Is the harsh treatment of disabled, unemployed and low-paid people increasing ‘welfare’ costs?

Successive UK governments have made it harder for people in need to get social security, at a devastating human cost.

Public services have also been cut, supposedly to save money and might this have ended up costing taxpayers more?

On Friday 20^th June, leaked documents suggest that Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) costs are rising and the government may breach its own cap on ‘welfare’ spending, the BBC has reported.

ESA replaced incapacity benefit for those unable to work because of sickness or disability.

People were forced to undergo ‘work capability assessments’, which have been widely condemned. 

Many people who were found ‘fit for work’, or placed on schemes to get them ready for employment, subsequently became very ill or died.

Numerous others appealed successfully and very few of those on the Work Programme ended up back in the workplace.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) denied that the cap might be breached, however it has a poor reputation for accuracy.

It turned out that many of the people reassessed “actually are quite ill or very disabled,"

Dame Anne Begg, Chair of Parliament’s Work and Pensions Select Committee states:

"That shouldn't have come as a surprise to the government, but perhaps it believed its own rhetoric when it's been talking about these large numbers of people who could be moved into work but haven't been.”

Continually reassessing people was also costly to the state, quite apart from the emotional toll on individuals and their families.

“A big criticism of incapacity benefit was that people were put on it and left and nobody reassessed them. With the ESA there is constant reassessment, but that is expensive and it's putting a burden on the health assessors employed by Atos in order to keep up with the numbers," she said.

Yet it is hardly surprising that putting huge pressure on people with conditions such as heart disease and depression, threatening them with condemnation and destitution, maybe occasionally leaving them without money for food or heating, is likely in some instances to make their health worse.

Growing levels of poverty have made even more people ill. 

The link between social inequalities and ill health has long been known and was highlighted, for instance, in 'Fair Society Healthy Lives' (The Marmot Review) in 2010.

In June 2014, a major study of poverty and social exclusion in the UK led by the University of Bristol found that the percentage of households who fell below society’s minimum standard of living has risen from 14 per cent to 33 per cent over the last 30 years, despite the size of the economy doubling.

One in three people cannot afford adequate heating in winter and four million children and adults are not properly fed.

If the government can further weaken trade unions and voluntary organisations combating poverty, as well as eroding protection for workers and forcing more people into insecure forms of employment such as zero-hour contracts, it may increase poverty further.

Cuts in health and social care have worsened the situation.

For instance over half the councils which responded to a Young Minds freedom of information request admitted cutting funding for child and adolescent mental health services over the past five years.

While numerous Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG's) are also paying less towards meeting young people’s mental health needs.

As well as intensifying suffering now, not providing urgently-needed help in a timely manner can store up trouble for the future.

It is increasingly clear that the government’s austerity policies are less to do with reducing public spending than with undermining social security principles and belief in economic and social rights for all, set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and elsewhere.

For those who care about justice, it is important to keep questioning government claims that harsh treatment of chronically sick, disabled, unemployed and low-paid people is somehow in society’s interests.

Brazil 2014 World Cup and protesters

It was October 2007 when Brazil was announced as the host of the 2014 World Cup and not many were surprised they picked up the tab for the tournament; they were the sole candidate left in the bidding process.

What it did ignite though were the embers which would soon spawn into flames of protest against such a decision.

These were most vividly seen this time last year during the Confederations Cup, when even the final between Spain and the host nation didn’t escape the attentions of some Brazilians.

And it’s easy to see why people were upset.

According to reports, bringing the 2014 World Cup to Brazil is costing the country approximately 61 per cent of its education budget.

Corruption, the nation’s education and health systems, public transport costs, and police violence have all come up throughout the protest movements of recent months.

Estimates say £7 billion of public money has been spent in total to stage the tournament.

As it’s been pointed out already, Brazilians were told at the start of the process that all the money to be spent on stadiums would be private, leaving the public funds for infrastructure and this has turned out not to be the case.

And yet considering these waves of protest, it’s obvious this was not the way FIFA anticipated it would be.

Their hope was undoubtedly that Samba would spread around the streets and flags would wave from windows everywhere as Brazil took pride in the tournament taking place in their backyard.

But the protests matter.

They matter because of the way Brazil is perceived to have gone about things; things like the eviction of people from their homes to make way for building the stadiums.

They matter because the richest 10 per cent of Brazilians receive 42.7 per cent of the nation’s income, while the poorest 34 per cent receive less than 1.2 per cent.

And they matter because most people living in favelas (slums) struggle to eat properly.

The protests disturbed the “dry-run” of the Confederations Cup last year, and will most likely continue throughout this summer’s tournament – even if held back by security forces.

And yet I can’t help but sense it’s all in vain and yes as a form of making their voice heard above the noise, it’s been effective.

But should it continue throughout, distracting from the showpiece and achieving apparently little?

After all, a decision to host the World Cup 2014 was made; the tournament will take place whatever happens.

Yes, Brazilian politicians have to be held to account for the way in which they decide how the country’s precious money is spent, but bear in mind the current government of Dilma Roussef has only been in office since January 2011 and did not hold the post when the World Cup was awarded four years earlier.

What choice do the government have other than to be fully behind sport’s biggest global event?

There is much debate as to the exact “legacy” of hosting the competition, but the jobs boost is an obvious one.

The World Cup is an opportunity to vocalize and make stronger claims for strengthening the process around political and social inclusion.

For the next month Brazil will see 64 matches played across 12 cities and while the financial cost will be high, the World Cup also brings prestige, tourism, and new infrastructure, as well as the watching eyes of the world.

It’s not just tourism for the here and now, but for the future.

It opens up a country to us that probably less than a fifth of our country’s population has ever visited.

With the eyes of the world upon it both now, and in the future, the onus will be on officials to eradicate further the extreme poverty in some areas of Brazil.

Sadly, the World Cup will mean some get richer, businesses will benefit and FIFA will rake in the cash.

But the World Cup offers something more than what can be got out of it financially.

For example, the celebration of sporting success – for all across society – does not cost.

Sport is able to bring unity and capture the imagination in a way few other things can do.

It brings joy, jubilation and ecstasy as well as hurt, anger and disappointment.

Its power to transform is seen regularly (think London 2012) and it brings people together who otherwise couldn't care less about one another.

Perhaps most importantly, it calls for us to believe in something better. 

Not the belief that all wrongs will be righted, but of life offering a new dimension; something more.

We find that in certain environments, and played with a sense of sportsmanship, we all can thrive.

Sport offers us moments of brilliance, joy and unity while also causing us to be staggered by the different gifts each one of us offers.

Sport means we no longer look to ourselves to achieve everything, but to others too and to someone or something else other than us.

  

Let’s believe Brazil 2014 can do that, whoever picks up the Jules Rimet trophy.

Housing and Debt

The Citizens Advice Bureau has reported that council tax debt was the most common issue for its clients between January and March 2014.

The debt charity StepChange has also reported a dramatic increase in clients seeking help due to council tax arrears, from 25,500 to 45,561 between 2012 and 2013.

This is bad news, but has not come as a surprise to charities and churches who campaigned for some of the most harmful aspects of the Government’s Welfare Reform to be reconsidered.

The underoccupancy charge or ‘bedroom tax’ gained the most coverage in the media, but analysts including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation identified the changes to council tax benefit as, perhaps, even more serious.

This Government is aware of the worsening shortage of affordable housing, yet its proposals do little to support this across different tenures. 

At present, the Government invests around £1bn in housing, yet it pays out around £25bn in housing benefit.

Much of the increase in this sizeable bill is from private renters on low incomes who require housing benefit to meet the cost of ever-inflating rents.

A sensible housing strategy would substantially increase investment in housing, in particular social housing.

This would have a cascade of positive effects: people on low incomes would have access to the social housing they need on lower rents than the private sector; the Government would have an increased, assured revenue stream from social housing; pressure on the private rented sector would fall, ending the scarcity market which incentives landlords to keep rents high; this would limit one factor keeping property prices high, making mortgages more affordable for those able to buy.

Instead, the Government has systematically chosen incentives which support a minority while leaving the causes of the housing crisis untouched.

For example, the Help to Buy scheme aims to support first time buyers to get a mortgage on properties valued up to £600,000 with as little as a 5% deposit.

This has proved controversial: even business leaders have criticised this scheme as liable to inflate house prices and lead to a housing bubble and house prices are indeed rising dramatically once again, though George Osborne is unconvinced that Help to Buy is the cause.

Another Government intervention is Funding for Lending whereby the Bank of England lends money to banks cheaply, to encourage them to lend to businesses and individuals.

Yet concerns about borrowing for mortgages led the Governor of the Bank of England to withdraw funding for mortgage lending from this scheme.

Likewise the New Homes Bonus scheme is likely to incentive the building of expensive properties in affluent areas rather than the affordable properties that are needed.

As the National Audit Office said “on average local authorities in areas with higher relative house prices receive higher payments for similar new homes”.

Whether or not Help to Buy has fuelled the current housing boom, it has little to offer the many people in the UK who cannot afford to buy a home and who are faced with rising rents and stagnant wages.

Some economists may say there that the wider economy requires property prices to remain high and benefit reforms to be seen through, however painful to disadvantaged sectors of society.

This is debatable, but if so there is one major taboo that the Government must face – the need for higher taxes on property.

Commentators across the political spectrum have pointed to the illogical council tax banding system, the need for a tax on land that discourages land-banking and speculative purchases, the argument for changes to capital gains tax and stamp duty.

Instead of painful changes to those for whom a loss of £10 a week or in benefit may make the difference between surviving – just – and a visit to a foodbank, rational changes to our taxation regime could fund the affordable housing the UK needs and limit the need for further punitive benefit cuts.

For a Government to support the economic factors which keep the cost of a home high is not just cruel to those on low incomes – in the long run it is detrimental to the economy as a whole.

It is time to stop throwing fuel on the fire of property speculation and invest in the future.