Britain’s richest are even better-off – but how did they get that way?

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austerity, avoidance, avoiding, Briton, Conservative, David Cameron, government, list, living, low, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, minimum, parasite, people, rich, selfish, Sunday Times, tax, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, wage, wealth

The Sunday Times Rich List has confirmed what some of us have been saying for years – that Austerity has funnelled Britain’s money into the hands of a very few, very selfish people.

The 1,000 richest Britons now own one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product, with their combined wealth rising from last year’s total of £449,654,000,000 to £518,975,000,000.

That’s an increase of 15.4 per cent, an average rise of £69,321,000 each and an average income of 518,975,000.

Average wages in the UK are stagnant at around £26,500, with average pay for the lowest earners having fallen by 14 per cent since David Cameron’s Tory government got its nose in the trough in 2010.

There are only two points to make from this.

Firstly, bearing in mind Gary Barlow’s recent appearances in the news for taking part in a tax avoidance scheme: How many of these 1,000 very rich people are participants in the same or similar – legal – procedures for avoiding tax? How many of them pay the full 45 per cent and how many only throw one per cent into the national pot (from which they get as many public services as the rest of us)?

Secondly, bearing in mind that many of these people take their money from very large corporations who employ very many people, how many of them pay very low wages to their employees?

The answers should provide enlightenment – not only on these people and their reasons for living in Britain, but on the policies of a government that intentionally impoverishes the defenceless in order to make this country more attractive to these fellow parasites.

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Osborne brings in new tax avoidance laws; city minister undermines him

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Andrea Leadsom, Andrew Mitchell, avoidance, Bandal, bank, banker, bonus, Conservative, financial transaction, George Osborne, government, help to buy, inheritance, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, offshore, Philip Hammond, politics, tax, Tobin, Tories, Tory, Treasury, Vox Political

Andrea Leadsom [Image: The Independent].

George Osborne’s latest attempt to make us think that Conservatives can be tough on tax avoiders has lasted less than a week.

The part-time Chancellor announced measures that meant avoiders faced bigger fines and were more likely to go to jail, on April 12.

What a shame his new city minister, Andrea Leadsom, is facing hard questions over actions she took to cut her own inheritance tax bill, just six days later.

Ms Leadsom is now responsible for the government’s Help to Buy property scheme, making this even more embarrassing as the allegations against her refer to shares in a property company.

The allegation is that she took advantage of offshare banking arrangements for her buy-to-let property company, placing her shares into controversial trusts in order to reduce her inheritance tax bill, for the benefit of her children.

The property firm Bandal, created by Ms Leadsom and her husband, another ex-banker – also created charges over two of its buy-to-let properties in favour of the offshore branch of an investment bank. Apparently this indicates that she obtained loans from the Jersey-based bank that were secured against the buy-to-let properties.

While none of the above is actually unlawful, it does mean there is at least one alleged tax avoider – not only in the Conservative Party but in the Treasury. The self-styled ‘Party of Financial Competence’ has become, once again, the Party of Financial Fiddles.

According to The Independent, “Since becoming an MP, Ms Leadsom has campaigned vigorously against bankers’ bonus caps and a financial transaction ‘Tobin’ tax.

“It is not the first time millionaire Tory ministers have been caught up in tax avoidance claims.

“The Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, former Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell and Mr Osborne were all accused of legal tax avoidance in 2010 by Channel 4’s Dispatches programme. All three men denied any wrongdoing.”

This is a serious embarrassment for George Osborne, who told the nation, “If you’re hiding your money offshore, we are coming to get you,” in a speech last week.

In the case of Ms Leadsom, it seems, he doesn’t have far to go.

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DWP calls in Rentadoc to harass the sick off-benefit

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abuse, accountancy, accountant, allowance, amputate, Atos, avoidance, belief, benefit, Big Four, Black Country, bloodbath, breakdown, claimant, condition, corporate, cut, death, Deloitte, Department, depress, Derbyshire, disability, disable, doctor, employment, ESA, esther mcvey, government, grow back, harass, health, healthcare, Iain Duncan Smith, Ingeus UK, Jobseeker's Allowance, JSA, law, Leicestershire, limb, Lincolnshire, mental, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, minister, Multiple Sclerosis, nervous exhaustion, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Parkinson's, Pensions, people, physical, politics, premature, professional, provider, rentadoc, required, Rutland, Shropshire, sick, social security, spending, Staffordshire, suicide, support, tax, threaten, unemployment, Vox Political, welfare, welfare to work, work, Work Programme, work-related activity, worse, WRA

Ingeus out of favour: This image was found on a site protesting against Workfare and demonstrates the high regard in which it is held by previous users of the Ingeus service.

Perhaps we’re jumping the gun with the headline but alarm bells tend to go off when you read that “people on sickness benefits will be required to have regular meetings with healthcare professionals to help them with their barriers to work”.

Everyone working on Employment and Support Allowance should already know what everyone receiving it knows – it’s more a bloodbath than a benefit.

This is down to the attitude of the healthcare professionals already working on it – the people who (and God forbid you should ever ask to see their qualifications) automatically sign 70 per cent of claimants as ‘fit for work’, whether they are or not, and tell most of the rest they need to be work-ready within a year.

The result? Mental breakdowns, depression and suicides; physical breakdowns, worsening of existing conditions, and premature deaths. By the thousand.

These are the people who ask claimants when amputated limbs are going to grow back, and who tell people with Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis that they’ll be fit for work within six months.

If you did (God forbid) ask them where they got their qualifications, it was probably the Teaching Hospital of Noddyland.

“People on sickness benefits will be required to have regular meetings with healthcare professionals to help them address their barriers to work – or face losing their benefits [italics mine] – in a two-year pilot scheme in central England which begins in November,” the DWP press release states.

Isn’t this what happened with people on Jobseekers’ Allowance? Suddenly they had to start fulfilling lots of pointless extra requirements or their benefits would be withdrawn? Part of that is a regular meeting in which – as far as we can ascertain – innocent people are harassed, threatened and abused by DWP employees who are themselves, it seems, millimetres away from nervous exhaustion brought on by the pressures of the job.

Claiming benefits, it seems, is now an endurance test: Who cracks (up) first?

Now, for 3,000 people in the work-related activity group for ESA in the Black Country, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Staffordshire and Shropshire, there’s no relief even if they have a nervous breakdown and have to claim ESA on mental health grounds.

“People involved in the pilot – who have all been assessed as being able to work at some point in the future – will have regular appointments with healthcare professionals as a condition of receiving their benefit, to focus on helping them move closer to being able to get a job.”

There you go – all judged as able to work in the future. Presumably Iain Duncan Smith has taken a look at their files, glanced into his crystal ball, and declared that he has a “belief” in their fitness to work. If any of these people are reading, please contact this blog if you have a progressive health condition that won’t ever improve.

Because the meeting is a condition of receiving benefit, anyone attending can expect to be treated abominably. This is not about helping you back to work, or even back to health; it’s about kicking you off-benefit and nothing further. The aim, as with JSA, is to cut claimant numbers and thereby cut spending.

“It’s really important we give people who are disabled or have a health condition the support they need to get into work if they are able,” said employment minister Esther McVey who knows nothing about this at all (despite having been minister for the disabled).

“Traditionally, this help has tended to be work-related, but this pilot will look at whether a more holistic approach is more successful in helping people to manage their conditions and so break down their barriers to work.”

The biggest barrier to a person with a disability getting work is the fact that the Conservative-led Coalition government has been closing down employment opportunities for them and removing incentives for employers to take them on.

The healthcare professionals will be provided by Ingeus UK – a welfare-to-work provider that has been involved in the Work Programme – you know, the time-wasting scheme in which jobseekers are taken off the unemployment statistics while they learn simple skills that, in fact, most of them already have.

The company’s website is very slick but contains no information about the number of doctors in its employ.

Oh, and guess what? The company is half-owned by Deloitte, one of the ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms that currently writes British tax law to make avoidance easy for the big corporates. How much tax has Ingeus paid lately?

“Everything we do is results driven”, the site declares.

One wonders what Ingeus will do when the casualties start piling up.

Labour’s Living Wage tax break exposes the Tories’ ‘making work pay’ lie

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avoidance, BBC, benefit, benefits, break, Conservative, Deloitte, economic, economy, Ed Miliband, Ernst & Young, food bank, Frances O'Grady, George Osborne, growth, haven, household, income, KPMG, Labour, living wage, making work pay, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, people, politics, PricewaterhouseCoopers, social security, tax, Tories, Tory, Trade Union Congress, Treasury, TUC, Vox Political, welfare, work

Ed Miliband’s Living Wage gamble: It’s a stop-gap solution while a Labour government works on re-balancing the economy, but will small businesses go for it? [Picture: BBC]

Just one day after the TUC leader said the Coalition has broken the historic link between economic growth and rising household incomes, Labour has proposed a way to restore it.

Since the recovery began, earlier this year, Vox Political has been pointing out its lack of impact on the poorest households in the UK – readily evidenced by the rise and rise of food banks across the country. This is because any profits are being funnelled up to those individuals who are already earning the most and – thanks to our bizarrely-slanted tax (avoidance) system – into tax havens.

According to the BBC, Frances O’Grady told a conference yesterday that “households are being excluded from the benefits of growth. Unless this changes, the recovery will be meaningless to the vast majority of people across Britain.

She said the government was “desperately short of solutions”.

A Treasury spokesperson said the government’s economic plan (wait a minute! The government has an economic plan? When did they come up with that?) was “the only sustainable way to raise living standards” despite all the evidence to the contrary.

This person also said the government’s plan was “slowly but surely working”, even though the economic recovery has nothing to do with any government action.

But today Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, unveiled a plan that made nonsense of the Tory mantra that the government is making work pay because, instead of cutting benefits to make it seem more desirable to have a wage (even though the amount earned is still a pittance), it will actually add cash to working people’s pay packets.

There is a drawback, in that it means a Labour government will offer businesses a 12-month tax break if they agree to pay employees the Living Wage. A tax break is legalised tax avoidance, and we really have enough of that going on already, thanks to the efforts of the Big Four tax avoidance accountancy firms – KPMG, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young – who happen also to write UK tax law for George Osborne (because he doesn’t know how).

But it’s only for a year while the Living Wage gets bedded in. It’s a stop-gap solution to lift workers out of poverty while Labour introduces long-term plans to re-balance an economy that has already been seriously damaged by three and a half years of crazy Conservative ideological pummelling. Who can predict the harm after a full Parliamentary term?

And the Living Wage is becoming even more desperately-needed in the UK than ever, after a study showed the number of workers earning less than its £8.55 per hour (in London) and £7.45 per hour (elsewhere) increased by eight per cent in the last year (from 4.8 million to 5.2 million).

Mr Miliband’s proposal means private firms would be able to claim back about one-third of the cost of raising their staff members’ wages to the Living Wage. This would be good for the government as it would save money on benefit bills and tax revenues would rise.

But costs to businesses would increase. While these could be absorbed by larger companies, smaller firms might struggle to stay afloat.

It is possible, though, that the wage rise would reinvigorate previously-downtrodden workers (as Vox Political has suggested in the past), giving them a sense that they are valued and a reason to invest their energy in the company’s success.

More dodgy numbers on jobs for the disabled from the fake statistics machine

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Making up the numbers: Thousands more disabled people are becoming self-employed, contributing to a huge boost in the number of private businesses – or are they?

Someone in the Coalition government needs to watch what they’re saying – otherwise people all over the UK might come to unintended conclusions.

Take a look at this: “Over 2,000 more disabled people got the support they needed to get or keep their job, compared with this time last year, official figures released today (22 October 2013) show” – according to a Department for Work and Pensions press release.

It goes on to say that the number of people receiving support under the Access to Work programme between April and June this year increased by 10 per cent on the same period last year, to 22,760. Access to Work “provides financial help towards the extra costs faced by disabled people at work, such as support workers, specialist aids and equipment and travel to work support”.

Apparently the new stats show the highest level of new claims since 2007 – 10,390; and more people with mental health conditions than ever before have taken advantage of Access to Work.

The press release also states that young disabled people can now get Access to Work support while on Youth Contract work experience, a Supported Internship or Traineeship; and businesses with 49 employees or less no longer have to pay a contribution towards the extra costs faced by disabled people in work. It seems they used to have to pay up to £2,300 per employee who uses the fund.

Now look at this: According to a press release from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the number of private sector businesses in the UK increased by 102,000 between the beginning of 2012 and the same time in 2013.

There are now 4.9 million private businesses in the UK, with those employing fewer than 50 employees comprising nearly half of the total.

Some might think this is brilliant; that the DWP and BIS are achieving their aims of boosting private-sector business and finding work within those businesses for disabled people.

But dig a little deeper and a more sinister pattern emerges.

Doesn’t this scenario seem odd to anybody who read, earlier this year, that the DWP was having deep difficulty finding work for disabled people from the ESA work-related activity group?

Or, indeed, to anybody who read the BBC’s report that work advisors were pushing the jobless into self-employment?

Isn’t it more likely that the DWP and Work Programme providers, faced with an influx of disabled people into the programme from the ESA WRAG at the end of last year, encouraged them to set up as self-employed with their own businesses in order to get them off the claimant books?

Does it not, then, seem likely that a large proportion of the 22,760 getting help from Access to Work were offered it as part of a self-employment package that also, we are told, includes start-up money (that admittedly tapers away over time) and tax credits. The attraction for WP providers is that they would earn a commission for every claimant they clear off the books in this way.

So it seems likely that a large proportion of the 22,760 may now be self-employed in name alone and that these fake firms are included in the 102,000 new businesses lauded by BIS.

Is it not logical, therefore, to conclude that these are not government schemes, but government scams – designed to hoodwink the general public into thinking that the economy is improving far more than in reality, and that the government is succeeding in its aim to bring down unemployment?

The reference to jobs for people with mental health problems would be particularly useful for a government that has just appealed against the result of a judicial review that found its practices discriminate against this sector of society.

Some might say that this conclusion is crazy. Why would the government want to release information that directly indicates underhanded behaviour on its part?

The answer is, of course, that it would not. This government wants to convince an undecided electorate that it knows what it is doing and that the country’s future is safe in its hands. But its right hand doesn’t seem to know what its left is doing – with regard to press releases, at the very least.

And let’s not forget that, since the Coalition came into office, 52,701 firms have been declared insolvent and 379,968 individuals. Around 80 per cent of new self-employed businesses go to the wall within three years.

Therefore we can say that, in trying to prove that it is competent, the Coalition government has in fact proved the exact opposite.

So someone really needs to watch what they’re saying – if they don’t want people all over the UK to come to unintended conclusions!

AFTERTHOUGHT: The BIS press release adds that the government’s ‘Plan for Growth’, published with the 2011 budget, included an aim to create “the most competitive tax system in the G20”. By “competitive” the Treasury meant the system had to be more attractive to businesses that aim to keep as much of their profits away from the tax man as possible. It is a commitment to turn Britain into a tax haven and the VP post earlier this week shows that the government has been successful in this aim. What a shame that it also means the Coalition government will totally fail to meet its main policy commitment and reason for existing in the first place: It can’t cut the national deficit if the biggest businesses that operate here aren’t paying their taxes.

Rising tide of protest marks start of Tory conference

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allowance, Andrew Marr Show, avoidance, banker, BBC, bedroom tax, boss, break, British Chambers of Commerce, bubble, ComRes, conference, Conservative, Corporation Tax, David Cameron, David Ison, Dean, Department, discontent, Downing Street Demand, economic, economy, employment, error, ESA, fool, funeral, George Osborne, Germany, hedge fund, help to buy, housing, Iain Duncan Smith, investor, Labour, Liam Byrne, loophole, Margaret Thatcher, married couple tax, mortgage, Nationwide Building Society, Pensions, policies, policy, poll, protest, St Paul's Cathedral, stall, support, tax, Tories, Tory, Treasury, USA, WCA, work, work capability assessment

Falling on deaf ears: The chorus of protest against the bedroom tax is unlikely to be heard at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, where delegates will be discussing how to bribe the electorate into supporting them in 2015. [Picture: Matthew Pover in the Sunday People]

Does David Cameron have any new policies that are big enough to silence the rising clamour of discontent against him?

He’ll need something big – Coalition partners the Liberal Democrats managed only a tax on plastic bags (an idea stolen from the Labour Welsh government) and a few weak cries of “Please let us stay in government after 2015”.

The married couples’ tax allowance isn’t it. It seems this is how the Tories plan to spend any money saved by imposing the bedroom tax, and people are already naming it as an election bribe – albeit a poor one at £3.85 a week.

He has set aside £700 million for the scheme, which is more than the government would have spent if it had not imposed the bedroom tax.

A brand-new ComRes poll is showing that 60 per cent of voters agree with Labour’s plan to abolish the bedroom tax – which hits 660,000 households. And one in five Liberal Democrats could vote Labour in protest at the tax.

The issue has prompted shadow Work and Pensions secretary Liam Byrne to say something with which this blog can actually – for once – agree! He said: “It is the worst possible combination of incompetence and cruelty, a mean-spirited shambles. It’s got to go.”

He added that the bedroom tax was likely to cost more than it saved – a point made by this blog many months ago.

Another hopelessly unpopular Tory policy to come from Iain Duncan Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions has been the work capability assessment for sick and disabled claimants of Employment and Support Allowance. It seems one of the first things the Tories did was alter this test so that it became almost impossible to accumulate enough points to be found in need of the benefit.

The result has been three years of carnage behind closed doors, where people with serious conditions have been forced into destitution that has either caused their death by worsening their condition, or caused the kind of mental health problems that lead to suicide. Thousands – perhaps tens of thousands – have died.

Now, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral has written to Cameron, urging him to end the assessments which, he wrote, can “cut short their lives”.

The Very Reverend Dr David Ison, who presided over Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, signed a campaign letter entitled ‘The Downing Street Demand’, which claims Government policies force some of the most deprived members of society to “shoulder the heaviest burden of national debt created by the super-rich”.

Some might say this is typical of broad Conservative policy: Taking from the poor to give to the rich.

The harshness of such a policy, as outlined in the letter, is appalling: “In 2010 you said, ‘I’m going to make sure no-one is left behind; that we protect the poorest and most vulnerable in our society’.

“The reality of the austerity programme is the opposite.

“Since your Government came to power, cuts have meant that disabled people are paying back nine times more than non-disabled people and those with the highest support needs are paying back nineteen times more.”

Dr Ison said: “It’s right to stand in solidarity with people from many different organisations to draw attention to the needs of some of the most deprived members of our society.

“Many disabled people feel desperate facing possible cuts in support, the bedroom tax, and in particular an inflexible and failing Work Capability Assessment scheme which can blight and even cut short their lives.

“The Government needs to respond by enabling disabled people to live with dignity and security.”

Against this background, what is Cameron doing to make his party more attractive?

He’s bringing forward the second phase of his government’s Help to Buy scheme, that helps people in England to get 95 per cent mortgages on properties worth up to £600,000 – a scheme that has been widely criticised for setting up another debt-related housing bubble.

Cameron denies this. Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show this morning (Sunday), he said that outside London and the South East the average price of homes has only risen 0.8 per cent.

But the BBC reported that, during September, house prices rose at their fastest rate in more than six years – and a report from Nationwide Building Society showed the rise was “increasingly broad-based”.

Adam Marshall, of the British Chambers of Commerce (which is normally supportive to the Conservatives), said: “With all the concern expressed about Help to Buy – rushing into it seems less than responsible on part of government.”

It is, therefore, under a barrage of scorn that the Conservative conference begins today. How is Cameron planning to rally his troops?

He would be ill-advised to use the economy – as seems likely from a BBC report today.

He wants the country to believe that “We have had to make very difficult decisions… These difficult decisions are beginning to pay off and the country’s coming through it.”

Even here, the evidence is against him. George Osborne’s economic theory was based on a very silly spreadsheet error, as was proved several months ago by an American student. Attempts by this blog to ascertain whether he had anything more solid on which to base his policy proved fruitless – all the evidence he provided was underpinned by the same discredited document.

No – we can all see what George Osborne’s policies did to the British economy: They stalled it.

We spent three years bumping along the bottom with no growth worth mentioning, which Osborne, Cameron and their cronies used as an excuse to impose policies that have hammered those of us on the lowest incomes while protecting the rich corporate bosses, bankers and hedge fund investors who caused the economic crash.

Now, it seems more likely that the economy is picking up because it was always likely to. Commerce is cyclical and, when conditions merit it, business will pick up after a slump. That is what is happening now, and this is why growth figures are “stronger than expected”.

It has nothing to do with Conservative economic policies at all.

That won’t stop Cameron trying to capitalise on it. Ever the opportunist, he is already trying to pretend that this was the plan all along, and it just took a little longer than expected. We would all be fools to believe him.

And he has rushed to attack Labour plans for economic revival, claiming these would involve “crazy plans to tax business out of existence”.

In fact, Labour’s plans will close tax avoidance loopholes that have allowed businesses to avoid paying their due to the Treasury.

Besides, Conservative policy – to reduce Corporation Tax massively – has been proved to do nothing to make the UK more attractive for multinational businesses; the USA kept its taxes high and has not lost any of its own corporate taxpayers.

That country, along with Germany, adopted a policy of investment alongside a tighter tax regime and has reaped the benefits with much greater growth than the UK, which has suffered from a lack of investment and a tax policy full of holes (because it is written by the architects of the biggest tax avoidance schemes).

So what’s left?

Historically, at this time in the electoral cycle, Tory policy is to offer Middle Britain a massive bribe.

If they try it now, they’ll risk wiping out any savings they might have made over the last three years, rendering this entire Parliament pointless.

This blog stated last week that the Tories seem to want to rewrite an old saying to include the line: “You can fool most of the people, enough of the time.”

We know that millions of people were fooled by them at the last election.

Will we be fooled again?

New attempt to demean benefit claimants launched by right-wing loonies

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avoidance, BBC, benefit, benefits, community service, Customs, dodging, economy, evasion, Exchequer, government, hmrc, living wage, Matthew Sinclair, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, people, politics, Revenue, social security, tax, Taxpayers Alliance, TPA, Treasury, unemployment, Universal Credit, unpaid work, Vox Political, welfare, work, Workfare

Bin it: We don’t need the Taxpayers’ Alliance or its rubbish ideas.

For a change, it isn’t the government!

The Taxpayers’ Alliance, an organisation of right-wingers determined to turn the UK into a low-tax economy by any possible means, has decided that Universal Credit claimants need to do community service-style unpaid work – or they shouldn’t receive a penny.

According to the BBC, the group reckons people should do 30 hours’ unpaid activity every week, and has suggested this could save £3.5 billion in social security payments every year.

Is that because it has worked so well in the past?

Schemes like this are already in place for jobseekers and, guess what, they don’t work. It costs more money to employ the private firms that administer them than they ever succeed in saving, and their success rate in getting people into jobs is so bad that benefit claimants would have a better chance of success if they just go and look for work by themselves.

In addition, Universal Credit will be paid to working people who claim, for example, tax credits and/or housing benefit. They have to claim these benefits because their employers do not pay them enough money to cover all their necessary outgoings – food, rent, electricity and so on. That is a result of right-wing government policy that aims to keep wages low. How are these low-paid working people supposed to fit another 30 hours’ work into their already-busy week?

Also: Community service? That’s what convicted criminals do. Unemployment is not a criminal offence and every TPA member should be ashamed that their leaders have conflated the two.

Finally, for every person carrying out unpaid work, a paid job is removed from the economy. Has it not occurred to the Taxpayers’ Alliance that the amount HMRC collects from them might drop, if more people were actually paying taxes?

Probably not, but then – oh, look – it seems the TPA is being investigated for, don’t laugh, dodging tax.

“Taxpayers rightly expect something back for the enormous amount they pay for out-of-work benefits, at the very least a real commitment to find a job as soon as possible,” said TPA chief executive Matthew Sinclair, proving in a single sentence that he understands neither Universal Credit nor the fact that people who claim it are also taxpayers.

No – this is not about helping anybody. It won’t save government money; it won’t help businesses and it certainly won’t help people on Universal Credit.

This is about demeaning people who are already in a very difficult place through no fault of their own. It is about pretending that they are a burden on society when it is the government’s own schemes – and the schemes that the TPA wants brought in – that are creating the burden.

Still, today’s misguided and wholly wrong-headed outburst does allow us to clarify what is needed.

People in work need to be paid a living wage, and should be respected by their employers for the work that they do.

And firms currently taking part in unpaid ‘workfare’ schemes need to be told that enough is enough; they’ve had the benefit of free workers for many years, and now it’s time to give something back by turning those positions into paid jobs – again at the living wage.

People in paid work pay taxes – and those earning enough that they don’t need any benefits at all are a double boon to the Exchequer because they pay into the Treasury but do not take anything out.

That is the way forward.

Another Tory ‘bait-and-switch’ scam – shares-for-rights scheme is employers’ tax dodge

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'Starve the Beast', Another Angry Voice, avoidance, bait and switch, budget, capital gains, Coalition, congress, Conservative, Corporation Tax, debt, deficit, dodge, economy, employee owner, employee shareholder, evasion, flexible working, George Osborne, government, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Mirror, OBR, observer, office, people, politics, redundancy pay, responsibility, rights, shares, social security, statutory, tax, Tories, Tory, trade, training, TUC, unemployment, unfair dismissal, union, Vox Political, welfare, work, workers

“This government is taking action domestically on [tax] avoidance and evasion,” wrote George Osborne in an article for The Observer, back in February. How right he was.

The Tory-led Coalition has done everything in its power to facilitate tax avoidance and ignore evasion, it seems, including the latest wheeze, which is to link it with a feeble attempt to get working people to throw away their rights in exchange for a few shares.

The BBC has reported that the new status of “employee shareholder” has come into force, allowing working people to claim shares in the company that employs them, if they give up the rights to claim unfair dismissal and statutory redundancy pay, the right to request flexible working (except in the case of two weeks’ parental leave), and some rights to request time off for training.

Nobody in their right mind would do this and expert opinion is that take-up will be small. So why do it?

Well, it’s not about the workers at all. It’s about helping company bosses avoid paying their taxes. Even the right-wing-leaning BBC was unable to cover up the facts (although it left them until the end of the article):

“Companies can also claim some corporation tax deductions on the issuance of shares to employees.”

Yes – it’s a tax dodge!

Here’s how it works, according to the Mirror: “New analysis show[s] it could also allow executives to avoid paying revenue on company shares. Tax experts commissioned by the TUC believe ruthless bosses could classify themselves as ’employee owners’ to escape Capital Gains Tax. And the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates the scheme could cost up to £1 billion, mainly due to tax avoidance.”

This will, of course, involve a drop in tax income to the Treasury, meaning increases in the national debt and deficit, which the Tories will no doubt use to justify further cuts to public service budgets as part of their ‘Starve The Beast’ agenda. Remember, this country has a chancellor who, for ideological purposes, actually wants to harm the British economy.

Meanwhile, as our friend at Another Angry Voice has put it: “If you’re thick enough to cash in your labour rights for a few grand worth of shares in the company you work for, then in a couple of years time when people are calling you ‘feckless’ for being unemployed, you’ll be one of the minority that actually deserve it (and your shares might well be worth only pennies in the pound compared to the value they had when you scrapped your labour rights to get them).”

Let’s make abuse of power a crime and Lord Freud the first to be prosecuted

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Face of evil: Because of creatures like Lord Freud, Parliament should legislate against a new crime – abuse of power. (Picture by Black Triangle)

Lord David Fraud – sorry, Freud. That was a Freudian slip – the man who said “People who are poorer should be prepared to take the biggest risks; they’ve got least to lose”, has been at it again.

According to Inside Housing this man, whose principles allowed him to take Labour’s money and provide that government with his duff advice before running off to join the Tories as soon as it looked as though they would be in office after the 2010 election, wants to bully councils out of an entirely legal way to help their tenants avoid paying the punitive and unfair bedroom tax.

The tax, as we all should know by now, affects people living in social rented accommodation with more bedrooms – as defined by the rent agreement (if I recall correctly) – than the government last year arbitarily decided they need. The options are to give up 14 per cent of your housing benefit if you have one ‘extra’ bedroom, 25 per cent if you’ve got two – or move to smaller accommodation which does not, in the vast majority of cases, exist.

Out of 600,000 affected families, 582,000 have nowhere else to go. So this is a thinly-veiled robbery, from people who can do nothing to prevent it.

It is a tax that has offended many councillors in local authorities across the UK, and some came up with the novel idea that rooms within the properties they own may be reclassified as offices or ‘non-designated’ rooms, thereby avoiding the need to pay the tax. After all, a room is just an enclosed space within a building, right? If it doesn’t have a bed in it, why should it be classified as a bedroom?

Lord Fraud – sorry! Freud – doesn’t see it that way. He wants that cash and couldn’t care less that people in social housing need it to keep a roof over their heads. He has been spending the last month or so (since the councils started re-classifying) trying to put a stop to it and now, it seems, he thinks he has found a way.

In a letter to council chief executives yesterday (Thursday), he has said redesignating properties without reducing their rent to reflect the loss of a bedroom creates an inconsistency for housing benefit and rent purposes.

“Blanket redesignations without a clear and justifiable reason and without reductions in rent, are inappropriate and do not fall within the spirit of the policy,” his letter states [italics mine].

“If it is shown properties are being redesignated inappropriately this will be viewed very seriously.” Meaning: The DWP will commission an independent audit to “ascertain whether correct and appropriate procedures have been followed”. Redesignation without reducing rent would lead to incorrect housing benefit subsidy claims being submitted to the DWP, he stated, adding, “Where it is found that a local authority has redesignated properties without reasonable grounds and without reducing rents, my department would consider either restricting or not paying their housing benefit subsidy.”

The flaw, of course, is this: The size of these properties will have remained the same, therefore so should the rent. But a room without a bed in it is not a bedroom.

Let’s move on to another tax avoidance issue. Since we’re discussing actions that are “inappropriate and do not fall within the spirit of the policy“, what about tax avoidance schemes that are used by very rich individuals, in order to avoid paying the full amount they owe to the UK Treasury?

This has been going on for more years than any of us can remember and the total currently parked offshore, where the tax inspector can’t get at it, is estimated at £21 trillion (it might actually be dollars, but either way it’s a heckuva lot of money).

If the turncoat Lord Freud’s new Conservative friends had been quick off the mark in dealing with this aspect of tax avoidance, he might have been justified in his own hasty behaviour, but they haven’t. Even now, there is no guarantee that the Treasury will get anything back from the tax havens, despite all its posturing and sabre-rattling. There’s just no interest. And by the time anyone gets around to actually taking action, the offenders will have had plenty of opportunity to move their capital elsewhere.

But the actions of the individual taxpayers who have chosen to put their money out of HMRC’s reach is no closer to the spirit of UK tax policy than the actions of the councils who have chosen to protect their tenants.

The difference is that one set of individuals is acting in selfish self-interest, while the other is taking action to help others.

Freud, by his own actions, has shown us all exactly where his loyalties lie. He’s not against tax avoidance, as long as it’s his kind of people doing it. And he loves to bully the little people. He really gets a kick out of threatening them, and he’s not above bending – or changing – the law to do it.

That’s why I say any new government coming into office after 2015 needs to enact a law that criminalises abuse of power – being any legislation or act by a government member that unfairly punishes any named individual or group within British society.

So for example here, it could be applied because Freud wants to penalise hundreds of thousands of people with a tax they can’t pay, when there is no alternative because they have nowhere else to go (except to be thrown out onto the streets, and then the question to be asked is, who takes over the properties after they have gone?) – and is now threatening to punish any attempt legally to avoid paying that unfair tax with another unfair punishment, because others who also legally avoid paying a – fair – tax are being allowed to do so.

As a criminal offence it should involve the sternest penalties possible – stripping the guilty of any titles and privileges, and all property, alongside a lengthy prison sentence involving the hardest labour to which prisoners may be put. Anyone who is willing to deprive the defenceless of everything they own should be made to lose everything as well.

So Lord Freud, for example, would have to kiss goodbye to his luxury mansion in Kent, and everything in it. When he finally came out of clink, he’d be living in council accommodation – and if nowhere could be found that didn’t have more bedrooms than he needed, he’d have to pay his own bedroom tax which would be poetic justice.

I know. It will never happen. Politicians look after their own.

But it should – and you know it.

Beware Coalition stooges who repeat Iain Duncan Smith’s lies for him!

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The pen is mightier: It is the war of words between Coalition distortion of the facts and those of us who value accuracy that will determine the outcome of the next UK general election.

It is most vexing when people refuse to believe facts that are presented to them.

Readers may recall an article on this blog nearly two months ago, in which the claims of Powys county councillor and Conservative general election candidate Chris Davies were thoroughly repudiated, using verifiable factual information. It was entitled ‘Does anybody believe this Conservative claptrap dressed up as information?’

You may be astounded to learn that, despite the veritable mountain of information in my 700-word missive, some people still did believe it!

Admittedly, they waited a while before breaking cover, but sure enough, in the letters page of the Brecon and Radnor Express dated June 6, a Mrs Lloyd of Brecon wrote the following:

“I must write to convey my disappointment at the handful of people who have written to your paper recently opposing welfare reforms. I assume from the tone of these letters that they are probably Labour Party supporters.

“Like lemmings blindly following each other off the cliff, these people have decided to oppose one of the most popular government policies in recent memory.

“I am no great fan of the Lib Dem/Conservative coalition but this handful of socialist Labourites must be the only people left in the UK who don’t think the welfare system needs urgent reform.

“I say I am disappointed because I have always voted Labour and it saddens me to see Labour so out of touch with public opinion.

“Our benefit system is far too soft and state handouts simply must be cut. Why can’t Labour see this?

“I am also ashamed that the local Labour Party… has decided to adopt a policy of scaremongering by trying to label one reform as a ‘bedroom tax’.

“It is not a tax and Labour knows that full well.

“A tax is a levy on something you own, earn or purchase: state provided housing benefit is none of these.

“Is it any wonder that people do not trust politicians when an established and legitimate political party like Labour resorts to such trickery?

“Having spare rooms wasting at the taxpayer’s expense is simply inexcusable and unaffordable.

“Why do Labour want the taxpayer paying for people to be in large flats or houses with unused bedrooms, when there are larger families who need this space?

“If people receiving housing benefit refuse to move to smaller housing and insist on staying in excessively large accommodation, then they should be prepared to pay for it just like every other family.

“To be fair to the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, they have decided to tackle an issue that Labour feels it cannot.

“The cynical amongst us would say Labour’s refusal to support benefit reform is because of their historic reliance on the votes of the unemployed and those receiving benefits.

“A turkey doesn’t vote for Christmas.”

You’re probably shaking your head in disbelief but in fact this is quite a cleverly-constructed letter. Look at the way she tries to establish that right-thinking people must approve of the way Iain… Smith and his mates are hacking apart our social security and that anyone who doesn’t – “probably Labour Party supporters” are a “disappointment”. She later attempts a feat of mind-reading when she tells Labour members that they feel they cannot tackle an issue that the Coalition parties have – and her final comment attempts to tar Labour with dishonest, or at least covert, intent by claiming that the party relies on the unemployed and benefit-receiving vote. One might hope that Labour’s recent adoption of a harder attitude to benefits will have persuaded Mrs Lloyd that this is not true, but this is by no means certain. It wouldn’t suit her purposes.

I particularly enjoy the next line because it conflates two gross misapprehensions: Lemmings do not fling themselves over cliffs suicidally. The makers of a Disney (!) documentary created that myth for reasons of their own, and it seems likely that Mrs Lloyd had reasons of her own for running it together with the myth that the Coalition cuts are “one of the most popular government policies in recent memory”. They’re not, and never have been.

Labour does not oppose welfare reform. It opposes the Coalition’s attack on the poorest and most vulnerable in society, carried out under the pretence of reform. The only Coalition welfare policy that has won any popular support – the benefit cap – is also supported by Labour. But the average family income is not £26,000 per year, as the Coalition states – that is a lie. That family would receive state benefits, bringing its income up to £31,500, or slightly more than £600 per week. This was glossed over because the Coalition would not be able to penalise enough poor people if the cap was set at that – realistic – level.

The other cuts to social security benefits have provoked a storm of protest – particularly the genocidal pogrom against the sick and disabled, and also the bedroom tax, which Mrs Lloyd singles out, and to which she applies her own quaint definition of ‘tax’.

So let’s put her straight. It is a tax, as it is a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government against a citizen’s property, to support government policies. Mrs Lloyd seems unaware that 97 per cent of the 600,000 families it affects – that’s 582,000 families – simply have nowhere else to go. The smaller accommodation into which she expects them to move does not exist. And the definition of ‘bedroom’ has been applied to small box rooms that would not accommodate a bed, let alone the person who would be expected to sleep in it! The tax is therefore exposed as a scheme to screw money out of the very poor, put them into arrears with their landlord, and sling them onto the streets.

This is why I support the redefinition of these ‘spare’ bedrooms, as taken up by some councils, into ‘offices’ or ‘non-designated rooms’. This is legal tax avoidance – putting the tenants of such homes into the same category as the billionaires who are sitting on £21 trillion of untaxed earnings in offshore tax haven bank accounts. If the government kicks up a fuss about ‘bedroom tax’ avoidance, it can damn well go and get those trillions back first.

As for the taxpayer being made to pay for unused bedrooms, that decision was made by the Coalition government, not the Labour Party, when it decided to cut Landlord Subsidy (that’s Housing Benefit to you, Mrs Lloyd) rather than cap rents at a reasonable level.

The remark that people are refusing to move to smaller accommodation is so far removed from reality that it defies belief, as is the implication that they do not pay anything towards their rent. For Mrs Lloyd’s information, the vast majority of Housing Benefit claims are made by people in work, who do pay the majority of their rent; the amount of Housing Benefit they receive is a top-up because the wages they receive are too low. I don’t see you blaming employers who have increased their own pay eightfold over the last 30 years, while employees’ pay rises total just 27 per cent – far less than cumulative inflation, Mrs Lloyd.

The opinions expressed by this correspondent are based on nothing but myth and should be fought tooth and nail. If her distorted views are accepted as fact by the majority of the voting population, then the Conservative Party will win the 2015 election, and those of us who value facts and honesty will only have ourselves to blame if we have not done all we can to rectify matters.

By the way, the Brecon and Radnor Express‘s editorial email address is theeditor@brecon-radnor.co.uk

I was going to write about a more recent letter to the same newspaper, which prompted me to contact the UK Statistics Authority with a complaint. But that will have to wait for another day.