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Archive for September, 2009

The nanny state vs benefit fraud – which side are you on?

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Over the weekend the papers highlighted the case of two police officers told that taking care of each other’s children for a few hours a day was illegal – they should have paid to be vetted and registered as childminders. The law was intended to protect children, but its zealous enforcement has been widely mocked: the women were police officers (who don’t need vetting?); and the ‘reward’ they earned was reciprocal childcare. But imagine a very similar story, with a slightly different slant.

‘Single mums caught cheating the system – when will we end the scourge of benefit fraud? Two single mums on benefits were charged with benefit fraud yesterday, after enforcement officials discovered what they described as an ‘illegal childminding business.’ The women explained “from time to time one of us would look after both kids, just while the other had to go somewhere for the day. We’d usually give £20 or so, just to cover the cost of food and a bit of travel. We didn’t declare it because we knew we’d lose some benefit if we did, and it really wasn’t much money.” Officials saw it differently however, and have charged them with failing to declare earnings while on benefits. They could have their benefits reduced or stopped, and be forced to pay back benefits they’ve already been given.’

There’s really not much difference, other than the social status of the offenders (police officer or single mum on benefits), and the odd £20. Still, many of those frothing about the ‘nanny state’ and Britain’s burgeoning bureaucracy would no doubt be equally righteous in their indignation towards these ‘benefit scroungers’ and their fraud.

In reality, many women on benefits do a bit of childcare on the side, and would be only too happy to declare it, if they knew that they wouldn’t end up worse off. This kind of part-time, community-spirited work needs to be encouraged, not penalised. But while the police officers have public sympathy behind them, the women on benefits are struggling along with far less support.

Finally, while the story centres around the legalities of looking after children, it inadvertently highlights the challenges facing many parents (particularly mothers) – the need for affordable, accessible childcare. These particular police officers were lucky in having each other (until OFSTED intervened). Many women aren’t so lucky, and either end up paying out a large proportion of their wages in childcare, or just can’t work in the jobs they’d otherwise like. That’s why Community Links has repeatedly called for an increase in the availability of good quality, affordable and “open at all times” childcare, and run childcare schemes throughout Newham (and yes OFSTED, before you ask, we are completely legal).

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Posted in Child Poverty, Informal Economy, employment | No Comments »

International Peace Day: a great example of a Chain Reaction

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Ten years ago, film director Jeremy Gilley had the idea for an international day of peace – one day each year of global ceasefire and non-violence. Today, it’s officially recognised by the UN, is being marked in all 192 countries worldwide, and has bought two feuding sportsware companies back together in (PR-driven) harmony.

It’s one of those great ideas that works because it involves everyone – government, charity, business, ordinary people. It grew, from Jeremy’s initial dream into a groundbreaking campaign, through something I’m going to call a Chain Reaction – connecting with people from a wide range of backgrounds, collaborating with them, and then committing with them to achieving something great.

Not coincidentally, Jeremy told us all about how he’d done it at our ‘Chain Reaction’ event last year (watch the video above), where over a thousand people were doing a similar thing.

Jeremy’s story embodies what Chain Reaction is about – people having innovative new ideas that cut across sectors, meeting other people who are equally passionate, and then making them real. And the good news is that we’re holding another one this year.

We’ll be revealing more details about this year’s event later in the week, but keep the 12th November free in your diary, and prepare to meet some senior government ministers, community groups, business leaders, and activists, and perhaps start your own chain reaction.

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Posted in General, Innovation, Inspiration | No Comments »

Dynamic Benefits report missed a paragraph on the informal economy

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

I think there was a paragraph missing from the Centre for Social Justice’s Dynamic benefits report yesterday. I’ve copied it below, just incase.

Furthermore, the barriers that stop people getting jobs, coupled with low benefits rates, often force them into informal, or cash-in-hand work. The informal economy is worth £120bn each year in the UK, 12% of GDP. Recognising and addressing this could prove vital to the success of our proposal.

People on benefits often take cash-in-hand work because taking on formal work would make them worse off, as we identify above. Reforming the benefits system would help remove the need for cash-in-hand work, thereby boosting the formal economy. Ensuring that those already working in the informal economy are welcomed into the formal economy, rather than punished, would then harness the entrepeneurship and effort of these workers for the rest of the economy.

Being involved in a campaign on the informal economy means I’m usually looking out for it, and yesterday I found it buried on page 295 of the report. I’ll quote in full: “A further advantage is that this more generous disregard will mean that many of those working in the informal economy can be recognised, and have their income regularised.”

It makes the point (specifically in regard to single adults), but just not very loudly – I think they might have missed the significance. Centre for Social Justice – in the event of a last-minute eureka moment over the informal economy, feel free to copy the bit above. Many of those you’re aiming to move off benefits are already working in some way. Formalising this, rather than punishing it, means you’ve created a load of extra jobs and have a load more money flowing into the economy. We’ve covered the details of how this could work elsewhere (pdf).

Still, its glaring omission aside, the report clearly illustrates one of the most significant barriers stopping people getting a formal job: they might well end up with less money. The report recognises (pg 96, if you’re interested) that Community Links – working with people in this situation every day – has said this before(pdf), but usually to counter the charge that people stay on benefits purely out of laziness. Perhaps everyone’s beginning to realise that in the current system, people often need to stay on benefits. This is an important shift in the debate, whether or not the report’s recommendations are eventually taken up.

It proposes to tackle this problem through radical change to the benefits system, and many of the specific proposals are very similar to ideas we’ve been suggesting for a while. Again, it’s nice to hear them talked about so widely. But crucially, what will happen next? Will the ideas be taken on and developed, looking beyond the immediate problems of the benefits system and considering other factors like informal work? Or will they be quietly dropped, as politicians desperately look for cuts and shy away from a large initial investment?

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Posted in Benefits, Informal Economy, Welfare, employment | 1 Comment »

How a roadside chat uncovered a £300,000 scam

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

London tube by Currybet on flickr

Community Links’ Aaron Barbour is never short of good ideas and his suggestion that I look into informal working on construction sites connected with the Olympics set me off on a really interesting investigation.

Aaron had suggested I look into whether informal working was going on within the massive 2012 construction effort.

First stop was the Olympic stadium, which is easy to get close to but nigh on impossible to access. Electrified fences and closely guarded turn styles keep the workers in and anyone who wants to talk to them out.

After cycling round the Olympic site a couple of times and only managing to speak to a couple of workers, I tried the East London Line extension site – where new bridges and track are being laid between Shoreditch and Dalston to improve links between north, east and south London.

It was much easier to talk to workers here – a lot of guys were hanging about outside the Dalston site, having a cigarette or helping direct traffic around the bottleneck the one way system. The first two I spoke to worked for Sky Blue, an agency which is part of construction giant Carillion, which is running the project along with Balfour Beatty. They were laying concrete along the new line and told me they were being faced with a pay cut from £10 per hour to £7 an hour if they moved on to the next job Sky Blue wanted them to do. One of the men said he was refusing to take the lower paid work but others said they had no choice because there was so little work around.

This pair also mentioned, almost in passing, a gangmaster who had been paying his team of fifeteen Indian workers only a third of what he was collecting for their work. Another worker said this gangmaster, Paul Singh, used to boast in the pub that he was clearing £6000 per week – over £300,000 over the year he was contracted to provide workers.  At least eight other workers confirmed the story and told me which sub-contractor had used the gangmaster.

I knew the Balfour Beatty / Carillion consortium had made a commitment to using local labour as part of the deal which helped them secure the contract, so using labour from a gangmaster – who appeared to have made off with hundreds of taxpayers money – was obviously a big deal.

It turned out the contractor who used the gangmaster didn’t tell Balfour Beatty / Carillion or anyone else about what the guy had been up to, but quietly got rid of him shortly before the contractor’s work on the site was complete.

So the first Transport for London – who have overall responsibility for the site – knew about the scam was when I asked them to respond to the allegation of wrong doing.

TFL first of all said they could not be expected to know how much every worker was being paid, although they admitted they did not know whether or not the workers were getting less than the minimum wage. But after the story had appeared in the Observer, they told the Evening Standard that they were instructing Balfour Beatty / Carillion to carry out a full investigation.

One of the confusing aspects of this affair was the fact that these fifeteen workers had worked for almost a year for much less – perhaps as much as half – than other men around them doing the same concrete laying job. And yet, the contractor had copies of their passports, which TFL says they have seen, so there was nothing to suggest they were illegal workers.

It didn’t make sense. Why would they work for so long without complaining to anyone?

Finding the answer to that question is the subject of the next stage of this investigation. I’ll keep you posted.

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Posted in Regeneration, employment | No Comments »

Community Allowance Pilot Partners Wanted

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009


We (the CREATE Consortium) are looking for three community organisations to pilot the Community Allowance with us. Could you be involved?

Background – the Community Allowance proposal
A Community Allowance would allow benefit claimants to supplement their income without incurring a penalty – this month’s New Start magazine has a useful overview of the idea, which is starting to be picked up by government. We hope to be involved in piloting the idea, and would welcome your involvement.

Under the government’s Right to Bid scheme, any organisation can propose to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) a new way of delivering any of its services. We thought this was a good opportunity to work with the DWP to pilot the Community Allowance. We developed a Right to Bid proposal for a £2.2 million pilot programme in 15 areas across the UK, and submitted it in January 2009. In April, they asked us a number of questions about our proposal, and you can read our answers here.

In July 2009 they called us to a meeting where they informed us that the Right to Bid process was looking for much smaller scale pilots. They also said that the outgoing Secretary of State, James Purnell MP, had made it clear that the Community Allowance could not be piloted for people on Income Support or Job Seekers Allowance.

They rejected our bid but asked us to submit another proposal for a smaller scale pilot operating in three areas anywhere in the UK. They also said our bid would stand a greater chance of success if we restricted the people who could participate to those who are on Incapacity Benefit and Employment and Support Allowance.

We asked all the organisations that had already expressed an interest in piloting the Community Allowance if they would be prepared to go ahead on that basis, and over 30 organisations said they would.

Aims of pilots:

  • To test the feasibility and impact of the Community Allowance on participants and their communities in a range of settings across the UK.
  • To capture learning and evidence that could inform further development of the Community Allowance to people on other benefits (e.g. Income Support and Job Seekers Allowance).

Want to be involved in the pilot programme?

We are looking for community organisations from across the UK that are interested in becoming a partner with CREATE in order to run the Community Allowance. We would like to work with organisations that are:

  • Local community based charities, social enterprises or community interest companies
  • Trusted locally, with a track record of working with ‘hard to reach’ people
  • Equipped with the capacity and skills to support the Community Allowance participants
  • Able to generate local paid work (e.g. community research or youth work) or identify and place people in paid work that strengthens their neighbourhood (e.g. School Crossing Patrol)

We’d like these pilots to be in a range of rural and urban areas. In each area we anticipate identifying and working with one or more partners, each of whom would recruit, employ, and support people. We have estimated that in each area the Community Allowance could create around 80 part time jobs.

If you wish to develop a proposal for how your organisation would deliver a Community Allowance pilot programme in your area, please download a proposal form and guidance notes. Completed forms need to be back to the CREATE Consortium by 5pm on 1st October 2009, either to CREATE Consortium, 33 Corsham Street, London N1 6DR or to n.alexander@dta.org.uk

Type of Jobs: Eligible jobs on the Community Allowance would be restricted to those that contribute to strengthening the neighbourhood. This would be defined and refined by the CREATE Consortium over the duration of the pilots through dialogue with the CREATE partners.

Real Time Evaluation: The CREATE Consortium will contract with an independent evaluator to carry out a real time evaluation of the pilot programme.

 Do get in touch on aaron.barbour@community-links.org with any suggestions or questions.

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Posted in Benefits, Community Engagement, Innovation, Regeneration, Welfare, employment | No Comments »

Theresa May MP: What is Conservative thinking on Welfare Reform…?

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Last week I went to listen to Theresa May MP (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) speaking about welfare reform at an event organised by Policy Exchange. In our previous blog we referred to the latest research by Policy Exchange revealing that unemployment was closer to six million than the current official figure of 2.44 million. May argued that the majority of these people have been ‘lurking in the shadows for the past twelve years’ and that many of whom can work and do want to work but they have been ‘let down by Labour’.

Similar to our blog post she highlighted that recent mass unemployment brought on by the recession has ‘brought a new focus on our welfare system and in many ways has exposed its inadequacies’ May later went on to assure the room that a Conservative government would do more than just promise a radical reform in the run up to the general election, but they would deliver on reform because they are ‘not afraid to be honest about the state of worklessness in Britain today’.

All well and good, but how are they planning on doing this and what do they mean by worklessness in Britain today? Well firstly May told us about how they would no longer hide people away on Incapacity Benefit, instead if they are capable of returning to work then ‘they will be provided with the support they need to get them there’. Secondly we were told how the Tories ‘would not be bullied by those, often from the left who opposed change’ Thirdly, as they understand that Government cannot solve this problem alone, they are ‘committed to working with individuals, communities, the public, private and the voluntary sector to break the culture of dependency’

All still a little ambiguous to me, so I eagerly awaited the Q&A for a little prompting on a more detailed explanation of Tory policy proposals. The questions came: ‘how exactly are you going to simplify the benefits system?’, ‘what are the differences between the two party’s policies on welfare?’ ‘Will the Tories recognise the six million figure if they get into power next year?’ (Watch the video  for the responses)

 Unfortunately I left the speech, still not much clearer on what the Conservative thinking on welfare reform is. To achieve a cultural shift around worklessness, which is what May said was paramount to their reforms, understanding the root causes of inter-generational benefit dependency within families and communities is essential. Yet there is not much evidence of this happening. Whichever political party is our next government, if reforms are to work they need to address the complexity of ‘interlocking problems that no government has successfully addressed, and no pontificating can possibly help to solve’.

 They need to reach out into these communities and work with the long-term unemployed, understanding their current situations, how they have coped over decades on benefits and what economic activity is really going on in these communities. We know from Need NOT Greed that people do have a strong desire to work but are really struggling to make the transition to independence. People have taken their own small steps back into work through bits and pieces of informal work. If the system enabled them to do this formally they would. To really break this cycle of worklessness and benefit dependency we need innovative political thinking to inspire individuals and communities to help themselves: use the skills from informal work to bring people close to the labour market, understand the local economy and support its development and make the benefits system an enabling transitional process, not a preventative one. These are proposals that should be on party manifestos, vocialised at welfare reform speeches and not ‘lurking in the shadows’ for another twelve years.

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Posted in Benefits, Child Poverty, Informal Economy, News, Welfare, employment | 2 Comments »