Well ahead of the announcement of the general election, the government had set out its stall for wooing the better-off sections of the electorate, by making it clear that cuts in taxes and National Insurance Contributions would be paid for by the poorest sections of the working class. And so, on 19 April, we were offered the obscene spectacle of one of the richest men in the country, embattled Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, taking aim at some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society as he announced a further assault on benefits. In his sights in particular were those who are too disabled or ill to work, as he launched a carefully-calibrated attack on Britain’s ‘sick note culture’. This is the latest attempt by a ruling class in crisis to punish, impoverish and discipline the working class, a move Sunak clearly hoped would also go some way to appeasing the restive far-right of his own Conservative Party.
The proposals include:
- Reducing eligibility for Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) for those who are ill or have a disability, replacing it in many cases with vouchers or one-off grants instead of regular cash payments and, for many mental health problems, scrapping it altogether.
- Scrapping the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) test and instead making eligibility for the disability-related component of Universal Credit dependent on being awarded a PIP. Although the WCA has been loathed for years as an unfair and degrading assessment of fitness for work, assessment for PIP is to be made even harsher (see above), and in any case many of those who currently receive means-tested disability benefits neither have nor require a PIP. Those assessed as having ‘less severe conditions’ will be expected to make more effort to find work.
- Shifting responsibility for issuing fit notes (‘sicknotes’), away from GPs to other ‘work and health professionals’, with the aim of reducing the number of people signed off from work for ill health.
- Speeding up moving people off the so-called ‘legacy benefit’ of Employment Support Allowance onto Universal Credit (UC).
- Tightening rules on UC so that anyone working less than half a full-time week is expected to take on extra hours in return for benefits.
- Giving the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) new powers to snoop on bank accounts, seize goods, arrest claimants and impose fines.
These punitive measures are a response to the longest sustained rise in ‘economic inactivity’ since the 1990s. 11 million people in Britain – 22.1% of the working-age population – are not in work or looking for a job: this figure is increasingly made up of those who are long-term sick, have a disability or are temporarily too ill to work. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that one in 10 working age people in Britain are receiving health-related benefits, and that this is likely to increase exponentially in the coming years. Spending on disability benefits is expected to rise by £16.1bn over the next five years to £52.2bn by 2028-29, a rise of 45%, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
But an ever-more brutal crackdown on what is already the least generous and most punitive benefits system of any advanced economy is not going to solve the government’s problem. Households including a person with disabilities are already amongst the poorest in the country. Whistleblowers who’d worked for the private companies ATOS and Capita – paid millions of pounds by the DWP to administer PIP assessments – have described the system as ‘horrific’ and deliberately set up to ensure claimants fail. The healthcare professionals – mainly nurses and physiotherapists – have no specialist knowledge of the conditions people face and rely instead on a one-size-fits-all form and a broadbrush interview to determine whether a claimant is entitled to the ‘enhanced’ PIP payment of £108.55, the lower £72.65, or no award at all.
The structural vindictiveness of the system was exposed most recently by the revelation that the DWP was seeking to recoup some £250m in ‘overpayments’ to carers. As the population gets sicker, with less and less adult social care support from underfunded councils, so more people – particularly women – are forced to take on caring responsibilities. In February, there were more than three million unpaid carers in Britain. If caring responsibilities take more than 35 hours a week, they are entitled to £81.90 a week. However, earnings from any part-time work taken on to top up this meagre allowance are capped at £151 a week. If a carer goes just one penny over that limit, the DWP will not only stop their benefit altogether but pursue them for the full amount already paid out. Thousands of people are left with nothing to live on and often in fear of criminal prosecution. One woman who inadvertently breached the limit by 50p a week over a period of five years because of the way her hours were calculated, was sent an overpayment bill by the DWP for £11,292.75 and told she would be prosecuted for fraud.
Far from living in a ‘sick note culture’, we are living in a society where the working class is being battered on all sides. With NHS waiting lists now up to seven million, many people are living with chronic pain or untreated debilitating conditions; getting a GP appointment is a lottery, and long-term cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, as well as the effects of Long Covid, are being exacerbated by appalling housing conditions, hunger and cold. No wonder mental health is getting worse – DWP figures show that 44% of new claims are for mental health issues, particularly among younger workers. After years of cuts – including to counselling services in schools – NHS mental health services are at breaking point, with more than a million people on waiting lists for urgent mental health support.
The Labour Party, for its part, has explicity ruled out scrapping the two-child limit on benefits – one of the biggest drivers of child poverty in Britain – as ‘unaffordable’. Nor will it get rid of the increasingly restrictive overall benefit cap. Given the party’s pledge to constrain spending to existing limits, it is clear that claimants can expect no relief under a Labour government. In a sign of the tightening of the screw that is to come, just seven Labour MPs voted against extending DWP powers to investigate the bank accounts of those on means-tested benefits.
This renewed onslaught on some of the most vulnerable and poorest of claimants is patently driven by the desperation of a ruling class facing a stagnant economy and low productivity that is hellbent on forcing the reserve army of labour back into the workplace. It is in a quagmire of its own making: with the government having trashed the National Health Service, decimated public services, and presided over the most catastrophic collapse in living standards since records began, is it any wonder that nearly a quarter of the working age population is now unable or unwilling to take up the low-grade, precarious, badly-paid jobs on offer that demonstrably offer no route out of poverty? This is testimony to the utter failure of a capitalist system that has run its course.
Cat Wiener
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 300 June/July 2024
