Liam Byrne, Labour MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill, has reignited the debate in the UK regarding welfare reform. Byrne's main concern seems to be the cost of welfare, and he wants to "bring down [the] benefits bill to help pay down the national debt".
This is tricky however, and morally dubious. The overwhelming majority of welfare recipients do deserve it, and they need it to live, especially in the absence of dynamic economic growth that could draw them into work.
Nevertheless, the bloated welfare state could be trimmed back with some common-sense proposals. At the moment for example, there is next-to-nothing in terms of tailoring potential jobs to incapacitated people's needs. Why can't those suffering from anxiety or agoraphobia be offered jobs working from home in our digital age? And given that the phenomenon of depression is rooted in a depressing society, we need policies to reinvigorate the economy in a wider sense to restore jubilation, rather than hoping for the best from the mere spectacle of the Olympic Games.
Cutting welfare without doing anything to create the new jobs needed is morally circumspect.
The true rate of UK unemployment
Currently there are 9.33 million economically inactive people aged 16-64 in the UK, more if you count students, and these people are supposed to be chasing, at best, half a million vacancies. Unless the economy expands, that means even if every vacancy was immediately filled, you'd still have over 8.5 million unemployed.
The take up of benefits is actually remarkably low. There are around 1.7 million people claiming Job Seekers Allowance and around 2.5 million on long-term sickness benefits. Fraudulent claims are estimated to cost the Exchequer £1.5 billion per year. However the non-take up of benefits people are entitled to saves the Exchequer £16 billion. Furthermore, the cost of benefit fraud is far, far lower than the amount of money lost through rich companies' tax evasion. The policy of welfare reform then, could be misguided on purely accountancy terms.
Does incapacity benefit zap initiative and destroy the soul?
But there is another dimension to the issue. Writing in the Daily Telegraph blogs, Brendan O'Neill thinks the welfare state zaps initiative and destroys the soul, as well as fraying social bonds.
I have a lot of respect for O'Neill's editorship of online magazine spiked; I especially like its anti-environmentalism, principled anti-militarism, and uncompromising attitude to free speech.
Perhaps involving a contradiction, or at least a lack of clarification, O'Neill and other spiked writers who've touched this issue, don't seem to want the incapacity benefit system completely scrapped because they acknowledge that a portion of the claimants really can't work.
My main beef with this take on the incapacity benefit system is that people who are well do lose their benefits. The system works okay as it is. If O'Neill doesn't think enough people are being thrown off the benefit, then he needs to spell out what new criteria should be used for assessing people.
I, for one, certainly fall into the category of “genuinely incapacitated”, though would never describe myself as “weak and pathetic”, as O'Neill portrays. For the past 11 years, I've struggled with schizophrenia and agoraphobia. In 2001, I was Sectioned under the Mental Health Act for 5 weeks with acute psychosis. I'm much better now as strong anti-psychotic medication keeps the symptoms at bay. Nevertheless many psychiatrists over this period of time (I must have seen at least 20) have all advised me not to work. I'm quite content to do this, because the agoraphobia means I can't travel without anti-anxiety medication. I've tried working from home writing articles, but nowhere pays enough for me to come off benefits. Furthermore it would be an unreliable income as for many months of the year, when I'm having partial relapses, I'm devoid of motivation and clarity of thought.
So I wonder if O'Neill's attack on welfarism is justified. And I know plenty of other people who are in a similar boat to me. There's also a massive chasm between the normal 'anxiety' everyone feels, and having a full-blown panic attack, just like there's an enormous gulf between everyday feeling sad, and debilitating manic depression, or being bi-polar.
I also think O'Neill's suggestion that all you have to do to get incapacity benefit is make a “performance of being ill or depressed” at the dole centre, is wrong. In order to get illness benefits, I had to send in sick-notes every month after a visit to my GP, then I was assessed by Atos Healthcare, the independent company set up to evaluate one's claim. They said I had a strong case as I was being seen in a psychiatric out-patients' clinic every 3 months. There's no way that ordinary people who are milking normal, everyday anxiety or depression that doesn't warrant medical intervention could stay on these benefits for a long time.
I also dispute that “large swathes” of the working class are being conned into thinking they're ill. O'Neill worries that huge swathes of working-class folk are being dumped on the incapacity scrap-heap, but actually the number of claimants is around 2.5 million. Assuming we have a workforce of 35 million in the UK, this number represents only 8.75% of the workforce.
And as for the percentage of these who might be chancers, even Work and Pensions Secretary Ian Duncan Smith reckoned the new stricter personal capability assessments would only mean 23% of claimants would be found fit to work. Therefore 77% really are ill. This equates to 1.925 million people, or 6.73% of the working population. As a percentage of the national population as a whole, it is 3.09%. Given how many times we are told that “one-in-four” experience mental health problems, it is welcome to discover that only one in thirty-three actually do, at least to the point where they require financial assistance. If anything, it seems the working class are holding up quite well in a therapeutic society. Whatever the case, 3.09% is not a huge swathe.
O'Neill also romanticises the past when it comes to the working class. Was there ever an era when everyone looked out for each other, and if you fell on hard times, you could easily pick yourself up? Isn't it more the case that our current welfare state is responding to a problem – responding to the deficit in social solidarity rather than creating it? And why does O'Neill think the simple receipt of welfare necessarily entails increased estrangement from the community? I'm sure if all the claimants had rich families, they'd turn to them, but since it is the welfare state that has the money, isn't it better for families that the state provides people with enough money to get by rather than squeezing a family member's pay-check even further?
Finally, a pedantic point, but “incapacity benefit” - the term O'Neill always uses – was replaced by Employment Support Allowance (ESA) in 2008. Did O'Neill actually do any basic research?!
Under ESA, there are more frequent medicals to weed out those who are fit or who get better. On balance, I don't think the system requires radical overhaul, it works more or less as it is. If anything, benefits should be increased as they're still set to the breadline.
Sources:
Labour Market Statistics, Office for National Statistics, December 2011, Accessed 06 January 2012
A William Beveridge for this Century's Welfare State, by Liam Byrne, Guardian Comment is Free, 02 January 2012, Accessed 06 January 2012
Liam Byrne is Right: We Need Radical Reform of the Initiative-Zapping, Soul Destroying Welfare State, by Brendan O'Neill, Telegraph blogs, 03 January 2012, Accessed 06 January 2012
Two Million Incapacity Claimants Fit To Work?, by Patrick Casey, FullFact.Org, 11 January 2011, Accessed 06 January 2012
Barry Curtis - Qualified as a philosopher, Barry Curtis is now a freelance journalist and writer for Suite101 based in the UK.
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