The Conservative government is in disarray. Iain Duncan Smith has resigned over proposed budget cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) for disabled people. The Tory Party is hopelessly divided over Europe and its austerity programme to beat the crisis has proved to be a big lie, aimed at making the rich richer at the expense of the poor. But there is no opposition to take advantage of the situation. Instead Labour councils are implementing savage cuts to services, hammering those already at the receiving end of welfare cuts – poor and disabled people. Robert Clough reports.
Duncan Smith’s six-year tenure as Work and Pensions Secretary, apart from a failing attempt to reform the benefits system by introducing Universal Credit, was characterised by a relentless attack on poor people:
- 1.5 million people were subjected to the Work Capability Assessment overseen by Atos which redefined disability so that hundreds of thousands were found to be fit for work – even those with severe mental disabilities or suffering with terminal cancer.
- A month before he resigned, Duncan Smith supported a cut to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) from £103pw to £73pw for some 600,000 claimants in the Work-Related Activity Group which will come into effect for new claimants from April 2017. The government spin on this is that recipients are really able to work – even though ESA is by definition an incapacity benefit.
- Closure of the Independent Living Fund which gave extra support to nearly 20,000 severely disabled people enabling them to live at home.
- 450,000 social housing tenants, two-thirds of them with disabilities, have been forced to pay the bedroom tax because they are told they have a ‘spare’ room. An evaluation by the Department of Work and Pensions found that 75% of those affected have had to cut back on food.
- At least 200,000 households will be hit by the reduced Overall Benefit Cap when it comes into effect in October 2016. Any family on housing benefit with two or more children will be affected: nearly 700,000 children may be threatened with homelessness as a consequence.
- Between November 2012 and September 2015 there were over 1.6 million benefit sanctions and over 200,000 ESA sanctions. Benefit sanctions have been the major factor in increasing destitution and the use of food banks.
- Implementation of local housing allowance limits for social rents from April 2018 will result in the closure of supported housing schemes and domestic violence refuges.
In saying good riddance to Duncan Smith we have to add that his departure was due to divisions within the Tory Party rather than Labour opposition. Labour leader Corbyn’s denunciation in Parliament of disability benefit cuts and his withering attack on George Osborne’s record as Chancellor may have been effective in helping to drive his popularity ratings higher than those of Prime Minister Cameron, but the majority of Labour MPs oppose Corbyn’s leadership, and demonstrated their contempt for him by pointedly studying their mobile phones while he was speaking. They are awaiting an opportunity to get rid of him, and hope for significant Labour losses at the May local elections to serve as an excuse for a leadership challenge. Meanwhile, Corbyn’s most reactionary parliamentary enemies such as John Woodcock are given unlimited access to the media to denounce and undermine him at the slightest excuse, while ‘senior’ shadow cabinet members engage in regular anonymous briefings.
Corbyn’s response to the pressure has been to make concessions such as allowing a free vote for Labour MPs on bombing Syria, and rejecting moves to deselect MPs who are in favour of austerity. Most seriously he has instructed Labour-run councils not to set illegal budgets and so to implement cuts in services which will particularly affect those with disabilities. Examples abound:
• Newcastle will cut 100% of ‘non-statutory’ mental health services while 21% will be cut from adult social care and 28% from care in the home services. Byker dementia care home will close.
• In Liverpool, adult social services will be cut by 40%, with the number of packages of care reduced from 15,000 to 9,000.
• Manchester will cut £9m from its adult social care budget and neighbouring Stockport £7.5m.
• Having closed Lyndale special needs school, Wirral council will close Girtrell Court respite centre in August; families have been offered the ‘choice’ of sending their seriously disabled dependants 250 miles away to facilities in Sussex.
• Rochdale will cut health services dealing with HIV, drugs and alcohol and services for children.
• Nottingham council, having cut funding for four homeless hostels, has printed posters portraying those begging on the streets, many of whom have mental health needs, as criminals or fraudsters.
In London, Camden Labour council has revised its overcrowding rules to recategorise living rooms and dining rooms as bedrooms as part of a fiddle to reduce eligibility for a council home and so reduce its waiting list from 27,000 to just over 5,000. This measure will exclude many single people with serious disabilities in desperate need of adequate, secure accommodation.
Both Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell argue that austerity is a political choice for the Tory government. If that is so, there is no reason for it to be any different for Labour councils. Yet Labour councillors have repeatedly claimed that if they do not adhere to a legal budget and make the cuts demanded by central government, the Tories will send in commissioners who will be even worse. The truth is that they are terrified of entering into any confrontation with the government since this may unleash forces over which they have no control and which, even worse, threaten their privileged positions. 40% has been cut from local authority social care budgets to date without the slightest semblance of practical opposition. Library services have been slashed across England: by the end of 2016/17, 454 libraries will have been closed and a quarter of all library jobs will have disappeared.
Keeping to a legal budget in the future will require councils to adopt a scorched earth policy towards their remaining services with the government intent on ending all central financial support for councils by 2020. The government says it will allow councils to retain 100% of local business rates rather than the present 50%, but this will not compensate for the losses incurred by the abolition of the grant especially in poorer authorities. To make matters worse, the March budget exempts 600,000 small businesses from paying any rates at all after April 2017, threatening to reduce future council budgets even further. The price for Labour councillors keeping their positions will be paid by larger and larger sections of the working class.
The majority of the trade union movement remains a bastion of reaction: the aim of the big three unions which organise among council and other public sector workers – Unite, Unison and the GMB – is limited to challenging compulsory redundancies. They are determined to prevent any mobilisation against cuts in jobs and services as this would undermine their alliance with the Labour Party: there is not even a gesture of opposition.
Momentum, the organisation set up by Corbyn supporters, and which now claims 90,000 members, has been invisible in most campaigns against the cuts. Like Corbyn, Momentum’s response when facing political attack is to back down. Many of Labour’s most reactionary MPs face the possibility of reselection because of changes to constituency boundaries, and they are determined to hold on to their positions. Momentum spokespersons have made it clear that they are opposed to unseating such MPs. In a statement issued in December after 66 Labour MPs voted to bomb Syria, the organisation said ‘Momentum is not a threat to MPs who voted for bombing. We have made clear that we will not campaign for the deselection of any MP and will not permit any local Momentum groups to do so.’ However this has not stopped it from being the whipping boy for MPs such as Stella Creasy who has denounced it as seeking to control ‘levers of power to select or deselect MPs and party officials.’ Momentum offers only empty pieties, such as the claim made by spokesperson James Schneider that it will be ‘building grass-roots power and helping Labour become the transformative governing party of the 21st century’ (The Independent 24 March 2016). Far from representing any pole of opposition to the ruling class, Momentum’s purpose is to help Corbyn head off any radical challenge and tie any new movement to the Labour Party.
The divisions in the Tory Party over Europe and the fiasco of the proposed cuts to disability benefits has opened up some political space for those determined to fight against austerity. The government may have retreated over PIPs, but the Housing and Planning Bill will shortly become law, more and more basic council services will come under threat, and the Overall Benefit Cap will come into effect in six months. The Labour Party is not going to fight regardless of Corbyn’s leadership; Momentum and the trade unions will do their best to stop any real fightback for the reason that it will inevitably come into conflict with Labour. However, resistance is inevitable, and the job of socialists is to help build a movement, independent of the official trade unions and the Labour Party, which will fight for the interests of the working class.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 250 April/May 2016
