The Tory government will be out of power at the next election. However, until then, they still have a clear majority in Parliament and they are passing right-wing and divisive legislation while they still can. This legislation will be around long after the Tories are out of office and the Labour Party (LP) is in power. The question arises whether the LP will actually eliminate these pieces of legislation.
The Tories (and their legislation) have clear targets which reflect their political and ideological positions and these targets are marginalised groups in the society; these are not new targets, they have been under attack since the Tories came to power, so migrants and asylum seekers (racism), disabled people and women on benefits. Various pieces of legislation have been passed which have vilified these marginalised people. They are blamed for economic stagnation and economic crises, they are accused of living off of the generosity of taxpayers, and not contributing to society. Some of this legislation is in violation of International Human Rights law (which is British law) and that is also part of the right-wing Tory agenda – so the Rwanda Legislation declaring that Rwanda is a safe country to send asylum seekers (while their asylum applications are being processed) is a great example of this; moreover, if Rwanda is a “safe” country, why does Britain accept asylum seekers in the first place. The House of Lords has been attempting to water down this ridiculous and vicious piece of legislation (which creates an extremely expensive attempt to remove at the most 300 asylum seekers) and the Commons continues to oppose the amendments of the House of Lords. It would be absurd if it wasn’t such an appalling policy.
The Labour Party will probably overturn the Rwanda legislation when they get into power (only because it is such a ridiculous waste of money and its limited impact, rather than the policy being racist), they also hold a policy trying to limit migration so they have accepted the Tory argument about immigration being a problem. So, while they will overturn the Rwanda plan, they are doing it for the wrong reasons. The reason there is such a backlog on processing asylum claims and there is illegal migration is because there are only limited legal routes to enter the UK (you need to be from specific countries) and there have been cutbacks to public spending and replacement of retiring public sector workers. The problems arise from right-wing Tory ideology both on migration and spending on the public sector.
We also have an additional problem in that the Labour Party says it will do this and that when they are elected, but more recently as we get closer to the general election (which must be held this year) they have changed their tune. Rachel Reeves (the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer) has been pushing a supply side approach to economic stagnation. So essentially anything the Labour Party says they will do in terms of overturning legislation that was passed when the Tories were in office (anti-trade union laws, welfare reform laws, anti-protest bills, policing bills) may be abandoned if it requires additional spending as they refuse to commit to wealth taxes, adding additional income tax bands or financial transactions taxes.
Reeves has also essentially accepted the budget debt limits set by Jeremy Hunt (the current chancellor of the Exchequer) and would not overturn the cut to National Insurance taxes (which covers state pensions and benefits) put forward at the most recent budget by Hunt, who has also said he wants to eliminate National Insurance completely (and hence everything that it funds). Yes, this has gotten Hunt in trouble (even they are worried about their children and grandchildren receiving the pitifully low state pension) with older white Tories whose votes the Labour Party are hoping to pick up at the next election. But if the LP is determined to go after these votes, it means that the LP will be moving even further to the right than it already is. Given that this is already a right-wing neoliberal LP leadership, one cannot help wondering whether voting for them will gain us much. Yes, they are not as bad as the Tories (many of whom are on the far-right), but they have already placed significant limits on what they are willing to do following more than a decade of continuous austerity which has destroyed our NHS, social care, welfare safety net, public sector, and with those wages and working conditions. Moreover, many LP shadow ministers actually accept a lot of Tory ideology on benefits and the welfare state so the changes the country definitely needs probably will not happen; this includes the Shadow Secretary of Works and Pensions, Liz Kendall.
Attacks on Unemployed and Disabled People and Family Providers of Support and Assistance
I have written previously about the attacks on unemployed people, disabled people, and women doing care work for disabled family member and mothers with young children that are hallmarks of the Tory Party policy. What we need to understand is that these attacks have been continuous since the Tories came into power. These policies are part of the continuing austerity that the Tories have used as economic policy since coming into power first with the Lib Dems and then since they have been ruling the country on their own. Moreover, these policies moved away from the notion of entitlement that were the hallmark of the Keynesian welfare state. I will just provide some history of these attacks leading up to the most recent threats of forcing disabled people into work.
Austerity policies have been used to undermine subsistence wage incomes in Britain by attacking wages of public sector workers, privatisation and keeping the rate of profits and revenue of the wealthiest higher which has led to massive income and wealth inequality in Britain undermining not only those that are dependent on benefits but the wage incomes of the whole of the working class. The use of zero-hour contracts which have hit younger workers (and minimum wage rates are lower for aged 18-20 at £8.20/hour, those aged 21-24 are now paid the adult rate of £11.45 which was not the case until now) and which led to the precarity of workers especially those in “low-skilled” employment.
Working on a zero-hour contract means you do not know your work schedule in advance, you have no idea how many hours you will work in a week, you have no benefits and holidays; essentially those on zero-hour contracts are members of the reserve army of labour; brought into work when they are needed by employers with limited protection and work benefits – this is something that the LP have promised to eliminate as part of their New Deal for Working People, they have also pledged to eliminate fire and rehire (where workers are sacked from jobs with decent wages and working conditions and rehired as gig workers) and withholding benefits until a certain period of employment. We will see whether this will happen, it still remains part of LP pledges and it will not affect government spending (although fire and rehire has been done to former public sector workers).
In terms of those on benefits, the Tories created Universal Credit (UC) to replace Legacy Benefits and tied receipt of benefits to those looking for work; failure to be looking for work will lead to sanctions and the loss of benefits; turning down a job will lead to sanctions, being late for an interview at Job Centres will lead to sanctions and sanctions can mean benefits will be stopped for a period or even permanently. Conditionality is built into the UC system. They introduced a 6-week period (built into the benefits) from application to receipt of benefits during which they offered loans to people waiting for a decision on whether they were eligible for UC. So, UC means that you are eligible for benefits if you do specific things; rather than people being entitled to benefits to ensure their survival.
Short, but useful and important historical diversion
This discussion on eligibility rather than entitlement makes it first appearance in discussions on poverty back in the writings of Jeremy Bentham in 1796 in reference to the 1795-7 Poor Law Amendments which provided out-door relief for impoverished people (Speenhamland System) tied to the size of the family and the price of grain based upon the notion of entitlement; it was predominately geared towards agricultural labourers who were out of work during parts of the year. Bentham articulated several arguments that formed the basis of eligibility for relief which were utilised in the 1834 Poor Law Reform. On the one hand, Bentham argued that while some people who were unable to work were eligible for relief, others had to demonstrate that they were eligible for relief. Moreover (and this derives from Bentham’s recommendations, although it was an essential part of the 1834 Poor Law Reform, you could only get relief by entering a workhouse where families would be separated). Bentham argued for the principle of less eligibility so that the amount of relief had to be less than what people could earn through selling their ability to labour. Bentham is also the person that argued for the medicalisation of disability; that whether you were disabled and entitled to relief depended upon the impairment you have and its severity (he has a whole chart discussing the extent of eligibility for relief); this also was part and parcel of institutionalisation of disabled people as well. One important point (compared to earlier economists like Smith who recognised that the level of employment depended on the capital available to employ labour and the development of the domestic economy), Bentham had a full employment position as well; he believed that people that were out of work (who did not have impairments) did so because they were lazy and shirkers rather than the fault of an economic system unable to create full employment. So the cause of indigence was due to the individual’s lack of responsibility rather than the system. Bentham argued that we can never be rid of poverty; poverty is the lack of wealth and that is the condition of the majority of human beings. The contribution of those without wealth, the poor, was their ability to labour for the society.
In Bentham’s “Essay on the Poor Laws” (1796), Bentham writes the following addressing who must labour, that forced labour must be run by the government (rather than charities or churches) and how much they should earn. These unpublished ideas are later incorporated into his published text “Observations on the Poor Bill” which was an attack on the principles of the 1795-7 Poor Law amendments:
“Ability to Work: Position 22
“(1) To a person labouring under total and absolute want of ability with regard to work, relief must be administered without any condition in respect of work, since otherwise he must be left to perish.
Position 23(2) To a person possessed of adequate ability, no relief ought to be administered, but on condition of his performing work: to with such a measure of work, as, of employed to an ordinary degree of advantage, will yield a return in value, adequate to the expence of the relief.
Reasons
- Regard to justice. – The administering relief to persons of that description on any other condition would be an unnecessary invasion of property. […] For the expense of the relief thus to be administered by Government there is no other source of supply but what is produced by taxes; i.e., by labour, or the produce of labour, extracted by force. The benefit of the relief would thus be enjoy’d by one set of men, while the burthen of it was cast upon another.
- Regard to economy. — Such an arrangement would be prejudicial to the national stock of opulence. Scarce any man will work, if he can obtain the same subsistence without working as he can by working: and may there are, who so long a they can obtain any subsistence at all without working, will decline working, how much soever they might be able to increase their subsistence by it.
- Regard to the welfare, the lasting welfare of the individual himself. – The habit of industry is a source of plenty and happiness. The habit of idleness in one who has property is a cause of uneasiness, and, in one who has no property, of indigence and wretchedness. (Bentham (2001), Writing on the Poor Law, Volume I, “Essays on the Poor Laws: Essay II”, pp. 44-45, 1796, Oxford University Press).”
But while Bentham did say that children and those with serious impairments should not be forced to work, he did argue the following further on in this text:
“A person deprived of all his limbs, or of the use of all his limbs, may still possess ability sufficient to the purpose of serving as inspector to most kinds of work, so long as mental facilities and sight for observing and voice for questioning are possessed by him with sufficient vigour (ibid, pp. 46-47).”
and also advocated that children should work so that they will be trained for future employment:
“From the labour of a Minor, brought up and educated at the public charge, the public may, without injustice, hardship or even deviation from established law or usage, reap the utmost profit that such labour can be made to yield, consistent with the regard due, as above, to the health and permanent welfare of the individual, and that, from the period, whatever it be of his being taken under public care, until the expiration of his minority” (ibid, p. 53).
Returning to Modernity (sort of)
The Tory government’s reform of welfare was devised by Iain Duncan Smith and it set out to unlink the level of benefits received from the level of need of benefit claimants. Limits to how much you could receive a year were set in place were introduced as part of Universal Credit (in terms of the total amount you can get); UC combined 6 different benefits available under Legacy Benefits (e.g., housing benefits, child tax credit, child benefit, employment support benefits, disability benefits, etc) into a single benefit called Universal Credit (UC). They also used Bentham’s idea of less eligibility, so that the amount received as benefits had to be lower than what people could earn through paid work; in the modern discussion, benefits had to be lower than the minimum wage.
If the adults in the family are out of work, the benefit cap introduced in 2013, puts a limit on how much you can receive in total as benefits. The level of benefits available under UC are lower than those under available under Legacy benefits if for no other reason than the limits to what you could get as Housing Benefit which was also capped (this was part of the policy of forcing the poor out of wealthier areas. The point of this is two-fold: 1) they believed that lower benefit levels will force people into work – this is a very old policy which had been revived; 2) a deliberate decrease in workers incomes (wages and benefits) below the subsistence wage level to undercut wage incomes in the society to prop up the rate of profits following the 2007-8 crisis which has been kept in place for over a decade.
As such, there was a deliberate policy to decrease overall incomes for unemployed working-class people through lowering the quantity of benefits they could receive; this was maintained artificially low until the cost-of-living crisis brought about by inflation of energy and heating as well as food prices made this impossible. This increase was lower than the rising inflation due to a 3 months lag between the level of inflation and the amount of benefit increases.
The second cap that was introduced is the two-child maximum benefit cap (which came into effect in 2017) which provides child support and child-tax credits only to 2 children in a family; the only exceptions to this cap is if the 3rd child is part of a multiple birth or is a child born of rape. This Malthusian policy (again we are in the late 18th and 19th century) was introduced to stop women from having more than 2 children and to break the ridiculous accusation that women were having children to get more benefits. Both the benefit cap and the two-child maximum benefit have led to a massive increase in absolute and relative poverty of children and their families.
According to the Resolution Foundation:
“The two-child limit results in low-income families losing around £3,200 a year for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017. And when 100,000s of families lose out on £1,000s of benefit income a year, poverty rates soar. In 2013-14, 34 per cent of children in larger families were in poverty, but this is projected to rise to 51 per cent in 2028-29. In contrast, the proportion of two-child families in poverty is projected to remain more or less constant over the same 15-year period, at around 25 per cent. Other outcomes are also worse for larger families: in the year 2021-22, three-quarters (75 per cent) of larger families were in material deprivation, compared to 3-in-10 families with fewer than three children (34 per cent); and 16 per cent of larger families were in food insecurity, compared to 7 per cent of families with fewer than three children.
Abolishing the two-child limit would cost the Government £2.5 billion in 2024-25, rising to £3.6 billion in 2024-25 prices if the policy were at full coverage. These costs are low compared to the harm that the policy causes, and scrapping the two-child limit would be one of the most efficient ways to drive down child poverty rates. If abolished today, 490,000 children would be lifted out of poverty.”
Labour Party members and economic foundations and anti-poverty campaigners have been fighting against the 2-child maximum benefit policy since it was put in place; Labour Party MPs have opposed the policy (and these include people in the current shadow cabinet) and had promised to overturn this pernicious policy when they came into power. Overturning the benefit cap as well to link the level of benefit with need would help tremendously to address both absolute and relative poverty caused by government policy. According to the Resolution Foundation, it actually will cost only £2.5 billion pounds and if the benefit cap was abolished along with it, the cost would be £3 billion in current prices. This is peanuts in the context of an advanced capitalist economy and can be easily be covered through the introduction of a wealth tax for example. The removal of these caps will have an immediate effect of removing families out of poverty and the LP now refuses to overturn these caps.
Closely tied to benefit sanctions, the introduction of workfare to force benefit claimants into “training” to get benefits was not a complete success; various versions of the programme began being introduced in 2012 (it did exist earlier but was rarely used), many corporations who took part in the programme abandoned it due to negative pressure from the Boycott Workfare Campaign. The Tory attempts to do a welfare to work programme have not been successful even in periods of high unemployment; which is not the situation now. But this has been part and parcel of the sanctions regime of people that were unable to find work after training.
To clarify, there are different types of benefits for people that are off work due to sickness (these are paid as part of National Insurance Contributions which are paid by both employers and employees). There are also benefits for long-term impairment for disabled people which you are “entitled to” irrespective of working “if you are sufficiently disabled enough and this is determined at work capability assessments” – understanding the social model was never a strength of the government. The types and amounts of benefits that were available of the second category were changed as was the determination of eligibility. Under Tony Blair, assessments of those newly applying for disability benefits were done to determine whether you were able to work and “deserving of disability benefits”. The Tories extended these assessments to cover those already on benefits due to long-term impairments which led to assessments (not done by medical professionals) to ascertain whether you were “lazy and slacking off” aka not contributing to society”. These terms are very important as they were used to vilify disabled people and those out of work — blaming the victims of capitalism rather than taking responsbility for the impact of their policies is a rather common practice of mainstream politicians.
They also changed disability benefits (disability benefits, then employment and support allowance) to jobseeker’s allowance and work-related activity groups (which was for those who could be removed from benefits once they had training as they were deemed “able to work”; this has been phased out) and lowered the amount available in total for disabled people. Moreover, there were changes introduced to benefits that were available as part of the available benefits to cover the additional costs of being disabled. They then eliminated the Independent Living Fund in 2015 (this has been declared illegal, but no replacement has been forthcoming, unsurprisingly) and new people cannot apply to receive it. So, the Disability Living Allowance that was part of Legacy Benefits (preceding Universal Credit) was eliminated and one of the categories relating to the extent of mobility was eliminated; the new system and assessment is called Personal Independence Payment. At the time, many disabled people did not transfer onto Universal Credit as the amount received was lower than on Legacy Benefits due to the elimination of certain categories that existed as part of Legacy Benefits. Moreover, those people still on Legacy Benefits (predominantly disabled people) during the pandemic were not entitled to the £20 uplift that was given during the pandemic to ensure that those that lost jobs due to the pandemic and were not eligible for furlough from companies could survive on benefits.
The government has again begun forcing disabled people onto Universal Credit (this was temporarily suspended during the pandemic). There have been 2 court cases already when disabled people had to fight to maintain £180/month of higher levels of support who had severe disability premium and enhanced disability premium under Legacy Benefits which did not exist on Universal Credit. There is now a 3rd court case, where a disabled benefit claimant has lost nearly £400/month transitioning from Legacy Benefits to Universal Credit. This forced migration to UC will clearly impact disabled people who have been able to remain on legacy benefits.
Recently, as discussed in this previous piece, the UK government blamed disabled people and family providers of support and assistance (care) as well as mothers with young children for the current economic crisis and British economic stagnation. It must be said that this is nothing new, Theresa May’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Phillip Hammond, did the same in 2017. But Sunak went a bit further and threatened to force them into work either at home (of course without providing personal assistants or the technology that would be needed for them to work from home) or in a workplace with the employer will make reasonable adjustments.
On the 5th of September 2023, the Government announced a consultation and new policies to get disabled people and those with long term health conditions into work.
“Earlier this year, Government confirmed investment worth £2 billion to support disabled people and those with long-term health conditions into work, while delivering on the Prime Minister’s priority to grow the economy. Today’s consultation will go further to facilitate appropriate work opportunities for people, by reviewing a range of categories in the assessment – representing its first significant update since 2011.
These categories are designed to determine what activity people can do and how that affects their ability to work. This then informs assessors’ decisions on what additional financial support people can receive through their benefits, and if claimants need to do anything to prepare themselves for work.
The consultation’s proposals include updating the categories associated with mobility and social interaction, reflecting improved employer support in recent years for flexible and home working – and minimising the risk of these issues causing problems for workers.”
Rishi Sunak’s statement about this consultation and proposals is wonderfully cynical and one cannot help wondering if somewhere in the Dept of Works and Pensions there exists a document that was used to justify the 1834 poor law reform just hanging around or perhaps something that long ago referred to Jeremy Bentham but has been lost in the annals of time that they are still quoting:
“Prime Minister Rishi Sunak MP said:
Work transforms lives – providing not just greater financial security, but also providing purpose that has the power to benefit individuals, their families, and their communities.
That’s why we’re doing everything we can to help more people thrive in work – by reflecting the complexity of people’s health needs, helping them take advantage of modern working environments, and connecting them to the best support available.
The steps we’re taking today will ensure no one is held back from reaching their full potential through work, which is key to ensuring our economy is growing and fit for the future.”
On 20th November 2023, Sunak made a speech about the economy in which he again raises getting disabled people into work talking about this level of unemployed people being a “national scandal”. These changes appeared in the 2023 Autumn Statement (22nd of November) under the “New Chance to Work” proposals alongside the Back to Work Plans for disabled people:
“Meanwhile, new flexibilities in the labour market mean that more people can undertake some form of tailored and personalised work-related activity, with the right support. For example, 40% of people reported working from home at some point in the previous week in Winter 2023, compared with just 12% throughout 2019. And of around 8 million jobs advertised online between April and October 2023, over 20% were either remote or flexible, compared to less than 4% over the same time period in 2016.
That’s why we are reforming the Work Capability Assessment to make it fit for the modern world of work. In the first major review of the Work Capability Assessment activities and descriptors since 2011, we will:
- Remove the ‘Mobilising’ part of the assessment that currently places people into a group where no work preparation is required – this will reflect that many of the claimants with these issues in the modern world of work will be able to undertake some work or work preparation with the right support
- Amend the regulations that determine whether mental health issues are assessed as putting claimants at ‘Substantial Risk’ if they are required to undertake any level of work preparation - these amendments will realign the regulations with the original intention of applying only in exceptional circumstances, whilst still protecting and safeguarding the most vulnerable.
- Reduce the points awarded for some of the Limited Capability for Work (LCW) ‘getting about’ descriptors, reflecting the rise of flexible and home working opportunities in modern workplaces.
This will mean around 370,000 people by 2028/29 who under current assessment rules would receive no support from DWP as they would have been placed in the Limited Capability for work-related activity (LCWRA) group will now be offered personalised support to help them move closer towards work.”
The problem with all of this is that disabled people working from home will require personal assistants as well as computers to work on and broadband to run these computers; if they are working at a business itself, these reasonable adjustments mean that it costs employers more money to hire disabled people than those who do not have impairments. Given the low wages (even with the increase in minimum wages) the race to the bottom has meant that employers can hire workers on zero hours contracts and using agency workers whose wages are really low. Why would they spend more to hire disabled people that require support and assistance and hence cost them more money? This is basic economics, a really basic understanding of techniques of production in use and the fact that employers treat workers as a cost, not an asset. They are as usual inconsistent with their own ridiculous policies and propaganda. Do they really think that capitalists will pay more to hire disabled workers out of a sense of what … justice or fairness ... or something equally absurd?
The biggest problem for this policy is that it is probably illegal; forcing disabled people to work is a violation of international humanitarian law about forced labour (yes, that is British law): see ILO Convention number 29 on forced labour; see article 11 of the forced labour convention extracted below:
“Only adult able-bodied males who are of an apparent age of not less than 18 and not more than 45 years may be called upon for forced or compulsory labour. Except in respect of the kinds of labour provided for in article 10 of this Convention, the following limitations and conditions shall apply:”
If you do not think there are human rights lawyers examining this law in the UK, you are severely confused.
Furthermore, there are additional issues that are impacting disabled people even at the local levels where they live; most local councils have increased care charges that disabled people have to pay to get the support and assistance they are entitled to; this means that many disabled people are paying three times to get this care, first through national insurance contributions, then through local council tax and third through paying for care charges to their local councils.
Attacks on family carers
On the 7th of April, The Guardian reported that family carers are being taken into court for overpayments of carers’ allowance and being forced to repay the money; these people earn £81.90/week for taking care of disabled family members for 35 hours/week while working part-time who are only allowed to earn £151/week in their part-time jobs. They are facing prosecution and imprisonment if they cannot pay the money back. In a follow-up article on the 19th of April, many of these family carers, usually women (that may be disabled themselves) are being are being forced to repay the whole carers’ allowance they received to the Department of Works and Pensions, despite the huge amount of distress this is causing them and their families as this has happened over time, and that the discrepancies may be very small. Read this as punishing those that have dropped out of work to take care of family members with long-term impairments and illnesses. This happened during the covid pandemic and the existence of long-covid is keeping people out of work and the appalling quantity and quality of social support and assistance has meant that people have stayed out of work to care for disabled family members. This is because of Tory government economic policies which have destroyed social support and assistance and which refuse to recognise that care work is skilled labour (so we have a nice bit of labour market segmentation going on in traditional women’s labour like the care sector).
The latest rubbish
On April 19th (yes, that was a banner day for those on benefits, disabled people and family carers). Rishi Sunak has given a speech on welfare reform which I will quote because it makes my point completely about Benthamite ideology.
According to The Independent, the £100 million Work and Health programme established by the Tories to get disabled people into work in England and Wales has been discontinued as of this autumn. At the same time, Sunak has launched a major attack against disabled people. His targets are the large increase in people being signed off from work (as well as partners leaving work to take care of them) due to the covid pandemic. Rishi Sunak (and the Tory party) is convinced that the problem is that General Practitioners are writing too many sick notes and we have a “sick-note culture” and that is the path to permanently leaving employment. Their solution is to remove that power from your doctors that actually know you and hand that responsibility to other specialist work and health professionals to determine whether you are fit for work or not. It is bad enough that routinely disabled people facing work capability assessment often have their doctors’ information disregarded, but now they will be ignored.
The other people that are clearly a problem according to Sunak (and for that matter LP’s Liz Kendall, the LP shadow secretary of works and pensions) are young people that are diagnosed with mental health problems like depression and anxiety that are not getting the benefits of work, despite the fact is that it is women over 50 that are those with long-covid that are out of work for the most part. So, what are they planning to do to help those with mental health impairments? The backlog of accessing talk-therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is ridiculous, they don’t have the professionals to do this. Where will they get them or do they think that if they wave a magic wand, doctor, psychologists and psychiatrists will mysteriously appear? That is what is also argued by the LP in terms of health care, they will get private doctors to pick up the slack … where are they going to get them? Will they try and woo doctors from overseas with better wages? That will be the final blow to the NHS … which again does nothing to alleviate the concerns about this Labour government.
So, they want to change work capability assessments whose determinations are routinely overturned anyhow with again non-qualified people that you do not know. Work capability assessments will be retained for those that have less severe impairments. From his speech, we have:
“To address this, the Prime Minister announced a review of the fit note system to stop people being written off as “not fit for work” by default and instead design a new system where each fit note conversation focuses on what people can do with the right support in place, rather than what they can’t do.
As part of this, the government will consider shifting the responsibility for issuing the fit note away from already stretched GPs, towards specialist work and health professionals who have the dedicated time and expertise to provide an objective assessment of someone’s ability to work and the tailored support they may need.”
But as Thorston Bell of the Resolution Foundation notes:
“Reforming sick notes is sensible BUT it’s got almost nothing to do with rise in people who are on disability benefits or out of the labour market entirely due to ill health. Remember a sick-note signs you off temporarily when you HAVE a job - it doesn’t sign you on to benefits”
Yes, sick notes are irrelevant for those on long-term disability benefits; sick notes only apply to those that are ill for a short time and they relate to those taking off from work temporarily not for long-term disabilities (in other words, these are covered by National Insurance Contributions). So, what is he attacking here? Evenmoreso, it is the fault of the Tories that the NHS is underfunded and it takes ages to visit a GP … how is this not the fault of the Tories? Add to this their economic policies that are responsible for the stagnant economy, somehow they (and for that matter Rachel Reeves) have not realised that supply side economics doesn’t create economic growth, just further income and wealth disparities. At least Reeves is still talking about eliminating fire and rehire and zero hours contracts, but will they continue this or will they abandon these policies to win over right-wing Tories to vote for them? stay tuned ...
From denying the existence of long-covid to blaming the victims of covid for economic stagnation as they do not understand that it is not only people out of work that are creating the economic stagnation. Economic stagnation in Britain is a result of their neoliberal economic policies (and Brexit has not helped the situation either), their government’s policies driving wages down so low that they are now forcing women into work who are caring for disabled family members and children and still cannot afford childcare (yes, they increased the entitlement to childcare but not the number of places available as they are privately provided) … they don’t get that working to pay for childcare is not a good use of time for women nor the economy as a whole.
The low wages mean that investment is not being undertaken by employers as it is so cheap to hire labour. Increases in productivity require capital investment; zero-hour contracts mean that skills do not grow over time which require long-term work to develop agility and cut down on time to produce things and then they will impact on productivity (guess what, just hiring more workers doesn’t necessarily lead to growth …) … a lot more is needed than this, like good working contracts, long-term employment and better wages … but Adam Smith knew this in 1776 …