Defend our entitlement to benefits –
we’re not “workless”
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Dear friends,
People who haven’t been on benefits before and have recently lost their job, are shocked by how little money you are supposed to live on. Jobseekers get £67.50 a week, under-25s only £53.45. How can we cover the rising costs of food, fuel, rent, transport and other basics on this?
Now, even this small guarantee of survival is under threat. The Welfare Reform Bill is being rushed through Parliament. People assume that welfare will continue, but it won’t if the government gets its way.
Take sickness benefit. It used to be that if you had cancer or other serious or terminal illness, you would get sickness benefit – but this hasn’t been true for years. We are regularly found “fit for work” regardless of ill-health. If we get Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) -- which replaced incapacity benefits – most of us are expected to “prepare for work” and to attend Jobcentre appointments, even when we are undergoing chemotherapy. Only 6% of people who apply for ESA are excused “work-related activity”.
This is the cruel regime which the coalition wants to extend to all claimants regardless of circumstances. And it is spending £2 billion to change admin. systems to do so.
The Bill is abolishing Jobseekers Allowance, ESA, Housing Benefit, the Social Fund and Income Support and replacing them with ‘Universal Credit’. Other benefits are also being abolished. Benefit levels are expected to be set even lower than they are already and paid monthly in arrears. Those who can’t manage the long gaps between payments will be unable to eat or will fall prey to loan sharks – debt already accounts for a lot of the worsening poverty.
New sanctions are being introduced, heavier than ever. On 6 October, the Work and Pensions Minister Lord Freud announced that people will be barred from benefits for three years if they refuse “three reasonable job offers”. We’ll be expected to travel three hours a day for work. Is that a reasonable job offer? Who is likely to suffer? Those of us with an already heavy workload because of children to care for, or disability. http://services.parliament.uk/hansard/Lords/bydate/20111006/writtenministerialstatements/part001.html
Mothers are expected to become jobseekers when our youngest child turns five. Since 2008, this age deadline has dropped from 12 to seven to five. Only mothers of babies under one will be excused. In couple families, both parents are expected to be jobseekers.
Benefits can be arbitrarily stopped, and already often are. Trivial ‘breaches’ of the jobseeking agreement can lead to benefits being stopped, endangering the survival of the whole family. A single mother of three children who does some tasks as part of her jobseeking agreement but misses making one phonecall, may have her whole benefit stopped, including her rent, threatening the roof over her and her children’s heads. If problems escalate, she may then have her children taken away by social services because she can’t provide for them – so that not only destitution but the trauma of separation is visited upon mother and children. People who have missed appointments because they were ill, received job application forms in the post too late to apply, or can’t read information, have been tricked out of benefit and exist on hardship payments of £30 a week, food parcels or nothing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/apr/01/jobcentres-tricking-people-benefit-sanctions
Many benefits staff who were trained to help people get their entitlements, have been deliberately got rid of, replaced by call centres where staff are trained not to care and some vent their prejudices against claimants. An ‘accent’ may be enough to get you targeted and told wrong information.
The complaints sections, where you could ask senior staff to sort out errors other staff made and put people’s claim back on within a day, have been abolished. Privatised ‘back-to-work’ companies working to targets and for profit, are making people come in for interviews and Mickey Mouse sessions just to make up numbers. Even when we are desperately sick, suicidal or disabled and unable to travel without problems, we are made to come in and answer questions about our ‘employment goals’, under threat that our ’benefit could be affected’.
The Welfare Reform Bill is inviting a “food parcel” society – no guaranteed entitlement to cash income -- where destitute and near-destitute people can be exploited and abused in all kinds of ways. Asylum seekers were the first to be made destitute. This is what’s going to happen to many of us unless this Bill is stopped:
1. Disabled people, single mothers, young people just out of care and others will end up destitute, homeless and begging on the street as we did before the welfare state. Many homeless and benefit-less people are already begging.
2. Vulnerable people will be the first to suffer increased illness and early death.
3. Mental health problems and violent attacks, suicide, drink and drug addiction will go up and more of us will be sectioned.
4. Others of us will end up in prison because we may have to resort to shoplifting or prostitution to survive. It’s ironic that government ministers have made a moral point of stopping Jobcentres from advertising sex industry jobs, while their cuts are forcing more and more women onto the game. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmbills/154/11154.96-100.html
5. More women and children will be vulnerable to rape and other violence in the home if we have to put up with a violent man just to keep a roof over our head because there is no longer help to leave and set up home somewhere else.
6. Malnutrition will cause more babies to be born with low birth-weight and disabilities.
7. More accidents and fires as children are left home alone because both parents are at work or looking for a non-existent job.
8. Very young children will spend ever-longer hours in childcare even into the evening while mothers are forced to work unsocial hours, because those who refuse will lose their job or be denied benefit.
9. A rise in children taken into care as mothers are deemed unfit because they can’t find a job or can’t cope.
10. People working inhuman long shifts and accepting terrible working conditions.
The Bill concentrates on people of ‘working age’, but pensioners, mostly women, are being finished off in hospital wards where yet again, spot checks have found patients deprived of water, food and basic care. All the entitlements generations have fought and lost their lives for, are being taken away. Only the wealthy are considered to have any value. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/oct/13/nhs-hospitals-care-of-elderly
Women’s retirement age is being raised to 66 and maybe further. If we are 60+, we are expected to compete for jobs alongside younger people. Those of us who are older will be discriminated against as too old, and those who are young because we are inexperienced.
The government wants to cap benefit income per week at £500 total – for everyone in the household, including rent and all our needs, except perhaps if someone has a serious disability. If we have a large family, we’ll suffer most. Even Child Benefit – which children need and mothers earn with their vital caring work – is included in the benefit cap. If we have several children and are also caring for elderly parents, we could lose Carers’ Allowance because our weekly benefit total already comes to £500. And those of us entitled to maintenance from the father of our children have to pay a fee for maintenance collection, out of money our children need.
As parents, we’re struggling to cover childcare costs since Working Tax Childcare Credit was cut to 70%. New money for parents doing less than 16 hours waged work a week does not make up for this cut. It’s like they will do anything to make parents go out to work, but won’t pay for decent childcare.
We face a threat to the roof over our head: spending food money on rent, as the housing allowance is too low. If we live in a wealthy area, the government will only pay part of our rent due to the housing benefit cap. Children will have to move schools, families will have to move out from wealthy areas, disrupting relationships. Blame extortionate rents on landlords, not us! If we are in Council or housing association homes, we’ll be expected to move if our place becomes “underoccupied” after our children or a carer leaves. We won’t have the option of rent paid direct to landlords, so if we have trouble budgeting, we are more likely to be evicted for arrears.
The disability amount in Universal Credit is likely to be too low to meet extra disability costs of living such as heating. Already, we are having to choose between paying for food, heating or charges for essential homecare services.
Disability Living Allowance, paid on top for care and mobility needs, is also being abolished and replaced with a stricter benefit called Personal Independence Payment. 78,000 fewer disabled people will get cash help with care and mobility needs. Many of us who use DLA to get to work, etc., will be forced to give up waged work. If we’re in a residential home, we won’t have any mobility money to go out independently, only group outings (if any) which we may not have chosen. Other provision is also being cut.
· People who were in work before falling ill will only get one year of contributions-based sickness benefit. Cancer patients and others need time to recover. Many of us are not eligible for alternative means-tested benefit if we have some savings.
· Those of us who are immigrant and have worked hard for years, paying National Insurance, won’t get any contributions-based benefits such as Maternity Allowance, even if we have paid for the required years, unless we are officially entitled to work in the UK. And the UK got ready-made workers, not paying anything for our schooling or training!
· They are abolishing the Social Fund (community care) loans, which we rely on to furnish a new home if we are fleeing domestic violence, coming out of hospital or prison, or lost all our belongings after a crisis. The government expects us to apply to local councils instead, who’ll have no obligation to help and no dedicated funds for it.
WHAT WE ARE DOING AND INVITE YOU TO DO WITH US
No party stands with us. They are all determined to end our entitlements and run us into the ground. Only a few individual politicians have been speaking out against the Bill. But more can be persuaded to oppose the Bill if we tell them what the consequences are for us, which gives them ammunition to oppose it and particular measures in it.
We are:
® Writing to Lords and MPs about the impact of the Bill and how we’ll be personally affected.
® Urging local councillors and Councils, doctors and other professionals, to lobby government about the impact of these changes.
® Spelling out the welfare cuts at anti-cuts protests – it’s not just about jobs.
® Protesting against welfare cuts and workfare at Jobcentres, “back to work” companies, Atos offices.
® Sharing information about our benefit rights so we know the rules we can rely on and what other people have been able to establish.
For information and to campaign together against these cuts we want to meet you. We can help to spread your news. Contact:
Single Mothers’ Self-Defence smsd@allwomencount.net
WinVisible (women with visible and invisible disabilities)
Tel: 020 7482 2496 or email: win@winvisible.org
Global Women’s Strike gws@globalwomenstrike.net
Legal Action for Women law@allwomencount.net
Websites: www.allwomencount.net www.globalwomenstrike.net www.winvisible.org