This is what happens when you prioritise lurid headlines over actual solutions
10 years ago David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party on a ‘modernisation’ ticket with a plan to make the party electable again. The failure of that project is evidenced by the party’s repeated reversion to type.
Whether evidenced by immigrant-bashing, hostility to Europe or, today, threatening the obese with benefit sanctions, the nasty party of old never really went away.
Indeed, under the veneer of ostensibly compassionate conservatism exists a far more traditional attitude to life: rich people will only work if you give the money whilst the poor will only do so if you take it away.
The latest wheeze is to threaten people who cannot work because they are obese or suffering from addiction problems with sanctions if they fail to seek treatment. Under the proposals which David Cameron will announce today, the Tories will reduce payments worth around £100 a week for those who don’t attend medical programmes.
The Conservatives plan to make £12bn in welfare cuts in the next parliament and today’s policy proposal is designed to make at least some of those savings.
However I have two major gripes with the announcement.
The first is the messaging
I mentioned already that the thin veneer of compassion has long-since dropped from the Tory brand. This ought to be driven home by today’s announcement. There is of course nothing inherently wrong with providing treatment to the obese or those suffering from drug addiction. In fact, it’s quite a sensible option.
But demonising people with lurid headlines and threatening to deploy sanctions are not a particularly helpful way to tackle addictive behaviour; not least because food/alcohol/drug addiction tends to be a consequence of underlying emotional problems – the substance is the emotional crutch, if you like. What eactly will being threatened do to a person’s emotional state, do you think? As disability campaigner Ellen Clifford told Sky News today: “That {Cameron’s proposal] isn’t going to suddenly snap people out of an enduring condition. It’s punitive and it’s savage.”
There are bigger fish to fry (no pun intended)
The NHS is haemorrhaging money due to the cost of obesity and obesity-related illness. Were the government actually serious about saving money and improving the nation’s health it would spend a little more time focusing on measures which nip health problems in the bud – i.e. before they result in costly long-term conditions.
However such an approach would probably not result it populist and lurid headlines, which perhaps explains why the government is reluctant to do it. As Tam Fry the National Obesity Forum also told Sky News this morning: “We have the most appalling problem [with obesity] and so far the coalition government have done absolutely nothing serious about it.”
It’s worth emphasising that point: the government has done absolutely nothing about it. Doing something about it would after all be ‘nannying’, wouldn’t it? (although for some reason this policy doesn’t fall under that label).
The UK has higher levels of obesity than anywhere in western Europe except for Iceland and Malta. But believe it or not most overweight people do actually hold down jobs. Rather than address two significant challenges – public spending and public health – the Conservatives have proposed a policy which produces the sensationalist headlines while not actually tackling any of the problems it ostensibly sets out to solve.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
34 Responses to “Stopping benefits for the obese: why it won’t work”
ttilley
There are many reason that people are ‘fat’. Food related issues are only one. I myself am fat. I have Lymphoedema and Lipoedema so am suitably deformed too. No amount of calorie control will give me a working lymphatic system. No ‘treatment’ by the multi-million pound diet industry will change the very nature of my adipose cells. I have a healthy relationship with food. I eat very healthily despite looking like I’d deep fry and consume ANYTHING. I also have Multiple Sclerosis. That’s nothing to do with being fat at all. I’m certain that most people claiming DLA/ESA/PIP do NOT have Obesity as the main cause of their disability.
littleoddsandpieces
From the second world war British servicemen prisoners of war, it was found that the more overweight you were the quicker the soldiers died from starvation.
Cutting benefit to obese not in work will kill them quicker than the average one month it takes to starve to death.
But it will also add even more funding consequences to the NHS, from rising even more the huge rise in malnutrition hospital admissions.
There are already 1 million people a year left to starve without food money from sanctioning, that include 23 week pregnant women and the over 60s even disabled / chronic sick.
Foodbanks do not feed the starving every day. If you are hungry one day, you are hungry every day, not least because Fareshare, the supplier to the foodbanks, do not gain state subsidy and so does not gain even 5,000 tonnes of surplus food, instead of near 400,000 tonnes a year available.
There is no saving unless, because even killing the poor has a cost – ambulances, hospital autopsy, police, HM Coroner, pauper cremations to cash strapped councils.
There is a way to gain a very different government
that will end all this active cruelty by the state.
And it is a Vote or Starve election.
See how on:
http://www.anastasia-england.me.uk
Kryten2k35
Taking benefits away from people is massively dangerous to their health.
Do I think people who DON’T have health reasons for being overweight should be given a free ride? No. Do I think the DWP are capable of fairly assessing that? No. Therefore, the fairest and best thing possible is to leave them alone.
If there was a system in place that could properly assess overweight people who are “too fat to work” to determine if there is a medical reason that they are overweight and then sanction them accordingly (in such a way that helps them to tackle their problem, addiction and better their lives and help them back into work… not a sanction that is basically a monetary punishment) then I’d be for it.
This, however, is just a way of punishing people and taking money off them. It’s unacceptable.
JoeDM
An excellent idea that should have been introduced years ago.
Peem Birrell
>>Doing something about it would after all be ‘nannying’, wouldn’t it?
Well if it’s done to people who’re not obese then indeed it would be. And I think that’s exactly what Tam Fry wants.