Welfare cuts: now they're slamming the door on the truly desperate

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...P=FBCNETTXT9038

Polly Toynbee

No, said the Department for Work and Pensions, you can't visit a jobcentre to talk to social fund claimants. That's the first no I've ever had from the DWP's press officers, always helpful under both Labour and Tory governments. I have frequently sat in on interviews, so long as claimants were willing. But the Iain Duncan Smith-Chris Grayling regime has pulled down the shutters.

 

What's to hide? Much human misery, as the welfare reform bill hastens through parliament with disappointingly minimal Lords amendments, for all their bluster. On Wednesday they debate the social fund – an awkward lump in the social security system, small potatoes, yet a last lifeline for the utterly destitute. Now it's to be abolished: cut by 39%; the remaining £178m will be dispersed to local authorities but not ringfenced. Many councils admit they will spend it on other things. No wonder ministers don't want journalists meeting the people about to be cut adrift.

 

The social fund section in a jobcentre office is set apart, the locked door opened by an official with a swipe card, by previous appointment. It's like an airport VIP lounge, but this zone isolates the VDPs, Very Desperate People. There they sit, glimpsed through the glass, waiting, sometimes for hours, for cheques they can cash at once at the post office. No, you can't go in without an appointment, said the man at the door. Waiting at the job search computer until another official took over, I pretended I had an appointment to collect a cheque and he swiped me in.

 

Why would he be surprised at my well-heeled appearance, when all kinds of people are down on their luck on a January Friday afternoon? They have only one thing in common – whatever their varied occupations, social backgrounds or family circumstances, all found themselves penniless. Explaining to the waiting claimants that I was a journalist reporting on parliament voting away the social fund, almost all were eager to tell their stories, starting an anxious debate in the room as they listened to one another's plight.

 

A mother recovering from a hysterectomy was barely getting by on £67 a week, but her cheque hadn't turned up. Until the operation she was working as a receptionist. But her wayward 19 year-old daughter had moved in with her, with a one and a two year-old child and another on the way. At her wits' end, she said, "There's just something badly wrong with her."

 

A 24 year-old man was sleeping rough in the car park behind the Rolls-Royce showroom in Berkley Square. He wasn't registered sick, not a drug addict and couldn't prove how long he'd lived there, so he didn't qualify for a hostel, he said. He was selling the Big Issue while singing in the street, but had just signed on for Jobseeker's Allowance, needed cash until his first cheque came. At first he seemed fit and normal – but he had a prison record. Besides, would any employer take on someone who can't stop talking, a compulsive talkaholic spilling out his whole life story and every passing thought about the world in an unstoppable flow? Probably not. A student soon starting an osteopathy course had good prospects, but hadn't eaten for days.

 

A car mechanic in his early 40s had worked all his life until recently suffering severe epileptic fits. He'd been waiting for his missing employment support allowance cheque all day, coming in from Heathrow, where he was temporarily sleeping on his mother's floor. "Will I get another job? I know plenty, plenty of mechanics looking for work now, not much hope."

 

Like most others here, a glitch in the payments system had brought him to beg for a crisis loan. All the money dispersed here will be taken back within a few weeks from future benefits. Most get a £70 loan to last them a fortnight: £5 a day is the rule of thumb for survival.

 

A young woman had come for money to get her broken boiler fixed. She was depressive, a serial suicide attempter, and in and out of treatment. "I'm spending £10 a day on electricity, with no boiler," she said in clipped, middle-class tones. Out of £90 a week in sickness benefits she was paying £25 a week in debts to loan sharks. Social fund crisis loans were supposed to save people from using the likes of Wonga, whose interest rates can soar to more than 4,000%. With the social fund gone, there'll be nowhere else.

 

Eventually, seeing some unexpected animation in the usually dead-eyed queue in the lock-in room, two officers hauled me out. Who let me in? I wasn't telling. The claimants had praised the staff here. "That man there," said one woman weak at writing, pointing to the official behind the bulletproof glass, "He helps you say the right things on the form to get a loan." "That one in the sari, she's kind", said another. Nor were these two managers stern with me – we talked of the imminent abolition of the social fund and the quarter of DWP staff cut despite unemployment claims skyrocketing, so they didn't call the police.

 

The pretence is that local authorities will each voluntarily set up their own social funds to dispense small loans. Few will. Yet again, a universal national system gives way to nonexistent "local knowledge" as council tax benefit is also devolved and optional. Why would one council risk attracting claimants from neighbouring boroughs offering nothing? "Localism", like "reform", is code for dismantling a national welfare state. Now the benefits system is losing the one small corner for people who fall through the cracks – and the only rescue from hunger when benefit cheques fail to arrive.

 

The dismal housing benefit debate revealed how tens of thousands will be tipped out of their homes, schools and jobs into the arms of cash-strapped councils who have a duty to house the vulnerable and families with children. Iain Duncan Smith has become increasingly belicose and irritable in his assertions that cuts will not create more poverty but will help the poor into work. Or so he tells the BBC, but he tells the Sunday Times he's warning claimants, "This is not an easy life any more, chum. I think you're a slacker."

 

He has never dared refute the Institute for Fiscal Studies' predictions of 500,000 more children made poor as a direct result of his colossal £18bn benefit cuts. Taunting Labour with polls that show a large majority support his cuts, he forgets those same citizens may yet be horrified when they see effects far crueller than most may think tolerable.

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This Government is now so wrong, acting so far against the interests of the citizens of this country and just so morally bankrupt, I think we'd have every right in the world to rise up against them... Here's hoping for more riots, only this time, can they be done for the right reasons please...? And actually target the scum who "run" this country...? Actually, come to think of it, where's Anonymous when you need a Govt taken down a peg or several.....? I think a bit of strategic targeting of DWP or Ian Dunan Donut is in order....

 

The Social Fund isn't even a hand-out, it's a LOAN... A bit like a Pay Day loan actually.. It's what the truly desperate turn to instead of turning to loan sharks who will break their legs if they dont pay up the "vig".. And if you dont think that there really are people out there who are that desperate, then you live a truly sheltered life... As for this supposition that the Govt has that local authorities would use the money to disperse to the needy... Yeah, right.... With local authorities having millions cut out of their budgets... SUUUUUUUUURE they will... F**king morons.... <_<

 

I am more surprised that anyone is shocked by developments like this. Realistically speaking what did anyone expect from a Tory government and their libdem lapdogs. They do not care about the poor, those that cannot fend for themselves and the working classes. The fact that Cameron and most of his cabinet are rich toffs tells me all I need to know. Labour will not get its act together under Ed and I hope at some point he stands down, he is too weak and ineffectual to take on the Tories. Who is doing these polls that most of us support cuts The Telegraph. Expect this to happen for sure "500,000 more children made poor as a direct result of his colossal £18bn benefit cuts". The poor are carrying the load for the rich the Tories would never close tax loopholes, stop corporate subsidies and billions in bonuses.

Edited January 24, 201213 yr by marrb

doesn't suprise me either, but it's really cynical and sad!

And this is exactly why the longer these scumbags stay in power the stronger my will gets to vote yes to Scottish independence despite being English and pro-union.

 

We have a 5year further freeze to council tax to help the worst effected by the recession and a devolved government that actually seem to give a shit about more than the 1%

So Duncan Smith and co think that it's better to leave people in the hands of wonga.com with their 4000% interest rather than a government backed loan at a more sensible interest rate? Perhaps they'd like to demonstrate their commitment to this policy by taking out a mortgage at 4000% interest - without claiming it on expenses.

 

When the last Tory government replaced the old grant system with loans that was opposed by the Lib Dems. Yet another betrayal of his party's values by Clegg.