Hands off incapacity benefit

THE QUEEN’S speech on 17 May shows what Blair intends to do in the
first part of his third term. True to form, most of New Labour’s plans
are designed to make life better for rich profit-seekers and worse for
the rest of us. His big business agenda talks of ‘reforming’ the NHS
and the welfare state but he means more private-sector involvement and
more cutbacks.

One of their most draconian bills aims to curb what ministers call
‘spiralling’ incapacity-benefit (IB) costs. David Blunkett says he
wants to "coax" up to a million sick and disabled people off
IB and into work.

But IB is for people who can’t work through illness or
disability. And apart from that very vulnerable group who were
incapacitated early in life, most IB receivers have made national
insurance contributions all their lives.

Ex-mining and ex-shipbuilding areas are among those with the highest
take-up rate for IB. That shows that the conditions that these workers
toiled in have made them ill. And many workers in those industries
wrecked by previous governments were put off sick rather than adding
them to the unemployment figures.

Blunkett’s idea of ‘coaxing’ is to cut the income of those who
don’t find work. But where is the government going to put these
workers eager to "try out" employment, as New Labour coyly
puts it? After such disasters as Rover and Marconi there is increasingly
only low-paid unskilled work available.

New Labour’s majority in Parliament has been cut tremendously and
we could see more rebellions from MPs, particularly those from areas
with high numbers of IB claimants. A massive campaign of opposition
could convince these MPs to join in the fight against this legislation.


Hit the rich scroungers

THE GOVERNMENT treats Incapacity Benefit claimants as ‘lazy’ and
‘scroungers’. Yet all New Labour’s policies are designed to aid
the real scroungers in our capitalist society – the super-rich.

Britain’s wealthiest 1,000 people have just got richer and richer
over the last 25 years under both Tory and New Labour governments. They
are now ‘worth’ a record £250 billion, up by nearly a quarter on last
year, according to the latest Sunday Times rich list. That’s
152% wealthier than when Blair came to power in 1997!

These scroungers gain from pro-rich government policies yet they
avoid paying tax on their ‘earnings’. Around the world they avoid
taxes totalling a cool $860 billion a year.

The rich make this $860 billion out of the $11.5 trillion they stack
away. They use ‘offshore’ companies, washing their cash through a
host of tax havens, anything rather than contribute towards the
societies where their businesses operate.

The super-rich are robbing the poor in ‘their own’ countries and
in the ex-colonial world. But rich business people, their accountants
and tax experts, who bay for punitive action against IB claimants, all
say there’s nothing anyone can do about this.

When their wealth is threatened the rich often threaten to carry out
a ‘strike of capital’, in other words they say they will stop
investing.

Socialists say there is ‘something we can do about it’. If these
rich individuals try to stop investment, their companies should be taken
into public ownership with compensation paid only to those in need. And,
if they can’t do a useful job, we could always put them on Incapacity
Benefit!