I'm sometimes asked why I fight tax abuse. The answer is simple right now: it is because we seem to have a political choice between collecting taxes or imposing cuts.
One of the people I have worked with on tax abuse has been Michael Meacher MP. Some have criticised Michael for robust language, and he undoubtedly uses it. He's also proving after 42 years in the House that he is still one of the most committed members of it, leading far more than his fair share of debates.
Yesterday he lead the debate on ATOS and its approach to work assessment. This programme is driven by the desire for cuts. I share Michael's speech here because it is the flip side of what we have done on tax abuse. These are not issues that exist independent of one another: they are intimately and inevitably related. And that's one good reason why I fight tax abuse.
Listen and despair at what we are doing to people:
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Very good, and all terribly and worryingly true. I also came across this in the report in The Guardian:
‘There was concern from Labour’s Sheila Gilmour that 43% of people who were found fit for work were not working the following year and were not receiving benefits. “Where are they?” she asked.’
Presumably living in abject poverty.
But of course, everything is all right when ATOS can simply reply, as they routinely do:
“[Our workers] strictly follow the guidelines given to them by the government when conducting assessments and make no decisions on a person’s eligibility for benefits.
“We have worked with the department on improving the part of the process we carry out and continually ask for feedback from the department and those claiming benefit.”
This is where the privatisation of core public services leads when government driven by ideology (and the last Labour government were almost as guilty) don’t put in place appropriate safeguards and evaluation mechanisms. Constant buck passing between the contractor (service supplier), who says we are simply doing what the contract sates, and the government department, who claim that it’s nothing to do with them but with the contractor. Result: months- even years – spent trying to put a policy right. So, don’t expect any chnage to what ATOS do for many months yet and after many more deaths and a mountain of more misery.
This is no accident. This is a known and deliberately planned feature of arms-length policy delivery.
Agreed
Since we often discuss economics here 🙂 I’d like to chime in and suggest the Motabiity company, which customises motor vehicles to suit the needs of individual disabled folk, is unlikely to survive the next few years. The benefit for disabled folk, DLA, which many use to pay for their customised Motability vehicles (while there’s a good range available, none of them are free as the tabloids would have us believe) is being shut down. In its place is offered the entirely inadequate replacement, PIP, Personal Independence Payment, which will only be available to a relative handful of claimants as hardly any will qualify. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of vehicles will have to be returned to Motability when peoples’ DLA ends and they fail to qualify for PIP for which they will be assessed by Atos in an extension of the shambles so well dsscribed above by Michael Meacher. Motability are going to lose huge regular income and face storing or scrapping thse vehicles. How is it going to survive that, and how can this overall process be described as good for the economy? How can this be justified by saying the country’s broke (which it isn’t) and we’ve got to make cuts, and saying there’s some kind of savings happening here when clearly there’s only economic destruction?
A good case to highlight, Bill, and your conclusion is accurate I’m sure. The problem – or at least one of them, leaving aside the ideology – is that we have a government that’s very incompetent. Or at the least, we have a large number of ministers who like to shoot from the hip – as it were. That is, they like to be seen to be ‘doing stuff’ so they can strut around looking policy macho. The result is a whole swathe of policies where the impact is simply not an issue for them. Or, if it is, they don’t give a toss anyway. PIP is one. But I’ve just read of another classic example. One of the first things the ConDems announced was the axing of the Central Office of Information with a budget of £168m. And now what’s the marketing (PR) budget for the next financial year? £285m.
Of course, one reason – perhaps th emain reason – for the total lack of concern about the impact of their policies is that, in truth, nearly all Tories – and certainly all Lib Dems, must know that there’s no way they’ll have to clean up the mess as they won’t be in government after May 2015. There’s nothing better than conscience free policy making!
The last line of my previous comment should more accurately have been: There’s nothing more liberating for a politician than conscience free policy making!
To see more of the human damage being caused by the Work Capability Assessment, DWP/Atos contract, and the cost to the taxpayer – A Must Read >>
http://wearespartacus.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/The-Peoples-Review-of-the-Work-Capability-Assessment.pdf
Long, but worth it for what it reveals! If short on time just look at few examples and then see “The Impact” & “Essential Information”.
Excellent points are made here – although let’s bring something else, rarely spoken about but all too relevant, in to the equation….
Finding people fit for work? – It’s an irrelevance & government knows it.
If you check the DWP statistics you will see that the overall incapacity benefit claimant count has reduced by just 32,900 when looking at the period from August 2008 to February 2012. It represents just 1% of the overall claimant count (which has hovered around 2.6 million since the mid 90’s). The overall claimant represents all of the incapacity related benefits which will by 2014/2015 be ‘converted’ to Employment & Support Allowance; an integral strand of the new Universal Credit. Government is working to a target to integrate all of these claims.
Thousands of assessment (it’s actually millions over the four years) and just 32,900 fewer claimants?
Now doesn’t a 1% reduction strike you as a little bit odd when government tells you via the media that 75% are found ‘fit for work’. Even if you allow for the people who normally ‘flow’ on and off benefits you would expect the much stricter Work Capability Assessment to bring about a bigger reduction in the overall count wouldn’t you?
When government quotes you its statistics it always does so from its DWP quarterly releases; these show you all that they want you to see but what they won’t show you is a figure of just short of 425,000 claimants (it’s actually a lot higher when you add an untracked ‘conversion’ phase) who are stuck in the ESA ‘assessment phase’. It’s a handy place to be when a government doesn’t want the numbers on the ‘dole’ to be seen to be rising and nor do they want anyone to think they are finding less people sick than the tabloids promised.
In reality a fair number of those found fit for work go the Jobcentre where they are told to reclaim ESA (allowed for under the rules after six months of the original decision – hardly a problem when appeals are taking over a year to be heard). The reason they are told this is because the Jobcentre simply can’t risk sending clearly unwell claimants to the workplace for obvious reasons connected with liability.
The true fit for work figures are very difficult to pin down because of the 8 to 14 month time lapse between the DWP collation of figures which are also subject to HMCTS Tribunal adjustment. 2013 is steering towards 250,000 ESA appeals by the end of the year 2013/2014 – many more are waiting with the DWP and in the ‘outstanding case-load’ at HMCTS where a success rate of 40% is achieved; the prospects of success with legal aid representation are 80% – government’s answer is of course to dispose of legal aid in the First – Tier Tribunal.
Won’t government get caught out? – No because it’s busy hiding and archiving all the statistics in readiness for Universal Credit when the handiness of one single streamlined payment (I think not) will conveniently merge ESA & JSA in to one figure. It will be how government claims to have fixed the sick, they’ll still be there – just hidden from view.
Nick D
mylegal.proboards.com.
I almost feel a bit sorry for ATOS – it must be terribly confusing for them. On the one hand they are (supposedly) helping the Government reduce the deficit by (heartlessly and ineptly) assessing unwell people fit for work, thereby reducing their benefits; and at the same time, they work to increase the deficit and tax gap by helping HMRC sack their tax-collecting staff through their bungling and cruel HMRC staff health assessments. I wonder if they understood the irony around their being a strategic partner/sponsor of the London 2012 Paralympic Games.
It is such a shame that principled MPs such as Meacher, who are prepared to recognise what is right and wrong and make a stand, are so thin on the ground. I’d be happy to see him and the likes of John McDonnell get a 42% pay rise – not so sure about some of the others.
Richard, as an aside, when are you going to appear on Question Time? I hope you are on alongside Gauke or Maude. I’d pay to see that