This morning's ONS release on the quarterly unemployment data says
Between May to July 2013 and August to October 2013 the number of self-employed people increased by 80,000 to reach 4.25 million.
As I showed earlier this month, the trouble for these people is that they are likely to face earning much below national average wage, and indeed, very often sums far below national minimum wage for the effort they expend, with the situation getting worse year by year.
We have to face the reality that this is not a measure of entrepreneurial Britain. It is a measure of desperation UK.
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I have personal experience of this. An ex teacher on ESA, I have been ‘encouraged’ a number of times by fly-by-night companies employed by the DWP to become self-employed whist on nearly no income! These companies then pocket the DWP Money, fold and dissapear (Working Links was one of them). It is a massive scam and one of the main reasons that unemployment seems so low. peoploe are being ‘pushed’ into self-employment as the only way of avoiding being harried and hasstled to death by a system that treats you like a criminal.
And they’ll shortly have to deal with monthly income and expenditure reports, under rules different t those blessed for income tax purposes, to DWP if they receive any in-work benefits. So much for simplification!
I understand from the forums people are encouraged to take up self-employment with a nudge and a wink by their work providers and the JC+. They’re told if you go self-empoyed you’ll get the same money in benefits and we won’t keep hassling you, which is true up to a point as they can then claim working tax credits and no-one checks to see if they’re actually working. Under UC though, if and when it ever comes in, it will be assumed they’re earning the minimum wage for a full week every week and any benefits they receive will have that amount deducted before consideration of the payment of any benefit entitlements. One imagines they’ll all be desperately trying to get back on JSA when that happens. The point of this would seem to be nothing more than government manipulation of the unemployment figures. I believe we’ve discussed this before on here when the subject of how unproductive per head of working population the UK is now came up. The answer is these people aren’t actually working, instead this appears to be the consequence of one of Duncan-Smith’s little schemes to fiddle the figures. Were you aware when he was finally dragged before a parliamentary committee the other week he turned up escorted by machine-gun toting bodyguards? I said some time ago he was weak-minded and he’d go mad in public, didn’t I? Now we’re seeing it! 🙂
A while ago a Labour MP said he’d seen evidence that a private firm, brought in to reduce “unemployment” were encouraging their ‘clients’ to go self-employed. The gag was that, if they remained on Job Seekers Allowance, they’d have it cut, but if they became “self-employed” then even if they enjoyed literally, no, income, they could make up the difference with benefits. The poor person would be no worse off & the agency had got a long-term unemployed person off their books.
The Labour MP in question doesn’t seem to have pursued this, rather vital,point.
I’m also aware, from personal experience, that among the possible options of “self-employment” for the formerly unemployed are “Big Issue Seller”. Are private agencies really getting paid to push JSA claimants into selling The Big Issue ?
Bill, what was the justification for IDS that he turned up escorted by “machine-gun toting bodyguards?” Were they there to intimidate the committee members? Can you provide more information?
I’m not sure I’d be so charitable towards IDS as to say he’s weak minded. My own opinion is that he is a liar and a hypocrite, pure and simple. Like most right wingers, he is the first to accuse others of not accepting responsibility for their actions, and the last to practice it himself.
Witness his pathetic attempts to blame the UC cock ups on everybody but himself – the IT contractors, his own civil servants, the last government (of course!) etc etc. What a loathsome individual.
I believe there are FOIs in progress to find out what was going on. This link will get you started http://jaynelinney.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/armed-police-in-parliament-is-this-right/