"We are people, not pit ponies" - my response to the Benefits Reform consultation (deadline: tomorrow)

Here is my response to the latest consultation on benefits reform: No one written off: reforming welfare to reward responsibility, the deadline of which is tomorrow.

I've been putting off responding because I'm very consultaion-weary at the moment, life is busy, etc., but it was important to me to put the time aside to do this because, although I think my views will be ignored, it makes me feel better to express them in the right place anyway. And once I got started, I actually enjoyed answering the questions.

No one written off: reforming welfare to reward responsibility

List of Consultation Questions

Question 1: How long should ‘work for your benefit’ last at different stages in the claim?

I feel very strongly that lone parents should not be expected to work for money at all. Children of all ages – especially children who only have one parent living with them – need the security of full-time parental availability. Ignoring this need will cause mental health issues in young people due to further fragmentation of their family lives.

Question 2: How could capacity and capability to provide full-time work experience in the community sector be provided and incentivised to produce the best employment outcomes for participants?

By making it a matter of choice, not compulsory. Forced labour is not productive labour anyway, and stay-at-home parents are doing an absolutely crucial, but vastly underrated job by being available for their children at home.

Question 3: Is full-time ‘work for your benefit’ as an alternative to a sanction of loss of benefit for repeated non-compliance with work search requirements an effective option for some jobseekers? How should it be targeted?

Neither option is a good idea in my opinion. Financially penalising people who are already trying to raise families on breadline benefits will plunge those families further into poverty, and forcing lone parents into the workplace is bad for children’s mental health and safety.

Question 4: What penalties do you think would be most effective to deter more people from committing benefit fraud?

Make the benefits system properly fair and usable. Better train your advisors to advise people well and to actually help them, instead of just threatening them. The system must be sympathetic to individual cases – this cannot be just about money and using stick and carrot measures to achieve economic aims.

You should also consult far more widely about your plans. I know many single parents on Income Support and not one has been told about this consultation by their lone parent advisor. How can you call it a public consultation when most of the people who will be directly affected don't even know about it? This is a vitally important point which needs to be addressed.

Question 5: Do you think it would be appropriate to reduce or withdraw entitlement to benefit after a first offence? How long should the sanction period be?

People who commit fraud are in need of extra help, not punishment in my opinion. There should be no sanctions, only investigation, counselling and further assistance.

Question 6: Do you agree with the proposed approach for identifying problem drug use? How should it be implemented? Do you think that everyone claiming a working-age benefit should be required to make a declaration of whether or not they use certain specified drugs?

Drug use (both legal and illegal) is a symptom of a broken society. The government’s time would be better spent trying to better understand why some people feel the need to escape from the day-to-day reality of life in the UK. This is not a problem that can ever be solved by taking the ‘strict parent’ approach.

Question 7: What elements should an integrated system of drug treatment and employment support include? Do you agree that a rehabilitation plan would help recovering drug users to manage their condition and move towards employment?

Drug addicts will only get clean when they want to, not when the government or anyone else wants them to. I don’t think any incentives will work.

Question 8: When is the right time to require ESA claimants to take a skills health check?

It should always be an option to them.

Question 9: Should ESA customers be required to attend training in order to gain the identified skills they need to enter work?

Not required, but free to do so as and when they wish.

Question 10: In view of the need to help lone parents develop the skills they need to find work, are we right to require lone parents to have a skills health check and training as a condition of receiving benefit?

Absolutely not. The first and most important job of a lone parent is that of parenting.

Question 11: Should we pilot extra benefit payments for lone parents in return for training, and if so, when the youngest child is what age?

No, you should focus on allowing them to be available for parenting if you are at all concerned about people’s long term mental health and safety.

Question 12: Are there any other circumstances where customers cannot get the skills they need to enter employment under present and planned arrangements?

It’s difficult if one is dealing with benefits staff who obviously don’t care. This situation is improving but there are still some bad apples. Tightening up the rules and regulations for claimants will only exacerbate this problem in my opinion. Better training for staff and better selection of staff is needed. Also, asking claimants for feedback about staff would seem sensible. I’m amazed you don’t do this already.

Question 13: How might we build on the foundations of the current rules so that they do not discourage unemployed people from volunteering as a deliberate back-to-work strategy, while retaining a clear focus on moving off welfare into paid employment?

I disagree with your ‘clear focus’. There is no need to have everyone in this country – even 80% - in employment and I would question the motives of those who propose such agenda.

Question 14: Do you agree that the WCA and WFHRA should be re-focused to increase work-related support?

No.

Question 15: What expectations should there be of people undertaking the personalised support we will now be offering in the Work Related Activity Group? Could this include specific job search?

No expectations. Only help if they want it.

Question 16: How can we make Access to Work more responsive to the needs of claimants with fluctuating conditions – including mental health conditions?

Primarily by making it non-compulsory. People with mental health conditions are the last people (after lone parents) you should be pushing into jobs. It would be better instead for the government to work towards developing a better understanding of the real reasons why so many UK citizens suffer from mental health conditions and to set about remedying those on a long term basis. Economy-based stick and carrot governance is not the best thing for people.

Question 17: What additional flexibilities in the system or forms of support would claimants with multiple and complex problems need to enable them to meet the new work-focused requirements proposed in this Green Paper?

The support should be non-compulsory and not based on ‘getting them off benefits’. Public money is used for many potentially questionable purposes. Using it to keep the poor, the abandoned and the sick from starvation is not one of them.

Question 18: What are the key features of an action planning approach that would best support employees and employers to take the steps for the employee to make a swifter return to work?

A swift return to work should not be the priority. We are people, not pit ponies.

Question 19: There is no Question 19.

Question 20: What approach might be suitable to assist partners of benefit claimants who can work into employment?

It would be better to allow them to choose when and if they want to work for money.

Question 21: What are the next steps in enabling disabled people, reliably and easily, to access an individual budget if they want one? Should they include legislation to give people a right to ask for a budget or will the other levers the Government has got prove sufficient? What are the safeguards that should be built in? How can this be done?

I don’t know enough about this to answer it properly.

Question 22: Is a system based on a single overarching benefit the right long-term aspiration? How could a simpler system be structured so as to meet varying needs and responsibilities?

Provide a breadline benefit, like Income Support, for all who need and want to claim it. Relax planning laws to reduce the price of land and houses, and support and enable more people to produce their own power and food, so that living is cheaper. We are more than units of economy. We should not be seen as resources to be mined. Paid employment should be an option for all who can get it, not a necessity.

Question 23: Would moving carers currently on IS onto JSA be a suitable way of helping them to access the support available to help combine caring with paid work or preparing for paid work?

Of course not. They wouldn’t be known as carers if they weren’t needed to care for someone.

Question 24: How might we reform Bereavement Benefit and IIDB to provide better support to help people adjust to their new circumstances while maintaining the work focus of the modern welfare state?

The modern welfare state shouldn’t be work focused and I would question the motives of anyone who said it should.

Question 25: Are lump sum payments a good way of meeting people’s needs? Do they give people more choice and control? Could we make more use of them?

You could certainly be providing people with help to make down payments on their homes. I’d also like to see more grants for wind turbines and solar panels to reduce people’s living expenses. Also the provision of an allotment or similar land to grow food. These measures, taken individually, will better enable our country to weather the new global economic situation.

Question 26: What information would providers need to make the Right to Bid effective? How would the evaluation process need to work to give providers confidence that their ideas would be evaluated fairly and effectively? How do we get the balance right between rewarding those who come up with new ideas and the obligation to tender projects?

If this is about employing private companies to force benefits claimants into jobs, I am strongly against the whole process. Putting profit before people is a horrendous idea, on so many levels. I think everyone knows this intrinsically.

Question 27: What would the processes around contributing to commissioning and performance management look like in a range of different partnership areas? How might they best be managed to achieve the desired outcomes?

If this is about employing private companies to force benefits claimants into jobs, I am strongly against the whole process. Putting profit before people is a horrendous idea, on so many levels. I think everyone knows this intrinsically.

Question 28: How could a link be made to the radical proposals for the pilots set out in Chapter 3, which seek to reward providers for outcomes out of the benefit savings they achieve?

If this is about employing private companies to force benefits claimants into jobs, I am strongly against the whole process. Putting profit before people is a horrendous idea, on so many levels. I think everyone knows this intrinsically.


Question 29: How effective are current monitoring and evaluation arrangements for City Strategies?

I don’t know enough about this to answer it properly.