Welfare White Paper DAVID BOYLE
Banking on reform T
hey are going to play a central role in shaping so many lives in the United Kingdom. They have been called both the new Beveridge set- tlement and measures that are likely to lead to “despair”. They are the progeny of a Conservative radical, Iain Duncan Smith, and a Liberal Democrat radical, Steve Webb. That gives a clue that the long-awaited proposals for benefits reform, pre-digested before the weekend and likely to be published in a White Paper as The Tablet went to press, are far- reaching and controversial. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who warned that he was anxious about the Government’s plans, and that they would risk people being pushed into a “downward spiral of despair”, may well be right. There is no doubt that the prospect of benefits changes is extraordinarily stressful to people who depend on them. On the other hand, there is no obvious virtue in simply clinging to the status quo. There has to be two cheers at least for the
new “universal benefit” that Mr Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, wants to replace the multiplicity of existing ones. Complexity can be a way of suiting every- one involved. But in practice, it is used by the system to bludgeon recipients into categories
The Health in Pregnancy Grant must be one of the most short-lived welfare provisions ever. First mooted in 2007, it was introduced in April 2009 as a one-off payment to help women cope with the additional costs of hav- ing a baby, but the coalition Government now wants to abolish it, writes Paul Nicolson. Labour MP and former head of the Child
Poverty Action Group Kate Green has tabled an amendment to the Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Bill that will give the coalition a chance to stop and think about relationship between the cuts and public health. The bill abolishes the £190 Health in Pregnancy Grant that women can apply for at the twenty-fifth week of their pregnancy. The Sure Start Grant for the second child has already gone. There is a failure in Whitehall thinking about the negative public-health conse- quences of poverty-level welfare, illustrated in a spat between the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Department
12 | THE TABLET | 13 November 2010
representing generations of initiatives by des- perate ministers. There also has to be a cheer, that people receiving benefits will no longer be forced to do nothing, under the guise of being “available for work”. Passivity is one of the unpredictable and
unfortunate side effects of the version of the welfare state adopted in the UK since William
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is piloting the biggest welfare shake-up for more than 60 years, with a focus on reinventing the work ethic. But redrawing the benefits map is only half the story. Without truly local banks to help create jobs, there is no way forward
Beveridge’s blueprint for its creation was pub- lished in late 1942. The fact that Mr Duncan Smith’s reforms are attempting to change that is a huge step forward. Nor is there anything wrong, in principle,
about expecting claimants to give something back in return for their state subsidy – as long as what they do in return genuinely benefits them. Mr Duncan Smith, however, has some dif-
ficult questions to answer. Here are five of them: ●Will you be able to use the benefits system – a blunt instrument if ever there was one – to ease people into worthwhile, creative and life-enhancing unpaid work? Or, in practice, can the huge system deal only with huge out- sourced agencies, only able to provide repetitive, pointless and alienating tasks? ● Can the reforms be used to encourage claimants to get involved in their own neigh- bourhoods? Or will they be forced into approved and audited “McJobs”, which are all about instilling “work discipline” and noth- ing about building creative relationships and supportive networks? This is an important issue. The first option is humanising; the sec- ond is semi-slavery. ●Can a state organisation such as the Benefits
‘The health of newborn babies is put in jeopardy by women’s stress and debt’
of Health before the May election, and that now continues with the coalition’s cuts. In 2009 we sent to DWP Ministers research by the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition, which has international recogni- tion, showing that poor maternal nutrition increases the risks of permanent develop- mental brain disorder in the foetus, in low birth weight in babies, and mental and phys- ical ill health during a person’s lifetime. Poor cognitive ability and cerebral palsy were high- lighted. We also sent ministers the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation’s scientifically researched, and publically supported, minimum-income food standard of £44 a week. We asked the DWP to consider whether the unemployment ben- efit of a woman aged 18 to 25 of £51.85 a week – it is slightly less per head for a couple
– can provide a healthy diet and all other necessities before conception and during pregnancy. The DWP ministers sent the question to the Department of Health ministers to respond. They replied it would not be appro- priate to comment; they forwarded our evidence to the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, which refused to comment on the poverty-level incomes of unemployed women and has now been abolished! This matters. Professor Baroness Findlay told the House of Lords during a debate on the Child Poverty Bill in January that “it is becoming apparent that low birth weights, of which Britain has the highest rate in Western Europe, are associated with poor cognitive abilities and serious brain disorders such as cerebral palsy”. Low birth weights in the UK
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40