New Labour’s nasty ‘let them eat cake’ welfare attitude

By Tony Rhodes

When it comes to Welfare Reform New Labour have lost the plot. Purnell and Freud are not true Labour men, they are the new breed of centre right politicians who want to appeal to both sides. By doing this they are alienating the very people that Labour were originally set up to help, the working classes. The working classes are now dismissed as unimportant, and especially the white working classes.

Purnell’s and Freud’s view of a welfare system is an Americanised view. Do we really want a society where the poor are stigmatised by having to use food stamps to buy the basics of life? It’s all very well people like Purnell and Freud slagging off estates where people don’t work, where young girls believe that to get pregnant is a way out of poverty, where belonging to gangs is perceived as being a necessity rather than viewing it as something to be avoided, where being disabled is now seen as being a malingerer or lazy – attacking these groups is nothing short of what happened in Germany during the 1930s when minority groups were persecuted for the failings of others. It’s always easy to attack the less fortunate – New Labour should be looking at wider issues to improve the lot of these groups.

It’s all very well MPs ands government ministers saying that there are plenty of jobs for people to take, but on the ground that is not actually true. At this moment in time there are about 600,000 thousand jobs available, with nearly 2 million unemployed. The vast majority of the jobs that are out there are extremely low paid jobs, minimum wage jobs.

While the minimum wage must be praised, it still does not allow people to live above the poverty line. Sure, some of you will say poverty in this country does not exist. Well, let me tell you, we have huge amounts of poverty in this country and you must be either ignorant or just decide not to see it if you believe that. Poverty is there to see if you choose to see it – but maybe for some Blairites it’s all too embarrassing, a failure that Tony Blair is all too pleased that he is no longer responsible for.

The fear that is now widespread amongst the sick and disabled and the unemployed is vast. New Labour has removed the term sick or disabled from their terminology – everyone is expected to do something.

Why? Why should people who have paid their taxes all their lives be expected to go and do work in the community for their benefits? These people have not committed crimes, the only crime they have committed is being unlucky in the fact that they are ill or sick under a New Labour government. New Labour ministers should be hanging their heads in shame, and all New Labour backbenchers should be making their voices heard loud and clear about this attack on the vulnerable.

New Labour have also made a huge mistake by bringing in Private companies to make the New Welfare Reform work. Companies like Atos Healthcare have a £1 billion contract over ten years to test people’s fitness to work. People’s GPs are no longer taken notice of. But GPs are the best people to know of the fitness of their patients – someone paid a fee or a bonus to prove otherwise will try hard to do so. It’s like the traffic wardens who are paid a bonus to give more tickets, councils had to pay back more monies because of over zealous attendants ticketing innocent people.

And this is already happening and people who have serious illnesses are being told they are perfectly fit to work when in fact they are not. The people doing these fitness to work tests are only doctors and RGNs who have undergone some special training, they are not consultants in their particular field of medicine.

It costs more to live if you are disabled or sick than if you are well or able bodied, yet these groups get some of the lowest rates of benefit in Europe. How come as the fourth richest nation in the world we treat our disabled or sick like this?

The benefit rates need to be vastly increased – the current rates of benefit that are available to family carers are an insult and I would go as far as too say that the government are the new slave bosses. They are profiteering from the sick and disabled and the carers that work 80/90 hours plus per week. Carers save this nation nigh on £87 billion per year, yet they get an allowance that does nothing to show the work or commitment that they put in. Child carers have committed suicide trying to care for a disabled parent and their schooling becomes impossible, yet the government allow this child labour to continue. Shame on you New Labour.

Carers, and carer led charities have been campaigning for years to improve carers’ finances, but with no improvement. CarersUK, the main carer charity, don’t really campaign in an aggressive way as they get some of their funding from central government. They don’t fight that hard because they don’t seem to want to rock the boat. They like to give the impression that they do – there are committees all over the place set up by the government – but the government don’t take any notice of what these committees or groups say. The whole caring system for family carers is on the verge of collapse. New Labour beware, vast amounts of money need to be put into carers’ finances and it needs to be done now and not in ten years time.

Carers are not greedy people, they are proud hard working people who deserve respect and a financial package that does not mean they are penalised for what they are doing. Giving up a potentially lucrative career to care for a disabled or sick relative should not mean a life of poverty. Carers should be able to provide care for their family members and receive a benefits package that enables them to pay for all the basics of a normal life in this country, not having to go without food or heating and maybe having the occasional holiday, should be the norm for carers.

Carers, when they reach pensionable age, have their carers’ allowance removed, even though their caring role is just the same. Surely this cannot be morally right? They still have the same bills to meet – but without the carers’ allowance they have had for years. Who made that stupid decision? Someone who is obviously not a bloody carer or who understands the life of a carer. This overlapping rule must end and end ASAP. Punishing pensioner carers will go down as one of New Labour’s worst attacks on vulnerable people.

Many carers talk about the comparison between the payments received by foster carers and those of ordinary carers – but here is no comparison whatsoever. It is shocking how government put foster carers on a whole different level to ordinary family carers. There are minimum payments that have to be made dependent on the age of the child you foster. It starts off at about £120 per week for a new born, plus other top ups available, incuding holiday pay, 24 hour support, clothing allowances, petrol allowances, vehicle allowances and birthday monies.

Now I am not against any of this but there must be some middle ground when deciding on a figure for carers’ allowances. Carers are expected to subsidise the people they care for by putting their allowance into a central home pot. This should not have to be the case – caring for sick or disabled people costs more than caring for able bodied persons. That should be shown in the allowance carers receive.

The government see carers as an easy target to penalise with regard to benefits. The view taken by Purnell and Freud will be the downfall of the party. Soon we shall hear the phrase ‘let them eat cake’.

Homelessness, hunger, isolation, these things will increase if New Labour continue down this very rocky road. The heart has been lost in the Labour party. You need to return to your roots, put people first and not city bankers, and stop the greed which is showing itself amongst your politicians. Until Labour feels what the people feel, they have no right to judge – it’s the politicians who have caused this country’s woes and financial mess but as usual it’s the poorest and most vulnerable that will be paying for the next twenty years.

It’s time for Purnell and Freud to leave and put people in charge of Welfare who actually care about people and not just moving on up the political ladder. Bribing Freud with a title was a shameful thing to do, it just goes to show how low New Labour have stooped.

If you are sick or disabled, or you are unfortunate enough to become unemployed then you are going to suffer terribly under New Labour. You are an easy target, you are a distraction from the real problems of this country: crime, violence amongst teenagers, schooling, immigration, the threat of Muslim fundamentalists and the failed experiment of multiculturalism.