Post updated 4 June to include details of figures of benefit fraud totals to make the point about benefit fraud levels being very low very clear. In the original post, I just had a link to them.
No doubt the Sun and others are delighted with the “patriotic” response to their campaigns to flush out benefit “fiddlers,” but I saw the flip side to that grimy coin at Newcastle’s Hardest Hit conference for people with disabilities on Friday.
This government and its vicious press have a great deal to answer for, and I hope they’re forced to at some point, preferably in court. Speaker after speaker at the conference talked about their experiences of a general hardening of attitudes towards people with disabilities and anyone who is assumed to be collecting benefits.
A number of people said that they’d been on the receiving end of hate crimes and threatening behaviour and had involved the police where they could. The problem has apparently become so widespread that whole parts of the conference programme were set aside to talk about ways to respond to it.
The facts about benefit fraud, as we well know, are neither here nor there where this government is concerned. The truth is that levels of benefit fraud remain very low, particularly as far as disability benefits go, although today’s political leadership is unlikely to let those facts get in the way of a good victimising.
“Look at these figures for [fraud around] disability benefits and see how low the figures are,” Richard Exell wrote when the DWP released a recent report on fraud and error in the benefits system (text added 4 June: the figures, which were released in February this year, showed 0.8% of benefit spending was overpaid due to fraud, amounting to £1.2 billion, and that the proportion was the same as in 2009/10. The number for Incapacity Benefit was 0.3% and for Disability Living Allowance 0.5%).
“Remember them next time the BBC is running one of its 30 minute hate programmes, pushing the idea that every disabled person on benefits is a fraudster,” Exell said.
I remembered them on Friday, all right. In the video from the conference below, people who had experienced hate crimes and abuse talk about those experiences (not everyone wanted to appear on camera, because they were concerned about drawing more attention to themselves, so I’ve posted transcripts from interview recordings below the video). Gateshead MP Ian Mearns talks about his expectations for worsening hate-crime statistics as local cuts to police funds and numbers start to affect the ability of the police to respond.
People were definitely making connections between damming political and press rhetoric about benefit “scroungers” and growing hostility towards people with disabilities.
“[Another area where] enough is enough is around the demonisation of disabled people in terms of the DWP’s campaign to vilify disabled people,” the RNIB’s Steve Winyard said. “What we’ve had is the steady drip-drip of disability benefit fraud stories from the DWP press office. Of course – these are usually about non-disabled people claiming disability benefits, but that gets lost. The damage is done and disabled people are associated with benefit cheating. A recent survey by Inclusion London found that the general public believe that disability fraud is running at between 50% and 70%.”
Disability activist and filmmaker Karen Sheader, who works with people with learning disabilities, said she hadn’t been targeted, “but the people who I work with have. People with learning disabilities seem to be more targeted by kids… it had got better – it really had. It wasn’t perfect – there was more acceptance, but it’s slipping back now. Campaigns like the Sun are running, directly against benefit scroungers – I think it is just hateful really.”
Indeed.
Also from the conference:
“My name is Z_. Disability hate crime has been an issue for me, I have had a head injury for four years now. I feel that I’m ignored…We’re seen as scroungers and we’re not. We offer a lot to the community…with the disability hate crime that I’ve experienced, it’s been 30 instances in four years and… I’ve had to spend £2000 to get a camera to prove to the police that this has been happening to me and until the police recognise that disability hate crime is going on and it’s a crime against those [of us]… ”
Peter Bennett: “I would like to show some solidarity to the gentleman who is sitting here – he expressed to the group what I can only describe as an abosolutely dreadful set of circumstances…and it expressed to me at any rate just how fearful and frightening that situation is must be….
“I think that disabled people are reaching a crisis point which delivers all kinds of fears for all of us and it’s so important that we stick together…First, I thought it was a triple whammy – people on incapacity benefit going onto ESA and being time-limited to ESA for one year and losing money and then people who are on DLA moving onto PIP and losing money and then people who are on housing benefit, having it cut and then losing more money, but then what we’ve begun to explore today is another big whammy…
“When we hear this morning about media coverage always being negative, I think that we can always turn media coverage into something more positive and I think the more people who write to newspapers and get the media on their side… but certainly solidarity is the way forward…”
J_ “With hate crime… with police commissioners’ elections coming up, maybe people can get working around that. It’s time, with the elections coming up for the police commissioners, to raise that as an issue.”
Hate crime is an abomination. I am a disabled person and spent many years on benefits, and experienced abuse and violence. Benefit fraud is also an abomination, and only does harm to those who really need benefits. It’s hardly wrong that there should be a campaign against people who are defrauding the system and robbing their fellow citizens. Disabled people pay tax too, and some of us are very angry about fraudulent claimants.
If you read the article it makes the point levels of fraud are actually very low (about 1 in every 200 claimants). Papers and government targeting these tiny numbers of fraudsters means that even fellow disabled people begin to believe it is a massive problem. I work and pay tax, but I more angry at a campaign that means that every time I get into a taxi or speak to a Sun reader I have to deal with incredulity that I bother to work given how massive benefits are for disabled people. Then I’m expected to join them in hatred of my fellow disabled people who don’t ‘bother’ to work. Rates of employment amongst disabled people who can claim DLA is around 9%. Around 60% of this group are keen to get a job and are actively seeking one (and the remaining 40% are just terrified they couldn’t cope in work because of their impairments.) So many disabled people I know would love a job and keep looking for one despite the heartbreak of constant rejection. I’m very angry about that. Disabled people being hated because they have an impairment (and therefore scroungers) and workshy (because they have an impairment). Who would want to give a job to a person like that? Vicious circle with us disabled people in the middle of it.
Reading back what I wrote. Three things I should have made clearer. 1) disability benefits aren’t generous. They are actually not enough to cover the extra costs of impairments. (There are reports and studies that back this up.) 2) Stats are confusing – boil down to – disabled people want to work and are being denied the right to. 3) When disabled people don’t want to work it is because of justifiable fears, The support that helped me move into employment in a way I could cope with is being cut away. (Save Access to Work!)
I live near ther conference, in Northumberland. The hate crime I experienced was by the police themselves. They say I ‘refused to walk’ (I couldn’t) and manhandled and arrested me. I ended up covered in bruises and with a broken toe. They thought the whole thing was funny and called me a quote: “disgrace to disabled people”. It has been the worse type of betrayal.
Have added the stats from this year’s DWP report on benefit fraud to the post to make the point about the (very) low levels of benefit fraud clearer. The point is that fraud levels are very low and that media campaigns to ferret out “scroungers” are disproportionate in their response as a result.
You’ll note that the RNIB’s Steve Winyard says in the video and text that a recent survey by Inclusion London found that the general public believes that disability fraud is running at between 50% and 70%. In other words, people are under the impression that fraud levels are exponentially worse than they are.
Nonetheless, anti-welfare campaigners think it appropriate to continue to give the impression that people on benefits are inevitably on the take. That is quite simply a lie.
Meanwhile, I’m spending my time talking to people with disabilities who have to lie at home alone and unwell because they can’t afford care cover for bad days and crises: http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/fight-for-care
That’s the scandal. And it is a scandal. If only the same energy and column space was set aside to detail the excesses of the financial sector.
Max, I agree about Access to Work. But an argument that a 0.5% rate of fraud (even assuming that figure is correct) can be ignored hardly holds water when you look at the size of the welfare budget in this country. As to the ‘whataboutery’ on display here which says we should ignore fraud because of ‘the excesses of the financial sector’, how does that add to this argument? (how about we ignore the ‘banker’s excesses because PresidentAssad is even more corrupt?) It also doesnt do your argument much good when you blithely impugn ‘Sun readers’. I don’t know what paper you read, but I doubt you would enjoy me stereotyping you solely on that basis. I’ve got news for you: plenty of ordinary working people, and disabled people, some working, some not, choose to buy The Sun. The kind of snobbery that sniffs at that is not edifying.
The fact that many people choose to buy a paper that is owned by an organisation that has ex staff and potentially more people who are knee deep in unethical practices at the very least. The Sun has a history of targeting people .. Miners , Football fans , Unions in general.
The stats on welfare expenditure with relation to fraud are quite easy to access.. In fact George Osburne quoted the at his first budget and they were so low that he had to beef them up with error in the over payments which rounded up 1.2 billion up to 4 billion and classified them as fraud and error.
20 billion goes unclaimed every yr in benefits how often do we hear that quote.. 200 billion every 10 yrs goes unclaimed ..
I am not a snob I used to work in newspaper delivery in the 80’s at the launch of the Scottish Sun and it was loathed .. It cost more in petrol to carry the bundles of shit around than any sales that were made..
The Sun in Scotland was a loss leader for many yrs but kept going till it finally found a way in to the market by all manner of sales ploys and a new generation of less a politically aware and unionised work force too busy paying off or aspiring to the lifestyles that they were advertising.. They helped to engineer that and they are helping/driving the next round of engineering via welfare ” reforms “.
There is a lot of money to be made in health privatisation and privatisation of national insurance.. Doesn’t mean we won’t be paying less NI contributions but means that we will have to buy extra to cover us in cases of illness.. Or dare I say Prenatal insurance policies in case of the possibility of children being born with Learning Disablities or other health conditions..
This is the real driving force behind this .. With the housing boom over the next shot of crack into the veins will be the commodification of health to be sold and traded on the stock markets. It is harder to sell this to people as a product than housing was for fairly obvious reasons but if you create a market through making people want to detach themselves from the ” scroungers on welfare ” then people will pay extra to be seen to be paying their way.. The great tragedy is that we have been paying our way all along but the markets want to get in on it .. It is not by accident than the department of housing and health were created together because they were so closely held to be vital to a persons well being.
Now that housing has been consumed by the markets health is next..
Nah, it’s not snobbery, Ralph. It’s because the Sun is running that campaign specifically. You can take issue with a paper’s campaign without thinking that everyone who reads it is rubbish or that the whole paper is rubbish. It’s a kind of reverse snobbery and an oversimplification to say that readers can’t criticise a paper, or at least, can’t criticise one aspect of a paper’s performance. Quite a few people mentioned the Sun’s claimant campaign on Friday. It obviously stands out in a lot of minds and deserves reporting in that case. Who I am to say people can’t criticise a campaign?
Don’t think there’s much whataboutery when it comes to the financial sector’s performance. If papers – all of them – ran campaigns pointing out the excesses of the bonus industry and the real effects of cuts to public sector spending, you’d have better media balance, at the very least. That’s what people on Friday were asking for.
Kate, your defence misses the point. Max specifically referred to “every time” he speaks to a Sun reader. It was to this that I was addressing my point. I very much doubt that you, either, are as liberal minded with regards to people who don’t share your views, or reading habits, as you wish to imply here. Liberal scorn at “Sun readers” and “Mail readers” is as I said unedifying, but also accounts for the utter failure of a lot of the left to make much impression on politics recently. If you deride people who disagree with you, and don’t take their arguments seriously, then don’t be surprised when they stop listening to you. I speak as a mainstream Labour voter who has only voted for another party once (the LibDems after Iraq). The problem for those (I have been one) who believe that the Guardian approximates to holy writ, is that they cease to understand what a small, unrepresentative, and often quite privileged minority they are.
As to your suggestion that the papers should run campaigns of the sort you favour, and which suit your own beliefs , join the club. What is tiresome is the view that there is a lumpen mass of unenlightened proles brainwashed by pernicious media who have to be taught the error of their ways. Of course, intellectuals like yourself don’t need this enlightenment because you can already perceive the ‘truth’ of the situation. This is a snobbish elitism which strangely is often most obvious in those who claim to be ‘progressives’.
THAT’S THE FIRST TIME I’VE BEEN CALLED AN INTELLECTUAL!
*basks*
🙂
…but seriously, Ralph, you can’t be saying that issues that people raise at a meeting like Friday’s can’t be raised in case they offend others, or that those issues shouldn’t be reported because the journalist who reports them is an overindulged leftie wanker?
I mean – I get to Friday’s meeting and people all over are talking about the way they feel they’re being portrayed in the media and they’re talking about the best ways to confront that portrayal. They mentioned the Sun’s campaign by name. People were really pissed off about being called scroungers, as well they might be. One person in the crowd took Labour shadow minister Ann McGuire to task for using the phrase “hard-working families” as Labour is so tediously inclined to do. The woman who raised that made the point that a lot of people would like the chance to be hard-working and have a job, but weren’t in a position to do so because jobs weren’t available and not everyone is in a position to work, etc. That seemed fair comment.
For all I know, and for all you know for that matter, everyone at Friday’s conference was a Sun reader. I didn’t know and never asked. They just didn’t like the Sun’s Scrounger campaign and felt pretty strongly that they were starting to deal with fallout from various Scrounger lines being run in the press. Dunno that that line is necessarily limited to the Sun – I’m pretty sure I remember seeing Iain Duncan Smith’s “festering scrounger” line in the Telegraph and elsewhere, but, you know – who cares. I still think people’s concerns about Scrounger campaigns like the Sun’s can be reported, even if the journalist reporting them is a liberal blowhard. Otherwise you’re saying people shouldn’t report comments about Sun campaigns in case those comments patronise other readers. Who is to say whose experience counts more?
You say:
“What is tiresome is the view that there is a lumpen mass of unenlightened proles brainwashed by pernicious media who have to be taught the error of their ways.”
Well, I totally agree with that. That’s why I get off my arse and go and interview people, rather than sit at home pulling “opinion” out of my butt (a comment on the screeds of comment round the place, rather than your comments here). I go out to find out what people other than myself are thinking and saying and what they were saying on Friday was that they were bloody sick of being called scroungers.
Kate, you make some great points, and I don’t particularly disagree with any of them. I particularly liked your last paragraph. Respect to you and your work.
On a broader point, I do have worries about the campaigning by some disability groups and the rhetoric and methods they use. Christina Odone, whatever you think of her, got some of this right, I thought in the Telegraph a few weeks ago.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100157702/iain-duncan-smith-must-not-give-in-to-disability-bullies/
The Sun was really quiet good about it i thought it has been supporting benefit scroungers for months in the run up to the jubilee! Surely the Royal Family are the biggest benefit scroungers in the country – un -capped too – or is it just a “certain type” of scrounger that lying low life comic opposes.
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A good friend of mine in a wheelchair was repeatedly called ‘handicapped, hanidycapped’ on a train to Stratford in east London, where the Olympics [and para-Olympics] are due this summer. She was, and still is shaken up. Hate crime covers a whole series of offences. But not until Sexism, homophobia, anti-disabled, are seen, and treated in the same way we regard racism will anything change. Bigotry needs to be seen in it’s equal light.
Below is a series of facts you might find useful:
With thanks to Adrian Wait:
“Friday’s DWP report on Fraud and Error in the Benefit System really ought to get more coverage.
With this publication we now have figures for the whole of the financial year 2010/11, and they show:
0.8 per cent of benefit spending is overpaid due to fraud, amounting to £1.2 billion, and
This proportion is the same as in 2009/10.
If we look at the estimates for different benefits, they are:
Retirement Pension 0.0 per cent;
Incapacity Benefit 0.3 per cent;
Disability Living Allowance 0.5 per cent;
Council Tax Benefit 1.3 per cent;
Housing Benefit 1.4 per cent;
Pension Credit 1.6 per cent;
Income Support 2.8 per cent;
Jobseeker’s Allowance 3.4 per cent;
Carer’s Allowance 3.9 per cent.
Look at the figures for disability benefits, see how low the figures are.
Remember them next time the BBC is running one of its 30 minute hate programmes, pushing the idea that every disabled person on benefits is a fraudster.”
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