Charities should not run prisons

Two charities (one that is ironically named Catch22) have recently declared that they are bidding to run prisons. This has rightly and predictably caused an outcry amongst other charities who believe that charities should not attempt to “exercise the coercive powers of the state”.

NAVCA’s Chief Executive, Kevin Curley  is running an energetic facebook campaign against this development.

As Ros McCarthy says in this week’s Third Sector magazine: “Dispensing punishment and depriving citizens of their liberty is not the job of a charity. Charities could be pushed into forcibly restraining prisoners; putting them into overcrowded or strip cells. Prisons have a long history of breaching human rights. The boundaries between the state and civil society have never been fixed, but running prisons is a step too far”. Certainly I don’t think that one could ever find a way to frame incarceration as a charitable object.

This whole issue brings up wider issues about how the Third Sector has been used by the present Government to sugar the pill of widespread privatizations and to provide cover (“voluntarisation”) for a  massive shift of power from the state to the private (and voluntary) sector. Sadly some of the national organizations that purport to represent the sector and should know better (ACEVO in particular) have gone along with this trend without any real thought or discussion about whose interests this is in, where this leaves the sector and whether we should be allowing ourselves to be used in this way.

Welfare Reform?

As Libby Brooks said in last weeks Guardian (1/6/09): “It is hard to decide what to object to most in the draft welfare reform bill. Perhaps it should be the clause allowing for the abolition of the fundamental state safety net of income support, or the privatisation of back-to-work services that will benefit only shareholders. Maybe it’s the requirement that single parents with children as young as three should be available for “work-related activity” or face sanctions, with the adequacy of childcare provision to be judged by a jobcentre adviser. Others might choose the piloting of “work for your benefits” schemes, which will undercut the minimum wage, offering as little as £1.73 an hour to claimants who have been unemployed for more than two years.”
Brooks is right that this is an appalling attack on what remains of the benefits system at precisely a time when there are less and less jobs to bully claimants into. One might have thought that the Labour Party would still have some residual pride in its creation of the welfare state. However its attacks on legal aid and welfare benefits betray New Labour as a very different kind of animal to the traditional Labour Party of the 20th Century. Now that the architect of the draft Bill, James Purnell, has left the Department of Work and Pensions under such unhappy circumstances, we might have hoped that his successor Yvette Cooper might find more useful things to do with her time. No such luck – there is really no difference between Blairites and Brownites in their shared desire to destroy (or reform as they tend to call it) key elements of the welfare state.

Labour’s failure to attack poverty

One of Labour’s most oft-repeated promises when it came to power was that it would halve child poverty by next year. Recent figures show that in fact under New Labour poverty has increased over the last two years and that this trend was happening even before the recent recession kicked in. The number of people now officially defined as living in poverty climbed to 11 million by March 2008 which represents a rise of 300,000 since 2006. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that inequality is at its highest level since 1961 and is likely to get worse. Despite the recession, at the top end of the spectrum, the rich are able to get away with “rewarding” themselves ever more generously and bleating loudly every time they are asked to contribute slightly more through their income and other taxes.

Two million pensioners were in poverty before the recession even started. Now as Age Concern says “pensioners on low incomes are still struggling with high food and fuel prices, while watching their income from savings evaporate.” Labour virtually admits that it has entirely given up the struggle against poverty in the current climate because they think saving jobs needs to be the priority. This new set of priorities may or may not be sensible but what is so disgraceful is the missed opportunity over the years of boom – how little they actually achieved against their poverty targets before the recession arrived. It does make one wonder just what (and who) the New Labour Party is for?

A budget for the poor

With the budget this week there are many of us in the advice sector who are hoping that the Government will act boldly to do two things. Firstly reverse the dreadful tide of growing inequality by taking concrete steps to help the poorest in our society by putting more money in the pockets of the poorest families. As the Child Poverty Action Group points out this can be done best and quickest through the benefit and tax credit systems, and this is the fastest way to pump cash into the local economy to help business and protect jobs.

Many of us believe that it is the growing chasm between the richest and the poorest that cause so many of the growing social ills we see around us. Under New Labour there continues to be a yawning gap between those who are socially and financially excluded on the one hand and the obscenely rewarded risk takers who got us into this mess on the other. Lasa believes that concrete help in the budget for the poorest through a one off upgrade to benefit levels and a real effort to increase take up of benefits and tax credits would be a highly effective form of fiscal stimulus

Secondly the Government must reconsider its punitive and unworkable welfare reform bill. At a time of recession and rising unemployment, trying to bully people back into work when there are fewer jobs just doesn’t make sense.

Recession-proofing the advice sector

Not a day goes by without some gloomy news about the impact of the recession. Of course, we in the advice sector know full well about its impact, as we see people coming through our doors everyday who have been affected. But, what are we in the sector doing to recession-proof ourselves from the impact? How are we coping with the increased numbers coming through our doors day in, day out because they need help with their benefits or they’ve just their job or about to lose their home?

We know that there has been an increased demand for our services. In evidence gathered by LVSC as part of their campaign on the impact of the recession on the voluntary and community sector, organisations reported being on the verge of closing because they cannot bring in enough money to sustain their services, key staff leaving due to ‘burn out, implementing wage freezes for staff and increasing deficits as many funders do not recognise ‘full-cost recovery’.

But, how is this increased demand translating into additional funding? Are we collating evidence and providing it to funders to make the case for additional resources? Well, we should be, because we need to show them that our services are collapsing under the strain of the additional demand on our services.

Quality Mark charges – a further attack on the small independent providers

The Legal Services Commission have truly excelled themselves this time, as news reaches us that they will be charging up to £1500 to existing General Quality Mark (GQM) holders for the privilege of retaining the standard, and up to a mind boggling £2500 for new applicants. This is a further attack on smaller independent providers, many of whom are already dealing with the onslaught of increasing numbers of clients with reduced amounts of funding.

We have real concerns that these charges will have a devastating impact on the independent advice sector. It will undermine the smaller advice providers, many of whom deal with the most marginalised communities. According to the LSC’s own research, most organisations holding the GQM were small voluntary organisations, of which 31% said their funding depended on accreditation to the standard and were concerned that funders would not cover the cost if they had to pay for the assessment. If funders insist on organisations having the GQM as a condition of funding, but refuse to pay for the assessment, then many of these providers will cease to exist, as they simply cannot afford the £1000+ needed. It is a very disturbing principle that they are being asked to pay for their own regulation and face the threat of closure if they can’t afford it.

Recollections of advising in a recession

All of us in the advice sector are worried about how the growing recession will affect our services and our clients who need them so badly. I asked Lasa’s former Policy worker to cast his mind back to his experiences advising during the last recession. His recollections throw up some worrying concerns about how we can retain a focus on our traditional clients – the poorest and most excluded in society- whilst at the same time developing services for the more articulate and (erstwhile) middle income clients who are already starting to make demands on our services.

Money advice: Being poor is relative. The richer your relatives, the better you will survive the recession.

When I started in money advice in 1985 pre the 1990 recession our client group consisted mainly of the long term unemployed, who having used up what little savings they might have had were being ground down by living on benefits for too long,

We concentrated on priority debts which normally meant rent arrears (private or council) and utility debts. People rarely had excessive credit debt. If memory serves, rental charges took up roughly 30% of a family’s available income.

Four years later as the recession was kicking in, our client group changed dramatically. Middle class owner-occupiers were facing interest rates of up to 15% and whether someone in the household had lost a job or not they were still finding it hard to cope with monthly repayments. Interestingly, even at the 15% high, the average family spent 25% of their available income on mortgage payments, some 5% less than that spent by families who were renting.

Even so, we were overwhelmed by owner-occupiers finding their way to our service and displacing our traditional clientele. Where previously our criteria of “home at risk” had pretty much selected local authority, low income or unemployed clients, we were now deluged with the multiple indebted owner occupiers, over extended, incredibly insistent and very articulate. And, of course equally deserving of not losing their homes.

Unfortunately though, when your service has finite resources if one set of users out competes another for access there will be losers. It was several years and a change of government before we saw our old “traditional” client group return. Of course, they had never gone away.

Labour attacks the poor

In 1997 when New Labour came to power it decided to try to “reform” the welfare benefit system by abolishing lone parent benefit and cutting incapacity benefit. There was a huge backlash from Labour MPs who threatened to vote against cuts in the income of some of the poorest people in Britain.  Now, the Government is again threatening support for people who are unable to work, but this time Labour MPs have been as quiet as mice. Incapacity benefit is being abolished and replaced by the new Employment Support Allowance (ESA). Lone parents will be transferred from Income Support onto Job Seekers Allowance (JSA). Benefits will be made more difficult to access and most claimants will have to “prepare” for work or lose their benefits. There have even been proposals to charge interest on Social Fund loans.

Since these draconian new proposals were first planned the credit crunch has arrived. Whereas there may once have been some sort of logic to bullying claimants back into the Labour Market, now the jobs will no longer be there for this to make any sense.  In these new circumstances this policy is no longer rational and in classic New Labour style is increasingly about being seen to be tough on Britain’s poorest people for the consumption of those better off readers of the Express and the Mail. Benefit claimants are increasingly seen as scroungers – the undeserving poor who in the words of James Purnell are “playing the system” (at a time when rich bankers really have been playing the system for billions of pounds).

In any event there are about to be many more individuals and families who will become reliant on these dwindling benefits. An increasing number of them are likely to be middle class voters who lose their jobs and maybe even their homes. Perhaps this change will finally make Labour MPs sit up and think about why they no longer have the courage to challenge the morality of an attack on the poor that actually undermines the system that is there to support us all if we are unlucky enough to lose our jobs, become ill or find ourselves unable to work. With all its talk of increasing social and community cohesion, New Labour is mounting a full-frontal attack on a welfare system that is actually a vital part of social solidarity in any civilised society.

Finally, some good news in a pre-budget report

It is great news that an extra £15.85 million has been allocated to debt advice in the pre-budget report, £5.85 million for free telephone advice and £10 million for face-to-face advice. This could not have come at a more crucial time, as the impact of the recession begins to deepen.

I must admit it’s always welcoming to see the Government recognise the benefits and impact of free impartial advice. However, although this news is to be applauded I am not sure I agree entirely with the decision to give all of the £10 million in extra funding for face-to-face advice to Citizens Advice. There are many other providers in the independent advice sector who do an important job and are able to reach clients from communities which CABs are not necessarily able to access.

The Government must recognise that although Citizens Advice are the main provider of independent advice, they are not the only provider and more should be done to make sure that these other agencies are properly funded too.

They must also ensure that other areas of social welfare law such as welfare benefits, housing and employment receive adequate funding as well, because in an economic downturn demand for advice in these areas increases too.

Getting parents back to work – credit crunch style

This month we have invited our Chair, Liz Sewell, to provide a guest blog on the Government’s Welfare Reform Agenda.  Liz runs a programme that helps parents return to work, education or training, so this issue is very close to her heart.

Getting parents back to work – credit crunch style
The DWP has chosen this credit crunch November to voluntarily add to the UK’s jobless total, it will move lone parents with children aged twelve and over from Income Support to Jobseekers Allowance.

The Government sees this as part of a staged approach to reducing the time lone parents spend on benefits. They argue that work lifts families out of poverty and improves life chances. And to show they mean business, by 2010 they will have further lowered the age limit to seven

I genuinely feel every parent should be able to work, if it suits their family. And I know what a decent job means. As well as a pay packet, it is a boost to self confidence and a chance to re-enter the “grown-up world”. But, the Governments thinking on this approach was done in the time of plenty: they need to make sure it works in this time of reckoning too.

First we need jobs that people can do, in the time they have available.  That means incentivising employers to create such jobs.

Step two is that work needs to pay more than staying on benefit and it needs to do that from day one.

Then, childcare needs to be affordable, and when you are on a very low income, that probably means free.

Finally, it is not just about being away from your children. It’s about making work and children compatible. So we need extend the right to request flexible working, not remove it.

A version of the full article is available at  http://www.lasa.org.uk/benefits/parents_back_to_work.doc