Today the Queen’s speech will consist of support for people and small businesses through the economic recession. The idea is that when times are tough for people, government plans to push for fairness. As for welfare reform this will consist of a greater crackdown on benefit cheats. Measures such as a ‘one strike and you are out’ system to deter benefit recipients from cheating. Pilots that use voice recordings to detect liars will be rolled out across the country.
In the Guardian the article is titled : PM to return to New Labour’s so-called ‘respect agenda’ with proposal that fraudulent claimants lose access to benefits for a month.
The Queens Speech offers support to small businesses yet toughens up on benefit recipients, people who are struggling to survive as benefit levels have not risen with the food prices or monthly bills. There is very little respect or fairness on the agenda for benefit recipients. In fact after reading the Guardians article governments proposals for welfare reform are beginning to sound a bit like a witch hunt, turning local communities against people who have to work cash-in-hand a couple of hours a week because benefits are so low they are keeping families living in poverty.
Proposals that create headlines such as benefit cheats are seriously worrying as they immediately incriminate every person on benefits. Proposals ignore the fact that many people are working cash-in-hand and claiming out of need, not greed. Either we reform the welfare system to enable people to work legally or increase the levels of benefits. Government needs to ask why people are claiming and working before they enforce greater sanctions, as recommended by Paul Gregg. In tough financial times the government should be looking at ways of developing informal work and entrepreneurial skills to enable formal self employment and local enterprises to grow: to create social mobility and ‘unlock talent’
As for fairness and respect, people living in poverty and on benefits receive neither, the current benefit system traps people on benefits and in informal work. The term ‘benefit cheats’ is so over used in recent months that it is becoming difficult to know what it means; is it people working and claiming or simply people on benefits and therefore cheating the rest of society in these hard times? If the latter is the case then who is to decide who is cheating? As the levels of unemployment, the numbers of benefit rcipients and the cost of bills rise in the coming months will the levels of benefit fraud also rise? Surely we need a complete modernisation of the welfare system to serve its purpose in modern day society – to support people in times of crisis, as a temporary measure with the maximum amount of dignity. The welfare system should be at its best now – not being demolished. The Need NOT Greed campaign is is supporting the Welfare reform campaign lead by Compass.
The Jobcentre Plus has been hailed by the DWP Select Committee as a success story thanks to good management and most importantly the high levels of experience at the top and the involvement of local ground staff in shaping the changes.