Sue Powell, Gloucestershire Socialist Party
Keir Starmer’s Labour has pledged to get tough on benefit claimants and ‘get Britain working’. About 22% of people of working age – about 9.2 million – are ‘economically inactive’, i.e. not employed or seeking work or training. The Office of National Statistics has warned the latest figures give a distorted picture, many carers, disabled people, students and retirees don’t work and claim no benefits.
The figures are fodder to critics of the ‘nanny state’, including Labour which, to reduce spending, aims to get two groups “back to work” with a stick and carrot approach. They will offer youth aged 16-24 training opportunities or work (that’s the carrot) but deny benefits if they refuse (the stick). Carers, sick, disabled and older workers are by far the biggest group. Labour, waving its stick again, intends to “drive down economic inactivity caused by ill-health”.
Labour Work and Pensions secretary Liz Kendall pinched much of her tough new plan from the Tories. Labour’s announcement prompted a media outcry about “shirkers” and calls for jobless youth and mentally ill people to be “dragged off benefits”. Employment Minister Alison McGovern spoke of “people stealing off the state”. How much do MPs claim for their energy bills?
Attacks on disabled and sick claimants
Disabled people already face tough work capability assessments and sanctions. Despite Kendall’s assurances about the positive effects of employment on the future of young people and the benefits to mental health, there is already more stick than carrot. Mental health professionals warn that proposals to send job coaches into mental health wards could have catastrophic effects.
Doubts about whether those registered sick or disabled are genuinely sick are farcical given the state of NHS mental health services and accessibility to GPs. The number of long-term sick people, has risen from 2 million before the pandemic to 2.6 million. This represents just 2% of the country’s total workforce.
Most work capability assessments do not involve an actual doctor and are weighted massively against claimants. A nurse assessing one disabled Socialist Party member admitted she had never heard of their neurological condition, despite receiving their medical reports.
Effects of previous clampdowns
Stringent measures introduced by Tory prime minister David Cameron fuelled verbal and physical attacks on disabled people, and the cuts led to suicides. Ed Miliband, then Labour leader, defended the “deserving poor” but said nothing of the undeserving rich.
The Labour government has proposed giving special powers to mayors and councils in their ‘get Britain working’ pilot areas, but have done nothing to reverse devastating cuts to local government. They have watched idly as thousands of livelihoods have been lost at Port Talbot steelworks, Luton Vauxhall factory, and countless other jobs lost in the retail and hospitality sectors.
Despite Starmer speaking of a “bulging benefits bill blighting our society”, nearly £23 billion in benefits goes unclaimed every year.
Reality of Universal Credit stats
Universal Credit is the main source of benefits for job seekers but it is also paid to those on low wages or insufficient hours – deemed “under employed” by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Claimants already face pressure and sanctions. Nearly 40% of Universal Credit recipients work. Parents and carers juggling work with care responsibilities are told to work more.
Bogus training schemes
When youth unemployment topped a million in the 1970s, the notorious Youth Training Scheme (YTS) was introduced whereby bosses were given the first six months pay for trainees by the government. These young workers were seldom taken on as bosses could replace them every six months with another super-exploited youth.
Pay and conditions were appalling. Participation in the schemes was often only possible due to family support. Countless industrial injuries and at least one death occurred under YTS because untrained, often unsupervised, youth were put to work in dangerous conditions. Then came Youth Opportunities followed by Workfare, in which young people worked real jobs in exchange for benefits without a real wage and rights at work. Trade unions must defend young workers and resist any attempts to establish such unashamed exploitation.
A socialist alternative
Job vacancies have fallen by 13.6% in the last year. Britain is not facing an ‘epidemic of economic inactivity’ but the outcome of industry’s terminal decline, decades of company closures and redundancies, the drive to push down wages, increase working hours and privatise public services – all in the interest of private profit. This Labour government is acting in the interest of the bosses’ system by attacking the rights and benefits gained by the working class through a century of struggle. Only public ownership, democratic working-class control of the economy and socialist planning can provide young people with decent jobs, high-quality affordable housing and a meaningful future.
