Duncan-Smith to police foodbanks. Will charities stand for this?

At a recent meeting of the Tameside Food Bank Forum (T.F.F.), which met last week at the Ashton-under-Lyne volunteer centre, a food bank representative reported that it was his experience that increasingly more people in-work were visiting food banks to obtain free food. People who fall into this category, in Britain, have been dubbed the 'working-poor'.

More than one million people visited the food banks run by the charity 'Trussell Trust', in 2014-2015 to obtain free food. Government benefit sanctions are blamed, in part, for the rise in the numbers of people relying on food banks to feed themselves and their families. 

In some local supermarkets in Tameside, such as 'Morrisons', in Dukinfield, customers have been asked if they would like to make food donations to the food banks to help those in need. Tameside Hospital, is also planning to open an on-site permanent food bank after doctors and nurses became concerned about the significant rise in patients showing signs of malnourishment. The hospital food bank aims to boost nutrition for patients and residents in the area.

Why  some many people should be unable to feed themselves in the UK, now ranked the fourth richest country in the world, is an appalling indictment on British society. Yet since the 1980's, the countries with the most marked increase in income inequality have been the UK and the U.S. which led the world in pro-rich policies. The Cambridge economist, Ha-Joon Chang, in his book 'Economics: the user's guide', writes:

"Markets are routinely rigged in favour of the rich as we have seen in the scandals about misselling of financial products and lies told to regulators. Money gives the super-rich the power to legally or illegally buy up politicians and political offices... We are persuaded to accept what I call the L' Oreal principle - if some people are paid tens of millions of pounds per year, it must be because they are worth it."  

The stigmatization of benefit claimants, has led to state benefits remaining unclaimed. HMRC estimates that £16 billion of benefits have gone unclaimed. Tax Justice and the trade union the P.C.S, claim that £120 billion of tax is avoided, evaded and uncollected. At a time when the government is cutting tax credits for some people in work, there is a £30 billion surplus in the national insurance fund which has arisen due to benefit cuts.

Chris Mould, Chairman of the Trussell Trust, said recently that cuts in Working Tax Credits were likely to lead to more people being forced to rely on food banks for support. Perhaps this is why Ian Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, recently announced that the DWP want to put their staff into food banks. This measure which should be resisted by charities, is probably designed to allow the DWP to police who is claiming from the food banks, but might also be designed, to discourage people from claiming. How long will be, before the DWP Gestapo is in the parlour, monitoring how much food is on our plates?

All aboard the Gravy Train. 'Poverty Pimps' seek to cash-in on welfare reform!

We are publishing below a recent briefing from 'Boycott Workfare'.

"Take action on Monday 27th January while poverty profiteers gather at Capita’s‘Welfare reform’ conference

While millions of people struggle to eat or heat their homes, and thousands of families face eviction, foodbanks and homelessness due to sanctions, bedroom tax and loss of disability benefits, Capita cashes in with conferences for Lord Freud (Minister for Dismantling Welfare) and his workfare collaborators.

You could pay £350 – £575 (plus VAT) to join all those snouts in the workfare trough at the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel. Or you can let them know what you think via twitter, email, phone – follow the links below.

We’ll post the conference hash tag as soon as we have it so you can join in the discussions on the day (or you can check out @capitaconf and their inspiring #capitaconf hashtag to see for yourself). You could also use the DWP’s #job2014 hashtag. The DWP are making a big effort to improve their social media presence – the least we can do is increase their footfall @DWPgovuk

The aim of the conference is to get ‘partners’ who make money from it ready for the next stage of ‘benefit reform’, with a special focus on ‘shifting the culture’. Let’s shift it in another direction!

In addition to the DWP’s own Lord Freud, (one of the chief architects in paying the private sector to dismantle welfare rights aka the great welfare rip off) the organisations below are supporting the event.

Private and voluntary sector organisations making big money from the outsourcing of welfare – let them know (politely) what you think…

Papworth Trust
As they say ‘If disabled people are affected, it’s likely that we’ll have something to say about it.’
Text 07860 021210 and Papworth will contact you.
Email: info@papworth.org.uk
Twitter: 

David Martin, Director of Strategy and Marketing will be speaking on the needs of job seekers with disabilities.  He’ll be covering self esteem and self awareness.  We’d like to know if he has anything to say about suicide, despair and plunging people with disabilities into poverty.
D: 01480 357208
M: 07772 197770
E: david.martin@papworth.org.uk

Aspire Housing

Email: enquiries@aspirehousing.co.uk

Sinead Butters CEO  of Aspire will be speaking on ‘achieving social and financial return on investment’ – and ‘delivering enhanced employment and skills interventions to tenants’. Let her know what you think about making money out of workfare and using housing as a route to coerce people into ‘skills interventions’.

Twitter: 

A2Dominion

A2Dominion – another housing association collaborating with the DWP’s benefits cuts agenda.  As part of the ‘digital deal pilot’, A2Dominion are ‘getting social tenants on line as part of preparation for universal credit’.

Fiona Cornell, Deputy Executive Director, will be talking about the digital deal pilot and how it helps the DWP to spy on and harass claimants
Twitter: 

Tomorrow’s People  ‘making life (low pay/no pay) work’

TP are major players in the forcing young people to work for nothing industry.

Steve Swan, Tomorrow’s People Director of Welfare to Work will be holding forth on how to push those who are most vulnerable and disadvantaged into the new growth industry of low pay, no pay jobs

You can let them know what you think about their schemes for young people:
Twitter: 

ATOS Healthcare

Gary Gear from ATOS will be speaking alongside Stephen Duckworth from Capita.

This is the ‘healthcare’ arm of the French IT firm ATOS, well known for making millions out of DWP contracts for ‘work capability assessments’ designed to strip people of out of work sickness and disability benefits.  They are also well known for earning hundreds of millions from WCA and payingno Corporation Tax in the UK.

Local Councils

Lewisham, Wigan and Southwark councils are also taking part.  If you live in these boroughs, why not let them know what you think:  Gerri Scott (Southwark Strategic Director of Housing), Peter Gadson (Lewisham Head of Customer Insight), Alison McKenzie-Folan (Wigan Director of Customer Transformation) and Graham Cadle (Croydon Director of Customer Services).

Lewisham Council
Twitter: 

Wigan Council
Twitter: 

Southwark Council
Twitter: 

Croydon Council
Twitter: 

Citizens Advice Bureaux
Twitter: 

We’re sorry to see CAB taking part.  CAB workers across the country have seen first hand the impact of sanctions, forced unpaid labour, bedroom tax and other benefit cuts.  The evidence is set out in areport from Manchester CAB. So why is Katie Shaw, Head of CAB Welfare Policy chairing this event? Workfare and other attacks on social security and workers’ rights would collapse without the collusion of the voluntary sector."

Government work scheme described as 'worse than useless' in helping people back into work!

The government denies that its 'Mandatory Work Activity' (MWA) programme, amounts to forced labour even though it's mandatory and does force the unemployed to undertake 30 hours of unpaid work each week for up to four weeks at a time, if they want to retain their Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA).

Although research carried out by the government, indicates that the MWA  fails to help the unemployed to get back into work after completing the scheme and seems to do little to get the long-term unemployed back into work, it is nevertheless being hailed by government officials as a huge success in getting people to sign off the dole.

Figures recently released by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), show that two-thirds of benefit claimants referred to the MWA programme fail to turn up for their placement because they either take a job or stop claiming state benefits. The report says that since the scheme started last May (2011), more than 90,000 claimants have been referred to MWA by Jobcentre staff. Of the 33,000 who began work placements, the remaining 57,000 found some work while others ceased claiming benefits. Anyone who is referred to the scheme and does not complete an unpaid work placement, is liable to have their benefits stopped. The DWP have confirmed that 6,000 people were stripped of their benefits for refusing to participate in the scheme.

Although critics say the scheme is forced labour, government officials say that it helps the unemployed to "develop personal discipline and other habits required for employment." Under the rules, any unemployed person judged by jobcentre staff to lack personal skills required to find and keep a job, must do unpaid work placements in return for their benefits.

Despite the government's own research findings into the efficacy of MWA, Mark Hoban, the Employment Minister who published the figures for MWA, said that the figures confirmed that the MWA scheme was "helping to push people off benefits and into work." He added:

"Some people will go to great lengths to avoid having to get a job, but sitting at home on benefits doing nothing is not an option for those who are fit and capable of work..."

While MWA might be having some effect in driving people off the dole - who don't like undertaking unpaid forced labour - it is less clear whether these people are going into paid employment. At a time when Britain is in a double-dip recession and there is little economic growth and nationally, there are 34 people applying for each vacancy it takes more than a pristine CV to get a job. In some regions, there are many more people chasing each vacancy. In October, when Jaguar Land Rover advertised 1,100 jobs at its plant in Birmingham, over 20,000 people applied.

The latest figures released by the DWP into the government's 'Work Programme', the 'worse than useless' job scheme which has helped just 1 in 25 back into work since starting in June last year, show how mainly private contractors, are failing to hit their target of getting 5.5% back into work. Although the government says that they would expect at least 5% of people to get back into work without any sort of government help, none of the 18 Work Programme contractors managed to hit their target of getting 5.5% of the 878,000 people referred to the scheme into a job lasting 6 months during the 14 months that the Work Programme was in operation. The Work Programme did in fact get less than 3.5% of people into work which was  mainly short-term, part-time roles, at a cost according to the BBC 2 Newsnight programme, of £14,000 per job and not £2,100, as suggested by the government. Since the programme commenced in June last year, the government have spent in the region of £412 million on a scheme which has helped fewer people into work than would have got back into work, without any government intervention.

The government say that it is too early (14 months), to judge the Work Progamme on job outcome and 'sustainment payment alone' because the programme helps people into work for 2 years or more. But there is evidence that the official figures put out by the DWP are misleading and far worse than suggested. Had the evaluation been done in the regular way from June 2011 to May 2012, instead of June 2011 and July 2012, the figure would have dropped even lower to 2.5%.

Need less to say, it's not only by the use of statistics that government's seek to mislead the public. Disinformation and the 'scrounger' agenda have been used by the government to make the public more amenable to £18bn of cuts in welfare benefits which has been taken up and reported by some journalists, to create a stigma attached to claiming state benefits. The Chancellor George Osborne does not refer to the unemployed but the 'idlers' who are "sleeping off a life on benefits" and there is no mention of the millions of people who are desperately looking for a full-time job. On previous occasions, Osborne has claimed that some families are taking £100,000 a year in housing benefit when in fact this only applied to five families in Britain. His announcement that no one would get more state benefits than the £26,000 median wage, represented less than 1% of people on benefits who were living in high cost temporary accommodation in London. Yet this kind of strategy, which tries to portray people on benefits as living the high life at the taxpayers expense, as successfully hidden the plunge in living standards for million of others through housing benefit cuts. Today, only one-in-eight people claiming  housing benefit are not in work.