Controversy rages about Liam Byrne and Labour’s developing position on social security reform as indicated in articles in the Daily Mail and The Guardian.
Controversy rages about Labour’s developing position on social security reform as indicated in articles in the Daily Mail and The Guardian, writes Declan Gaffney
In the Mail, a source “close to Liam Byrne” says:
“Decent Labour voters see their neighbours lie about all day and get benefits while they are working their socks off, and say, “Why should I vote Labour when they let this happen?”.”
While in the Guardian, Byrne writes that William Beveridge:
“…never foresaw unearned support as desirable.”
For Sue Marsh, this is a betrayal of disabled claimants who are faced with massive cuts to sickness and disability benefits under the coalition’s welfare reforms.
She writes:
“You talk of “unearned support” Liam… We know about the hundreds of thousands terrified about what happens to those who CANNOT earn support.
“Until recently, we believed you gave it freely.”
Sunny Hundal, however, writes:
“Labour ministers have deliberately avoided mentioning disabled people in their rhetoric, and Liam Byrne explicitly attacks cuts to disability benefits in his article.
“They are not talking about disability benefits here.”
So who is right? Unfortunately, both are. Labour is trying to run with the hare (defending disabled claimants) while hunting with the hounds (attacking those who ‘spend a lifetime on benefits’). The problem is that these two groups are very hard to distinguish, because long-term benefit receipt is dominated by disability.
The evidence comes from the benefit system itself.
As Chart 1 shows, 57 per cent of all long-term working age benefit claims (running for five years or more) are among people entitled to Disability Living Allowance – the benefit which compensates people for additional care and mobility costs they face due to severe impairment.
A further 9% are for people receiving Carer’s Allowance because they are caring for someone receiving a disability benefit (DLA or Attendance Allowance). So two thirds of long-term benefit receipt is accounted for by identifiable disability.
But not all disabilities trigger entitlement to DLA, so the true figure for disability as a driver of long-term benefit receipt will be higher again.
Chart 1:
So Sue is right to argue Labour’s ‘scrounger’ rhetoric is implicitly, albeit unintentionally, directed against disabled people. This is unavoidable as long as the issue is framed in terms of ‘a lifetime on benefits’. Attacking coalition cuts to disability benefits does little to counteract the framing of long-term benefit claimants as ‘scroungers’ when most are in fact disabled or caring for people with disabilities.
At the same time Sunny is right that Labour is making efforts to avoid disabled people being tarred with the ‘scrounger’ brush. But trying to balance the message in this way puts the opposition in a contradictory position.
Bear in mind that many severely disabling conditions are invisible to casual observers (and read Sue’s blog if you need to be convinced on this). So public perceptions are a poor guide to what is happening to benefit receipt.
The saloon-bar wisdom of statements like ‘decent Labour voters see their neighbours lie about all day and get benefits while they are working their socks off” needs to be confronted with the evidence the UK public grossly overestimates abuse of the benefit system and grossly underestimates the scale of disability in benefit caseloads.
One statistic serves to illustrate the point: there are a quarter of a million phone calls to DWP’s benefit fraud hotline annually. One per cent of these calls result in a sanction for benefit fraud. Put another way, 99% don’t. That means an awful lot of legitimate claimants are getting hauled over the coals every year because of snap judgments by ill-informed neighbours and acquaintances.
Now ask yourself: do we want opposition policy to be based on the perceptions of voters or on the evidence?
Would-be political tacticians will have no hesitation in opting for the former, but Labour will have to live with its chosen policy for the long-term. Policy based on ill-informed grievances will do nothing to address the real issues about social security, and, as evidence (pdf) from the United States suggests, may be doomed to political failure as well.
The main reason disability dominates long-term benefit receipt is that over the last 15 years, prior to the recession, other types of benefit claim reduced significantly – notably for lone parents and people on sickness benefits . Labour’s rhetoric in opposition seems strangely oblivious to its record in office- described by David Freud no less as “remarkable”.
There is serious thinking going on in Labour circles on what the next phase of social security reform might look like, and there are hints of this in Byrne’s Guardian article. But seconding grievances against benefit claimants and then seeking to evade the consequences by saying you aren’t talking about disability benefits is a untenable position.
The opposition should be trying to change the terms of debate, not passively reproducing them.
That wouldn’t generate friendly coverage in the Daily Mail – but as the blogger Mason Dixon, Autistic put it:
“Short-term headlines are not worth the lasting brilliance of a solid paradigm change in a national debate.”
See also:
• Miliband quizzed on disability reforms, apologises for omission from speech – Shamik Das, September 30th 2011
• Miliband must stop spreading myths about benefit claimants – Tim Nichols, September 28th 2011
• How disability reforms were whitewashed from Labour’s conference – Daniel Elton, September 27th 2011
• Shameful incapacity benefit consensus between main parties must stop – Steve Griffiths, January 5th 2011
• The paradoxical stability of welfare expenditure (and why we should be spending more) – Declan Gaffney, July 10th 2010
74 Responses to “Labour’s untenable position on social security and disability”
Simon Brader
Sadly this is yet another example of Labour’s professional politicians pandering to the squeezed-middle Daily Mail reading constituency that they believe is the the only way to (their own) job security. In this I’m sure they are ably-abetted by any manner of professional advisors, image-makers, PR consultants. All in all a happy cabal content to take the money with minimal rocking of the boat.
It seriously makes me wonder about my membership of the party. I want to belong to a party that cares only about equality and fairness and social justice and that believes that we should be measured, as a society, by the way we treat the weakest within it.
In short, Mr Byrne, Mr Milliband et al – grow a pair!
Jos Bell
I would definitely not call the left ‘self satisfied’. As this posting clearly exhibits the left is worryingly fragmented, something which the right can and does exploit to the hilt. Having worked on numerous anti-poverty measures prior to and for the Labour government, researching, developing and assessing programmes across the length and breadth of the country, I can honestly refute the charge that people were not given the chance to be heard. Communities and individuals were widely consulted ( there was even a ‘condition’ known as initiativitis!), programmes and policies were continually evaluated and the results fed back and integrated into any legislative changes. I was part of this process and so can assure you it happened. Not all was perfect, but a very great deal was achieved and many families were lifted out of poverty as well as prevented from falling into poverty. Now so many of these measures are being overturned and dismantled as part of a full scale assault on the welfare state.
As I say, the current opposition needs to rein back from a reactive position and produce a constructive agenda for growth based upon equality and inclusivity
Anonymous
To create the platform you desire (not the Parliamentary Labour Pigs) would require taking a lead on the issue and challenging the public perception fostered by Tories in all three polarized Parliamentary Parties with the media. That would require a Leader or group within the Shadow Cabinet to be able to fight and win a case as democratic advocates, they would also have to have vision and imagination to create this more sound platform. That is well beyond the ability, grasp and skill of the current PLP whose agenda will not change. We all remember Ed Milliband’s response at your Conference on disability (I am happily free of this valueless empty Party now) which was hardly mature, authentic or intelligible and could have been delivered by a child. It revealed him to be a man of childish rhetoric, weak conviction and having no real concerns about people who are vulnerable. I also happen to recall an ex-serviceman and his wife in the news lately who committed suicide after being fobbed off, they chose death with dignity than life with humiliation and hunger and this was as a result of the last as well as current administration. Labour has no claim to be friends with the armed forces as their Leadership have no compassion or mercy and as we witnessed with expenses and lobbying no honor either. They are not the friends of the armed forces and they are certainly not the Party that once could offer the kinds of values society is lacking. They were elected in 1997 by many who did not make as much money as they would have under a Tory Government to address the problems the Tories had ignored. They failed and simply emulated the Tories. Expect no change from Liam Bryne’s sick policies, lack of responsibility and arrogance, as a mad child. He is the true face of the current and past Labour Party, New, Blue, Black, Purple, Red, its all garbage. None of it is about the lives of the people of this country and none of it offers any real substantive solutions the people require. The Party has remain largely unchanged, uncreative but remains equally untrustworthy and equally petty and ruthless. The unelites still reign supreme and Ed Milliband is truly the greatest unelite I have ever seen in any occupation or walk of life. In the meantime the majority are seeking an alternative to the three main parties as they did in the EU elections and in Scotland. Option “D” please, a representative legitimate and “normal” option please no more weirdos and mad children.
Jodi Bailey
Why 'scrounger' rhetoric on benefits inevitably targets disabled people, whether you want it to or not http://t.co/6Y3IvMU0
Jodi Bailey
Why 'scrounger' rhetoric on benefits inevitably targets disabled people, whether you want it to or not http://t.co/6Y3IvMU0