Rochdale Unite's Job Centre Protest!

Brian Bamford - NV Joint-Editor (far-right)

 

FROM 9am this morning until lunch-time, the Rochdale Unite Community Branch set up a stall across the road from Rochdale Jobcentre, and issued leaflets protesting against unfair benefit cuts. 
Besides members of the local branch the secretary of the Greater Manchester County Association and another colleague were in evidence, and a delegate from Tameside Trade Union Council came over to offer support.
While I was there several claimants endorsed the campaign and were advised by the activists on the stall.

This was a national day of action against unfair benefit cuts, and Unite the Union issued the statement below:

Stop benefit sanctions

Thursday 30 March 2017
National Day of Action Against Sanctions
JOIN US

 
More and more people are facing benefit sanctions. 300,000 people have had their benefits suddenly stopped by sanctions in the last 12 months.

Many of whom have been plunged into poverty, unable to heat their homes or even eat. How is this meant to help prepare people for work?

 
Benefit sanctions must be fought against

These sanctions are cruel and handed out for ridiculous reasons such as:

• Arriving minutes late to a meeting 
• Not applying for jobs when waiting to start a new job!
• Missing an appointment on the day of the funeral of a close family member.

- See more at: http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/communitymembership/day-of-action-against-sanctions/#sthash.jpQGFLNQ.dpuf

High Court 'devastating' ruling on bedroom tax

THE High Court in London has dismissed a legal challenge to the Government’s 'bedroom tax' after judges ruled that the policy did not disproportionately discriminate against disabled people.  However, the High Court said ministers must now make regulations 'very speedily' to ensure there is 'no deduction of housing benefit where an extra bedroom is required for children who are unable to share because of their disabilities'.

Shelter chief executive Campbell Robb said the ruling would be ‘devastating’ for disabled adults and families with disabled of vulnerable children.  He said:
'As a result of today’s ruling we’re really concerned that these families will now face a real struggle to meet their rent and may end up losing their home.'

The judicial review of the 'spare room subsidy' was brought by 10 families with disabled or vulnerable children, who argued the under-occupation penalty discriminates against claimants who are disabled or have disabled family members.

Since 1 April 2013, persons deemed to have one spare bedroom have had their housing benefit reduced by 14 per cent and persons deemed to have two, or more, spare bedrooms have had their housing benefit reduced by 25 per cent. 

The claimants all argued that these new housing benefit rules discriminated against people with disabilities. But the court ruled that discrimination against adults with disabilities, even those in the same situation to children with disabilities who could not share a room, was justified. Lawyers for adults with disabilities confirmed that they intend to appeal the ruling, arguing that the discriminatory impact of the measure on people with disabilities cannot be justified and is unlawful. Disabled children and their families also intend to appeal as ministers have declined to confirm that the new regulations, which the court said must be made, will cover their situations, or to provide a date by which the new regulations will be made.

Housing industry leaders expressed their disappointment at the judgment.

National Housing Federation chief executive, David Orr said:
'We are deeply disappointed with the outcome of today’s High Court judgement. The fact that disabled people are being forced to take the Government to the High Court to challenge the bedroom tax shows how desperate their situation is.'

Housing associations warned from day one that this policy was unworkable.  Disabled people across the country are being forced to cut back on food and heating to pay the bedroom tax, despite the fact that many have had their homes adapted at great cost due to their disabilities: 
'The Government said Discretionary Housing Payments would protect these people, but this is only a temporary measure which is unlikely to provide long-term security for people, and the money available is not enough to go around. “This judgement does not change the fact that the bedroom tax is a flawed and unfair policy that won’t achieve what the Government hopes it will. The only fair solution is to scrap this policy now.'

Grainia Long, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing, added:
'This judgement will come as a huge blow for thousands of disabled families who are being unfairly affected by the bedroom tax. “The legal challenges have highlighted the problems caused by having a "one size fits all" system that doesn’t take people’s individual circumstances into account.  Increasing discretionary housing support by £35 million, as the Department for Work and Pensions has announced, is simply not the right way to mitigate the impact this policy is having.'

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said:
'We are pleased to learn that the court has found in our favour and agreed that we have fulfilled our equality duties to disabled people.  Reform of housing benefit in the social sector is essential, so the taxpayer does not pay for people’s extra bedrooms.'

Bedroom Tax: High Court decision today

THE High Court is to rule on whether cuts to housing benefit for social housing residents with spare bedrooms discriminates against disabled people.

Lawyers for 10 families brought a judicial review over the 'bedroom tax' in May this year.  They say the change breaches their clients' human rights because they need the extra space for health reasons.  The families, all disabled or the parents of disabled children, challenged the changes during a three-day hearing. 

The claimants are represented by three law firms and are from various places including London, Stoke-on-Trent, Manchester and Birmingham.  Their lawyers argued the benefit cut violated the Human Rights Act and Equality Act. 

Ugo Hayter from Leigh Day, which is representing two of the claimants said the legislation was "unfair" and had 'disproportionate negative consequences on disabled people and is therefore discriminatory'.

The lawyers also said the £25m the government has made available to councils to make discretionary payments to help disabled people affected by the benefit cuts is insufficient.

The government says the benefit changes were intended to reduce a £21bn annual housing benefit bill and encourage greater mobility in the social rented sector.  The Department of Work and Pensions said it was confident the measures were lawful and do not discriminate against disabled claimants or those with shared care of children. 

At the time of the High Court case, a DWP spokesman said it was 'only right' to bring back fairness to the system and pointed out there were 'two million households on the social housing waiting list and over a quarter of a million tenants... living in overcrowded homes'. 

The DWP added that an extra £150m in total has been made available to councils' funding for vulnerable claimants.
However, the National Housing Federation said earlier this month that the consequences of the change were worse than feared.  Rent arrears have soared in some areas while larger houses are lying empty as people refuse to move into them, it claimed. 

Risk to Homeless in Welsh Ruling?

A recent ruling in North Wales, which found that Housing Benefit should not be paid to a night shelter, has led to similar cases throughout the country. While local and national government consider their next steps, the issue must not get in the way of helping people off the streets, argues Jacqui Mccluskey, Director of Policy & Communications at Homeless Link. 

A night shelter is not a home, so went the argument behind recent judgement in Anglesey, therefore it should not be subsidised by Housing Benefit. Of course it is true that night shelters aren’t permanent homes. They don’t pretend to be, but they do offer a vital lifeline for some of the most excluded people in society - and many of them rely on income from housing benefit to provide that support. 

Now that other local authorities are following in Anglesey's footsteps, we are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact this will have on local emergency provision. 11 local councils have already withdrawn some or all payments to night shelters, or they are insisting on modifications to services. From council to council there is a wide range of interpretations of what should be paid and for what service. This has inevitably raised the question of what will be done in those areas to ensure that there is still provision both for emergency and longer term accommodation to ensure that rough sleeping does not rise. 

Whatever the answer, given the different types of emergency accommodation available – from winter shelters on church floors to year round No Second Night Out projects – the local impact could be devastating even before the challenges we expect to see under the monthly assessment structure of Universal Credit.

In our policy briefing on the issue we highlight the actions that central and local government must take if we’re to avoid an unintended rise in rough sleeping in the areas affected:

The Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) must urgently clarify the national position and communicate this to councils.  DWP also needs to communicate whether night shelters will or will not be exempt from Universal Credit reforms.  Local authorities must avoid suddenly withdrawing funding from services, especially if there is no alternative emergency accommodation in place.

Above all, what this issue highlights is the fundamental need both for secure long-term funding for effective emergency accommodation, as well as accommodation that provides people with a secure base that they can call home. 

Jacqui Mccluskey manages Homeless Link's policy, campaigning and communications functions, as well as the Project Director for Making Every Adult Matter (MEAM). 
News item from Sylvia Wilson on her HUT Newsletter.

Scottish Housing Association to pay bills

EAST Lothian Housing Association (ELHA) has announced it is to help pay the ‘bedroom tax’ for its most at risk tenants. 

Following the introduction of the Underoccupancy Charge, more commonly known as the ‘bedroom tax’, ELHA has developed an Assistance Scheme to help tenants affected by the changes. The Scheme, known as the ELHA Assistance Scheme, or EAS, will see arrears caused by underoccupancy charges written off for qualifying tenants. Alistair Sharp from the Govan Law Centre (GLC) said he hopes other housing providers consider adopting the model.

The EAS is designed to avoid conflicts with the Association’s allocations policy, and also cases of severe hardship. For example, where a couple require separate bedrooms for medical reasons or because of a disability, the Underoccupancy Charge calculation does not consider an extra bedroom essential, whereas ELHA’s allocation policy does – so a tenant could be told that they have to pay the Charge, but if they then applied to ELHA for rehousing to a smaller house, that request would be refused because the Association would not consider a smaller house to be suitable for their needs. 

The EAS contains 'Standard' and 'Discretionary' grounds on which charges can be written off. To claim, tenants need to demonstrate that they have been unsuccessful in an application for Discretionary Housing Payment, and that their circumstances are covered by the Scheme, but otherwise no lengthy application or assessment process is involved.

The East Lothian Housing Association Chief Executive, Martin Pollhammer, said:
'The so-called bedroom tax is wrong and should be withdrawn – it is as simple as that. But at the moment, it exists, so we have to deal with it, we cannot just ignore it. We feel that the EAS is a balanced and measured approach to helping our tenants deal with its worst effects, but it is also useful to us – firstly in preserving the standards we have in the way we assess the minimum amount of space a household needs, but secondly, trying to collect payments from people who patently have no means to pay them is also a waste of our time, money and resources, so is not in our best interests as a charitable organisation.'

Alistair Sharp from the Govan Law Centre added:
'Although we are campaigning for no evictions because of, and ultimately the abolition of, the "bedroom tax", we very much welcome ELHA’s approach – it is more than just a step in the right direction, it shows an organisation with a commitment to the wellbeing of its tenants, and especially to those made vulnerable by the bedroom tax. We feel this is a model that other housing providers in Scotland should consider adopting.'

News item from Sylvia Wilson on her HUT Newsletter.

Landlord Action say deductions ‘will not work’

LANDLORD Action has expressed concerns for both landlords and tenants over plans to deduct Universal Credit payments in order to recoup rent arrears.  The landlord-led organisation said the whole system is flawed and needs to be looked at much more closely before being rolled out. 
Paul Shamplina, Founder of Landlord Action, said:
'The new system is a big worry to landlords and tenants. At present it is at a council’s discretion to choose to make payments directly to a landlord and not via the tenant. We know that it is only the minority of tenants that do not pass on housing allowance but we have worked with many landlords that have stepped away from the sector as a result.  As more tenants struggle with the new system, fewer landlords will feel confident enough to rent to this sector, creating an even greater gap between supply and demand of social housing.  What’s more, docking a tenant’s Universal Credit when they are already in a vulnerable position is not going to solve the problem. Most tenants are not refusing to pass on payments because they want to keep them, but because they can’t manage financially. From a landlords point of view, five, 10 or even 20% of a tenants Universal Credit payment would be a minimal and lengthy process towards paying off even one month’s rent arrears.  We need to stop tenants getting into arrears in the first place, and the only way to do this is with direct payments to the landlord. Our experience tells us this is what the majority of both landlords and tenants would prefer.'

News item from Sylvia Wilson on her HUT Newsletter.

George Osbourne Parks Badly, Condemns Mick Philpott, & Plays a Blinder

IT is a few years since I last bumped into George Osbourne and his family, shortly before he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, relaxing in the gardens of Dunham Massey owned by the National Trust: Dunham Massey is described as 'one of the North's great gardens'. Set amidst a magnificent deer park it is a grand Georgian house with a history of salacious scandal attaching to its former owners: the 7th Earl of Stamford married Catherine Cocks, a bare-back circus rider, and the 2nd Earl of Warrington, according to the National Trust handbook, was 'so enamoured with his wife that that he wrote anonymously on the desirability of divorce!'

Now, Osborne seems to have come down in the world and on Wednesday he is reported to have been photographed while his chauffeur parked the car carrying him back from a 'regional tour' in a disabled parking zone in a service station off the M4, as he nipped out to buy a burger. Yesterday, using a broad brush approach Mr. Osborne derided Mick Philpott who had just received a life sentence for manslaughter, and by extension he used this to castigate other folk on benefits, who might also be living unorthodox lifestyles.

While doing his darnedest to create a housing bubble with his latest budget, and inflicting cuts on the nation Mr. Osborne has recently declared that 'We are not anarchists!' Indeed, yet judging by his attitude to parking restrictions he may well be being too modest. After all, like the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, anarchist authorities as distinguished as Peter Good and Martin Gilbert have both recently had occasion to drawn attention to people on benefits.

Everything changes and everything remains the same; the Tories talk like anarchists and the anarchists like Tories, just as in Animal Farm the men become pigs and the pigs become men.

Judge rules benefit sanctions unlawful after DWP fails to comply with its own regulations!

Thousands of unemployed benefit claimants who lost money after being sanctioned, may be due a refund following a judicial review brought by two unemployed jobseekers.

In a fifty page ruling, Mr. Justice Foskett, declared that a six-month benefit sanction imposed on Jamieson Wilson a 41-year-old Midlands lorry driver who refused to work unpaid for six-months on the government's 'Community Action Programme (CAP), because he considered it 'forced labour', was unlawful because a letter sent to him by the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) was "not sufficiently clear and precise to comply with the government's own regulations concerning benefit sanctions." After being sanctioned, Wilson was forced to live on handouts from family and friends after being stripped of his benefits.

The ruling will apply to tens of thousands of jobseekers who received the same or similar letters and were sanctioned. In his ruling, Foskett said:

"It should not be necessary to ferret around for what most people would be inaccessible regulations to find out his or her position...there could be no question of sanctions being validly imposed if no proper notice of the sanction consequences was given."

The ruling says there had been a catalogue of errors surrounding Wilson's right to benefits. He had been told his benefits could be stopped for up to six-months if he refused to participate in the 'CAP' but his benefits could only have been stopped for two weeks.

A claim brought Cait Reilly, a 23-year-old geology graduate from Birmingham, that working for her dole money for 'Poundland', breached Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), that prohibits forced or compulsory labour, was dismissed by Foskett. Although both claims brought by Wilson and Reilly contended that being forced to work unpaid for their benefits amounted to 'forced labour', Foskett ruled that the government work-for-your-dole schemes were "a very long way removed from the kind of colonial exploitation of labour that led to the formulation of
Article 4." But in the Reilly case, he stated that the DWP had broken Jobseeker regulations because she had been wrongly told the 'Work Experience Scheme' was mandatory, when in fact, it was only mandatory after she'd agreed to take part.

Lawyers acting for Reilly and Wilson had also argued that because the DWP had failed to publish enough information about the schemes setting out jobseekers rights and responsibilities, the schemes were unlawful. This claim was also rejected by Foskett.

Although the judge in this judicial review dismissed the main claim that working-for your-dole money was analagous to 'slavery' or 'forced labour', many who have been forced onto these government schemes, perceive it to be so. Likewise, so do the firms who have pulled out who say involvement in the schemes, is damaging their reputations. It is difficult to see how a scheme described as 'mandatory work activity', could not be forced labour even if if it doesn't fall within the meaning of Article 4 of the ECHR. Moreover, there is little evidence that these work-for-you-dole schemes increase peoples' chances of finding work. People who refuse to take part get sanctioned and face destitution and there is increasing evidence that these schemes, are undermining the pay and conditions of those in work. Naturally, employers are attracted to workers costing very little and people who work for nothing, are even more attractive. The government says that it wants to end the "something for nothing culture." We couldn't agree more! Why should the British taxpayer be paying a subsidy to high street stores making billions in profits by providing them with free labour. If these companies want workers, surely, they should be paying for it.

Suicide risk linked to benefit cuts and flaws in government incapacity test!

An internal e-mail which was recently circulated to staff working within the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP), has warned staff that 'ill-handling' of benefit claims involving claimants being moved off sickness benefits to Jobseekers Allowance(JSA), could lead to suicide risks amongst 'vulnerable customers'. The e-mail says:

"Very sadly, only last week a customer of DWP attempted suicide...said to be the result of receiving a letter, informing him that his sickness benefit would be cut off."

Although the e-mail from the DWP, emphasises the need for the "utmost care and sensitivity", when dealing with 'vulnerable customers', disability campaigners have repeatedly warned government ministers that flaws in the Work Capability Assessment(WCA) - which is carried out when someone applies for Employment and Support Allowance(ESA) - could lead to mentally ill people taking their own lives.

In April, the 'Daily Mirror' newspaper revealed that: "at least 32 people are dying each week despite them being ruled not sick enough in the medical test carried out by the private firm 'Atos Healthcare', for the new sickness benefit."(ESA). Among the cases referred to by the newspaper, was that of a warehouse worker whose degenerative lung condition forced him to give up work. Although the man had trouble breathing and walking and his weight had dropped to seven stone, he was awarded no points in the medical test for ESA carried out by 'Atos', and was told that he would be fit to return to work within three months. But the man died, before the 3 months had expired.

While some people gleefully clamour for more benefit cuts and want more welfare reform, it is the less well off, and the most vulnerable, who are making the biggest scarifices to pay off Britain's financial deficit brought about by the banks.

In August 2011, northernvoices blog reported the tragic case of Richard Sanderson aged 44, from Southfield, South West London, who took his own life when he and his family were threatened with eviction following government cuts in his housing benefit.

In May, it was reported in the press that a man had slashed his wrists during an appointment at Birkenhead Jobcentre. The man - who had mental health issues - had missed several appointments and was warned by the benefits officer that he was at risk of being sanctioned and had two options. He was told that he could start turning up on time or continue being late and lose his benefit. The man replied: "I have a third option." He then took out a knife and cuts his wrists.

Last month, the Guardian reported on the case of a 48-year-old man who set himself on fire outside Birmingham Jobcentre over a dispute about delays in receiving his benefits. According to the newspaper, the man had just been found fit for work following a medical assessment.

Though these kind of cases do get reported, negative press reports about feckless workshy scroungers who are "Living the life of Riley" on state benefits, has allowed the government to take away support from the disabled, the unemployed, and the 'working poor'. As a result of this, the government has been able to slash benefits by £18bn and brush aside objections because it believes that the public support a hardline, on benefit cuts. Indeed, opinion polls do suggest that the majority of the British public tends to believe that the government pays out too much in benefits and that welfare levels overall, should be reduced. However, public attitudes towards welfare are often based on little knowledge or influenced by misleading and negative press reports which are drip-fed, to the public on a daily basis. Although many may believe that benefits are too high in this country, it is a fact that out of 27 EU countries, only Estonia has a higher level of poverty among unemployed people than this country. Benefits paid in the UK are amongst the lowest in Europe and over the last 40 years, unemployment benefit has been cut by 50% as a proportion of average earnings, to just 10%. Though the cuts in benefits have been savage, what few people realise, is that 88% of all benefit cuts are still to come.

Suicide verdict returned on father who killed himself because of cut in his Housing Benefit!

The following article which concerns the tragic death of Richard Sanderson aged 44, from Southfields, South West London, in May 2011, has been taken from the Wandsworth Guardian. We thought this article (published in full) would be of interest to many of our readers and particulary those who gleefully clamour for more public spending cuts, and severe and rigorous welfare reform. How many more deaths will it take, before there is a re-think on welfare reform and public spending cuts?

'A desperate man who lined up three kitchen knives before stabbing himself twice in the heart, blamed cuts in housing benefit.

Unemployed Richard Sanderson took his own life after writing three suicide notes which were laid out neatly on a bed in a meticulously planned act.

In one to his wife he wrote: “Don’t come into the bathroom, this time I will most certainly be deceased”.

Mr Sanderson, who said he could not face the thought of his family being homeless, stabbed himself twice in the heart with a kitchen knife on May 29 at home in Augustus Road, Southfields, after years of being unable to find work finally took its toll, an inquest heard.

The 44-year-old former helicopter pilot wrote three suicide notes – two for his wife, Petra, and one for the police – after carefully planning the suicide over several days.

This followed a failed attempt less than a year earlier.

Coroner: Man ordered by Job Centre to give up training course

After returning a verdict of suicide at Westminster Coroner’s Court on Tuesday, August 23, Dr Fiona Wilcox said: “What I find particularly tragic in this case is this act appears to be pursued by a man who was not suffering from an illness and appears to have made a considered act in response to his inability to find employment.

“The fact his housing benefit was about to be cut and the family would be at risk of having nowhere to live, and being ordered to give up his training course because of the Job Centre's rules, would appear to be especially poignant and tragic.”

In February, Merton Council estimated up to 3,000 residents would be made poorer by the coalition Government’s policy of cutting housing benefits, which will decrease by between £5 and £400 a week from November, depending on the size of the property.

"80,000 Londoners at risk of eviction"

Annys Darkwa, who runs St Helier-based Vision Housing and helps find homes in Merton for ex-offenders, said tragic cases like this would become more frequent in the coming months because housing benefit cuts would hit the most vulnerable the hardest.

Mrs Darkwa said: “We are going to see this happen more and more as we expect 80,000 people across London to be evicted due to housing benefit cuts.

“It is especially concerning in Merton where mental health provision has disappeared. What’s going to happen to people who think they’re all alone and commit suicide because they think there’s no one to help them?”

Mr Sanderson, who was also a window cleaner, met his wife while travelling in South Africa in 1995 before the pair eventually settled in Wimbledon in 2007 to find better work prospects in London.

Widow: Council cut our housing benefit by £30 a week

Mrs Sanderson got a job but was made redundant in 2009, while Mr Sanderson constantly struggled to find work and was unable to complete training as an electrician because the job centre would not continue to pay his benefit because his training stopped him from being available for job interviews.

He tried to commit suicide the first time in June 2010 by crushing up 150 tranquiliser pills which he swallowed with a glass of whisky.

He was found at home unconscious but still alive by his wife.

Mrs Sanderson, who did not attend the inquest because she thought it would be too upsetting, gave a statement to police in which she explained the first suicide bid was done so she and their nine-year-old son could benefit from a life insurance policy payout worth 2.5m South African Rand (about £210,000), which she soon cancelled after the suicide attempt.

A psychological report by Dr Joanne Turner, who examined Mr Sanderson at St George’s Hospital, said he did not exhibit any signs of mental illness or depression and claimed to be “embarrassed” by his suicide bid.

But in her statement, Mrs Sanderson revealed: “In March or April [2011] we received a letter from [Wandsworth] Council which said our housing benefit would decrease by £30 a week, forcing us to move but leaving us with nowhere to go.”

"Despite this, I hadn't noticed any major change in Richard’s mood. I don't know why he killed himself. We had planned to go to Wimbledon Common the next day."'

Frank Field calls for the work-shy to be punished. Welfare reforms are not radical enough, he says!

Frank Field (pictured), the Labour MP for Birkenhead, is back in the headlines once again after claiming that David Cameron`s proposals for reforming the welfare state, don`t go far enough. He favours a harsher welfare regime that punishes the 'work-shy' and rewards those who have contributed to the system.

A former Labour minister at the Department of Social Security, he was once dubbed by Tony Blair, his 'minister to think the unthinkable'. But he was criticised for being inclined to pose more questions than he answered. Now he`s been appointed by the Con-Dem government as their 'Poverty Tsar', to look into poverty and life chances.

As a former poverty professional himself, having worked for both the 'Child Poverty Action Group'(CPAG) and the 'Low Pay Unit', Field, ought to know something about poverty. But he has attracted a certain amount of notoriety for his right wing views on welfare reform. He has said that he favours reintroducing National Service to tackle unemployment and to inculcate, in the unemployed, a sense of order and patriotism. Some years ago, he also proposed that the unemployed (like criminals), should be subjected to compulsory DNA testing as a way of countering benefit fraud.

Curiously, as a practising Anglican and member of the Church of England General Synod, Field, seems to show a certain predilection for deriding the poor and disadvantaged. This may well be linked to his upbringing. Both his parents who were Conservatives (like himself), "believed in character and pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps." He also exhibits a certain inclination towards using the welfare system as a means for social engineering. But as George Orwell, once pointed out, there`s a 'pew-renter' asleep in every Englishman.

Judging from his recent musings in the national press, a number of things seem to gall Frank Field about the welfare state. He says that since the election, nine-out-of-ten jobs which have been created, have gone to foreigners because the British fail to chase work. The public he says, are clamouring for tougher sanctions that force the long-term unemployed back to work, like taking their benefits off them. Moreover, he says, that voters reject the idea that entitlement to state benefits should be based solely on need and not earned. He believes that 'good and reliable' people who have worked and paid National Insurance contributions and contributed to society, should be prioritised for help above others. This equally applies when allocating social housing. Field says that priority should be given to those who are deserving, such as those who have waited the longest, paid their rent on time, and have been upright citizens who have kept their children out of trouble.

Concerning the government's work programme for the unemployed, Field says that he doubts that this will ultimately have a huge impact on the number of workless claimants, or those who have never worked, getting back to work. He believes that those who are likely to gain jobs from these schemes, will be the recently unemployed, who are 'work ready' and motivated and easier to place in work, by private companies running these schemes. However, he adds:

"But what of those lads, barely able to read or write, who tell me they wouldn't dream of taking a job that doesn't pay three times the rate they gain on benefits, and who refuse those jobs available on the grounds that such work is fit only for immigrants? This group of recidivists, workless claimants, know from past experience that governments leave them alone."

Field says that three quarters of the public - including benefit claimants - believe those who willingly refuse to seek work should lose all or part of their benefit. He wants tougher sanctions to force people back to work and believes, that if this is not introduced, the Government`s approach to welfare reform will fail. He also believes that we ought to get back to an insurance based system where benefits are only awarded to those who have paid in and not to those who are in need, or whose income is below a certain threshold.

As Frank Field is undoubtedly aware, claimants already in receipt of Jobseeker`s Allowance (JSA), have to be available for work and must provide evidence that they are seeking work every time they sign-on, in order to keep their JSA. Under the guise of 'work experience', many claimants are also working for their dole money for private employers or are being confined in modern day 'detention centres' doing job searches. If unemployed, your chances having getting a job will differ depending on where you live. Rates of unemployment vary across the country and within regions. In Dorset West, one claimant of JSA is chasing every vacancy, but in Hull North and Rhondda, there are 84 claimants chasing every vacancy. Moreover, Britain has never had a system of social insurance like that which developed in countries like France and Germany. Britain`s welfare system is a product of the new poor law and the 'workhouse', which continued in this country from 1834 to the introduction of the National Assistance Act in 1948. The 'means test', the workhouse, the 'deserving and undeserving poor' and the principle of 'less eligibility', have shaped and moulded the British Welfare State for donkey's years, as well as the opinions of its ruling political elite.

For the last 30 years, successive governments in this country have continually sought to undermine and dismantle the benefits system on a piecemeal basis, to make it less attractive to be out of work and to price the unemployed back into work by taking low-paid employment. Hyperbole about the work-shy, scroungers, and the deserving and undeserving, used by political parasites like Frank Field, are merely conjurors tricks designed to make it easier to cut the benefits bill. The Con-Dem (millionaire) government of which he is a member, is already, "looking at more radical American-style plans to set time limits on benefits for fit people of working age", (Daily Telegraph 21/6/11).

We should not forget that back in 1996 the government cut contributory unemployment benefit from 12 months entitlement to 6 months, at a stroke, regardless of how much money people had paid into the system and without any consultation whatsoever. Who would pay into social insurance system where there was no guarantee that the government would even honour the social contract? Likewise, who would want to buy into a system which is so punitive and which pays a mere pittance, to the jobless, as compared with other welfare systems in other EEC countries? While means-testing may well create perverse incentives like making people less inclined to save, it has nevertheless, been preferred by British governments because it is far cheaper than the cost of providing a universal welfare system, where everybody was entitled, who had paid in.