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.
Posted by lasaceo 
