So, today Chancellor George Osborne, will present his budget and show that he has found where to make the 12 billion pounds of welfare cuts that The Conservatives openly stated in the General Election campaign, they would make, but people voted for them anyway. Where will these cuts fall? No doubt yet again on the sick and disabled in our society and working families on low incomes with children to support. We've got to have a welfare system that is fair to those who need it, but also fair to those who pay for it." Says Mr. Osborne, seeming to forget that millions who through no fault of their own end up having to claim benefits have paid for them for years in their taxes.
Being sick and or disabled is not a lifestyle choice, but rather a situation over which most of us affected have little or no control, and it is the duty of a civilised and caring society to support the most vulnerable members in it. Indeed, doing so adequately actually helps them to become less dependent on the state. Living in poverty affects both mental and physical health and leads to people being sicker than they already are, with conditions such as high blood pressure, strokes and heart attacks and depression and anxiety , leaving them unfit for work for even longer and costing the health service more.
Of course, the many who commit suicide as a result of being unable to cope with the stress and strain of losing their benefits and those who die as a result of being forced to seek work are a saving on the welfare budget , a very cruel saving too, with something of Nazi Germany about it .
I am not believe me, someone who thinks that people have the right to make a choice not to work and to live on benefits as a career when they are capable of work . However, I do believe that any government in the 21st century has a legal obligation to be compassionate and guarantee the jobless a decent standard of living, especially if they are sick...I do not believe that David Cameron The Prime Minister, George Osborne the chancellor and Iain Duncan Smith Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, would choose to have their own families if they were vulnerable, living in the conditions that they are quite happy to force the rest of less fortunate British people to live in .
It is not the right of any government to set up a body such as ATOS, which overrules the opinion of a person’s GP, and declares them fit to work, resulting in their deaths due to the worry and stress and fear this brings and the physical effort involved in seeking work and working, and even brings about deaths by suicide from people just unable to cope with the loss of their only income…disability benefits. I myself have had the Job centre tell me, it is not your doctor who decides anymore if you can work or not, it is the government. I am 55, partially sighted with arthritis and a severe vitamin D deficiency. I suffer from the effects of fractures, hypertension and a heart condition but do not expect to pass my ATOS medical when it comes up, as anyone who can move a hand and press a button and hold an intelligent conversation is declared fit for work, even though in icy winter conditions I am housebound and not many employers like being told, I am sorry but I cannot come to work from October until April, which is when for several winter now in the UK, we have had icy winter conditions. This is why I work so hard towards my goal of making it as a writer on disability and age related employment issues, in order to become self-employed and self-sufficient and to write about my experiences in order to help others in the same position as myself.
True, there was a time when we put the unemployed and those who had fallen on hard times in the workhouse or the debtor’s prison, illustrated in so many Dickens novels. Dickens own father had been in the Marshalsea prison, and this and the experience of poverty reflected in his novels, but just as we don't really still expect to see buses pulled by horses , or watch TV in black and white, we have moved on since the days of the Marshalsea...or we are supposed to have done so .
I have long come to the conclusion that if a G P with knowledge of your medical conditions and the effect they have on your daily life, including fluctuations in your condition declares as mine has that you are not fit for work, or/and after realistic consideration of your actual employment chances, you are still unemployed, but prepared to look for work, then benefits should actually be paid at a higher rate than they are.
My reasons for coming to this conclusion are that having the stress and strain of unpaid bills and debt and being unable to afford food and heat for your home actually ends up making a person less able to seek work due to the knock on effect on physical and mental health. This results in people being less employable and costs the health service more, also the legal aid services, what little free legal aid is still available, as they struggle to help the millions of people trying to deal with things such as debt and the loss of their homes. It is not at all unusual for credit reference checks to be carried out when seeking work and certainly when trying to find a home to rent, and people with damaged credit ratings as a result of debt are less likely to get jobs and find accommodation than those without.
It is very difficult indeed to be able to concentrate on what the Job centre and Department of Work and Pensions demand of you if you are claiming benefits, especially Job seekers allowance which many sick and disabled people are now forced to claim, and to treat looking for work as a full time job in itself, if you are constantly going backwards and forwards to advice centres and court appointments about your debts and struggling to keep or even find a home. A better and in the long term cheaper way to pay benefits may be that for a strictly limited time e.g. a year , those who are capable of work but who lose their job either because of redundancy or because they are no longer physically fit to do that job but could do something less physically stressful are paid the same in benefits as their job paid, up to a certain limit, not executive salary level perhaps, but in a proportion pro rata to their previous salary , that enables them to still pay such vital expenses as the mortgage . This would prevent the physical and mental stress and strain of the sudden huge drop in income from a salary to benefit and the resulting debt issues that can arise with the resulting effects on health and would leave people in a stronger more stable position to concentrate on looking for a job or indeed setting themselves up as self-employed.
The evidence that has brought me to this conclusion is that the theory put forward by the government that cutting benefits and forcing people to live in poverty encourages them to get a job does not work and can be counterproductive that it can even hinder the chances of that happening.
The obvious knock on effect of living on the breadline, and for many living well below it, is debt problems with unpaid bills , this leads to court cases , requiring legal help, advice and representation. This demand on the country's legal aid budget has resulted in savage cuts leaving very vulnerable people without help and advice for serious matters such as benefit appeals, debt often involving bailiffs and the threat of prison and repossession of property resulting in homelessness.
One of the biggest effects of being forced to exist on an income well below your even basic needs is being unable to finance your rent or mortgage...when I did a course around supported housing and vulnerable tenancies I learned to understand that there are many definitions of 'hidden homelessness' including being unable to actually afford the home you live in, Again, this results in huge demands on what increasingly limited legal help is available, while people in this position try to cope with the mounting debts. What no government including Labour, who in fact were the government who introduced ATOS assessments for those on incapacity benefit has recognised (or admitted) is that to force people to live in poverty actually holds up their chances of obtaining work rather than helping it....
People of no fixed abode, perhaps sleeping on friends sofas or on the streets, do not appeal to employers and you can be so busy trying to sort out your debt, financial and housing issues or jumping desperately at every get rich quick scheme that you miss the deadline for many job opportunities., then people in this position go to the jobcentre to sign on and get told that their benefit is being sanctioned because they have not applied for enough jobs.
Labour as I am, I increasingly wonder if another kinder less brutal way to cut the benefit budget if the government insist, and it seems indeed they do and it does seem we are powerless to stop the cuts falling on the most vulnerable, could be to have all employers just in the way many now offer pension schemes, also to offer and make membership compulsory of an unemployment benefit scheme, which pays should the job have to end due to redundancy or the health of the employee. Also, compulsory membership of an unemployment insurance scheme could be part of the requirements of everyone to take up on beginning their first job. Of course, many would remind me that we already pay for unemployment benefit through income tax, but this does not seem to have been enough to protect us…
During the election campaign, all parties banged on about helping hard working families, we hear a lot about how at least some benefits and provision for pensioners remains and will remain protected, however, poverty for working-age adults continues to rise, especially of course for the unemployed and the sick and disabled, with those who live alone without the benefits of family allowance being hardest hit. Benefits are way too low, and people on low incomes experience higher inflation due to the costs of basic essentials such as food and energy costs rising on an already limited income …The stress and strain of this further affects mental and physical health , ending up costing even more to the health and legal services of the nation .
Valerie Hedges
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