Learning difficulties, signing on for JSA and hoping for a merciful jobcentre adviser

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Kate B

Right. This one goes out to anyone who still believes that there’s a safety net in place. It’s also for anyone who believes that the jobcentre system is still vaguely functional, or that there are checks and balances in it to keep things fair.

This post is an update on a story I’ve been writing about a man with learning difficulties who is signing on for JSA. He sometimes struggles with his jobsearch, because he isn’t able to use a computer to apply for work. He hasn’t been sanctioned so far, because his jobcentre adviser has been reasonable. The problem is that she’s suddenly no longer his adviser. Now, he’s in a precarious position. It is unlikely that he’s the only one.

Let’s start from the beginning:

Readers of this site will know that I’ve been spending time with Eddie (name changed), a 51-year-old Kiburn man who has mild learning difficulties. He also struggles to read and write with any fluency. He has spent most of his life working in general assistant jobs in commercial kitchens and stores, but was made redundant about four years ago. He’s been signing on for JSA ever since. Eddie is desperate to find another job – but he doesn’t think that is going to happen through the jobcentre. Neither do I. That’s because I’ve seen the whole process in “action.” Every fortnight, Eddie goes to the jobcentre to show his adviser his jobsearch papers. He must prove that he’s searched for 14 jobs every two weeks. The adviser checks his papers, sets a time for his next appointment and then waves him goodbye. The whole exercise takes ten minutes, if that. Nobody ever offers to call employers on Eddie’s behalf, or to put his CV forward, or to organise interviews, or to liaise with anyone who might take him on for work. It is incredible to think that some people are now being forced to engage in this moribund process every day. It is unpleasant to know that Iain Duncan Smith believes he’s onto a winner with this kind of “concept.” It is also unpleasant to know that he may well be onto an electoral winner with this kind of concept, given that the “scroungers” line has well and truly taken hold and there’s no political opposition to the destruction of support for people who are out of work.

Anyway – in my last post, I wrote about the problems Eddie had completing an online jobsearch. His jobcentre advisor had told him to choose and apply for at least three jobs online as part of his fortnightly quota. The problem was that Eddie couldn’t use a computer well enough to start this jobsearch (as you can read here, he wasn’t sure what a browser was). He was unable to type in the complex urls that he’d been given – you can see some of them on the list he was given here:

and he struggled to follow the text on the job application pages. He was very concerned that he’d get sanctioned if he didn’t complete the three online applications. I ended up typing his CV and then submitting the online applications for him. When we went to his signing on appointment, we raised these issues with his jobcentre adviser. The adviser freely admitted that she knew Eddie couldn’t complete the online jobsearch – but said that she was unlikely to sanction him because she knew about his learning and literacy difficulties. Unfortunately, as I said at the time, that isn’t good enough. People in Eddie’s situation can’t rely on a forgiving adviser to protect them from sanctions. We’re in a sanctions-driven environment here. Things can change very suddenly. Advisers come and go, or take leave, or go off sick, or move to new jobs. A reasonable adviser can suddenly move on.

Which is, of course, exactly what has happened. Last Thursday, Eddie turned up for his fortnightly signon session, only to be told that the adviser we’d seen two weeks ago wasn’t working on Thursdays any more. (I wasn’t able to accompany Eddie to last Thursday’s appointment, so he went alone. He said he didn’t have a good experience. People often report that they are treated with less respect when they go alone to their jobcentre appointments). Eddie was instructed to show his jobsearch papers to another adviser. He reported to me today that the new person was impatient and told him that he’d need another appointment. Eddie was worried that this meant he was going to be sanctioned. Unfortunately, this new adviser wasn’t prepared to reassure him on this point, or to make a new signing on appointment for him. Continue reading →

Pretty sure Iain Duncan Smith has decided these people shouldn’t live #SaveILF

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Kate B

To the Royal Courts on the Strand today, where Disabled People Against Cuts, Independent Living Fund recipients and their carers turned out in very good numbers to support disabled people who are taking a second court case against this repulsive government’s second decision to close the ILF.

Part way through the day, disabled people went and sat on the Strand and brought the traffic to a standstill. I only hope Lord Freud was out in London in some overpriced government vehicle right at that moment and found himself stuck in a lane somewhere.

The Independent Living Fund is the pot of money that profoundly disabled people use to pay for the extra carer hours they need to live their lives as independent adults. For many people, ILF money tops up council funding for care. Unfortunately, this government dislikes the idea of disabled people living like grownups in their homes and working, studying, socialising and doing their thing like everyone else. In fact – I think we can safely say that this government dislikes the idea of disabled people living at all. God knows Iain Duncan Smith has put an extraordinary effort into getting rid of the ILF. I’ve been writing about the ILF battle for several years now. I expect nothing from IDS and understand that he’s an extremist, but even so, I’ve found the government’s continued and renewed assaults on this group of people difficult to fathom.

The ILF closure makes no sense, unless you understand that IDS is malicious and such an ideologue that he actually wants blood on his hands. The number of people who get ILF funding is small – about 18,000 (the fund was closed to new applicants in 2010, so the number of recipients is not growing). The average cost of the ILF each week is about £345 – which, as Inclusion London says, is considerably less than the average weekly cost of residential care. A lot of ILF recipients will end up in carehomes if they can’t afford high-cost support at home.

And they won’t be able to afford that care at home. Councils certainly can’t pick up the tab for people with high support needs. I’m already talking to people who rely solely on council care and are left dangerously short of support. Cutting the ILF could be deadly. It really is that simple. So – why pursue this group of people with such venom? Could it be that IDS wants to punish them for not going quietly? Is it that he wants to get them simply for existing and needing financial support?

“The reason coalition ministers don’t mind slashing entitlements for disabled people, are quite happy to use them as guinea pigs for new benefits that don’t work, and to chuck them at incompetents such as Atos, is because they couldn’t care less,” Aditya Chakrabortty wrote this week. I think it is partly that. I also think it is part of the general plan to eradicate anyone who needs help from the state (anyone who isn’t a banker, that is). A generous view would be that it’s a combination of the two, but I don’t always feel very generous. I’ve been writing about this evil for too long.

Last year, the court of appeal overturned a government decision to close the ILF and noted the adverse effect the closure would have on ILF recipients. The government came back in March this year and announced again it would close the fund. So, disabled people are taking the government back to court. The case started today and carries on tomorrow. I hope they win. They must win. There is a crucial truth at the centre of this fight. It represents a turning-point for all of us. Saving the ILF is not just about saving a pot of money. It’s about saving the idea that disabled people deserve to live like everybody does. Once you abandon that concept, you abandon the idea that everyone counts and that everyone deserves to live.

Which is one of the reasons why disabled people and their personal assistants turned out in very good numbers on a weekday to give their support to people taking an all-important and potentially life-saving court case. That June 2015 ILF closure deadline is getting nearer.

And listen to these people talk about their lives and the ILF. Dunno about you, but I think that Iain Duncan Smith has decided they shouldn’t live.

We’re NOT all in this together: the story of the closure of the Independent Living Fund from Moore Lavan Films on Vimeo.

Excellent photos from the vigil today here

Daily JSA sign on: more sadism for the hell of it from the DWP

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Kate B

This is a report about having to sign on every day for jobseekers’ allowance – an entirely pointless “process” that seems to be taking hold:

On Wednesday, the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ Group and I went to talk with JSA claimants at the North Kensington jobcentre.

Almost as soon as we got there, people brought a significant fact to our attention: the North Kensington jobcentre appears to have instigated a daily JSA sign on regime for some people. Daily sign on does, or at least is, pretty much what it says on the tin – it means that people must present themselves at their local jobcentre every single day of the week and sit and wait until they see an adviser for a brief time. Their attendance is noted and there’s a (very) quick catchup about people’s jobsearches. And that’s it.

Daily sign on was one of the platforms government’s ironically-named Help To Work platforms. The Help To Work scheme was launched in April to much fanfare (by government) and consternation (by reasonable people). I wonder if we’re seeing evidence now that it is underway, after a fashion. We’re certainly seeing evidence that people were right to dread it. The daily sign on exercise is nasty and utterly pointless – certainly as far as helping people into work goes. The three people who I talk about in this article reported that absolutely nothing happens at their daily signon appointments. I think we’ll say that again – absolutely nothing happens. JSA claimants must turn up at their jobcentre and have their attendance noted. One person reported a quick chat and check with a jobcentre adviser about jobs applied for – “and that’s ridiculous, because they can check everything that I am doing online,” he said. “They forced us to use [Universal] Jobmatch, so they can check everything already.”

When that’s done, the person is given a time for the next day’s appointment. After that, it’s all over until the next day. (A man I spoke to at length at the Clacton jobcentre recently reported exactly the same experience). Talk about an exercise in humiliation and futility – like people who must use the already-degrading JSA system needed another one.

People can’t use jobcentre phones to call employers (the man who described daily sign on process as “ridiculous” had got into trouble with security for demanding that the jobcentre let him use a phone to call prospective employers), no employers are rung on their behalf, no job interviews are arranged. I can well believe that – I’ve attended a few sign on appointments with people now and have seen how this system “works.” I don’t think I’ve been to one that has lasted more than ten minutes. Which means that daily sign on is not about finding people work. It’s about taking people by the scruff of the neck and keeping a very tight hold. It’s about letting people who are out of work know that their lives are no longer their own – that once people are unemployed, they’re not entitled to even a few hours’ peace of mind, or relief, from the DWP. It’s about disrupting people’s lives and making sure that they get up each day not knowing whether they’ll still have JSA at the end of it. It is depraved. Nobody we spoke to on Wednesday knew from day to day what time their sign on appointment would be. They were given a time for the next day’s appointment at the previous day’s appointment. That means people can’t plan their week, or even from day to day. They’re not allowed to plan their week. The subtext is that people who find themselves out of work have no lives – and, perhaps more to the point, are not entitled to lives. If you’re unemployed, you must forfeit your right to yourself. The people we spoke with were absolutely furious about it. I am too, just by the way. I think we’re very much at the point where the DWP should be forced to open the doors on all of this. This regime exists to deliver stress and panic, and nothing else. That needs to be fully revealed.

The first man we talked was in and out of work, as so many people we meet at jobcentres are. He was 46. He worked in marketing and business development – “anything. I will take it.” He found work himself and was hoping that a few leads he was following would pay off soon. His problem was that he could only get short-term contract work. I find that again and again.

The daily sign on (he’d just started) was angering him badly and very disruptive to his actual jobhunting: “it is so time-consuming and it doesn’t serve a purpose for me or them. It costs me and them time and money for me to be here every day.” Because of that, he’d asked the jobcentre if “it was possible for them to provide me with additional services while I’m here – where I can use the phone for basic things.” Using a phone for half-an-hour or so would mean his daily attendance wasn’t a complete waste of time. Unfortunately, this suggestion was not well-received. He raised his voice and management was called down. “The lady decided to that I was being awkward and she walked away and she calmed down.” That, he said, was ridiculous. “All I wanted was access to a phone. There’s nothing there. I don’t think I was being awkward asking them what provisions they have.” As I say, his actual appointment was a complete waste of time. “They went onto the computer to see whether I had done any jobsearches. But I said that I want them to provide a service.” Continue reading →

You must do your JSA jobsearch online, even though we know you can’t

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Kate B

Iain Duncan Smith, planner extraordinaire, aims to have the majority of Universal Credit claims made online. Here’s an example of someone who will be completely excluded from claiming because of that:

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article about Eddie (name changed) and the problems that he was having with his online jobsearch. I’ve met twice with Eddie since then.

Eddie is a 51-year-old Kilburn man who has mild learning difficulties. He struggles to read and write. At the moment, he signs on for jobseeker’s allowance. He has worked for most of his life as a catering assistant in hotels, pubs and in kitchens, but was made redundant about four years ago. He has been unemployed ever since. He is very keen to get another job, but has not been able to find one. He wants someone to help liaise with potential employers on his behalf – to ring people who take staff on, put him forward as a candidate, promote him and his work history and to talk through any problems that employers may have with his literacy difficulties. Eddie has taken CVs into businesses all over Kilburn. He never gets called back.

The upshot of all of this is that Eddie must go to the jobcentre every fortnight to sign on and to show that he’s searched for at least 14 jobs. This post will show you how difficult and pointless this jobsearch exercise is for him. One of Eddie’s main problems is his struggle to read and write. He can write letters out if people tell him which ones to choose (for example, he asked me how to spell “Customer Service Advisor” when applying for one job, then wrote it as I spelled it out), but has trouble with more complex words. He also finds computers challenging. He doesn’t have a computer at home, which means that he rarely uses one. He wasn’t sure what a browser was when I took my laptop around to his flat to help him with his jobsearch (you’ll see some of this in the videos below).

Nonetheless, a couple of weeks ago, Eddie’s jobcentre adviser instructed him to choose and apply for at least three jobs online as part of his fortnightly quota. He was given this sheet of paper – you’ll see that it lists job ads and links:

Eddie was concerned about this because he was not at all sure how to tackle an online application. The jobcentre didn’t show him. His jobcentre adviser actually conceded this when I accompanied Eddie to his signon appointment last week. Eddie and I explained to the advisor that we’d worked through the online application process together. I’d typed his CV for him, because he didn’t have an electronic version and couldn’t submit an online job application without one. I ended up completing a couple of the online application forms as well (to Argos and Superdrug). The adviser, who seemed a reasonable person, at least on the face of it, was quick to say that she knew Eddie had literacy problems, that she had never sanctioned him and was unlikely to do so because she felt that he did his best to meet his jobsearch requirements.

The problem is, of course, that people can’t rely on a forgiving adviser. Advisers come and go, or take leave, or go off sick, or move to new jobs. New managers come in and apply target pressures. Jobcentres shut down and/or people are sent to different jobcentres to sign on. People can’t just rely on scoring a nice adviser. Sanctions are the ever-present threat. There is always the chance, too, that advisers behave in a more concilitory fashion when a JSA claimant brings an advocate along (“never attend anywhere official alone!” says the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ Group. Indeed). None of that should matter. Effective and consistent support should be in place wherever you go. On this evidence, it isn’t. Continue reading →

I have to sign on every day. I was sanctioned for six weeks when I was homeless

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Kate B

More stories from the jobcentre:

To Clacton now – and a long conversation outside the jobcentre with Paul, who is 56. There is a transcript from that conversation below. Paul has mental health problems. He has been in and out of street homelessness for some years, in different parts of the country. “I’ve been travelling for about 35 years,” he says. His face is seamed and his teeth are broken. He says that he was sanctioned for six weeks about 18 months ago when he was homeless in Manchester. He was born and raised in Newcastle.

Now living in Clacton, he must sign on every day at the jobcentre. This daily-signon setup is utterly pointless. It won’t lead to work. It can’t. Nothing goes into it, or comes out of it. It’s a process for the hell of it. Paul says he goes into the jobcentre each day and waits around until jobcentre staff “check all that out and say “I’ll see you tomorrow” and tell me a time to come in tomorrow and that is it. It’s a pain in the arse. It’s pointless.” Indeed. So many of these jobcentre exercises now are meaningless: exercises to be gone through to meet a criteria, not a useful result. I’ll be posting more on this next week. “I don’t know what I got to come up every day for. I just say thank you very much and then go.”

During our discussion, Paul – like so many people I speak with now – says that Britain has reached a crisis point. He thinks that Britain has become weak. More specifically, he says the problem is that Britain is filled with immigrants who think that Britain is easy. So. I hear people say this sort of thing more and more now. It’s important to keep pointing this out – the extent to which this dislike of immigrants has taken hold. I used to hear it every now and then. These days, I hear it all the time. I hear it in plenty of places other than Clacton, too. I hear it in places where there’s not enough to go around – at jobcentres and from people who can’t find work, or housing. And it is hard to see how things will improve while a terrified political class devotes itself to keeping stride with Ukip, rather than, say, to addressing the housing crisis in a genuine way.

“Enoch Powell was right, you know,” Paul tells me. “It will spread like a cancer. He should have been prime minister. But lots of people are worried about it [immigration]. They are taking our things off us. We get in trouble for having our things – for having crucifixes in our rooms. [But they] are walking up the street with their face covered with a mask. [When you have a face veil on], I don’t know who you are or what you’re going to do. And they moan about people wearing crucifixes.”

So.

Says Paul:

“I have to sign on five days a week. Every day, I’m here at a different time and all. It’s twenty to two today and then I’ve got to go upstairs. They took me off the sick and all. I can move and all that, but my mind is sick. I got mental problems. They took me off the sick and said “you can work.” I can move about. I can have a conversation probably.

“I was on the sick because of the depression. I went for the medical and they took me off. That was in 2010 and they knocked me appeal out. So, I’ve got to come up here and jump through their hoops, which makes my depression worse. But if I don’t, they will stop my money. I have been sanctioned before for not getting [applying for] five jobs a week and I was on the streets at the time and all. I was living in a nightshelter – this was in Manchester. They sanctioned me, because I wasn’t applying for five jobs a week. My priority then was getting something to eat and somewhere to live. You know, instead of jobhunting. It’s somewhere to live, innit. I’m all right [for somewhere to live] at the moment. Continue reading →

Learning and literacy difficulties, no computer – but must do jobsearch online with no help

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Kate B

“I didn’t want my first #JSA meeting to be in a group session with a G4S guard.”

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Kate B

I’d be keen to hear back from anyone who has experience of this:

I spent a couple of hours today talking with someone who is a new JSA claimant in North London. This man started his JSA claim a couple of weeks ago. It’s the first claim he’s made. He filled in an application form online and then was sent a text by the DWP some days later which called him to a meeting at a London jobcentre in the first week of August.

He assumed that the meeting would be one-to-one with a jobcentre advisor – a meeting where an advisor goes through the application in detail with the claimant and jobsearch requirements are set – but instead found that the meeting was a group session with about ten other new claimants and one G4S security guard who sat in the room the whole time. This man was shocked to find that this first meeting wasn’t private. He found the experience confusing and worrying, and wasn’t sure what he agreed to in it.

He said that he was certainly concerned about asking questions and sharing personal details and financial information in front of a group of strangers. He wasn’t the only one. He said that “a couple of the people there looked very nervous and anxious at the prospect of a group meeting,” and that people were worried about confidentiality.

He also said that the two jobcentre staff who ran the meeting “said that the new claimant meetings were now ‘unfortunately’ group meetings rather than individual meetings.” He has another meeting coming up soon and thinks the new meeting is a one-to-one, so he wasn’t sure if the group session was a direct replacement for a new claimant one-to-one. He was hoping that his claim would be finalised at the upcoming meeting. He was concerned about papers that he signed at the group session though. He was worried that he may have agreed to a claimant commitment without properly talking about it, or having time to think things through. He wasn’t sure if that had happened and hoped to find out at the upcoming one-to-one. He didn’t want to make a fuss and not sign papers at the group session. He also didn’t want to ask many questions or reveal his financial situation in a room full of strangers.

I’ve put a transcript of our discussion below. I’ve found some evidence of these new claimant group meetings online and a woman I know told me today that she’d accompanied someone to another London jobcentre where new claimant group meetings were held. The woman she was with was excused from that group meeting, because she didn’t speak English well. She was given a one-to-one session with an advisor instead that day.

The man I spoke to today said:

“Beyond the complete lack of confidentiality and privacy in a group meeting, it proved highly impractical and inefficient to address questions of ten different claimants. New claimants obviously have very different and unique cases. I can’t imagine how anyone would want to talk about sensitive or difficult issues in that environment.”

People were also told to put their identifying documents and bank statements into a box for photocopying and had their names read out for all to hear when the documents were returned.

I’ve asked the DWP for more on this and I’d be interested to hear from anyone who knows about these meetings. You can contact me here. People I’ve spoken to about this have real concerns about confidentiality and also about the appropriateness of a group environment for people who need to discuss sensitive personal information. I’m also interested to know why these meetings are held at all and why a G4S security guard gets to sit in listening to people’s personal stories. Continue reading →

How Iain Duncan Smith lives – compared with people who must live his policies

Posted on July 31, 2014 by Kate B

Posting this because I can.

Here’s Iain Duncan Smith’s weekend place, which was occupied last year by UK Uncut and Disabled People Against Cuts in a protest against the bedroom tax. It’s a very nice pile indeed. It comes with a tennis court, the sort of lake that Mr Darcy might emerge from in clinging pants, happy lambs and a very large house. Very. If you must lie around somewhere thinking of ways to piss the rest of the exchequer away on Universal Credit, then this is the place to do it:

Compare this if you will with the tiny one-room Kilburn flat which I visited on I visited on Monday.

No lakes or tennis courts here, alas. This flat is occupied by a 51-year-old man who is out of work at the moment and must sign on at the local jobcentre. He has been sent on the work programme. He has mild learning difficulties. He has not found a job through the jobentre, even though he has a good work history.

He was very depressed about the flat and it was easy to see why. The room was so small that it was difficult for the four of us who were there to fit into all at once. There was a bed, a broken fridge, a small fridge in the middle of the room that this man had bought to keep his diabetes medication in, and a broken oven. There was a second, smaller oven with two hotplates sitting on top of the broken oven.

There were no windows as such in this room – just a door area that led to a path. The man had complained to his landlord about the mice and cockroaches that live under the broken oven, but nothing had been done.

I’d say We’re All In It Together, except that is getting old. Even as irony it’s getting pretty old.

Empty words and a terror of protestors: thanks for nothing, Penning #SaveILF

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Kate B

Here we are, then – a little video I filmed on the quiet of the now-departed (post-reshuffle) Minister of State for Disabled People Mike Penning talking total bollocks at the June Independent Living Fund adjournment debate. I had to film this one on a little camera that I rested on my knee under the desk. Things were fraught at the House of Commons that day. There was an official in the room who told me off for stepping over a little rope instead of walking around it. After that, he kept looking at me like he was measuring me for a coffin. I got the distinct feeling that the very fact campaigners and journalists turned up for the ILF debate that day was getting on people’s nerves. I arrived 15 minutes early for the debate and wasn’t allowed to wait outside the room. Officials told me to go away and come back. It really was that kind of day.

Anyway – thought I’d post this video for the record. Mike Penning’s failure to support independent living for disabled people ought to haunt him forever. It will if he has any sort of conscience. This issue will not go away.

As many people know, the Independent Living Fund is a vital pot of money used by severely disabled people to pay for the added carer hours they need to live their independent adult lives. Earlier this year, Penning announced that the fund would close by the end of June next year and that people would have to rely on councils for social care. No matter that last year, the court of appeal overturned an earlier government attempt to close the ILF. Penning and Iain Duncan Smith have insisted that this attack on disabled people continue.

That ILF closure will be disastrous for ILF recipients – and for the idea that disabled people should be able to live, like everyone else. This is a crucial point – and it’s the reason why the fight for the ILF is both escalating and winning people round. There’s something fundamental to the notion that everyone is equal in this battle. As I’ve said before – saving the ILF is not just about saving a pot of money. It’s about saving the idea that disabled people deserve to live and to get out there and live. Penning argued, of course (he did it again at the adjournment debate) that councils will be able to pick up the tab for care costs for this group of people. That is garbage and everyone knows it. Councils can’t meet social care costs as it is. As readers of this site will know, I’m already talking with severely disabled people who have real problems finding adequate care. ILF recipients will join these people in their problems if their fund closes. The fund should be kept and opened up to all who need it.

Penning did tell one truth at the adjournment debate, right at the start of his speech:

“Can I guarantee that no one in receipt of ILF money today will be adversely affected by the changes that we are going to make? No, I cannot, and no minister of any colour or persuasion could.”

People know this and are responding accordingly. About ten days after he gave this speech, ILF recipients occupied the grounds of Westminster Abbey to draw attention to the threat the ILF closure poses.

Which brings me to – protests about social security cuts:

During that adjournment debate, the MP Mary Glindon observed that a group of ILF recipients had recently turned up to the DWP offices at Caxton House to protest at the ILF closure and to hand in a letter which outlined their concerns. The doors at Caxton House were shut in their faces. I know this, because I was there. I took this film on that day. “Those people simply wanted to hand a letter in to the Minister’s office, but no one was available, and I had to take the letter in by the back door,” Glindon told Penning.

Said Penning: “I am sure that it [the event] was peaceful, well-mannered and nice, but that is not always the case. If the hon. Lady looks at the side of the building she will see that paint has been thrown over it and there have been really nasty incidents outside.” (There’s a clip at the end of the Penning video above where he says that).

Interesting. I sent an FOI to the DWP to ask about the paint throwing and the “nasty incidents”. The response showed things were really not as dramatic as all that. They certainly weren’t as dramatic as Penning would lead you to believe…The paint throwing was apparently noticed in February this year. The DWP didn’t know when it was thrown, or who threw it. So that was all a bit hopeless. You can see the sad little dribble of paint they photographed in the picture they sent me here:

As far as Penning’s “nasty incidents” went, the DWP reported three events in its FOI response to me.

The first was a 2012 “invasion” (their word) of the DWP’s Caxton House reception area by protesters, which the DWP said prevented “normal access.” I was at that protest myself. My overriding memory of it was that the thing was seriously overpoliced and ended in scuffles in which a disabled protestor was injured. The police did a hell of a lot of pushing and shoving that day. You can see that in the video I took here:

Remember: people at that protest were demonstrating against horrendous social security cuts and the Atos regime. They had and have every right to make a vociferous protest against those things. Protesting against that sort of government extremism is not extreme. It is an entirely rational response.

Next, the DWP FOI response mentioned the May 2014 protest at Caxton House, too (I was at that one as well and filmed it here. There was no violence. There was a group of disabled people in wheelchairs trying to deliver their letter about the ILF as discussed above and asking people who came and went from the building if anyone had ever set eyes on Mike Penning. People were starting to wonder if he actually existed at that point.

The DWP also cites a 9 June 2014 protest where staff had to walk past protesters to return after a fire evacuation – you can watch that here. Protestors had a loudhailer and banners, and they chalked names onto the pavement. The FOI response says that police were not called.

People have the right to protest. They certainly have the right to protest about this government’s out-of-control social security cuts. And of course people wanted a response from Penning on the ILF. They wanted him to abandon his plans to close the fund. But Penning made it clear that the closure would go ahead – that came through loud and clear at the ILF adjournment debate. That left and leaves people with no option except to go back to court, which they are doing, and organise protests where they get in the establishment’s face. The ILF closure plan must be thrown out.

Until it is, people are perfectly entitled to demand that it is thrown out. Such protest is entirely justified. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the establishment that has done the escalating to date. I’ve been to plenty of these protests and was at the recent Save the ILF occupation of Westminster Abbey grounds – a peaceful but ridiculously over-policed event where a small group of disabled campaigners and supporters tried to set up a camp to draw attention to the government threat to the ILF. Look at the number of coppers that turned out for that one. Look at the vile policy protestors are campaigning against. It’s very clear to me who started all of this.

I find it very interesting that the mere act of protesting these days – that is, standing outside a building with banners, loudhailers and leaflets – is written off as nasty or extreme and used as a justification to stick to a massively unpopular decision, and to ignore the people whose lives are being destroyed by that decision. Without ILF money to pay for personal assistants, ILF recipients face lives at home with grossly inadequate levels of care, or stuck in carehomes. Nobody deserves that. Nobody voted for that. It is this government that is extreme. Even Nick Clegg is getting that. So, you know – expect a goddamn response. It amazes me that people on the receiving end of the coalition’s appalling attacks on social security have kept their cool for as long as they have. The government keeps escalating. Who knows what the future holds.

Video and pics: disabled protestors block Victoria Street #SaveILF

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Kate B

To Caxton House and Victoria Street today, where Disabled People Against Cuts blocked all traffic at the top of Victoria Street to protest at the government’s plans to close the Independent Living Fund. The ILF is a fund disabled people used to pay for the extra support they need to live independent lives. The government wants to close the fund. The government is not going to find that easy.

ILF recipient Kevin Caulfield fights to save the ILF and the police fight to save…Barclays

Last Saturday, disabled people occupied the grounds of Westminster Abbey to protest at the proposed closure of the ILF. That protest generated an extraordinarily large and unfriendly police response, and zero support from the good Christians of the Abbey. Today’s coppers seemed to have learned something from the bad publicity Saturday’s effort generated. The police sent to the Independent Living Fund tea party outside DWP HQ in Tothill Street today and then to Victoria Street when protestors blocked the road appeared to have done a bit more by way of affability training. Still, protestors blocked Victoria Street for long enough to make the point about the ILF again… and the police definitely wanted them gone:

The copper in the video above kept rattling on about the impact the protest was having on the traffic – an odd line to take, given that disrupting London traffic was the point of the exercise.

“What about the long term impact on me of not being able to leave my house and doing what you take for granted?” ILF recipient Sam Brackenbury asked him.

“I can’t do anything about that, me,” said the copper. “What I can do is ask yourselves to consider the impact on the traffic you’re causing.”

Long may that impact and disruption continue. Without the ILF, disabled people will not be able to afford the day-to-day support that allows them to leave their houses, go to work, socialise – everything that everyone else takes for granted. That’s why these Save ILF protests are so vital and why they’re gaining momentum. Saving the ILF is not just about saving a pot of money. It’s about saving the idea that disabled people deserve to live.

Protestors block the buses to Clapham: