsy who was forced to beg for food and eat out of bins after a DWP “error” left him trying to live on £16 a week, has provoked a huge reaction from Vox Political readers.
“Errors” that leave vulnerable people struggling to survive have rightly made the Department for Work and Pensions infamous over the years since the Conservatives took office in 2010 – and every single reader who responded had their own horror story to tell.
Deborah Denison – who does have a job – started the ball rolling [all boldings mine]: “I’ve been on Universal Credit for four years… I’ve had to look at my lifestyle and reduce my outgoings. I have given up home insurance, pet insurance … no TV licence, no mobile phone, no nights out, no new clothes, no treats, no holidays.
“I have arrears with my council tax and rent and I’ve had to use food banks, which can only be used twice a year so it looks like I’ll be going hungry sometime in the next six months.
“The council thinks that moving me into a smaller property will help… Why would I move to solve a problem that universal credit has created? My main problem is I’m paid fortnightly and universal credit is paid monthly so three times a year, when there’s five weeks in the months, I get three wages so get nothing from Universal Credit. This has caused my arrears with rent and council tax.
“Im dreading the winter and [will] not be able to afford to heat my home to a standard of comfort. I’ve always worked and I hope to continue doing so. Being unemployed would destroy me [but] ends don’t meet anymore. And after all these years of being a single parent this is the worst struggle I’ve ever had to face, food and heat is not a luxury. I’m going without things I’ve never had to go without. It’s soul destroying.”
Ms Denison’s comment led to a deluge of responses. Here’s “Trev”, a regular commenter: “I’ve been living like that for years. I haven’t had an holiday for 16 years, and it must be about six years since I had a night out in a pub. If I need clothes it’s the charity shop. I do have a mobile phone though, but it’s rapidly becoming outdated.”
“I hear that!” responded ‘Gizmo’. “I work two jobs, my wife is disabled and thanks to UC I’m virtually destitute. I’m trying to get driving [work] so pulled in some overtime to cover an ill colleague and for my efforts we’ll get less money this month than if I hadn’t done the extra shifts. How is this even legal?
“My wife is constantly hounded to get employed; she has arthritis in her knee so can’t stand or walk, constant spasms in her back meaning she can’t sit for extended periods and finds herself bedridden most of the time. I get scowled at when I need to go to [the Job Centre Plus] as if I’m scum and taking from the state!
“We have to pay back a tonne of “overpayments” because they can’t even do their job properly!
“And to top it off I am being told to look for other work as well!”
‘Mark’ raised the issue of medical evidence. After an accident at work in which he damaged his spine, his doctor refused to order scans to ascertain the nature of the damage. Was this because the cost would have blown their personal budgets, as defined since the Tories took over the National Health Service and started privatising it?
He described a history of struggling to get the medical help he needs. Meanwhile, the DWP decided he was fit for work: “I had a fitness for work test what was full of lies all from start to finish… My doctor who I have now still says I am not fit for work and signs me off. The DWP threaten me with sanctions over the phone, telling me that there is nothing wrong with me and I was found fit for work. My doctor is disgusted [with] how I am being treated.
“The UC should be scrapped altogether. The Conservatives know fine well it does not work – it was designed to make the poor suffer even more.”
He added: “Anybody who reads this, my answer to you is don’t give up fighting the DWP.”
Have you been affected by “errors” that have forced you towards poverty – or even endangered your life? Tell us your story.
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The Department for Work and Pensions would hate the world to know about this, so here it is.
You can bet that new prime minister Boris Johnson couldn’t care less.
A Universal Credit claimant has been left begging for food and having to rummage through bins to feed himself after a blunder by benefit officials left him with just £16 a month to live on.
David George Strong, 54, has been left unable to work due to Epilepsy and is now having to repay a Housing Benefit overpayment debt out of his monthly Universal Credit payments, even though the error was not of his causing.
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Disgrace: If it isn’t bad enough that this person is homeless, if he was in Somerset he would be criminalised by the police and the justice system.
This is cruel, unnecessary, and frankly silly.
It seems sitting down is now a crime if the UK’s skewed justice system can make it seem that you might be begging.
Think about it, next time you take advantage of a sunny day to go out and sit on a handy bit of grass.
Depending on how you look, you could be committing a crime.
Note also that this man was ordered to pay a £115 “victim surcharge”, even though there was no victim (let’s face it; there wasn’t a crime).
Perhaps it doesn’t seem much to you, but this is a homeless man living in a hostel. He doesn’t have that kind of money – and shouldn’t have to spend it on a fine handed out because someone doesn’t like the way he looks.
Utterly ridiculous. Avon and Somerset Constabulary should be ashamed, as should HM Courts and Tribunals Service, and anyone who created the legal framework that allows this abuse.
A homeless Taunton man has been jailed for 20 weeks for sitting on the ground “without reasonable excuse”.
Haydon Mark Baker, 33, who was staying at a homeless hostel at the time… admitted sitting on the ground, which he was banned from doing under a Criminal Behaviour Order, outside Greggs, in North Street, on April 28; outside tReds, in East Street, on May 2; and outside McDonald’s, in East Street, on May 5.
He was sent down for 20 weeks (concurrent) on each count, which were contrary to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.
He was also ordered to pay a £115 victim surcharge, but there was no order for costs due to lack of means.
The court heard there was considered to be a high risk that he could be seen to be begging and that his deliberate actions were the latest in a line of deliberate breaches of the order.
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In trying to convince us that her botched Brexit deal is worth supporting, Theresa May is covering herself in denial.
She’s the weakest prime minister the UK has ever had – and this weekend she wrote a letter to us all, practically admitting it.
Who could possibly have advised Theresa May that a two-page pack of lies would make anyone more sympathetic to her botched Brexit plan? We all know it will make all of us much worse-off than we are now, and may even result in some of us (Gibraltar) losing UK citizenship after she bargained away sovereignty in a desperate bid to stop Spain from obstructing support for her deal in the EU.
All you have to do is glance at it to see that Mrs May has filled it with lies. Here are some of the worst howlers:
“Today, I am in Brussels with the firm intention of agreeing a Brexit deal with the leaders of the other 27 EU nations. It will be a deal that is in our national interest – one that works for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’.”
Nonsense. It doesn’t work for Northern Ireland or Scotland because their political representatives have made that clear. And it doesn’t work for Gibraltar because Mrs May has – undemocratically – handed over part of the UK’s sovereignty over that territory to Spain.
“It will honour the result of the referendum.”
No, it won’t. Those who voted to leave the EU did so for a multitude of reasons. It was impossible to honour the result because Mrs May and the Conservatives never made clear what it would mean, before the referendum took place in 2016.
“We will take back control of our borders, by putting an end to the free movement of people once and for all.”
That’s right. UK citizens will no longer have the right of free movement to EU countries and those of us who actually live in EU countries will not have the right of free movement back to the UK.
“Instead of an immigration system based on where a person comes from, we will build one based on the skills and talents a person has to offer.”
That should not be hard as we already have such a system. All that talk about EU citizens coming here to live on benefits was a lot of lies.
“We will take back control of our money, by putting an end to vast annual payments to the EU.”
Check out the graph immediately below, which shows the miniscule size of our “vast annual payments” to the EU, in comparison with the UK government’s annual budget:
“Instead, we will be able to spend British taxpayers’ money on our own priorities, like the extra £394 million per week that we are investing in our long-term plan for the NHS.”
That is a tiny increase in comparison to investment in the NHS by the last (New) Labour government – and also much smaller than the average increase in investment since 1955. See this Channel 4 FactCheck article for the details.
“And we will take back control of our laws, by ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK.”
Not true. EU laws and the ECJ will continue to influence the UK as Mrs May has promised to maintain “common rulebooks” after Brexit – applying EU law and jurisdiction.
“In future, our laws will be made, interpreted and enforced by our own courts and legislatures.”
… As long as they don’t affect existing laws that cover our dealings with EU countries.
“We will be out of EU programmes that do not work in our interests: out of the common agricultural policy, that has failed our farmers, and out of the common fisheries policy, that has failed our coastal communities. Instead, we will be able to design a system of agricultural support that works for us and we will be an independent coastal state once again, with full control over our waters.”
This will send farmers reeling as subsidies that were based on the amount of land they own will disappear, to be replaced with a new scheme in which farm payments would be based, among other measures, on improving air or water quality, habitats for wildlife, preventing climate change or protecting historic features.
“As prime minister of the United Kingdom, I have from day one been determined to deliver a Brexit deal that works for every part of our country – for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, for our Overseas Territories like Gibraltar, and also for the Crown dependencies. This deal will do that.”
She must be really keen for us to believe this lie, as this is the second time she has mentioned it.
“Crucially, it will protect the integrity of our United Kingdom and ensure that there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland – so people can live their lives as they do now.”
The details of this part of the deal have not yet been agreed; she has kicked the can down the road and is asking you to believe that she has solved an insoluble problem.
“It is a deal for a brighter future, which enables us to seize the opportunities that lie ahead.”
Everybody in the UK will be worse-off.
“Outside the EU, we will be able to sign new trade deals with other countries and open up new markets in the fastest-growing economies around the world.”
That depends on whether those other countries want to sign trade deals with the UK, a country that will be considerably less attractive outside the EU than within it. No deals can be signed until after the UK leaves, and this is the reason Mrs May wants a transition period – but this also creates problems.
“With Brexit settled,”
It won’t be settled. As significant issues have not been resolved, Brexit will rumble on and on – and the UK may not be completely out of the EU, even by the time of our next scheduled general election, which will be in 2022.
“… we will be able to focus our energies on the many other important issues facing us here at home: keeping our economy strong, and making sure every community shares in prosperity;”
Brexit has weakened the economy.
“… securing our NHS for the future,”
By stockpiling medicines because we don’t know whether the UK will be able to secure a regular supply, post-Brexit? By putting talented EU-based medical professionals off coming to the UK for work?
“giving every child a great start in life, and building the homes that families need;”
Homelessness is increasing rapidly under the Conservatives.
“tackling the burning injustices that hold too many people back,”
Under Mrs May, those burning justices are now a raging inferno.
“and building a country for the future that truly works for everyone.”
Waffle.
“We need to get on with Brexit now by getting behind this deal.”
No. We need a deal that we can get behind – and Theresa May hasn’t negotiated one.
And the citizens of the UK aren’t stupid. We knew exactly what Mrs May meant:
If you don't want to read this letter here is a summary of it:
I want to stay as PM I want to stay as PM I want to stay as PM I want to stay as PM I want to stay as PM I want to stay as PM I want to stay as PM I want to stay as PM I want to stay as PM I want to stay as PM
— Gracie Samuels 🌹#NotMyRacistPM #ToriesOutIn2Years (@GracieSamuels) November 25, 2018
Tough.
It seems unlikely that Mrs May will win enough support for her silly deal – and let’s face it, we would be silly to sign it – in Parliament, and a loss will be treated as a vote of “no confidence” in her leadership and her government.
And perhaps that is a good thing.
A new leader, and a new government formed by a different party, may produce the deal we all need.
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Innocent: A nine-year-old girl (not the one in the picture) contacted a charity and begged for work to alleviate the destitution inflicted on her family by the Tories’ Universal Credit policy.
Let’s answer the question in the headline straight away: We believe the girl, obviously. Mrs May and Ms McVey are both habitual liars.
Once again Humanity Torbay is in the news, exposing the Conservative government’s fake “benefit” – Universal Credit – for the charade it really is.
Last time, the charity’s boss, Ellie Waugh, spoke out against the gagging order imposed by Theresa May and her cronies on organisations like hers, threatening to de-fund them if they criticised the imposition of Universal Credit.
This time Ms Waugh highlighted the harm being done to families across the country – by raising the case of a nine-year-old girl who begged to be allowed into employment after her mother died and her father, on Universal Credit, was unable to find work himself.
“A girl of nine begged for work to feed her family after Universal Credit left her jobless dad skint.
“In a heartbreaking phone call, she told how her mum had died and there was barely any food at home.
“She said: “I’ll do anything. I don’t mind cleaning floors, making beds.”
“The desperate nine-year-old girl revealed her mum had died, her dad lost his job and they were going hungry as delays in his Universal Credit had plunged them into poverty.
“The phone call exposed the harsh reality of life on the hated Universal Credit, which the stubborn Tories refuse to axe despite the obvious hardship it is causing.
“Five weeks ago, the girl’s HGV driver dad was made redundant but is still waiting for his first benefit payment to clear.
“He was raising the three children alone in the Torbay area of Devon after his wife died four years ago. The girl contacted Humanity Torbay, which provides food banks and support for the vulnerable.
“CEO Ellie reassured the brave child she would not have to work. She called her dad, who wants to remain nameless, and promised food and support.”
The Department for Work and Pensions responded with the usual flannel, this time about the extra money promised for UC in the Budget – cash that will do nothing to alleviate the suffering that is built into the way the harsh policy works.
My fear is that some will have heard the story and started salivating at the thought of reimposing child labour. They’ll see it as a cheap alternative – and Tories see no profit in educating the poor.
Condemnation has been widespread:
I’m reading about a 9 year old girl who phoned up a charity. Her mum is dead, and her dad forced on to Universal Credit. The little girl called the charity to see if they could help her get some work, so she could help dad.
This is the Britain created by the Conservative Party.
There will be more stories today, tomorrow, and in the future as long as this atrocity of a policy is in force.
Ms Waugh has asked Theresa May and Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey to visit Humanity Torbay and see the human cost for themselves.
They haven’t agreed to attend yet – and what good will come of it if they do?
Ms McVey lied bare-faced to Parliament on Monday and Mrs May has ordered others to lie, to save herself and her government from embarrassment and criticism.
But something has to be done and if these people fear being shamed by the facts, then let’s provide as many as we can.
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On the day the minority Conservative government was crowing that it had cut unemployment to the lowest level since the early 1970s, a study has shown that Tory employment policies are putting people through hell.
Rules imposed on the Department for Work and Pensions by the Tories mean that jobseekers must accept any job they are offered, including those with flexible-hours contracts. These may offer as little as a single hour of work per week but that is enough for a person to count as employed, in Tory figures.
The National Living Wage is currently £7.50 an hour, if you’re outside London – clearly nowhere near enough money to survive for a week. So people have to claim Universal Credit – which, according to Tory rules, means they must seek extra working hours from their bosses if they’re not getting enough.
Evil, isn’t it?
It means people are being denied the dignity of properly-paid work.
It means they are having to beg employers for the privilege of working extra hours on subsistence wages.
And it means they are doing this so the toffs in the Conservative government can claim they have achieved full employment and the economy is going swimmingly thanks to them.
Lie upon lie upon lie.
Perhaps you should ask your Tory-voting neighbour why they voted to inflict misery on the working people of the UK. Do they know anybody affected by this terrifying Catch-22?
If so, why did they insist on inflicting it on us all?
Workers are being forced into low hour contracts that leave them ‘begging’ managers for additional hours in order to earn a living or accommodate childcare commitments.
These flexible contracts are having a negative impact on the home lives and mental health of an estimated 4.6 million people, and Cambridge and Oxford sociologists have described them as “toxic and endemic”.
Flexible hour contracts are when workers are given minimal guaranteed hours and can have last minute changes and reductions made to their agreed working hours. They are particularly common in supermarkets and care homes.
Often, people are employed under contracts that offer one, two or four hours a week, “under the assumption that they will get more hours”.
The study has shown that being given extra hours by managers leaves workers feeling “indebted” to their boss, and as a result they feel that they should work “extra hard”.
It appears that people are forced into these low hour contracts that lead to ‘heightened economic instability’ because there are no other alternatives.
Faced with unemployment or very short hour contracts, workers have no choice but to accept what little they are offered.
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One of the critics sought to alter the stated opinion of David Cameron and his Conservatives by pointing to a letter from Margaret Thatcher to then-South African President PW Botha in 1985, seeking Mr Mandela’s release from prison. This part of the letter didn’t sway yr (dis-)obdt srvt, as the suggestion seemed to be made as part of advice on how Mr Botha could gain political advantage from the situation, rather than from any genuine moral standpoint.
The letter did feature comments that are of considerable interest and relevance at this time – relating to sanctions. Mrs Thatcher wrote: “The Commonwealth meeting opened with forty-five countries seeking extensive trade and economic sanctions against South Africa… My rebuttal of the case… rested on two main premises: that sanctions do not work, indeed are likely to be counter-productive and damaging to those they are intended to help: and that it was inappropriate to take punitive action against South Africa at the very moment when you are taking steps to get rid of apartheid and to make necessary changes in the system of government in South Africa.”
Let’s take these comments back home and apply them to people who are unemployed in the UK today.
The Department for Work and Pensions, under Iain Duncan Smith, imposed a tough new regime of sanctions against Jobseekers’ Allowance claimants in November last year.
Now, sanctions can be imposed for a month if a claimant is judged to be not actively seeking a job or being available for work. Subsequent misbehaviour along these lines would mean a 13-week period without benefit. The claimant must then reapply for benefit in both instances.
Benefit may also be lost for 13 weeks if a jobseeker fails to attend an interview with a Job Centre advisor, although it restarts automatically at the end of this period.
The highest sanction withdraws JSA for 13 weeks if a person leaves their job voluntarily, rising to six months for a second “failure” and three YEARS for a third.
In the eight months between the application of the new rules and June this year, nearly 600,000 JSA claimants were sanctioned. Employment Minister Esther McVey claimed that this affected only a small proportion of jobseekers – “The vast, vast majority of people don’t get sanctions” – but when you compare the actual number of sanctions (553,000) with the number of people on JSA (1,480,000) it becomes clear that this is not true.
In September 2012, 1,570,000 people were on JSA. The government has been claiming that the figure has dropped because people are getting jobs but from these figures it seems far more likely that they have had their money stopped instead.
Ms McVey also said: “The people who get sanctions are wilfully rejecting support for no good reason.” Let’s have a look at that with the help of this website. All the sanctions it describes were really imposed on real jobseekers by Job Centre Plus employees, and these are just some of them:
“You apply for three jobs one week and three jobs the following Sunday and Monday. Because the job centre week starts on a Tuesday it treats this as applying for six jobs in one week and none the following week. You are sanctioned for 13 weeks for failing to apply for three jobs each week.”
“You have a job interview which overruns so you arrive at your job centre appointment 9 minutes late. You get sanctioned for a month.”
“Your job centre advisor suggests a job. When you go online to apply it says the job has “expired” so you don’t apply. You are sanctioned for 13 weeks.”
“You are on a workfare placement and your job centre appointment comes round. The job centre tells you to sign on then go to your placement – which you do. The placement reports you for being late and you get sanctioned for 3 months.”
The victims of these sanctions were clearly people who were trying to take steps to rid themselves of their unemployed status and get a job – but they were sanctioned by our Conservative-led government under a policy created by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. Draw a parallel with what Mrs Thatcher was saying about South Africa and it is clear that she would call that “inappropriate”.
But do they work? No.
According to Liam Purcell, writing in the Church Action on Poverty blog: “Where there are few jobs available, as in the North West of England, taking money away from people is hardly going to help them find jobs.
“Many of the unemployed despair of getting help and meaningful training. For most people who are sanctioned, it does nothing to help them acquire skills that would help them compete in the labour market.
“Having to apply online for dozens of inconvenient, unsuitable jobs for which they are poorly qualified, and which they may be physically or mentally incapable of holding down, is hardly a profitable use of time… Yet failure to comply can mean an end to even the minimum income produced by benefits.”
And the result? “Destitution, which follows, merely helps the poorest to learn how to survive by ducking and diving, by applying to charity, by falling into the clutches of payday lenders and loan sharks, by begging and sometimes stealing. Increasingly we come across people who find the whole process of claiming out-of-work benefits so demeaning and stressful that they just can’t be bothered to apply, and conveniently disappear from the official register of the unemployed.”
And conveniently disappear from the official register of the unemployed.
For those the system was originally “intended to help”, as Mrs Thatcher put it, her letter of 1985 was absolutely right: “Sanctions do not work [and] are likely to be counter-productive and damaging.”
But for a government that is desperately trying to claim that its policy on jobs is succeeding, sanctions that “conveniently disappear” people work very nicely indeed.
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This video shows Members of the Scottish Parliament hearing how a blind former health worker was reduced to begging as a result of the UK government’s welfare changes (I still refuse to call them reforms).
It is the gentleman’s personal account, in a letter being read to MSPs.
I’m publishing it here because I have received a couple of comments from another gentleman, putting forward the belief that the vast majority of those on disability benefits are scroungers. It’s a view that, polls suggest, is still held by a majority of the British public.
That view needs to be countered.
The video is nearly 10 minutes long. I urge those of you who might not want to spend that amount of time watching it to have patience; the information is good and it is worth hearing.
It’s only through finding out about what’s going on that people will ever be motivated to do something about it.
Otherwise, the vast majority of disabled people in the UK can look forward to a future as beggars.
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