Tory welfare plan is welcome but does not go far enough

Simon Icke

David Cameron threatens the genuine poor, the disabled and chronically sick and tars them all with the same brush.

What a nasty little policy statement/ threat this is; to hit the weakest and poorest first by attacking all people who receive incapacity benefits no matter how ill or disabled they are and make everyone including genuine claimants feel like unwanted leapers, spongers and criminals; talk about tarring everyone with the same brush! He doesn't mention the reality i.e. that anyone receiving incapacity benefits will have had to have paid full national insurance contributions for a minimum number of years, also to have completed at least one 20 page detailed questionnaire, have seen their GP on numerous occasions and sent to the incapacity Jobcentre Plus government department, several medical certificates, not to mention the full physical examination and interview by a Government approved medical professional. So it is no easy task to qualify for incapacity benefit as Mr Cameron is trying to make out.

I would like to ask Mr Cameron if this is the kind of callous Conservative party we can expect if he manages to win the next election? Help the rich and attack the sick, disabled and the poor. You are starting to sound like a spiteful bully, already targeting the weakest British citizens first; kicking them whilst they are already down on the floor.

Well thank you for that Mr Cameron, it is now becoming more clear of what kind of Conservative Government you will lead; should you win the next election.

You have just managed to lose millions of potential votes; in your callous new 'bullying' policy statement.

Dean

The problem with incapacity benefit is that the devil is in the detail, and this is where successive governments (both Labour and Tory) have always come unstuck.

The number of claimants has increased dramatically under Labour, which is prima facie reason to think that the claimant total could be brought down dramatically by a bolder policy. But there is also a school of thought that Labour has used incapacity benefit to conceal the true unemployment level, which is higher than official statistics acknowledge. This is the real difficulty - you can't achieve substantial cost savings by getting people off incapacity benefit if the jobs don't exist. Claimants will simply end up switching from incapacity benefit to jobseeker's allowance. Much more detail is needed on the cost-benefit analysis before we can judge whether there is anything genuinely new or radical in the Tories' plans (as opposed to ideas that Whitehall has already considered but rejected as impractical, unrealistic, counter-productive or too costly).

G J Wyatt

I would like to see Mr Duncan Smith in the shadow cabinet.

Andre

No this won't do, Mr Cameron. Dave's almost new deal ducks the central issue: Welfare dependents will buck any system, find out its weaknesses and exploit it. The New Deal is neither new nor a good deal for the tax payer. The only solution, as politicians of all persuasion know full well, is to scale down welfare payments and abolish them altogether. We cannot afford the welfare state or the family and societal dislocation it unwittingly provokes. How absurd that we are dependent on migrant labour to keep our services and cities running.

Andre

No this won't do, Mr Cameron. Dave's almost new deal ducks the central issue: Welfare dependents will buck any system, find out its weaknesses and exploit it. The New Deal is neither new nor a good deal for the tax payer. The only solution, as politicians of all persuasion know full well, is to scale down welfare payments and abolish them altogether. We cannot afford the welfare state or the family and societal dislocation it unwittingly provokes. How absurd that we are dependent on migrant labour to keep our services and cities running.

TrevorsDen

But its a start. And once in government with an army (hopefully a dwindling army) of civil servants more 'innovations' can be found.

Care is clearly being taken to cover attack of being nasty from the left

Angela

Give the man a chance. What you say is right, but if Cameron et al move too fast they will ensure they don't get elected. Is that what you want? Like Heffer & Hitchens?

Quadratus

Fraser.
Where did you learn maths? There are 30,000 general practitioners in U.K
That means each one needs to see ninety each year. Taking account of holidays,say,two per week for 45 weeks

jaybs

There are no doubts there are people who are claiming "incapacity benefits" falsely, often just to claim extra on their benefits.

But it is disgusting and will lose many votes if people seem to think those who are seriously sick are pushed into check ups by private bodies that have no real idea of the full health situation, such as surgery and on going health problems) Do you really think that this is the life that the true sick and disabled choose, to have to struggle through life and build up debts. No way can you cast guilt on every person and cause them even more distress, this is not what David Cameron stated on TV today, he was clear that society stands by those that are sick and disabled.

I am shamed on you Fraser stirring up feelings against the true sick and disabled. You better than anyone knows the current unemployment figures, so creating jobs like magic is just not possible. First every effort should be made to get those under 35 that are unemployed back into work, some have never experienced what work life is like. Followed by those over 35 and unemployed. Only then do you attempt in a fair way to sort out those who are not seriously sick and disabled, but you can't let either civil servants or the public sector make decisions is making everyone who is sick take up work, wake up and smell the coffee!

Moraymint

" ... it leaves me with the feeling that root-and-branch welfare reform has again been decided a battle for another year – or decade ..."

The simple fact is that we're running out of time, and the the clock is spinning at three times the previous rate now that the nation is going bust.

This is a bad portent and just adds to all the other reservations I have about Cameron and the Tories, and their supposed willingness to grip the unprecedented socio-economic crisis we face.

Not good enough; not worth my vote.

Tiberius

I would agree, Fraser, that there is a problem with fitting in that number of assessments in the anticipated timescale, so is there not also going to be a shortage of resources to enable a push that goes even further?

I still have the same reservations about resources in the education programme, as welcome as it is. Where are the teachers going to come from to work in the new schools, certainly in the short term?

When you look how radical (and necessary) the Tories' welfare, education, and economic policies are, it's no wonder they wish to park Europe and the NHS. And never mind the logistics, just look at some of the political reaction to today's welfare announcements, watered down as they supposedly are.

To get us where we all (well most of us) know we need to be is going to take at least two terms of persistent pushing against the vested interests. I'm sure this is the Cameroons timescale because anything shorter is far less likely to be achievable. After all, the country is in a worse state overall than it was in 1979.

Victor Southern

Strange - when Labour said they would do this the same people who criticise today were all for it. The difference is that Cameron means it whilst Brown was just blowing the usual Labour hot air.

Let's cut to the chase - where will the doctors come from? What about the 40,000 new doctors that Blair and Brown boast of.

If a quarter of those managed one such assessment every two working days then we are looking at 1.25 million in the first year. Would that be a reasonable start? Did Cameron or IDS indicate that it would all happen on day 1?

Just for the sake of a column you should not fall into the trap of thinking that nobody in the Conservative shadow cabinet can do simple maths.

There is an important difference - labour has announced hundreds of new initiatives. Over benefits and education the pace of initiatives is dizzying. But the sombre picture is that lamentable failures of management have resulted in these just becoming hot air, no meaningful action. It is very reminiscent of the Tony Hancock sketch where he skippers a submarine and gives an order "Hoist the anchor". This is echoed all the way down the boat and as the last repeat dies down his Exec. asks "How was that,Sir"? Captain Hancock says "Very good No.1. Now let's try it again and this time will somebody actually do it".

JohnAnt

I lived in a Labour council area which was full of incapacity benefit recipients. It works like this: you work as a builder or labourer for a few years, then say you've had an accident, or that you feel too depressed to work. You can even cultivate a drugs habit, to make you even moodier and more doolally, and get you classed as 'vulnerable'. You persuade a GP to certify you long-term sick, then incapable of work. You apply for and get a flat from the local DHO, get housing benefit, every other benefit you can. Then you go to another borough with or without an alias, and do the same. You rent out (sub-let) one of the flats - which councils actually permit these days with few restrictions. Or you take in b&b lodgers - nice little earner in Central London. Meanwhile, during the day, you go about your professional freelance work - plumber, builder, electrician, mini-cab driver, market stallholder - all done on a mobile number you conceal from the councils/DWP, paid for cash in hand, so no tax to declare.
Every now and then you have to allow the Jobcentre to send you to work for an afternoon in a charity shop, but you can be so unhelpful and surly they'll make sure they'll avoid asking for your services again.
Of course there are genuine cases of incapacity, but in the area I knew well, 80% of incapacity claimants were swinging the lead in this way.

Hysteria

where does the IDS review fit into this? Confused.....

London Calling

Followed by the Political Inquisition? Abolish welfare altogether? Social cleansing ?.

At present in the UK 3000 jobs are being lost daily, not created. The reality is the recession has created a New Working Class, those who were made redundant and were forced to downgrade from being middle earners and take low paid jobs rather than face the prospect of surviving on £60 a week Job seeking allowance. Not everyone can become teachers, skilled workers are struggling to find jobs let alone the illiterate and the long term unemployed who lack the skills and confidence.

Getting two million off Incapacity benefit and into work sounds more like a political stunt to me. Put them all on job seeking allowance and hope for the best, at least they wont be classed as unemployed and are available for work, the figures will shine, but the truth will not. The damage will have already been done by deducting £25 a week and pushing people further into poverty.

A friend of mine who receives disability allowance and is unable to work is suffering from great anxiety and depression as a result of the recent announcement of changes to benefits, even though he has been reassured that
he will not be affected, he fears he will lose his benefits and be made homeless, I fear that there must be many like him who are confused and suffering further ill health mentally as a consequence.

The core problem is, we are in a recession and therefore forcing people to look for jobs that simply aren’t available right now is mindless. We need to create the jobs first, re-educate those who cannot read and write properly, offer job training for those over 24 years of age and ultimately force the work shy to train or work for their benefits and receive Food vouchers rather than money to buy alcohol and drugs.

I understand where your coming from Fraser, I just see and hear things differently that’s all, where we are in agreement though is that something has to be done, my only concern it the timing and the approach is all wrong. Hammer too hard
and society will split and social unrest will be waiting around the corner like you've never seen it...the alternative, get it right and actually make a difference.

Peter From Maidstone

There are in fact plenty of jobs, but unfortunately they are all being filled with European guest workers. If we had a bit more British Jobs for British People then there would be jobs enough for the unemployed. They may not all be the jobs everyone would want, but he who will not work shall not eat. When I was unemployed for a couple of months I applied to Toys-R-Us and the local coffee shops rather than not work.

Billy Blofeld

I agree. I was distinctly underwhelmed by the welfare announcements. Labour / Tories - what is the difference?

Chris lancashire

At a time of steadily improving public health it beggars belief that 2m more people should become unfit for work over the last 10 years. Clearly, therefore, there is a problem to be tackled.
Reviewing all IB claimants must be done by an independent health board. Leaving it to GPs will result in very little change to the status quo. It needs to be done firmly and as sensitively as possible to protect the genuinely incapable - and ignore the pseudo-righteous screams of "unfair on the sick". What is more unfair than consigning a partially fit person to the scrapheap for life? Instead, find out what they can do, not what they can't.

Secondly, I would have like to have seen any announcement aimed at curbing abuse accompanied by a policy to make it more attractive to work. Like scrapping all these ludicrously complicated (and abused) tax credits and replacing it with a straight lift in the personal allowance so that someone on £15k p.a. or less pays virtually no tax.

Simon Stephenson

The idea of dealing with benefits through the tax system isn't a new one. Everyone is given a basic living code, according to their circumstances, which triggers negative tax for those people whose income is below their calculated basic. It's a much more efficient system of social provision, and it largely removes the anomalies of disincentive that currently result from the interaction between the tax and benefits systems.

But it's not all sweetness and light. Its one big drawback, as far as I can see, is that it will bring into the benefit system a large number of people a large number of people who are not there at the moment. By formalising basic entitlement you make it automatic that those currently entitled to benefits, but not claiming them. I suspect there are a large number of relatively poorly paid people who under this system would have a high basic living code and will see a substantial increase in their income.

Now you may say that this is no bad thing, but has it been fully costed into the new system? Or has the costing only taken into account the benefit/tax changes of those currently on benefit?

There is of course also the problem that at the low end the marginal tax rate is very high, and it will still provide a major disincentive to advancement, particularly for those people with high basic living codes. There will undoubtedly be many people in low-paid professions who, because of their circumstances, will be able to see no level of advancement where their marginal tax rate will reduce from being penal. Why go through all the hassle of taking the supervisor's job when the weekly pay increase isn't worth more than a tin of beans?

As usual, the key problem is airbrushed out because it's too painful to accept. The cause of the benefit/work disincentive is certainly in part due to the anomalous arrangements, but the principal reason is that low level earnings are so little above the basic subsistence level at which benefits are set. There is so much of our economy that is productively useless or inefficient that the wage entry level, even for those actually producing something, is barely above subsistence. We're a high cost country because the incomes of so many minimal-producers are reflected in the price of finished goods.

The key to our future lies less in driving the unnecessarily idle into work than in recognising that far too many of those already in work are producing far too little value to justify the wages they are paid. The structural inefficiencies are with the people in work, not those out of work.

JR

This announcement is a joke. I gave the Conservatives a chance but it's now obvious they have no clue and no desire for radical policies.

IDS was probably wrong about several things (e.g. that his proposals would in themselves reduce benefit numbers) but at least he had clear thinking how to reform the system. There's nothing that will simplify the system in these proposals - they are simply same old, same old current Government policy spun differently.

Fraser you touch on a very good point about Freud which I've made several times before in comments. He's a second rate thinker. He was basically steered by John Hutton, his special adviser and civil servants into what conclude in his original report (AME/DEL, outcome based funding, moving lone parents to JSA) to support the established agenda. And he still managed to bodge it by including some very dodgy sums of his own (£6000 AME savings per year for a claimant).

Now the situation (and economy) has completely changed he's stuck in the same mode of thinking. A little question for you - there are AME/DEL recycling agreements in place at the moment that assumed that some of the Flexible New Deal and Pathways to Work could be funded from their related AME savings. However AME spend is going up hugely despite a lot of people still moving into work from benefit (the churn of jobs accounts for that). So you have DEL spending on top of AME increases NOT falls. We couldn't see it clearly at the time but AME/DEL was a sideshow. Freud and the Conservatives obviously haven't picked up on that.

I'm genuinely gutted and scared if the Tories are this bereft of intellect and ambition.

anxiouswarrior

you think your deep thinkers my god your nothing of the sort your just extreme right wingers who want further punish most of the most unfortunate in society your iodeas belong with so called north american liberterians you people make me sick you take your eye off the real villans in this country the banks the rip off utilties companies the square mile and the rest of your disgusting greedy hard faced despicable friends on the right wing i bet you dont post this either you cowards

James Strong

anxiouswarrior:
I find it difficult to think about the content of your comment because your writing is very poor.
You will win no converts with paragraphs like that.

Nicholas

Oh, God. Not another semi-literate class warrior stalking the Coffee House. You better get some decent security on the door or they'll be handing out 'Socialist Worker' next.

Moraymint

anxiouswarrior

Calm down now.

The idea is to articulate a reasoned view, ideally with a few facts and figures thrown in to make your case (complete with punctuation and a touch of grammatical awareness) ... and persuade us that Marxism remains the political philosophy most likely to dig us out of the Labour Party's socio-economic legacy.

Over to you.

PS Were you educated in one of Alastair Campbell's "bog standard" comprehensive schools, by any chance?

David Short

At least we can now see Lord Snooty and his Pals in their true colours, and can choose not to vote for these overprivileged, out of touch, rich by birth, morons.

Nelson got it right early in the article: how can you save money by financing millions of unnecessary medical examinations, but then goes on to support this idiotic and cruel move.

Something wrong with the logic there.

Coeur de Lion

In all this I think we have to remember what a desperate situation we are in - not just the self-induced financial disaster but all the external ones coming down the pike. We'll be lucky if anyone has any 'benefits' quite soon. Get real, everybody.

treborc

Look it's simple I have written so many times, been on radio and TV.

I'm classed as Paraplegic but I can walk with sticks or crutches and of course if i walk for more then a short period i return to my wheelchair.

But look it's no good blaming the Tories all they are doing is Labour plans.

here is one rule for you, from new Labour, if a person can move his own wheelchair he shall be deemed to be mobile, he shall be seen as able to walk.

good one is it not.

If a person has lost both legs and can walk using a stick he shall be deemed able to walk he shall be seen as not disabled.

Here is my disability in case somebody thinks I'm work shy.

I broke my back in a fall in 1990 I was taken to a hospital by ambulance but was mixed up with another patient, I was sent home. On the way home i had a fit the driver of the car rushed me to another hospital, I was then xrayed and it was found I had broken leg, but sadly the hospital was so busy they plastered the wrong leg, they did not notice I had a fit and I was sent home again.

That night I had a stroke was rushed into another hospital and all hell broke lose with doctors blaming other doctors i was blamed for walking out, a doctor said for god sake he could not walk out both his leg are broken, he has a broken back.

But they all missed the one thing which nearly killed me and had caused the fits, I had in fact damaged my spinal cord I had a lesion.

To cut it short here i am please give me a job, but if you employ me you will need to help me, i take massive amounts of medication, I mess myself, I wet myself, i have period in which the pain is so bad i will curl up in ball and cry, I use morphine and other pain killers.

But I'm ready to work.

Now go and find an employer who is willing to give me a chance take the responsibility and the insurance company willing to insure me.

I have been looking for work for six years, i did find a job sadly the company could not keep me on, because I had to have people help me.

sadly disablity to some people is a broken finger nail or a bit of depression, unless you have depression you do not know what it's like, a broken leg will get better, a broken heart will get better, a lesion of the spinal cord does not.

But if people know of a nice job for me I'll take it, I'm ready