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I am not an underclass

By DeusEx Macintosh - posted Friday, 29 January 2010


Disability sucks. I just thought you should know that.

It’s sometimes painful, always inconvenient and inclined to bite gaping holes out of your self esteem. Most people are pretty reliable: they get up in the morning, go to work or school during the week and kick back on the weekends doing activities they enjoy once the daily maintenance tasks (literal and financial housekeeping etc) are complete. However once you are disabled, you are no longer “most people”.

Supposedly the most damaging aspect of disability is isolation. Sometimes this is physical - when a disability limits your ability to get out of the house; other times it is social - when you are so busy meeting the additional needs of your condition/illness/injury that there simply isn’t time or energy left to maintain relationships properly.

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As a society we are at least beyond the stage of say the 1930s where those with disabilities were considered “socially dead” and restricted to a role of utter dependency and silence by the conviction that physical handicap was somehow a sign of intellectual damage.

What I’ve personally found most isolating about being disabled has been the change from working full-time to relying on benefits. As a benefits claimant I’m “politically dead” and restricted to a role of utter dependency and silence by the conviction that the source of my income is somehow a sign of moral damage. Once you rely on welfare you’re no longer “most people”.

If I’m a welfare queen, where’s my crown

Thanks to SKeptic Lawyer I had unprecedented access to a senior politician last week. Vicariously of course, but then these days most of what I consider my “life” is experienced vicariously, either online or through friends. You’ve read her piece David Cameron Visits Brasenose? Well that was MY question she was kind enough to ask.

I though it was important to ask because the question itself reminds policy promoters that their rhetoric effects real people. The idea that people commonly fake illness or injury to go “on the sick” isn’t in itself new, I ran into it personally ten years ago as my mobility declined and I started my grand tour of neurologists: my landlady decided that I was too young to be really disabled and evicted me. Unfortunately this story has been used deliberately as a tool to silence criticism of the welfare reforms forced through over the last two years, particularly the abolition of Incapacity Benefit.

It’s hardly coincidence that the government has been rolling out a massive national advertising campaign against benefit fraud during the same period. The BBC’s Saints and Scroungers series which followed the work of fraud investigation departments - three convictions an episode for 13 episodes - simply offered a new placement for the same government advertising. So much for editorial independence.

Now you won’t find me defending dishonesty or denying that benefit fraud exists, what I will question however is the differing treatment people receive and assumptions made about their character based on the source of their income. The creepy 1984-style “we’re closing in” adverts made a point of emphasising the surveillance powers available to both local authorities and the DWP. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act that gives them the right to covertly follow and photograph suspects and commandeer their banking and utility records, was passed into law with barely a whimper in 2000 as an anti-fraud/anti-terror measure. It only aroused popular criticism when the same powers were used against parents gaming the “catchment area” system for school admission.

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If it is acceptable and desirable to use this level of surveillance in the fight against benefit fraud why aren’t these powers available to the Inland Revenue when investigating tax fraud? Why is self-assessment considered an acceptable basis for a tax return but an unforgivable invitation to fraud when the application is for a disability-related benefit?

Moral hazard is for poor people

This double standard isn’t imaginary, though it doesn’t tend to get much coverage beyond left leaning publications like The Guardian:

Research earlier this year conducted by the Fabian Society and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation asked people to estimate the social cost of benefit fraud relative to that of tax evasion - and their answers misfired by an order of magnitude that was laughable.

The majority thought benefit cheats cost more than tax evaders; in fact benefit fraud is estimated by the Department for Work and Pensions to cost £800m a year, while personal tax avoidance was thought to be running at £13bn.

This misconception is more troubling than assumptions about middle-class honesty: if the taxpayer is thought to be broadly honest, while society’s net recipients are all crooks, then clearly that will have an impact on our readiness to pay tax and support even the most modest redistribution.

It’s hard to argue that fraud is only a minor problem when the latest DWP estimates for 2008/09 suggest that £3 billion of total benefit expenditure was overpaid due to a combination of fraud and error … unless you also notice that this constitutes only 2.2 per cent of the overall benefit bill. [The fraud estimate for Incapacity Benefit in isolation is only 3.5 per cent - the lowest of all the continuously monitored benefits - while Pension Credit is put at 5.1 per cent. No mass public condemnation of rorting wrinklies seems imminent but perhaps they’re saving that for when the pensions crisis really bites.]

Not that the Guardian hasn’t joined most of the press in drawing a very long bow over the applicant failure rates for the new Employment Support Allowance (ESA) - now replacing Incapacity Benefit - in the course of its first year. Despite their Society section having one of the best articles describing the intricacies and contradictions of the new medical assessments, it didn’t stop political editor Patrick Wintour attempting to apply ESA failure rates to migrating IB claimants without considering IB failure rates …

More than two-thirds of applicants for a new sickness-related benefit are failing in their claims, suggesting many of the 2.6 million existing incapacity benefit claimants will be forced on to a lower level of benefit when they are assessed over the next two to three years …

Overall, the research found only 5 per cent of those seeking ESA were thought totally incapable of being ready for work and so entitled to the full benefit of £108.55. A further 11 per cent, thought potentially capable of work, were put on a rate of £89.80 a week, and were expected to co-operate with efforts to ready themselves for work. A third of the initial claimants dropped out before completing the claim, and a further third were seen as fit for work.

But at least the broadsheets acknowledged that the whole definition of “fit to work” had been changed. At the tabloid end of the spectrum, editors were a bit clearer about the message these results sent to them.

75% ON SICK BENEFITS ARE FAKING
LABOUR’S failure to crack down on scroungers has let three-quarters of incapacity benefit claimants get away with faking their illnesses.
Daily Express.

Just one in six incapacity benefit claimants “is genuine” as tough new test reveals TWO MILLION could be cheating. Daily Mail.

Head meet desk

At the time ESA was launched I wondered why the government was needlessly duplicating the cost of privatised medical assessment in setting up a whole new benefit when they could have simply used the receipt of Disability Living Allowance to determine whether an IB claimant was genuine or not (DLA has had privatised medical inspections for over a decade and is paid alongside most income benefits to meet the additional costs of care and/or transport incurred when you’re disabled.)

Even if the numbers were still too high they could restrict eligibility further by dropping out those who only received the lower-rates of the two components … but that would have been validation of one of the benefits it has since turned out they were also planning to scrap (a fact not openly admitted until ministers changed their minds).

Though impressed by some of the Conservative moves towards openness about their priorities, I find Mr Cameron’s agreement that politicians need to be more careful with their statements to be somewhat disingenuous. Politicians are very careful with their statements. These are carefully scripted by an army of special advisors … take this choice nugget from Theresa May, the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

The Government needs to get to grips with Britain’s benefit culture and radically reform our welfare system. It’s hardly surprising that so many people spend their lives on benefits when in some cases they can get as much money from benefits as many people earn in work. Things really have to change.

Hard to argue with that one as most people would agree that people who work should end up with more money than people who don’t, but the solution is left carefully unstated.

The Right hear, “The unworthy poor are receiving too much money. Cut their benefits!”

Libertarians hear, “Low income earners are paying tax too early. Raise the personal threshold over £10,000!”

The Old Left hear, “The minimum wage is too low. Raise it with new legislation!”

The New Left hear, “The minimum wage is too low. Raise it by restricting low skilled immigration!”

This is why you hear so much about the problems and so little about the solutions when parties are campaigning. The problem alienates no one whereas the choice of solution may.

I’m the kind of poor Alfred Doolittle warned you about

The Conservatives recently published a cheeky little league table that “ranks constituencies according to the proportion of working-age adults receiving incapacity, lone parent or jobseeker benefit”. One hundred and eight-nine of the 200 seats with highest rates of adults on benefits for being incapacitated, unemployed or single-parents are held by labour, only four by the conservatives. It was accompanied by the Theresa May soundbite I’ve just mentioned. Though the right wing press cheerfully pounced on the idea that Labour was in power thanks to the “Welfare Vote”, actual Conservative statements seem to have left this very carefully unmentioned.

Here’s a tip: if you genuinely think a particular selection of the electorate has control of a particular seat, it might be a good idea to not insult them during the run up to a general election. If not, then you have no right to use the association with them as a smear against your political rivals. This “nod and a wink” politics is extremely annoying. A smear inferred is no less a smear, particularly if not especially, when it’s against you as a person.

If Mr Cameron really believes that there is a “welfare vote”, then how about publicly acknowledging the electoral significance of that section of the British electorate in receipt of State Benefits in a positive way? After the party conference rhetoric where Tories claimed to be the “party of the poor” I’d rather hoped this would be the new direction they were taking but that might be the residual middle-class expectation of fairness showing.

I receive benefits because I can’t work full-time not because I lack the education, intelligence or skills I had when working full-time as a journalist (though sure, the ability to walk and remain upright is pretty much a goner at this stage). I may be overweight and live in social housing but the accent is unmistakeable.

Universal suffrage is a bitch and so am I

SL always says that her “libertarian exception” is compulsory voting. Having grown up in Australia she has decided that it discourages politicians from demonising any particular minority group by making them pay at the ballot box and that it is unfortunate this mechanism isn’t available in the UK. But Britain got rid of Census Suffrage and the property qualification in 1918 for men and 1928 for women, so I’d like to end my post with this timely reminder for Mr Cameron and other politicians of whatever party.

We listen.
We remember.
We vote.

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First published on Skeptic Lawyer on November 24, 2009. Best Blogs 09 is tun in collaboration with Club Troppo.



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About the Author

DeusExMacintosh blogs at Skeptic Lawyer.

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