DWP: Denial With Prejudice?

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Atos, benefit, benefit cap, benefits, carer, children, Coalition, Conservative, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disabled, discriminate, DLA, DWP, Employment and Support Allowance, Equality Act, error, ESA, fraud, government, health, High Court, Iain Duncan Smith, ill, Incapacity Benefit, Inside Housing, Jobseeker's Allowance, judge, judicial review, Major Projects Authority, mental, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, minority, people, Personal Independence Payment, PIP, politics, racial, religious, sick, social security, three strikes, Tories, Tory, unemployment, Universal Credit, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, women, work capability assessment

Despite being beleaguered with defeat in the courts, the threat of further legal action for a different reason, and criticism that a flagship project is likely to fall flat on its arse, the DWP denial machine steams onward.

The fact that it continues to do this flies in the face of logic – but then, this blog has consistently argued that logic has nothing to do with DWP decisions. How can it? This is the government department with Iain Duncan Smith at the helm.

We all know that the Department of Welfare Persecution lost a court case last week, when High Court judges found that the regulations covering assessment of the mentally ill for Employment and Support Allowance break the Equality Act.

Yesterday it was reported – in Inside Housing, because none of the mainstream media would dream of reporting anything that criticises our alleged government – that no fewer than four families have launched a judicial review against the government’s benefit cap on grounds that it is “discriminatory and unreasonable”

They will argue that Mr… Smith did not take into account the impact of the policy on women, children, the disabled, racial and religious minorities, and carers when formulating the policy. Two of the families are expected to immediately fall into rent arrears and face eviction and street homelessness, because their rent exceeds the level of the cap – £500 a week.

And two of the families have fled domestic violence in circumstances where they were financially reliant upon their abusive partners and now risk losing their homes.

The DWP says the benefit cap sets “a fair limit” on what people can get from the state, which is not more than “£500 a week, the average household income”.

The average household income, once state benefits to which they are entitled is taken into account, is currently £605 per week.

On the same day that this new legal challenge was reported, the government itself revealed that it considers the Department of the Wastefully imPracticable’s flagship Universal Credit scheme to be in serious difficulty.

The Major Projects Authority has given it “amber-red” status, which denotes a project in danger of failing – and it wasn’t alone. Also in danger were the department’s fraud and error programme and its plan to introduce the new Personal Independence Payment, which is intended to replace Disability Living Allowance.

The DWP has argued that the rating is out of date, reflecting where the project was eight months ago – but this is clearly nonsense. Eight months ago, the government was telling us that Universal Credit was on track. Now it is saying this is no longer the case.

Also, any fool can say that the evidence is out of date because all statistics used in such reports are from a point in the past. That doesn’t mean they are inaccurate.

In the United States they have – or had – in their justice system a convention known as the “three-strikes law”. This was a statute enacted by state governments which demanded harsher sentences on habitual offenders who are convicted of three or more serious criminal offenses.

Since we in the UK seem to be adopting more and more American policies (their rubbish health system springs immediately to mind), perhaps we should adopt this system. Iain Duncan Smith has already lost in the courts on workfare and on the work capability assessment.

If he loses on the benefit cap, that will be the third strike against him and he should be ejected from government (if this has not already happened by then) along with all the silly so-called ministers who support him.

With new minds at the top of the DWP, its possible that Universal Credit would then be halted and we could see a return to something approximating sanity.

I doubt it, but hope springs eternal.

DWP In the Dock Again, This Time Over Benefit Cap

Coming on the same day as my own article on government members who not only lie to Parliament and the public but also break the law, apparently with impunity – https://mikesivier.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/ids-and-too-many-other-ministers-are-having-their-way-by-playing-fast-and-loose-with-the-facts/ – this is a must-read. Yet again the DWP is in trouble.
Yet again, the mainstream media have not mentioned it at all (this article is based on a piece from Inside Housing).
What next?
I can only rub my hands with glee and hope for the best…

the void

Another of Iain Duncan Smith’s flagship welfare reforms is to face a court challenge it has been reported this week.  Four families are to bring a judicial review against the cap on benefits at £500 a week which was recently brought into force in three London boroughs and is due to be extended throughout the UK from July.  The families will argue that the cap is ‘discriminatory and unreasonable’.

This latest legal challenge comes in the same week that the DWP faced a humiliating court defeat over the Atos assessments for sickness and disability benefits – which were ruled to discriminate against people with mental health conditions.  This followed last week’s news that the DWP had lost a tribunal hearing and was ordered to release the names of the companies and charities profiting from workfare schemes.

These are the very same workfare schemes which were ruled unlawful in the Appeal…

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IDS and too many other ministers are having their way by playing ‘fast and loose’ with the facts

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benefit, benefit cap, benefits, Centre, charter, committee, Conservative, David Cameron, debt, deficit, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disabled, DLA, DWP, economy, email, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, esther mcvey, George Osborne, government, Grant Shapps, health, Iain Duncan Smith, illegal, Incapacity Benefit, Information Commissioner, job, jobseeker, Jobseeker's Allowance, Labour, league, Liberal, Liberal Democrat, mark hoban, mark mcgowan, Media, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, murder, NHS, nudge unit, Parliament, Pensions, people, policy, politics, psychometric, publish, risk assessment, sanction, sick, snooper, social, social security, table, tax, tax avoidance, test, Tories, Tory, unemployment, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, Woolwich, work, work capability assessment, Workfare

Hoban lies: And this is just a taste of the many ways the Conservative-led government has been trying to hoodwink you and me since 2010.

It seems the Conservative Party is doing exactly as many of us feared, and using the attack in Woolwich on Wednesday to revive its proposals for laws to snoop on the emails and social media communications of law-abiding citizens.

Make no mistake – these powers would not be used for the good of the country, but for repression. And bear in mind that, for a Tory, the law is something that they set, and the poor obey. They think it doesn’t apply to them.

Let’s all remember that these new calls have been prompted by the actions of two men who were already known to – and monitored by – the security services. Monitoring your internet communications would not have made any difference to what happened in such a situation.

You cannot trust the Tories with the facts – all we have to do to prove that is look at Iain Duncan Smith.

Here is a man who will say anything to get his own way – which is to impoverish people who are already poor, pushing them beyond breaking-point with ridiculous ‘directions’ and unreasonable decisions in the hope, one presumes, that they will sign off benefits. The reality is that many of them go on to die from aggravation of their illnesses (if they are sick or disabled) or commit suicide.

He will be dragged before the Work and Pensions Committee within the next few weeks to answer for some of these transgressions, including his claim that 8,000 people who would have been affected by the benefit cap had moved into jobs instead, which the UK Statistics Authority rubbished by pointing out that the report from which he drew the figures “explicitly states that the figures are ‘not intended to show the additional numbers entering work as a direct result of the contact'”.

Worse than that was the claim, taken up by fellow Tory truth-fiddler Grant Shapps (if that’s his name today), that 878,300 people people decided not to pursue their claims for Employment and Support Allowance because a change in the benefits system meant that they’d have to be assessed for their level of disability – and that this showed how necessary this government’s attack on disabled people is. In fact, the figures represented nothing more than ‘churn’ – a turnover of claims withdrawn because of perfectly normal things like people getting better, or finding a job they can do even if they’re ill. After the government intensified its scrutiny of disabled people, the number in receipt of the benefit increased.

Iain Duncan Smith isn’t the only one making mockery of the facts. Look at George Osborne, who made unsupportable claims about the value of another DWP effort – Workfare – a few weeks ago.

Osborne also talks tough on tax avoidance, but he himself is known to have taken part in a legal tax avoidance scheme; he advocated one to a caller on a TV politics show; he re-wrote the law to make it easier for firms in the UK to stash their cash in offshore subsidiaries, putting their profits into tax havens rather than the British tax system; and he allowed tax lawyers from the so-called ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms into his department, where they re-wrote tax laws to make it easier for their clients to dodge high tax bills.

David Cameron said the amount of money available to the NHS was rising, when in fact it had fallen.

Cameron also claimed – on a party political broadcast! – that the national debt was falling under his Conservative Party. In fact, it has risen massively during the course of this Parliament, due primarily to the poor decisions made by the comedy Prime Minister and his allies.

It seems Cameron is a serial exaggerator of the truth. On April 15 he tweeted that the benefit cap is equal to the average wage. His claim was, therefore, that this is £26,000. Average family income, when benefits are taken into account: £31,500.

The government also lied that disability benefits were not affected by the benefit cap. Employment and Support Allowance is a disability benefit and is counted when considering whether a claimant’s income is to be capped.

On March 19 this year, Tory employment minister Mark Hoban lied to Parliament that there were no league tables in place showing which Job Centres had applied the most sanctions on jobseekers. Just one week later, those league tables were leaked to the press. Like his boss, Iain Duncan Smith, Hoban should have been expelled from Parliament under Parliamentary convention. Both are still in office. Why?

Fellow DWP minister Esther McVey has also misled Parliament and the public, this time with regard to Disability Living Allowance.

And, if you want proof that Tories like to play ‘fast and loose’ with the law:

Smith’s department has been forcing people to take rubbish ‘psychometric’ tests that have been rigged to produce set results, as part of an illegal experiment by Downing Street’s so-called ‘nudge unit’ (such experiments require the willing consent of the participants and none has ever been given).

The test itself was stolen by the ‘nudge unit’ from an organisation in the USA, and the UK government has been facing legal action from those people as a result.

The DWP lost a judicial review earlier this week, when a tribunal found that the ‘work capability assessment’, a so-called medical test (in reality nothing of the sort) designed to make it easy to push people off of the sickness and disability benefit Employment and Support Allowance, discriminates against the mentally ill.

Worst of all was the moment in March this year when Iain Duncan Smith decided to actually change the law, because his policies had been found to be illegal. Think about that! If you or I did something illegal, we would pay a penalty ranging from a fine right up to imprisonment for an indefinite period of time; if Mr Smith does it, he changes the law so he can be whitewashed. Tories think the law doesn’t apply to them. His department had been found to have breached human rights laws with the regulations it had been using to sanction people who refused to take part in Mandatory Work Activity or Workfare schemes. Utterly despicable – and worsened by the fact that the Labour Party colluded with the Conservatives to change the law, with no meaningful concessions to show for it.

Come to think of it, if you can remember far enough into this Parliament’s useless history, you might recall that the Department of Health, under Andrew Lansley, started implementing changes to the structure of the National Health Service – illegally – before his Health and Social Care Act was passed by a misguided and misled government.

The Information Commissioner had repeatedly ordered Lansley to publish a risk assessment which had been compiled by civil servants, and which is believed to have explicitly warned that the financial viability of the Tory NHS Bill was seriously questionable, predicting “deteriorations in the financial positions of one or more NHS organisations”. Practices could go bust or require central intervention to prop up their financial position. The Risk Report also warned of economic ‘slippage’ and ‘cost pressures’ arising. The London NHS risk report – which was made public – categorically stated that commissioning groups run by GPs may “not be able to secure [services] […] within the running cost range”.

As Mark McGowan pointed out on his blog, the entire top-down reorganisation of the NHS was done “without a mandate, having concealed their health policy”.

All of the above examples either occurred, or were referenced, within the last two months alone.

With a record like that, how could we possibly believe the ‘snoopers’ charter’ will be a blow for freedom?

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DWP just can’t get its story straight re fake psych ‘test’

This story will run forever – or at least, as long as it takes for the DWP to come up with a story that makes sense.
The rest of us have already come up with a story that makes sense, and the DWP’s continued efforts to fabricate something plausible from the material that is already publicly available only serves to confirm it.
Here’s the next chapter in Skwawkbox’s exposure of the DWP’s fake psychometric test. Let’s hope the Work and Pensions Committee grills Iain Duncan Smith about this little wheeze as well as his other exaggerations of the truth, when they drag his sorry bones in front of them (as promised) in the very near future.

The SKWAWKBOX

Last month, I revealed that the DWP was forcing jobseekers to take a fake psychometric ‘test’ – under threat of losing their benefits – as part of a sinister ‘behavioural control’ experiment on behalf of David Cameron’s ‘Behavioural Insights Team’ (BIT) or ‘nudge unit’.

This story was picked up by the Guardian (and was one of its most-read items) as well as by other newpapers and even by BBC Radio 4. The letter given by the DWP’s Jobcentre Plus (JCP) stated clearly that non-compliance with the instruction to take the test could result in sanction, or loss of benefits.

However, the DWP has since tried to weasel out of responsibility for its actions by claiming that the letter instructed ‘Maggie’ to take a ‘My Skills’ test, while the sinister fake test was called a ‘My Strengths’ test.

The DWP continues to make this claim. Last month I sent a Freedom of…

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The Woolwich atrocity

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attack, catholic, Christian, fact, Iain Duncan Smith, Islam, Jew, machete, murder, Muslim, peace, terror, uk statistics authority, Woolwich

I wasn’t going to mention this, but some commenters on this blog have already done so, and in that case I would rather have my opinion registered than leave people guessing.

It is too early to tell why two men drove a car into a third – who is believed to have been a serving soldier – then got out and attacked him with machetes – or at the very least, large bladed objects – dragged him into the road, and then danced around shouting admittedly Muslim-style slogans or got passers-by to film speeches they made about why they did it.

However, a friend of mine – who has been a member of the armed forces in the past – was so affected by what happened that he posted a message on Facebook to the effect that he wanted all Muslims killed.

This is what such attacks achieve. They don’t solve anything; they just perpetuate the misery.

I do not sympathise with my friend’s point of view. Even if this was the work of Muslims, those two people do not speak for all of Islam. I have encountered many Muslims during what is still a relatively brief life; some I have been privileged to have been able to call friends. I’ve also known several Jewish people whose company was also a delight. And earlier this week I attended a Catholic religious ceremony (a funeral) and felt very welcome.

My point? All these faiths are about peace.

A man standing on the street with bloodstained hands, telling us that women in his country have had to witness worse than what he has just done, has nothing to do with peace – and therefore nothing to do with religion.

It’s a trick, you see – pointing you in one direction so you don’t see what’s been happening in the other. Politicians do it all the time – and if you don’t think so, consider the UK Statistics Authority and its assertions about the number of times Iain Duncan Smith has parted company with the facts.

What happened in Woolwich was not rooted in religion; it was about violent crime, which is something that all religions abhor.

But it seems to me that, until we can eliminate the religious rhetoric, from all versions of what is going on, we are all – Christian, Muslim, whatever denomination we may be – going to have the hardest time bringing the murderers, and the murderers who demand the murders, to justice.

That’s all I have to say about it.

Judges find DWP ‘fitness for work’ test breaches the Equality Act and is illegal

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Act, assessment, Atos, benefit, benefits, Black Triangle Campaign, capability, Coalition, Conservative, disability, disabled, discriminate, discrimination, DWP, Employment and Support Allowance, equality, ESA, government, health, Iain Duncan Smith, ill, Incapacity Benefit, judicial, mental, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, MIND, Paul Farmer, Paul Jenkins, people, politics, Rethink Mental Illness, review, sick, social security, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work, work capability assessment

Despair: It’s what many people who have mental illness feel when faced with the DWP’s Work Capability Assessment regime. Now there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

A judicial review has ruled that the test used to decide whether people are fit for work actively discriminates against the mentally ill.

The tribunal concentrated on the issue of supporting evidence, and found that – under the current system – no matter how ill or even delusional a person may be, they are responsible for gathering their own medical evidence and sending it in. Otherwise, the material will not be considered. For someone with a severe mental illness, this may prove impossible.

Paperwork documenting a patient’s history of mental illness may be ignored and their ability to work will be judged using evidence from a 15-minute interview with a stranger who probably has no mental health training and no idea what the experts have to say.

Reporting the victory, the Black Triangle Campaign wrote: “The judgment that the DWP is in breach of the Equality Act is a huge victory for everyone affected by severe mental illness, but it’s sad that it took a court case to force the DWP to take action.

“What makes it even harder to stomach is that it’s completely at odds with the government’s repeated insistence that mental health is a top priority… they are penalising the very same group by forcing them through this discriminatory process, which is putting lives at risk.”

Paul Farmer, chief executive of the charity MIND wrote: “The judgment is a victory, not only for the two individuals involved in this case, but for thousands of people who have experienced additional distress and anxiety because they have struggled through an assessment process which does not adequately consider the needs of people with mental health problems.”

And Paul Jenkins, CEO of Rethink Mental Illness said: “Now that the court has ruled that these tests are unfair it would be completely irresponsible to carry on using them. The Government must halt the mass reassessment of people receiving incapacity benefit immediately, until the process is fixed.”

We have yet to hear what Iain Duncan Smith has to say. Don’t hold your breath; you know in advance he won’t accept this.

The government is weak and Labour should take the advantage

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A-level, Conservative, David Cameron, Democrat, Department, DWP, Ed Miliband, education, EU, exam, GCE, GCSE, gracious, homeless, Howe, Iain Duncan Smith, John Bercow, John Mann, Labour, Lawson, Liberal, Michael Gove, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, National Health Service, neoliberal, NHS, Nick Clegg, Owen Jones, Pensions, private, queen's, same-sex marriage, speech, state, swivel-eyed loon, Tebbit, Tories, Tory, Tory Lite, UKIP, Vox Political, work, work and pensions committee, Work Programme, workhouse

Don’t dribble, David! The spittle on his chin shows us exactly how much calm leadership we can expect from this over-promoted, spoilt, overgrown child.

As the Commons went into recess, both David Cameron and Nick Clegg were desperately trying to reassert their authority – not just over the government but their political parties as a whole.

For Cameron, the last couple of weeks must be like falling into an ever-deepening pit, lined with members of his own party who are criticising him and calling him ugly names.

UKIP – or, as I think I’ll call them from now on, BLIP – humiliated him at the local elections; the EU issue stayed with him when his own Parliamentary party tried to amend the Queen’s speech; Tory grandees including Tebbit, Howe and Lawson spoke against him; he alienated his grassroots party members, who now firmly believe that the Tories in government think they are “swivel-eyed loons”; and this week he alienated them again by pushing through the same-sex marriage bill via a deal with Labour, even though Conservative association members have been saying that his government is now acting against the wishes of modern Conservatives.

(Traditionally, if an amendment to the so-called ‘Gracious speech’ had succeeded, Cameron would have been forced to resign and a new government would have had to be formed. An alternative amendment, put forward by Labour’s John Mann, regretted that there was no plan for a referendum on the Coalitions shameful and abhorrent treatment of the National Health Service. Had Speaker John Bercow chosen this for discussion, matters might have been very different indeed.)

Apparently there has been some kind of campaign to oust Nick Clegg as Liberal Democrat leader, but he is now such an irrelevance to politics that I couldn’t be bothered to look up the details.

It is in this atmosphere that both men (we can hardly call them leaders any more) took to speechifying, as if talking themselves up would make any difference.

It didn’t help that Cameron included one statement that we can all see is blatantly untrue: He said the Conservative Party was a “broad church” and would continue to be, under his leadership. In fact it has become – more than ever before – a minority-interest group, aiming to suck all the money in the country into the hands of the wealthiest party members and their friends in big business, impoverishing the rest. This blog has made that clear from the start.

Cameron said the government was focused on issues that were “squarely in the national interest”. Let’s have a look at some of those issues.

The Huffington Post tells us that it may be possible to use the forthcoming Anti-Social Behaviour Bill to make homelessness a crime – and this has given rise to fears that, in conjunction with the Conservatives’ implementation of laws that make it extremely hard for poorer people to keep up rent payments on their homes, and their support of privately-owned prisons, they are planning to bring back the 19th-century idea of the workhouse, with poor people worked mercilessly to make money for the idle rich. It may seem like fantasy, but there’s something in it!

What about the failure of the Work Programme? Does anyone remember Iain Duncan Smith (Vox‘s Monster of the Year, 2012) wagging his finger and screaming at Owen Jones on Question Time last year – “I didn’t hear you screaming about two and a half million people who were parked, nobody saw them, for over 10 years, not working, no hope, no aspiration. We are changing their lives”. In fact, the government is not changing their lives, unless Mr… Smith admits he meant changing them for the worse.

Parliament’s Work and Pensions Committee has discovered “growing evidence” that organisations involved in the Work Programme are the ones that are “parking” the most disadvantaged people, who had spent the longest period of time out of work.

They’re not interested in helping people; they don’t want to boost the economy by increasing employment. All these firms want is their pay packet from the Department of Work and Pensions. That is what we see.

And we have Michael Gove, failing the youth of this nation with his ridiculous ideas about education. These can be summed up by saying, “State education must never be as good as private education and state pupils must never be allowed to achieve high results”. This is why he interfered with the marking of GCSE exam papers last year (did he do it to A-levels as well?), prompting the Welsh and Northern Irish education ministers to intervene.

Mr Gove’s reaction to that, revealed this week, has been to write to the ministers concerned, suggesting that they should set up their own examination system. A Whitehall source, quoted in The Guardian, said: “The Welsh are determined to keep dumbing down their exams. Leighton Andrews interfered with exam boards last year. He opposes our attempts to toughen things up and made clear he will continue to interfere to make things easier. It’s better that we all go our own way and defend our positions to our electorates.”

For a Conservative Party that is supposedly trying not to be divisive, those words are a shot in the foot.

The Welsh Government, seeing this for what it is, responded tersely: “Wales is keeping GCSEs and A-levels, as is Northern Ireland. We wish Mr Gove well with his plans to rename these qualifications in England.” In other words, it is the English system under Gove that will let pupils down.

This is the landscape we currently inhabit. The government has treated the people abominably and seems determined to continue in the same manner. Sympathy for it is draining away and the people are looking for an alternative.

It’s time for Her Majesty’s Opposition – the Labour Party – to step up and offer that alternative. Not ‘Tory Lite’ or another shade of neoliberalism but a genuine plan to improve this once-great nation’s fortunes.

Over to you, Mr Miliband. No pressure.

Memoirs of a benefits scrounger: Jobcentre sanctions me for getting a job

There’s a sitcom on ITV at the moment called The Job Lot, about life in a West Midlands Job Centre. I’ve missed every episode so far (not by intention) but my impression has been that it may be a whitewash job for the DWP. Here’s the true story.
I doubt the ITV sitcom has had any scenes that are even close to being as funny as the interview chronicled in this article – probably because we know that this one actually happened. The sad part is that people are going through this every day.
For real.

Slutocracy

My transition from good-for-nothing benefits scrounger to upstanding citizen is only a phone call away. Yes, for the last couple of months copywriting and content writing work was harder to find and I’ve been claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance. Now that I’ve got a regular job again I went down to my local Jobcentre to close my claim. Turned out it wasn’t so easy.

“We can’t close your claim because you didn’t sign in on Monday so we have to take disciplinary action against you. Your benefits have been stopped and it’ll have to go to a hearing,” said Lauren, one of the Job Centre staff.

“But I was at training,” I explained. “And I sent you two messages saying I couldn’t sign in that day. I gave you a message online and got my friend to come in and give you a note.”

“That doesn’t make any difference because you didn’t…

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Labour is hard work

Labour MPs – and especially the Labour leadership, although that is probably a forlorn hope – read this and wake up to your responsibilities! The nation needs a REAL alternative to the Coalition (and UKIP, although they really are nothing more than an interesting blip on everyone’s political radar).
The argument here reminds me of one that was put forward to explain why laws haven’t been passed in the USA to restrict gun ownership – Congress and the Senate pay attention to the gun lobby, which constitutes a tiny minority of the US population, and ignore the vast majority who want to get rid of the dangerous – potentially fatal, in fact – toys that are available all over their land.
I, for one, want rid of the dangerous – potentially fatal – neoliberal political policies that have been poisoning my land. Is there anyone in the Labour leadership brave enough to say the same?

juxtaposed

In 2010 I became sick of always being cynical and decided to opt for healthy scepticism to coincide with the formation of a Coalition Government. It was a new day: exciting unchartered territory. I’ve always supported the concept of proportional representation so I thought this would be an enlightening adventure. And anyway, wasn’t it all Labour’s fault? And wasn’t this an emergency?

I’ve never had much time for labelling and categorisations. I never cared whether my opinions were to the left or right. Hey, if it’s correct and it works, who cares, I mused. I thought I was above that kind of restrictive, pigeon-holing crap. In my mind I still am. But in my heart? Well, now…

That was three years ago. Now, through getting to grips with the 3 Ms of modern finance: Machination, Manipulation and Malfeasance, I find that my search for solutions, insofar as they fit my…

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The summer is heating up – but are the Conservatives melting down?

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amend, andrew dilnot, association, authority, backbencher, Bank of England, BBC, benefit, conference, Conservative, contribution, David Cameron, debt, divisive, doubletalk, Education Secretary, EU, Europe, Eurosceptics, finance, financial, fireworks, Health Secretary, help to buy, Income Tax, Independent, ipsa, Jeremy Hunt, Labour, loons, Lord Howe, mad, marginal, Michael Gove, mortgage, MP, Nasty Party, National Association of Head Teachers, national insurance, NI, Olympic Games, Parliamentary, pay, public services, Queen, questionnaire, referendum, resign, responsbility, responsible, rise, Russell Hobby, Sir Mervyn King, social security, speech, standards, swivel-eyed, Tories, Tory, two-tier, uk statistics authority, union, unsustainable, water cannon, welfare

Swivel-eyed loon: And Jeremy Hunt is a member of the government, not a grassroots Conservative association.

The Conservative Party is eating itself from within. It is therefore an odd time for members to go into Labour marginal constituencies, trying to undermine support with a loaded questionnaire.

That, however, is exactly what we have seen this weekend. But then, what did you expect from the Party of Doubletalk? The Nasty Party? The Party that sows Divisive-ness wherever it can, while mouthing platitudes like “We’re all in it together”? The Party that claims it is responsible with the nation’s finances, while threatening to run up greater debts than any of its rivals ever did?

Let’s start on financial responsibility: Sir Mervyn King, who retires as Governor of the Bank of England next month, has warned that the ‘Help to Buy’ scheme for new mortgages must not be allowed to run indefinitely. The scheme has the state guaranteeing up to 15 per cent of a mortgage on homes worth up to £600,000, and is intended to run until 2017. Sir Mervyn’s fear is that the government will expose the taxpayer – that’s you and me – to billions of pounds of private mortgage debt. He said the UK must avoid what happened in the USA, where state-backed mortgage schemes had to be bailed out.

This particular scheme has already run into flak from those who claimed it was a “second-home subsidy” for the very rich. The new criticism raises fears that the Conservatives are actively engineering a situation that will create more unsustainable debt – and we all know what they do to resolve that kind of problem, don’t we?

They cut. Most particularly, they cut parts of the public services that help anyone who doesn’t earn at least £100,000 per year.

And no – before anyone pipes up with it – nobody receives that much on benefits.

For doubletalk, let’s look at Michael Gove. The Education Secretary was heckled and jeered when he appeared before the National Association of Head Teachers’ conference, where members passed a motion of no confidence in his policies.

The BBC quoted Russell Hobby, general secretary of the NAHT: “What I think he’s failed to pick up on is the short termism of the targets and the constant change, [which] means that people no longer feel that they’re doing the job that they came to do, which is to teach children.”

Mr Gove said he had been “delighted with the warmth and enthusiasm” that had greeted some of the government’s education policies.

But he went on to say there would be no change of course: “What I have heard is repeated statements that the profession faces stress, and insufficient evidence about what can be done about it. What I haven’t heard over the last hour is a determination to be constructive. Critical yes, but not constructive.”

Doubletalk. At first he was saying one thing when we know he means something else entirely; then he went on to ignore what he had been told – by the experts – because it did not support his policy.

Meanwhile, of course, the Conservative Party is eating itself alive over Europe. There are so many angles to this, it’s hard to know where to begin!

We know that Conservative backbenchers tried to amend their own government’s Queen’s speech with a motion regretting the lack of intention to legislate for an in/out referendum on membership of the European Union, and we know that 116 of them voted in favour of that motion. That wasn’t anything like enough for it to pass, so David Cameron didn’t have to worry about resigning (as suggested in previous articles on this blog).

Next thing we knew, the Telegraph‘s political editor, James Kirkup, told us a government figure close to the Prime Minister had said the backbenchers had to vote the way they did because they had been ordered to do so by grassroots Conservative association members, and they were all “mad, swivel-eyed loons”.

Downing Street has denied that anybody said such a thing, but Kirkup has tweeted “I stand by my story” – and anyway, the damage has been done. Conservative association members were already at loggerheads with the Parliamentary party and the government, we’re told, because they believe their views are being ignored.

(One wonders what those views might, in fact, be. This could be one case in which ignoring the will of the people is actually the more sensible thing to do!)

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has said the Conservatives are “united” in their view of Europe – but then, Jeremy Hunt – as Health Secretary – told Parliament that spending on the NHS has risen in real terms since the Coalition came into office, and we know from Andrew Dilnot, head of the independent UK Statistics Authority, that this is not true.

Lord Howe, on the other hand, has accused Crime – sorry, Prime – Minister David Cameron of “running scared” of Eurosceptics and losing control of the party. This is the man whose resignation speech, which memorably included a comment that being sent to deal with the EU was like being in a cricket team whose captain had broken his bat, signalled the end of Margaret – later Baroness – Thatcher’s career as Prime Minister.

Who do we believe, the silly youngster or the boring old guy? That’s right – we believe the old guy who already brought down one Prime Minister. Perhaps he can do the same to another.

Meanwhile, we were told on Sunday that members of Parliament are all set to receive a pay rise of up to £20,000, starting in 2015, the year of the next general election. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has been considering an increase of between £10,000 and £20,000, with the lower figure most likely – despite a consultation revealing that some MPs (all Conservative) thought they were worth more than £100,000 per year.

Backbencher pay is around £65,000 per year at the moment. This means the pay rise they are likely to get is 15 per cent, while those Conservatives who wanted £100 grand expected a rise of 54 per cent.

Average pay rises for working people over the last year were less than one per cent.

Do you think this is appropriate remuneration for the political organisation that said “We’re all in it together?” Because I don’t.

And this is the time the Conservative Party decides to float a proposal for a two-tier benefit system, in a survey sent to residents of marginal seats held by Labour.

One question asked whether benefit payments should be the same, regardless of how many years a person has paid National Insurance or income tax. If people answered ‘no’, the next question asked what proportion of benefits should be dependent on a record of contribution.

This is insidious. If benefits become dependent on contribution, that means young people without a job will not qualify for benefits – they won’t have paid anything in, so won’t be able to take anything out. Also, what about the long-term sick and disabled (don’t start about fraud – eliminating the 0.4 per cent of fraudulent claims does not justify what the Conservative-led Coalition is already doing to 87/88 per cent of ESA claimants, or what it has started doing to PIP claimants)? Their claims are likely to continue long after their contributions run out.

This is, I think, a trick to allow rich people to get out of paying higher tax rates. Think about it – rich people pay more, therefore they subsidise public services, including social security benefits, for the poor. Get people to support benefit payments based on the amount of money people pay in and the rich get a nice fat tax cut while the poor get their benefits cut off.

Fair? All in it together?

There’s a lot of doubletalk, so sections are headed “helping with the cost of living” (they tend to make it impossible for people to meet that cost) or “making our welfare and benefits system fair” – Tories have never tried to do this in the entire history of that political party.

And respondents were asked to agree with one of two statements, which were: “If you work hard, it is possible to be very successful in Britain no matter what your background” and “In Britain today, people from some backgrounds will never have a real chance to be successful no matter how hard they work”. The correct answer is to agree with the second statement, of course. And this government of public schoolboys have every intention of pushing that situation to its utmost extreme, so if you are a middle-class social climber and you think there are opportunities for you under a Tory government, forget it.

The whole nightmarish rag is prefaced by a letter from David Cameron. It’s very funny if you accept that it’s full of doubletalk and nonsense. Let’s go through it together:

“I’d like to know what you think about some of the steps we’ve taken so far – and I’d like to know your ideas about what more the Government can do to help families like yours,” he begins. He means: I’d like to know what we can say in order to get you to vote for us in 2015. We’ll have no intention of carrying out any promise that does not advantage ourselves and our extremely rich friends. The correct response is: Your policies are ideologically-motivated twaddle that are causing critical damage to this country and its institutions. Your best action in the future will be to resign.

“I think helping people through tough economic times means making sure our welfare and benefits is [sic] fair. That means ensuring the system helps those who do the right thing and want to get on. That’s helping rich people through tough economic times. We’ll make welfare and benefits as unfair to the poor as we can. That means ensuring the system helps those who support us and are rich enough for us to want to help them. Your changes to welfare and benefits have led to thousands of deaths. That is not fair. You are breaking the system.

“That’s why we’ve capped the amount an out-of-work household can receive in benefits, so this can’t be more than an average working family earns. Again I’d like to know what you think about the actions we’ve taken so far, and your ideas to the future.” It’s nothing near what an average working family earns, because they would be on benefits that top up their earnings to more than £31,000 – but you couldn’t cap at that level because almost nobody would have been knocked off the benefit books (all your talk about people taking more than £100,000 in benefits was nonsense). Resign, join a monastery and vow never to enter public life again.

There is no doubt about it – the cracks are beginning to show. Last summer, the Olympic Games gave us spectacular firework displays. As public unrest mounts, it seems likely that we’ll see even more spectacular fireworks this year – unplanned.

But then, that is why the Conservatives bought the water cannons that are being tested at Petersfield. When they go into use, we’ll all know what they really think of the general public.