…as far as the political class is concerned.
Having spent some of Easter reading renowned “christian” (I do mean that ironically) Iain Duncan Smith on benefit cuts and the gruesome George Osborne bragging about his winkling out of the “undeserving poor,” I post below a discussion with yet another person who deserves social security and isn’t getting it. The man in this story is called Clifford Poole.
I’m posting Clifford’s story because I have it and plenty like it and so I might as well. I’m also posting his story – as I post them all – to make again the point that when it comes down to it, there is no such group as the “deserving poor” as far as this government (and the Labour “opposition”) is concerned. Osborne and the Telegraph and all the rest can claim that coalition social security “reforms” as they are “merely” aim to distinguish between the “workshy” and the “deserving” as the Telegraph so charmingly put it this weekend. But that isn’t true. The truth is that in the eyes of modern government, everyone (everyone outside of the financial sector, that is) is undeserving of state support. Everyone. I laugh, if thinly, when I read that “deserving” tag these days. Deserving? Ha. HA HA. I’m laughing at that. Nobody’s considered deserving out here. As I see it – and I see a lot of it – if you need or use public services, you’re considered undeserving. And that’s it.
These days, I’m talking to people whose physical impairments are so extensive that they can’t move, or even feed themselves unaided – but they’re still facing the sort of service cuts that will make their lives impossible. Actually, it’ll be worse than that. It is absolutely fair to say that the health, and probably the lives, of people who currently receive, for example, Independent Living Fund money for extra care hours will be compromised if they lose that funding. There can be no other outcome if, as recipient Mary Laver says in this video, care funding cuts mean you’re left sitting round in your own urine and pressure sores for hours each day.
I mean nothing patronising when I say that I’ve wondered why these people are even in frame for cuts. The answer is that they’re in frame because everyone is. There will be no exceptions. Social security will not be “reformed” for modern government until it is entirely obliterated and/or passed to the private sector for a final bleeding (if you want to experience an example of that in real time, just follow Barnet bloggers like Mrs Angry – she’s writing very regular and detailed updates on the unfolding disaster that is Barnet council’s already-catastrophic and costly attempt to outsource all services. Alternatively, just google Privatisation and NHS).
“This is ridiculous. How much plainer could it be? This government are out to destroy us all,” observed Steven Sumpter on twitter last night. I don’t often lift tweets for stories: I think lifting tweets is lazy journalism. But that one was on the money. Government is targeting people who absolutely should not be targeted – people who will pay a very high price for it. I really don’t give a damn who thinks that is an unacceptably emotive statement. I’m seeing enough of all of this with my own eyes to know the facts. And anyone, just by the way, who thinks that this government will stop its plundering at the homes and bank accounts of people on benefits is dreaming. There are days when Cyprus doesn’t seem very far away.
So we go to Clifford Poole. Clifford is a Liverpool man who has greatly inconvenienced the welfare-slashing political class by developing an industrial injury. He is also a victim – as many now are – of the government’s April 2012 decision to time-limit eligibility for contributions-based employment and support allowance to a year.
We’ll get to that. Let’s start at the beginning of this story – it’ll give you an idea of the perverse manner in which these things are sneaking up on people now. It’ll give you an idea of the way things unfold when people lose their jobs. Clifford was a painter and worker in the shipbuilding industry for years. ”I’ve always worked on the industrial side, which is a lot heavier with shotblasting and paintspraying.” He used needleguns and chipping hammers and as he says – “they vibrate like hell. It’s a handheld gun. All the vibrations come through your hands and arms.” The upshot of this for Clifford has been terrible pain in his hands and arms, which he manages now, to a degree, with sleeping pills and morphine. The symptoms range from “numbness to tingling to shooting pains.”
So. Clifford “first went sick from work in February 2010, with the pain in my hands.” The effect on his income was immediate. “Probably before that I was earning between £480 and £520 a week after tax. Obviously, Beccy (his wife) is working, so we had a reasonable life – nearly two grand coming in after net. When I come onto the sick in February, I’ve gone from £480 a week down to £67 a week on statutory sick pay. By the time September come, when my statutory was due to run out, you’ve lost a lot of money. You’re losing over £400 a week, which put more pressure on Beccy.”
When his statutory sick pay ran out in September 2010, Clifford contacted his local benefits office.
Clifford says that the benefits office told him not to apply for employment and support allowance until January 2011, because he didn’t have enough recent national insurance contributions for a claim (he’d been laid off in 2008).
“So I said – “look. What do I do now? I’ve got no statutory sick pay from work.” The benefits officer said “your wife works (Beccy was working part-time in the betting shop then – that’s the job she still has). I said “what’s that got to do with anything?” I said – “look, I’ve worked all my life and now I’m injured.” She said – “well, you’re just going to have to try and get crisis loans.”
That meant, Beccy says, that they had to try and survive from September to January on “my wages, which weren’t very much, because I was only doing about 24 hours a week. We were still paying all the rent.”
After an Atos face-to-face assessment in January 2011, Clifford was awarded ESA – but “it all fell apart in December that year. “I went for another assessment. I’d passed all my others – but this time, I got zero points. As soon as I walked in the room, I knew. It was just 40 minutes of degradation and humiliation. They know that if you turn around and say anything, they’ll just remove your money and everything. They know they’ve got the power and they know they’ve got the government backing them, so that was that. Everything started falling apart.”
Clifford appealed the fit-to-work decision and got an ESA payment – at the reduced rate people get when they’re appealing that Atos decision – while he waited for his appeal to be heard. He won his appeal and was placed in the ESA work related activity group. “That was fine, because they knew I was trying to get back to work at that stage.”
Then it all fell apart again – and this time, for the duration. Clifford got a back-payment which covered the months when he received the reduced-rate ESA – and then the payments suddenly stopped. He quickly found out that he’d fallen foul of the government’s new 365-days time-limit rule on contributions-based ESA.
“I rung them up and said “can you tell me why me ESA hasn’t gone in?” They said “you’re not entitled to any.” I said – “but I’ve won my appeal.” They said – “yes, but you’re on contributions-based ESA and the law changed in April. You only get it for a year.” Unfortunately for Clifford, his year was up.
The upshot is that he now has no income. “Now, everything is coming out of Beccy’s wage. The more they take off me, the more Beccy has to work and Beccy is not on a high income job. The situation is that in the last three years, I’ve gone from earning about £500 a week down to £67 pounds down to nothing. Beccy will get a bus at 6.30am in the morning and she doesn’t come in until 11pm at night. She does hours and hours of overtime.”
Beccy also does a lot of work at home: “because of his hands, I cook all the meals. I’ve got to do everything before I go to work. I had to buy a travel kettle for when he’s home on his own, because he can’t lift our kettle. The only thing we’ve had is an adapted shower fitted. That’s been an absolute blessing. That was due to our GP.” And just to add to that – this month, it seems Clifford will lose the small amount he received in Disability Living Allowance. He was entitled to the low-rate DLA care component, but his welfare rights advisor has told him that rate is at risk when DLA is replaced with the personal independence payment. So that’ll be it for Clifford. “That’s my repayment for working,” he says, wryly.
Indeed. There are, as I say, no “deserving poor.” Doesn’t matter if you’ve busted your hands and arms at work, or have a long history of severe mental illness, or have serious physical impairments which mean you need round-the-clock care. Doesn’t matter if you just happen to have a tiny spare room in your council flat, or if your grownup children have learning difficulties and need support services, or if you require medical help from time to time (as we all probably will). As I say – if you use public services, you’re undeserving. That’s the end of the story for you.
“I think that it has to do with how we judge what is valuable in terms of being a nice, Tory work product,” writer Penny Pepper (who happens also to be fighting for the Independent Living Fund which pays for the 24-7 care she needs to live and work independently) told me when we talked about this in January. “Do we deserve to get out of bed? Do we have to take part in some crazy ideologically-driven competition [for resources]? It’s sickening.” It certainly is.
It is particularly sickening in light of the fact that there’s no political opposition putting any sort of case for social security. There really isn’t. There really, really isn’t. This year already, I have sat and tried not to hurl as I’ve listened to Ealing councillors blither on about “having heavy hearts” as they have cut much-loved services for people with learning difficulties. I heard the same sort of crap at this year’s budget-cutting meeting in Birmingham as that council wiped some £120m from services for the next year. I stood outside Liverpool town hall with irate locals in March as councillors there did a similar thing. I attended bedroom tax meetings in Liverpool where people asked point-blank why councillors weren’t supporting them and “where are the councillors? Why aren’t they here?” (the answer was that councillors were at the town hall making massive budget cuts, with heavy hearts. And in front of more cameras, I imagine). I sent a bunch of questions to Emily Thornberry asking why she and Labour weren’t being more helpful to people like Mary Laver and Penny Pepper in their fight to keep the Independent Living Fund. That was about two months ago. I haven’t heard anything back. Now we seem to have Ed Miliband making vague statements via Liberal Conspiracy about voting against the bedroom tax – but I’m not even sure what he means by that. Does he mean he wants every Labour council meeting to propose “that the bedroom tax is shit” and then have everyone shout Aye? Is he telling Labour councils to all refuse to evict people who fall into arrears? Is he just talking any old crap? Pity we’ve run out of time to find out.