Arise Sir Iain, You Aren’t to Blame

People are all of a tizzy over the knighthood for Iain Duncan Smith.

With the usual suspects pointing out his grievous errors and malicious nature, seemingly quite oblivious to the part they played in creating the system.

Let us for a moment get in a time machine (aka an interwebz search) and travel back to the glory days of the Labour government of 1997–2010, when ambrosia flowed, the sun always shone, and ne’er a problem arose that couldn’t be solved by some half arsed and ill thought out set of regulations and targets.

2002 seems like a good year… so let’s see what Tony Blair was talking about….

“ We have changed the culture of the welfare state — it is now universally accepted that it is right to expect unemployed people to look for work and take jobs, that is right for lone parents and others to come in for work-focused interviews.”

Oh yeah… but what about the sick, and the disabled?

“ More active strategies to help lone parents and sick and disabled people make the break-through into the world of work.”

What sort of thing had you in mind Tony?

“ begin with a can-do mentality which sees claimants as potential employees; · ask them why they think it is that they are not working — staggeringly, this is often the first time someone long-term unemployed has been asked that; · give your front-line staff greater autonomy — and with it responsibility and flexibility”

And to place this into context, a popular TV show of the time was League of Gentlemen, and a popular character in the show was Pauline. So Pauline is going to be given autonomy, responsibility and flexibility? What could go wrong?

Cutting benefits, and restricting access to Incapacity Benefit, had already been the cause of a backbench revolt for the Labour government. But Labour were intent on cutting away the safety net, driving the idle from their beds, and satisfying their supporters in the Mirror, Independent and the Guardian: who were all for this approach.

Amid all this talk of ‘rights and responsibilities’ and ‘work makes freedom’, what was never addressed was a very basic issue. For in the matter of the sick and disabled there was a clear division with regard to how benefits were paid and calculated. For Incapacity Benefit was paid on the basis of contributions, and non contributions based benefits: i.e dependent upon National Insurance contributions. And dependent upon that, and other factors, much else flowed, like whether a person could do voluntary work, how much they could earn without deductions etc.

Now if you stop and think about this for a moment you will see the fly in the ointment. Because if you have paid enough National Insurance to receive the contributions based benefit, the chances are that you have not been hiding behind the sofa for years as the hopeless neurotics, bed-wetters and social embarrassments receiving the non-contributions based benefit. (the sort of person that used to be locked away in asylums, see the Lunacy Act)

And since the definition of disability is made so broad, and the various disability charities and advisors so focused on the contributions based disabled such as those with a limp, the moderately deaf, and sufferers of chic mental illness, it is hardly surprising that the reforms ran into difficulty. In part because they never addressed the central problem, but instead relied on a hopelessly flawed top-down approach that to all intents and purposes deliberately set out to hamper the people it was intended to help.

But then the aim was never to help anyone. The aim was to get the unemployment figures down. Because everyone knows the disabled weren’t really disabled, they were faking it like Lou and Andy of Little Britain fame.

And so the clampdown under Blair continued always with a focus on work as the solution. It was really quite brilliant, and utterly Panglossian, for the logic of it is simple, if you are not disabled enough to work, then you are not disabled.

The turning point came with the introduction of ATOS. Now there was a focus for who was to blame. Instead of the work-shy (disabled) killing themselves largely unseen, due to benefits being cut, or reassessed, at the dole office by job centre staff (Pauline types without medical qualification, working to targets), now there was ATOS.

And it was quite perfect in a bizarre way, because now instead of having to rely on a GP’s word that some random women would piss herself if she stands on a chair, ATOS could make her do it and put the hypothesis to the test (and yes this did happen).

Those railing against Iain Duncan Smith revel in their accusations of his killing people, and driving them to suicide, and starving them… but this had been going on long before the coalition government. All that changed after the 2010 election was that for political reasons the ATOS contract came into question, and newspapers began to highlight the cases of people who had died, or been mistreated by the process.

Nothing had actually changed, except the government.

But let’s look at something else, that gets the newly outraged hot under the collar at the evil Tories, let’s look at housing.

“ The Government wants the public to play a leading role in the reform of housing in England.” So said Caroline Flint in 2008, when announcing her plans to ‘reform’ housing.

The fact that the words ‘reform’ and wanting the public to play a role were used, in dealing with the Housing Crisis, should have sounded alarm bells.

So let’s have a look at what Ms Flint came up with….

No wait, let’s look at this first… Who gets priority for council housing…. oh yes, what have we here… “ need to move because of a health problem or disability”. Keep that in mind, when you read this…

“ Imagine her surprise, she said, on discovering that council tenants are much more likely to be unemployed than the rest of the population, and that poverty and long-term worklessness have become concentrated on council estates during the last 25 years.”

Good lord, isn’t that a shock, that the hopeless neurotics, bed-wetters and social embarrassments receiving the non-contributions based benefit. (the sort of person that used to be locked away in asylums, see the Lunacy Act) are likely to be found on council estates. So what is the plan Caroline?

“ Caroline Flint, who has just replaced Yvette Cooper as housing minister, has spoken of her wish to make “radical” changes to the way in which council housing works, linking tenancy agreements with “commitment contracts” to ensure that jobless social housing tenants improve their skills and find work.”

Really? So you don’t think this might lead to homelessness?

To be fair the reasoning behind this, from a government point of view, is sound. If you are working, and living in rented accommodation, then it will cut the bill for housing benefit. Of course, if you are not working, and living in rented social accommodation, it will make no difference unless the government adopts a policy of linking social rents to market rents: thus doubling and sometimes tripling the bill for Housing Benefit…. oh I know it was the Tories under George Osbourne who introduced this… but guess who proposed it?

Oh yeah, and remember that thing about an Englishman’s home is is castle. Well not so much with Caroline Flint. For her next wheeze was to end the tenure for life of social tenants. On the basis that it was inequitable that a pensioner should remain in the three bed-roomed ‘palace’ in which they had raised their family because there were immigrants wanting to move in.

The immigrants part of the story was quickly dropped by the Labour spin machine, and replaced with the term ‘hard working young families’ (though everyone knew who they meant). But regardless of name, thus was born the Bedroom Tax.

Although at the time the Bedroom Tax had a slightly different meaning in that it related to a proposed tax on the extension of private homes.

At which point it useful to return to that briefing paper to understand why Labour was doing all of this. The simple answer is that they were propping up the housing market, in order to stabilize the banks. And in doing so they were bankrupting the country.

By 2009 the Government had spent £850billion bailing out the banks, or to put it another way — they had distorted the housing market, pushed up social rents, created a formula for suicide and homelessness; and fought a damaging and stigmatizing war on the sick and disabled over a £7billion annual welfare bill (that Labour had previously argued needed to be cut because it was bankrupting the country).

The mistake Iain Duncan Smith made, and given the limited room he had for manouvre due to the impoverishment left by the Labour government, was that he didn’t immediately reverse large parts of the Labour program. But instead went native, in a Whitehall culture endlessly focused on triangulation, targets, and the needs and prejudices of Sierra man.

And we should not forget that Mr Duncan Smith’s original proposals on welfare were widely praised, and far more liberal than anything Labour ever dreamed up… particularly with regard to the sick and disabled.

After ten years of ineffective government, the question remains to be answered if Dominic Cummings, and his boffins, will grasp the nettle, and deal with the central issue in this debate that the NHS is too quick to diagnose mental illness (thus excluding those diagnosed from whole swathes of employment), and then ineffective at dealing with it (CBT is not effective, and the use of drugs questionable: and the reintroduction of talking therapies would be welcome).