People on the frontline of austerity Britain. Part two: the Southwest

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Extracts from this article are printed in the Guardian today (18 July).

This is the second article from my series of interviews with people around the country who are affected by this appalling government’s welfare changes, NHS reform and cuts. This report is from the southwest.

The interviews from Weymouth are with a group of older men who were  in and out of homelessness and battling to keep their jobseekers’ and employment and support allowances.

The names of people on jobseekers’ allowance or ESA have been changed and marked *. Most of these people were going through Atos work capability assessments and were concerned that the mere act of giving interviews would be construed as fitness for work. There are accompanying audio recordings.

There is also a list of policy changes and cuts which affect each person at the end of each section.

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Weymouth, May 2012

Olympics 2012 costs-in-austerity controversies:
Stone mushrooms cost more than £330,000.
Local hoteliers fear thousands in losses during the games
Sandcastle costing £5000 demolished

 

Weymouth pier

Image: Pier at Weymouth, May 2012.

Of all the cowflop that David Cameron speaks, there is no bigger pile than his deceitful and misleading “culture of entitlement” line on people on benefits.

Lives on benefits are not, as Cameron would have us believe, simple and sorry stories of unreal “expectations” from people who believe “the state will support you whatever decisions you make… you can have a home of your own… you will always be able to take out, no matter what you put in.”

It’s one of modern politics’ most loathsome sells: this notion that people who need state support hold any cards, let alone all of them. The idea of a culture of entitlement is entirely romantic. There’s nothing left for anyone to feel entitled to. No aspect of taking state money in this day and age is painless, or liberating – except, perhaps, if you’re a bailed-out banker.

For the rest, a life on benefits is an appalling tale of financial and personal reduction, particularly when you’ve no hope of buying yourself back by finding a job. You must have the state in that case. You can’t do without it. Your desperation, though, means that the state also has you.

I’ll give you an example of this reduction from Weymouth. It will sound tiny, but it wasn’t. It’s probably common, but it wasn’t insignificant. At the time, I was worried – I thought there was a chance that I may have put someone’s benefits in jeopardy. It was probably a small chance, but the thought did occur to me.

It all started merrily enough. I was horsing around in a carpark with Sean Needham* (in his 50s and made redundant from a Woolworth’s warehouse when Woolies went bust), Pete Gyte* (ex-armed forces), Mike Gale* (also ex-services) and H*, Mike’s cheerful, turbo-charged, Alsatian when Needham made a sudden decision.

He invited me to the next meeting of the job club that the men said they had to regularly attend as a condition of collecting their jobseekers’ and employment and support allowances. All three men were in their late 40s, or early 50s. All were unemployed and all had been homeless from time to time over the years.

Nobody seemed entirely sure what the job club was for (“we’re supposed talk about getting work and CVs,” Needham said, vaguely), but they could see two clear advantages to it for me.

The first was that they thought it would give me some insight into the hoops they had to jump through to keep their benefits and/or find employment in their challenging patch. Employment rates in the southwest are among the country’s best, but unemployment has been on the rise. If you’re a drug addict, or an alcoholic, or have serious mental health problems, or a history of homelessness – well, the guys said that it might happen, but it might not.

“I mean – come on,” Gyte said when we touched on the topic. “They reckon everybody’s fit for work, but if I had a company, most of the people I know – I wouldn’t let them in the door! Operating expensive machinery…?”

The second was that there was a sex shop somewhere along the way. There was no real advantage to that news, I suppose, except that it made us all incredibly funny for the rest of the night.

“You can get a pair of knickers first!” Gyte giggled.

“No crotch for me,” I said, which was, obviously, hilarious. The entire conversation seemed hilarious – a whole lot of giggling and snorting about David Cameron, Tories, government, CVs and dildos. Continue reading →

National security alert! For…an anti-parking charges poster. Brilliant.

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Updated 5 July to add this glorious quote from a forum on parking in Barnet:

“Appealing to the council is like playing chess with a pigeon. You might be a chess grand master but the pigeon will always knock all the pieces over, shit on the board and then strut around triumphantly.”

Gold.

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It’s kicking off in Barnet again…

…this time, the council (or its CEO at least) appears to be after a local trader who produced a poster on behalf of Barnet Traders – a group that campaigned against the abolition of pay and display parking in Barnet at the recent elections.

I post this in solidarity with Helen Michael and the Barnet bloggers who are also posting about the issue. I’m also posting this because I’m generally pissed off with heavy-handed reactions to protest posters and leaflets, particularly in the leadup to the Olympics. It does not thrill me to know that I could be fined, or jailed, or tasered, or whatever for hanging an “Olympics 2012 Sucks” poster out of my own window. For Christ’s sake. I’ll say that the Olympics suck if I want to – not least because I’ve contributed God knows what in tax towards the whole circus and as a direct funder of it, I reserve the right to describe it as shit.

Anyway – Mrs Angry backgrounds Barnet Postergate in inspired style:

“Helen had, as part of her efforts to oppose the parking scheme, created, published and distributed a poster directly linking [Brian] Coleman to the damage to high street trade. It was a hugely popular poster, for obvious reasons, with traders and residents alike, all of whom were badly affected by the impact of the scheme, both financially, and in terms of restricted accessibility.

“…out of the blue last week – and blue does seem to be the appropriate colour – Helen Michael was contacted by police and told that she would be obliged to attend a local police station for an interview in regard to the Coleman poster.

She was asked for her ‘co operation’ – failure to show such ‘co operation’, one imagines, might have led to her being arrested. Taking legal advice, she sent a statement to the DPP, putting her version of the matter.

Yesterday, Helen spent two hours at Barnet Police Station, not arrested, but under caution, being interviewed – a recorded interview – by two detectives from what she was told is Scotland Yard’s ‘Special Investigation Unit’ – whatever that means.

There is a Specialist Operations branch which deals with various security issues, including counter terrorism, but one would imagine that only a complete idiot would think it likely that a cafe owner from North Finchley worried about the drop in sales of her tuna mayo baguettes was a threat to national security, or even the security of a tedious minor local politician – or indeed think it a justifiable use of public resources, especially at a time of such need for counter terrorist scrutiny in the preparation for the Olympic Games.”

That last paragraph is particularly brilliant. You can read the rest of Mrs Angry’s post here.

From Barneteye:

“Let’s just stick to the facts. Helen Michael was yesterday interviewed by 2 officers from Scotland Yard’s special investigations unit. This is the unit responsible for, amongst other things, terrorism investigations. Helen was read her rights and interviewed under caution.

The reason? Because a poster produced on behalf of Barnet Traders, campaigning against the abolition of pay and display parking in Barnet and extortionate parking charges, may have breached election law on a technicality. The purpose of the law was to prevent anonymous smear campaigns against people standing for elections.

The complaint against Helen Michael was initiated by the CEO of Barnet, Nick Walkley. Mr Walkley doubled up in this role as the returning officer. The Barnet Eye wishes to explore the motivation of Mr Walkley in making the complaint and wishes to know in what capacity he has been pursuing this.”

Read the rest of the Barnet Eye post here.

From the marvellous Mr Reasonable:

“Something is very, very wrong in Barnet. I am sure you have read on other blogs about the questioning of Helen Michael by the Special Investigations Unit of Scotland Yard over the poster she put up regarding parking in Barnet. It appears that the complainant is Mr Nick Walkley, Chief Executive of Barnet. What I find utterly incomprehensible is that just days after we have been told there is a massive black hole in the Met Police Budget and just over 3 weeks away from the biggest ever policing event in the capital, that someone in the Met has deemed this worthy of investing so much time in such a trivial non issue.”

The rest is here.

Perhaps Scotland Yard should leave this woman alone and go and throw Bob Diamond in the can. Just a suggestion.

Government mismanagement of these flagship (welfare) reforms is a complete shambles

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This morning, the High Court in London is hearing a challenge on the legality of the government’s now-legendary, and legendarily shambolic, workfare schemes.

This is a short report on the statements that one claimant, Cait Reilly, and her lawyer Tessa Gregory made before they went into court this morning.

There’s a video and full transcript from their statements below.

Cait Reilly and a claimant who was not named are challenging two workfare schemes. One is the sector-based work academy scheme (Reilly). The second is the community action programme (the unnamed claimant).

Say Public Interest Lawyers (who are representing the two claimants): “If it succeeds, the court will quash the regulations[1][1] under which the schemes are made and Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, will be sent back to the drawing board.”

Here’s hoping.

From Public Interest Lawyers again:

“Cait Reilly participated in the “sector-based work academy” scheme against her wishes. She was forced to leave her voluntary work at a local museum to work in Poundland stacking shelves for two weeks.”

“The second claimant refused to participate in a scheme known as the “Community Action Programme” when he was told that he had to work cleaning furniture without pay for 30 hours per week for six months. No detailed information or guidance was provided to him about the scheme itself and he has recently been informed that he is being stripped of his jobseekers’ allowance for six months because he refused to participate in the scheme.”

Said Tessa Gregory this morning:

“The government’s mismanagement of these flagship reforms has reulted in a complete shambles, where nobody understands the plethora of very different schemes that have been created and where the only ones benefiting are the companies receiving free labour. Nothing has been done to improve the employment prospects of our our clients.”

Indeed.

(Have spelled “qualifications” incorrectly in there somewhere).

Full transcripts:

Tessa Gregory (Public Interest Lawyers):

“Today, we’re asking the high court to quash the regualtions under which the government has made many of its back-to-work schemes. We represent two clients who have been subject to two very different schemes under the same regulations.

Cait will speak about her experiences.

Our other client, a qualified mechanic, under a scheme known as the community action programme, was required to work unpaid cleaning furtniture for 30 hours a week for six months. The scheme was not once properly explained to him. While he desperately wants to find work, he objects to doing unpaid work which is unrelated to his qualifciations and which will not assist him in re-entering the job market.

He refused to participate and as a result, has been stripped of six months benefits of jobseekers’ allowance.

Continue reading →

Mental health illness and failing work capability assessments

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This is a post in progress which I’ll be adding to, so there’ll be changes/additions/updates etc:

A couple of months ago, Mental Health Northeast (an umbrella group which represents about 340 voluntary and community groups for people with mental health illnesses in the northeast) ran a survey to collect information about the experiences people  with mental health problems were having as they went through Atos work capability assessments.

At a recent Hardest Hit meeting in Newcastle, MHNE chief executive Lyn Boyd, who ran through some of the survey’s first results, said the organisation decided to run the survey because:

“A lot of our member groups were getting in touch with us and saying that they were really concerned about the people they’re working with and the impact that this [Atos work capability assessments] was having on them.

“And individuals that didn’t belong to any organisation – they were getting in touch with us in very distressed states, not knowing where to turn where to go for help and really just being very distressed – not feeling up to coping with what was happening. So, we wanted to see how widespread the problem was. We wanted to see what effect it was having on people’s social lives, their housing, their mental states.”

MHNE is still analysing responses from their questionnaire and writing a final report, but they sent through some information. They say the responses represent the experiences of about 200 individual service users.

They report that 99% of respondents reported that their work capability assessments had a negative impact on them, their families/carers and their recovery. Many mentioned despair, outright trauma and suicidal thoughts.

About 85.7% of respondents felt that no notice was taken of medical evidence submitted in support of their employment and support allowance claim.

Other comments from respondents include:

“Medical evidence was routinely not sought when needed and often little consideration was given to it when received.”

“It is only at the [work capability assessment] appeal meeting that mental health concerns were taken into account. There was too much focus on physical elements of a person’s illness – for example, questions like: 1) can you walk in a straight line 2) read these words 3) [do you have] any injuries.”

S_ (am withholding his name, because he has further WCA sessions to take) has schizophrenia. He said this at the Newcastle Hardest Hit meeting:

“I got five points [at my first work capability assessment] when I needed 15 [text changed after publication – initially said for support group]. The second time – I got none. This time, I felt well enough, with the help of the community mental health team, to go through an appeal… then I lost the tribunal. It took a year, which made me feel worse anyway.

“Then I went on Jobseekers’ Allowance, because the community mental health team said – okay, you’ve recovered sufficiently. You don’t need our help. I think it was to do with the cuts – they couldn’t provide the service. Six months after being on JSA and not getting anywhere fast…I’ve been telling my GP to refer me back to the CMH team, because I’m getting worse….I’m telling you – it’s getting worse.

“I’m going back to Atos in the next few weeks and what Lyn has been saying – I fully concur with all of that. They don’t listen to anything to do with mental health. They’re not trained. They don’t listen to your GP at all – they barely look at your medication prescriptions. Basically, if it wasn’t so tragic, it would be an utter laugh, but it’s just the fear of going through that process again without any help and at the moment, the GP and CHM are arguing [about] whether I’m going to get that help, but they’re not with me every night when I get the schizophrenia coming back, so really, I’m basically between a devil and the deep blue sea all the time and it’s going to get worse.

“It’s tickboxes and if you don’t fully satisfy most of their criteria, you get nowhere and that’s what I found all the time and basically it’s a very very bad system.”

Other comments from survey respondents include: Continue reading →

Barnet Council Not For Sale Conference

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If you’re in Barnet on Saturday 7 July, this event really is one that is worth attending: Barnet Council Not For Sale conference.

It’s on Saturday 7 July from 12pm to 3pm at the Greek Cypriot centre, Britannia Road, Britannia Road, North Finchley, London N12 9RU.

Something very interesting is happening in Barnet and it is worthy of serious attention. A group of extremely organised residents, bloggers and Unison members (John Burgess is branch secretary) has begun to put real pressure on (Tory) Barnet council as it has pursued much-derided plans to mass outsource council services to the private sector. There’s groundswell in Barnet and it’s worth keeping an eye on. For all the odds against them, local people, workers and writers in Barnet are scoring direct hits. They take hits, too, of course, but on they go.

Five very talented and able bloggers have delivered consistently damaging reviews of council outsourcing projects and forced very public investigations into the council’s horrendous contract failures. Burgess has taken members out on a number of well-attended and well-organised strikes. Bloggers, residents and library campaigners have managed to set up weekly pop-up libraries (their response to the council’s recent decision to close Friern Barnet library) which have been very well-attended by Barnet people and evolved into pro-democracy rallies. A local campaign to separate Brian Coleman from his London Assembly seat at the last elections delivered in a big way. A film made with local people who are having to live with the council’s care cuts decisions and monumental parking charges (the charges have slowed custom to high street businesses) has drawn full houses and the council’s ire. As I say – an interesting picture and one that continues to unfold.

A lot of the people involved in the Barnet fight for public services and against the government will be at the Barnet Not For Sale Conference. It will be worth hearing what they have to say about strong, anti-government, community-driven organising.

Turned down for Disability Living Allowance before applying for it…?

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…in a manner of speaking.

Here’s a short and disturbing story (very likely a common one, too – there are many reports of similar situations around):

At a recent Hardest Hit meeting for people with disabilities in Newcastle, the woman* in the video below (who describes herself as severely to profoundly deaf and whom I talked with at some length after she spoke at a Local Cuts session) said she’d been told by her welfare rights advisors to expect her application for Disability Living Allowance to be turned down on first application.

She says in the video:

“What I find incredible is now is that I’m being told by professionals – “Well, you’ve got that far [completed an application form for DLA] but expect it to be turned down. That’s normal. You know, you’re going to have to go to appeal.””

She wasn’t sure what sort of hint she was supposed to take from this – either, that she wasn’t eligible for DLA at any rate (although she wondered why she’d be encouraged to apply or appeal at all if that was the case), or that the application process is now so stringent that many applicants are failed on first application as a matter of course (“that’s normal”) and their only hope lies in the second part of the process – appeal. That makes the application process even more complex and even more drawn-out and likely deters people from pursuing their claims. Already, this woman is worried about it, as well she might be. Continue reading →

People on the frontline of austerity Britain. Part one: the Northwest

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This year, I’m talking to people in different parts of the country about the ways that welfare changes, NHS reform and council cuts and charges (particularly in social care) are affecting lives.

Most of the people I’ve spoken to use a range of services and are affected by changes across the board – ESA and DLA assessments, council social care cuts and charges and NHS reform. Apparently, only 12% of the government’s cuts have been implemented. People are on edge waiting for the rest.

Extracts from these articles are appearing the Guardian here and in the Society Guardian.

This first report is from the Northwest.

 

Richard Atkinson, Cheshire

“A lot of people have got to be in this position…forced to finish work in one way or another and unable to get any money…it’s a threatening prospect.” Richard Atkinson, Cheshire (photograph: Charles Shearer)

I start to understand that care cuts and costs might be leading people to take risks with themselves when I go to Lisa Henshaw’s* house and find her front door unlocked. I knock, hear her call out, and I try the door, which is open.

“Wow,” I think, brilliantly. “That’s not very secure.” I wander down the hall to find her. Then I get it.

Henshaw, 48, has rheumatoid arthritis (she was diagnosed when she was two). She has limited use of her hands and does not walk easily. Mostly, she must use her electric wheelchair to move. This morning, she woke up feverish and “very, very shivery.” That’s how I find her – a small figure lying on her bed next to a red plastic container that her carer left out in case Henshaw needed to be sick.

She’s alone, because “I’ve run out of carer hours,” she says, grimly. Direct payments from her local council fund about five carer hours a day (starting with a couple of hours in the morning, to help her to bathe and dress) and her carer had to leave at ten for another job.

She didn’t want to ask another carer to come, because “I have to preserve my [care] hours… for an emergency.” The front door was unlocked, because Henshaw was waiting for medicine to be delivered and was worried about missing it. So – I end up waiting for the drug and signing for it and making Henshaw her mid-morning hot drink.

Then, I leave her to her problems.

She has plenty of them – “it isn’t always gloomy like this,” she says, “…but I never had to worry like this before.” Henshaw faces an ESA work capability assessment (which will cost her – she’ll have to pay a carer to fill in her forms for her) and a Disability Living Allowance assessment. She was given a lifetime DLA award as a child, but will be reassessed as the personal independence payment replaces DLA.

There’s also the ongoing issue of Henshaw’s living arrangements. Henshaw wants to keep living in her own home, but will need extra care for that as she ages.

She isn’t too sure that funds will be available, though, and worries that her local council will put her in a carehome. It’s easy to see why she wants to stay. She’s made her housing trust bungalow a magical place. Each room is a riot of retro – flowered walls, bright surfaces, lustrous curtains and winking lamps. You want to follow the lights and explore it.

Henshaw just wants to stay in it. Her concern is that her council will look at her requests for more carer hours, decide that it can’t afford them, say that she’s at risk alone and move her to a carehome. So, she needs to fight for extra care hours without drawing her council’s attention to the fact that she needs extra care hours. There isn’t an answer to this, but that hardly helps. Henshaw torments herself trying to find one.

The irony is that there might not be a carehome, either. Council officers told Henshaw recently that they didn’t have suitable spaces. So, in Henshaw’s mind now is an end-scene where she is stuck in her beautiful home without enough help. Doors are shutting wherever she looks. The Independent Living Fund has closed (people with disabilities were once able to apply to the ILF for extra money for care). In some parts of the country, councils are, incredibly, capping spending on high-cost care. On her bad days, Henshaw imagines how those chapters of the story might play. Continue reading →

Hate crime, hate reporting and the hardest hit

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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.

Continue reading →

Needing the NHS: to Totnes

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This is the latest in the transcripts from recorded interviews I’m publishing as I talk to people who are dealing firsthand with fallout from public sector cuts and the recession around the country. I’m publishing these transcripts between longer articles and testimonies that are appearing at False Economy and elsewhere.

This is a transcript from a discussion with Trina Furre, a member of a patient advisory and support group for people with arthritis in South Devon. Trina has had rheumatoid arthritis since she was 19. In this transcript, she talks about her concerns for the NHS and fears about having to pay for healthcare and also about her support group’s battle to keep a hydrotherapy pool at Torbay hospital open.

On relying on drug therapy:

“I got rheumatoid arthritis when I was 19 – so all the way through, I’ve been under the care of rheumatology departments. I’ve been put on a very expensive new drug (called Humira) which costs about £10,000 a year per patient. It’s been pretty life-changing for me, but you know… one of the things that I’ve done with my support group is put up a forum for people with arthritis and [there are] threads that are talking about the new biological drugs [for treatment of arthritis].

“[Because the forums are worldwide], a lot of people [in other countries] are saying -“Will your insurance company cover the cost of this? Which drugs will they pay for and which drugs won’t they pay for?” There’s a whole tier of stuff that [people outside the UK] have to think about. They have to try and convince their insurance companies that it’s worth funding that particluar drug – whereas here in the UK, if you qualify medically, you get the drug pretty much. There’s a bit of postcode lottery in that it is easier to get in some areas than others – but it is just so different than living in fear that [your] insurance company is going to stop the funding…

“It’s one of the new types of biologic drugs that are now used quite extensively for people with arthritis. The down side of it is that it is a new family of drugs that is very expensive to produce and they are very expensive per patient.

“A lot people don’t know…the thing that really worries a lot of people with chronic illnesses is that if this thing with [needing to buy private health] insurance comes in, there would be no insurance that I could get. Nobody [no insurance company] would touch me with a barge pole. Nobody in their right mind would give me health insurance. It only works if you’re completely healthy and very young. I don’t know what the provisions would be if you’re already ill… Most people don’t have private health insurance and it always used to be frowned upon if you went private. It wasn’t approved of in certain circles, so the whole notion of people having to buy health insurance will be a really hard one to sell.

Continue reading →