Tim Nichols of the Child Poverty Action Group wrote this sitting next to me in Liverpool yesterday so I borrow it with his permission from Left Foot Forward:
Ed Miliband's speech contained some tremendously important and bold attacks on powerful elites that have helped create and perpetuate today's social and economic inequalities. Despite much to welcome it is important understand why many may be upset today.
Minutes after taking applause for his rejection of Murdoch during the phone hacking scandal, Ed Miliband breathed new life into the News of the World's myths about benefit claimants.
He attacked a ‘take what you want culture' highlighting benefit cheats and a system in which “benefits are too easy to come by for people who don't deserver them”.
The party's recent focus groups have apparently found the public still hostile to benefit claimants they believe are either defrauding the system, or slinging the lead instead of seeking work. Focus groups always bring up ideas based on their daily media diet, so this is no surprise given the relentless hate campaigns towards benefit claimants in much of the press. Hostile public perceptions are less surprising still when you remember that former Labour secretaries of state such as Purnell and Hutton played an active part in propagating these dangerous myths.
Isolated cases of fraud are reported, alongside hysterical comment pieces that create the false impression such fraud is rife. Official statistics on disability claimants are grotesquely distorted into out-and-out headline lies that label millions of genuinely disable people as ‘scroungers'. Instead of using the facts to refute the claims, Labour minsters responded with promises to end “free riding” on benefits with harsh new sanctions.
A just society requires not just that people speak truth to power, but that politicians speak truth to people too.
There is a great true story the party could tell instead to counter the false perceptions encountered in their focus groups. Labour has a tremendous track record on reducing benefit fraud. When they left government, fraud in the benefit system was at its lowest level ever recorded. The verification framework (a new standard for provision on evidence of identity and income introduced in Blair's first term) and more investigation officers reduced fraud significantly.
Most claimants are desperate to work, but they have been let down on promises to provide the tailored support to help them into sustained work that they need. Even before the recession, in many areas of high unemployment the jobs were simply not there. We have not had a serious industrial policy for years. A million disabled people in incapacity benefits and allowances say they want to work, but they are still subjected to serious levels of employer discrimination.
Meanwhile, disability charities are reporting disturbing increases in verbal and physical assaults suffered by disabled people — an increase which they link to the hostility of the press towards claimants of disability benefits.
But there does exist a major problem of fraud and taking without giving in one area:taxation. An elite of corporations and super-rich individuals is cheating the nation out of tens of billions lost to tax evasion and avoidance each year. We seriously reduce the deficit overnight if we put a stop to these tax cheats, allowing us to avoid harsh welfare cuts of disabled people and families.
Miliband called on Cameron to “put aside the politics; look at the facts”. If he wants to prove his claim to believe in the welfare state, he should start by following his own advice and stay within the facts on benefit claimants.
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Benefit “cheating” is relatively insignificant when compared to tax cheating.
Regrettably this fact is often deliberately disregarded to provide an emotive distraction from the £billions salted away in a network of tax haven courtesy of corporate and individual greed.
That a few, often destitute people, take advantage of the welfare system pales into insignificance when compared to the depravity of cynical tax evasion/avoidance/dodging.
And yes Richard; Ed Miliband (and more particularly the present government) should stop spreading myths about benefit claimants and address the real problem which is the international network of tax havens — three of them almost within spitting distance of our shores.
Correct, tax cheating is much greater than benefits cheating, but if you are saying that one type of fraud is wrong, but the other is OK then I disagree. Fraud is fraud, whoever is the fraudster.
As RM points out regularly the “tax gap” is significantly larger than the government figures suggest, and from the response I got from the government when I asked how they arrived at the benefit fraud and overpayment figure of £3.3 billion, that is probably a significant underestimation also.
For those of us who live in an area of high unemployment and classed as socially deprived, we see benefit fraud everyday, the vast majority of which goes undetected and unreported.
I think Ed Milliband had every right to raise it, and good for him for doing so.
And respectfully, priorities are what matter
And benefit fraud is the wrong priority
“As RM points out regularly the “tax gap” is significantly larger than the government figures suggest, and from the response I got from the government when I asked how they arrived at the benefit fraud and overpayment figure of £3.3 billion, that is probably a significant underestimation also.”
Really? £3.3 billion? I understood benefit fraud totalled £1.5 billion. you wouldn’t be exaggerating, would you? Unclaimed benefits total £17.5 billion, so it probably balances out a tad!
“For those of us who live in an area of high unemployment and classed as socially deprived, we see benefit fraud everyday, the vast majority of which goes undetected and unreported.”
Yeah…because everyone who has Sky TV or has a nearly-new car parked outside and not working is obviously on the fiddle aren’t they? Stands to reason, doesn’t it? It wouldn’t be money from a redundancy or insurance payout or actual saved money, would it?
Yeah, that fella up the road is fiddling hundreds off the social! I know because the brother of my second cousin twice removed told me so!
Fiddling goes on mate, but nowhere near to the degree the Sun and the Daily Mail like to pretend. If its such a great life on the dole, I don’t see many people exactly queing up to live the high life on £67 a week JSA.
One prostitute selling herself for £10, another for £10,000, all we are arguing about is the price ……………….
I am in absolute agreement with this article; I always feel angry when I hear anyone complain about people who scrounge off of benefits. You just know that most of these comments stem from indoctrination from the gutter right wing press.
I would like to give Ed Milliband the benefit of the doubt just for now, because I think that I may have the reason why he is attacking both ends of the spectrum. Many people are indoctrinated. I know many people who believe these nonsense. If Ed Miliband can stop people from worrying that he will let the mythical benefit cheats off of the hook, he may have more success in making them see the real enemy. If people listen to him and like what they hear, even if some of it is nonsense, that would weaken the effect of the gutter press. He has been singularly effective in trying to fight Murdoch, much more so than Blair. That I hope shows his credentials.
It is however important for others to tell the truth, but politically tricky for Milband. Well, I hope I am right!
It’s an interesting idea of double bluff
But then much of politics is just that
I hope you’re right too