Incapacity Benefit Reforms
The government has begun the New Year with a propaganda offensive designed to win support for its “reforms” of incapacity benefit. The media are describing this in terms of a trial of strength between Tony Blair and Labour party back-benchers. But the truth is that Blair will win or lose the vote on the strength of his arguments.
One problem is the overuse by new labour spin-doctors of the term “reform”. Journalists still seem to assume that anything described by Tony Blair as a” reform” is: progressive, modernising, forward- thinking, an improvement on what went before and for the general betterment of mankind. Labour MP’s know that Blair tends to describe as a “reform” any change that he wants to make; whether it is marching drunks to cash machines to pay their fines or doing away with the student grant. And we also understand that many of these so-called “reforms” have been, at best been ill thought out, at worst an actual backward step.
So the real question for Labour MPs is are the proposed incapacity benefit “reforms” designed to improve the lot of the disabled or are they primarily designed to bring down the welfare bill? Bringing down the overall welfare bill was one of the themes of Thatcherism that New Labour has been keen to consolidate. I remember back in 1993 as a member of the House of Commons Select Committee taking evidence from the retiring Governor of the Bank of England Robin Leigh-Pemberton. He was an amiable member of the landed gentry, not overburdened with intelligence, who (allegedly) owed his position to a certain suave Brylcreemed good looks that Mrs Thatcher was partial to. I asked him at his final session in front of us what he thought was the greatest economic issue facing the country. He searched his brains (always a torturous process for him) and then came out with one word “entitlements”. What he meant was the size of the welfare bill.
In the latest PR offensive the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions John Hutton is careful to make no mention of bringing down the welfare bill. Instead he argues that areas with a lot of incapacity benefit claimants have a lot of poverty. This is true but the benefits do not cause the poverty. Nor is it obvious that getting thousands of middle-aged former shipyard workers off benefit and into low paid, insecure jobs in burger bars will turn Tyneside into the Northern equivalent of the Home Counties. Everybody wants to see people come off benefit and into work. But the government already has good voluntary schemes for the disabled that have been successful in putting up the numbers of people coming off incapacity benefit by fifty per cent. Tony Blair has to prove to his party that the latest “reforms” are not just about cutting the welfare bill and that vulnerable disabled people will not slip through the net. If not then this is yet another issue where he will be relying on Tory votes.
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