I wrote this tale to challenge the popular ‘cheats’ and ‘scroungers’ view of benefit claimants that, as I write this introduction, is leading to some particularly barbed rhetoric and unhealthy competition between politicians to look ‘tough’ on ‘welfare’. Although all the characters and events in ‘Severe Discomfort’ are fictional, their dealings with the Department for Work and Pensions and Tribunals Service are firmly rooted in reality. The Walkers’ predicament is exactly that faced by many supposed ‘benefit cheats’. That isn’t to say there aren’t cheats out there, but they are neither numerous nor typical, despite what certain politicians and papers might have us believe.
Since that was written, the rhetoric has got nastier and the policies crueler, with worse promised from the Tories and only the demise of the Bedroom Tax offered in redress from Labour, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary famously promising to be 'tougher' on 'welfare' than the Tories and just this week attacking the Government for not doing enough to reduce 'fraud and error'. Not a word about the continuing underclaiming of benefits, especially by vulnerable people, pensioners and increasingly young people ashamed or afraid to attend the Jobcentre. No pledge to review Personal Independence Payment with its open agenda of cutting the cost of disability benefits. No word on fixing the Work Capability Assessment so sick people aren't told to get up and walk by incompetent assessors and a flawed points system. No promise to roll back the draconian sanctions regime. Indeed, at conference last year the Shadow Chancellor promised to keep the Benefit Cap and to freeze Child Benefit.
If in May I end up putting a cross in the box next to my Labour candidate's name, it will be with gritted teeth and the knowledge that the Tories have already promised to cut the Benefit Cap still further (effectively allowing poor families one less child than at present - that's what a cut of £3,000 means in Child Tax Credit terms after all) and prevent young people under 21 from claiming Housing Benefit. That they believe both policies are not just acceptable to the public but vote-winners means we are still losing this fight.
Without a major political party on our side, it can only be a grossly unequal fight - a handful of principled MPs, a few public figures, a network of bloggers and Facebook pages up against the majority of the political establishment, strident voices at the heart of the media, a mass of anti-claimant hate-speech on social networks, and the broadcast vomit known as 'Reality TV' - Too Fat to Work, On Benefits and Proud, My Big Benefits Family, Saints and Scroungers and, most notoriously and back for a new series just in time for the General Election, Benefits Street.
Are you not entertained?
As if that's not depressing enough Citizens Advice published their ideas for an alternative 'welfare' system last week. It looked not at all like the system [minor spoiler] Hilary Carrington describes to her friend Daphne in Continual Supervision, suggesting instead a fragmented system with local variations in benefit rates, more discretion in administration and the following illustration of how it might work:
Greater Manchester would have a simple statutory responsibility for using this funding to promote core social objectives. Within a fixed budget they could use the framework of existing benefits, or they could adjust the design of those benefits. They could reduce unemployment benefits for young people, for example, in order to strengthen incentives to work or stay in education, as part of a wider skills and labour market strategy.
Yes, you did read this correctly - the Citizens Advice Bureau advocating reducing benefits for young job-seekers, who are already expected to survive on only three-quarters of the adult rate.
It would be easy to lose all hope, were it not for the rise of the Green Party with their policy of a Citizens Income. Okay, Hilary or any of her colleagues might have made a better job of explaining and defending it than Natalie Bennett, but at least the idea is out there, very publicly, and being advocated by a party whose star is in the ascent. When the promise of greater social justice - the real sort, not IDS's fake tears and cuts disguised as tough love - was put at the heart of the 'Yes' campaign for Scottish independence, it came closer than anyone expected to success by bringing people out to vote who had given up on politics and politicians. The rise of anti-austerity parties Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain is proof that people want better than kick-the-poor-to-save-the-rich policies and parties that differ only in the number of hobnails in their boots.
In the meantime, my small counter-propaganda campaign rumbles on, with free ebooks whenever possible and a new 'exclusive to Completelynovel and cheaper than Amazon' paperback version of the original story and its sequel out soon. And yes, when my volunteer proof readers have finished fine-tuning Limited Capability there's a paperback of that to publish too (before the Election please, ladies!!) with Daphne's thriller Grand Union hopefully acting as bait to draw in some unsuspecting new readers.
Let's see who blinks first, Channel 5!
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