Video from today’s vigil outside the Royal Courts of Justice.

Inside, the DWP was appealing a May Upper Tribunal decision which found that the Atos work capability assessment discriminated against people with mental health conditions. Several months ago, the DWP was granted leave to appeal this decision.

The original action against the DWP was brought by the Mental Health Resistance Network. Two claimants represented by the Public Law Project argued that Atos work capability assessments discriminated against people with mental health conditions. As the Public Law Project’s Ravi Low-Beer told me here, the claimants wanted reasonable adjustments made to work capability assessments and the onus put on DWP to source medical evidence for ESA claimants who had mental health conditions at the start of their ESA claims.

The courts agreed with that direction – but the DWP wants the decision overturned. No matter that proposed changes may have improved things even slightly for people who must go through the appalling work capability process. No matter, even, that proposed changes may have improved things as far as the public purse goes – people found eligible for ESA from the start when they should be would not, obviously, need to take their case through the wildly oversubscribed and costly appeals process (which is not to forget that the government is about to make the appeals process even harder to access with its introduction of mandatory reconsideration for people wanting to appeal fit for work decisions).

“We believe we have made – and continue to make – significant improvements to the work capability assessment process for people with mental health conditions,” the DWP blathered to me in an email about its decision to appeal the Upper Tribunal decision on mental health claimants. I have my doubts about this (and plenty of them) and have written about that at length. The people in the video also have plenty to say about that.

Claimants talk about their experiences in the video. They also talk about the costs of the process – to them in an emotional sense and more generally, as a financial cost.

“I was managing my mental health really well until I got an ESA assessment,” one woman says. “After two weeks of distress, I ended up having to go into inpatient care, for three and a half weeks last year and two weeks this year. It cost the government and the NHS over £40k simply to to cover the cost of that crisis care. That crisis was manifest by ESA Atos and their assessment.” That, as we all know, is exactly the kind of maths and economics which makes perfect sense to Iain Duncan Smith and this government, and absolutely no sense whatsoever to anybody else.

Says Paula Peters:

“In 2011, I ended up in hospital for three months. I tried to take my own life for fear of waiting to be assessed under this cruel and callous system. I was hospitalised by the NHS for three months. I was held down and injected, because I have bipolar.”

She also makes this excellent point:

“If it can happen to us, it is going to happen to you. You can face your job cuts. You use the NHS – all of us use the NHS and they’re cutting back on all of that. I tell you something now. Any one of you can become sick. Any one of you can develop a devastating disability, or end up losing your job or livelihood like we all did and end up with devastating health problems.”

Indeed.

From Black Triangle and Paula Peters:

On Monday 21 October to Tuesday 22 October 2013m the Judical Review Appeal for the Atos WCA for mental health claimants will be heard at the Royal Courts of Justice room 72 in London.

The Mental Health Resistance Network, who brought this Judicial Reivew to court, have called a vigil for Monday 21 October 2013 at the front entrance of the Royal Courts of Justice at 12 noon until 2pm on the first day of the court case.

The MHRN has asked that people bring white flowers with them as a mark of respect for all the human beings who have lost their lives within six weeks of their ESA claim being unjustly ended. Continue reading →

No surprise at all this weekend to find a well-heeled politico like Rachel Reeves peddling the notion that people who have the least owe society the most – and must be made to pay it. Absolutely everyone who is anyone is on that bandwagon now. Wherever you look (and I look in lots of places), you find variations on the Reeves theme: that people who don’t have money could and should rise to the costs and hardships imposed on them by a vicious ruling elite.

And here is an example. I’ve been wanting to write something on this one for a while.

A month or so ago, someone sent me a link to this story. It’s a story about South Liverpool Homes’ “radical” (their funky word) plan to cap the bedroom tax for SLH bedroom tax tenants who agreed to take part in an A4e “Employability Training Programme.” In other words – SLH would cap the bedroom tax for people who were on jobseekers’ allowance, or employment and support allowance, if those people participated in a course that would supposedly help them find work and then to pay the tax.

So.

This is a nasty little notion. It suggests that the bedroom tax could be paid and even would be paid, if only social housing tenants got off their arses. It suggests that the bedroom tax is not a policy to be fought. Instead, it is a price to be paid. The whole thing of course comes couched in the uber-bright, if brittle, work-makes-you-free liberation-language that sets the tone for so much of today’s grisly political discourse. We have someone called Wayne Gales, Director of Operations at South Liverpool Homes, feeling “really excited to be able to offer this fantastic opportunity for tenants… Supporting tenants to get back into work so that they are no longer affected by this unfair tax is really important and we hope that through this ongoing initiative we can really make a difference, thus a win-win situation for everyone.” Of course, the thrilled Wayne et al “continue to lobby against the bedroom tax and are doing everything we can to support those who are affected,” but – yeah. Readers of this site will know that I’ve had my doubts about that side of things for a while. Certainly, I’ve spoken to SLH tenants who aren’t exactly feeling the love – from any direction. Earlier this year, they told me that they were doorstepped for bedroom tax money only a month after the tax was introduced. They are also wondering what they’ll do now that their discretionary housing payments have run out and their new DHP applications have been refused. “The local authority feels you’ve had sufficient time to make alternative arrangements to enable you to meet your shortfall,” these refusal letters say (Liverpool City Council hands out the DHPs). You get my point. There’s not a lot of win-win going on here.

Of course – there won’t be much win-win for any us if the political class is allowed to keep spreading the loathsome idea that some people deserve life’s essentials more than others. Because that is the subtext of “initiatives” like this SLH one. And it’s an ideology that will end up taking us all out. It says that people will be helped if – and only if – they meet a narrowing set of criteria set out by the political class. It says that the vicious ruling elite isn’t responsible for the vile policies it imposes on people – the people on the receiving end of those policies are responsible. This sort of “initiative” absolutely absolves the political class. Never lose sight of that point. That is the point to fear.

Basically, what we’re hearing from SLH is that people are more deserving of a place to live if they work. We’re not hearing much about the ongoing chances of people who can’t. The whole thing assumes, too, that an A4e programme would actually help people into work – something that I absolutely would not assume, given A4E’s pisspoor results in that field, particularly in Merseyside. The results of the SLH “initiative” to date make interesting reading. Vaguely. SLH says it recruited seven people to the first course several months ago and that precisely none of the four who completed it went onto paid employment. Nonetheless, the future is perceived to be bright. For A4e, at least. Twelve people will start an October course and the aim is to sweep more into A4e’s net: “Moving forward and assuming we can demonstrate meaningful outcomes, its ambition is to expand capacity to offer similar support to all interested tenants, not only those affected by the bedroom tax.”

Right. SLH says that “there are no intentions” to make attendance at such courses a condition of tenancy, but I like to keep an open mind on these things. A very open mind. I think I’d even take bets on all this. As everyone knows, endless conditions are being attached to the receipt of measly JSA payments now and Osborne has plenty more to come. I can absolutely see a future where everyone has to beg and grovel for any sort of accommodation. Except those who are setting the pace, of course. Let’s not forget that all this “people on benefits must pay” and “you lot must work and in crap jobs for rubbish pay” stuff is happening as the real thieves openly take the piss. “The amount of tax lost through non-payment and avoidance increased last year to £35bn, according to official figures released on Friday,” the Guardian tells us. Wonder where they all live.

With the appalling Iain Duncan Smith and George Osborne due to force the long-term unemployed into US-style workfare (compulsory attendance at unpaid jobs in “return” for benefits), I thought I’d post a few truths about workfare as it has unfolded in the US.

A couple of years ago, I did some reporting on US workfare with Community Voices Heard, a New York member-based group made up of people on low incomes and workfare, and John Krinsky, associate professor and political science department chair at the City College of New York City, and the author of Free Labor: Workfare and the Contested Language of Neoliberalism. I learned enough from that to know that Osborne and IDS’ plan is entirely unsubstantiated and cheaply populist. Of course – that goes for most of his plans, but this one is something else and should be twatted out of the park.

Let’s have a few facts, then. The fact is that neither Osborne nor IDS plan to help people into work (or to improve wages, or work term and conditions, for that matter) – the rubbish results of his work programme tell you that already. They plan only to make life even harder for people who are out of work and to pull off a few Daily Mail headlines at their expense. That’s the only reason that anyone would base their plans on the American experience. It isn’t about improving lives. It is about scoring cheap electoral points off a group of people who politicians see as easy targets. I’ve posted a few interviews with people who are in that category at the end of this blog. Continue reading →

It’s hardly surprising to hear that the tension is bad at jobcentres. Lengthy and ridiculous benefit sanctions, pointless courses and workfare placements that go nowhere – it’s no wonder that people are getting really, really angry.

Birmingham Against Cuts had a story recently about a man who smashed windows at the Sparkhill jobcentre after being sanctioned.

The Manchester Evening News has a story today about a man who set fire to phones in a jobcentre in the hope that he’d be arrested and given something to eat when in police custody.

And last week, I visited a few people in Bracknell who told me they and people they knew had been banned from their jobcentre for complaining about the centre and their workfare provider.

The jobcentre ban notices (which are not signed by a named officer) said they were banned for verbal and written abuse and behaviour “which was totally unacceptable” (no further details on that appear in the correspondence). The people in question denied the charges in the letters. More to the point – and this is the key point, whether we’re talking Bracknell, or wherever – they felt that they had little recourse. They said that they had nowhere to go to appeal those bans. They’d been issued with ban notices by London lawyers (I have copies of these) and then the jobcentre (I have those as well) and told to appear at another job centre for their fortnightly JSA interviews. That was the end of that.

Except that it’s not. Iain Duncan Smith has clearly decided to leave claimants and jobcentre staff to their hell together, to fight it out themselves. This can surely only get worse. As Birmingham Against The Cuts observes, people are dealing with increasingly lengthy sanctions and ridiculous reasons for them – absurd sanctions handed out by stressed staff who are under pressure to meet cruel targets. No wonder things kick off. What do people expect?

As for bans – heavy. And one-sided. I’ve got papers here which threaten Asbos and injunctions and costs if bans are broken. Wonder what happens if you disagree. Which you might. Of course jobcentre workers shouldn’t be abused – but there are always two sides to a story. These are tense times, as I’ve said. Isn’t it possible for frustration, anger and persistence to be interpreted as abuse? Can’t perspectives on a heated incident differ? Couldn’t jobcentres ban people who simply persist with a complaint and refuse to give up the fight for their money? Couldn’t bans be used to shut people up? (The DWP said, simply, that it banned people “who posed a threat” and that “we do not issue bans lightly.” I’d be interested to know if people think that’s the case. Certainly, the various people I’ve spoken to about this have issues with it).

And if someone disagrees with a ban, shouldn’t they at least be able to appeal that decision? Because if they can’t, or don’t know that they can, then the equation is not equal. So I asked the DWP about this as well. I tried to ask Bracknell jobcentre first, but kept getting bounced back to the DWP. Their advice seemed to be that anyone who disagreed with a ban would need to fork out for a lawyer – “they can seek legal advice – and additionally they could follow our complaints process if they disagree with the methods we adopt – but as a legal request the ban would stand, unless contested legally.” So – you’re sanctioned, you’re banned and you must find money for a lawyer. You’re hardly in a position to do that.

What a bloody mess. I can only imagine that IDS enjoys it – this power to throw people into a tinderbox and chuck in a match. Only a truly evil prick would foster that.

Latest article with Jo here. She’s from Speke and I’ve been in contact with her about the bedroom tax for most of this year (visited her house in June to write this article):

“Been sent this letter by Jo.

Jo lives in Speke in a two-bedroom housing association flat. She’s lived in that flat for about 13 years. She was moved to her current flat so she could care for her elderly mother who lives nearby. Jo is disabled herself and on employment and support allowance. She has one small “spare” room for which she must pay the bedroom tax.

When the bedroom tax began, she knew that she’d struggle to pay for that “spare” bedroom out of her small benefit. So she applied to Liverpool City Council for a discretionary housing payment. That was in April. She was awarded a DHP of about £11 a week which was paid directly to her housing association (the South Liverpool Housing Group) to cover the bedroom tax.

The problem is that Jo’s DHP award was only for six months (DHPs are time-limited) and it has just run out. She applied for another DHP a couple of weeks ago, but was turned down. So now she’ll have to pay the bedroom tax herself. “A discretionary housing payment is not a long term solution for assistance with your rent shortfall,” the council says.”

Read the rest here.

Letters Jo received from Liverpool City Council saying her application for DHP had been turned down are here:

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