Another brick in the wall.

Think the review is to do with the fact that UK was originally in breach of a UN convention:

http://dwp.gov.uk/docs/appointee-review.pdf

Can see the writer’s point of view, but not all carers are quite as caring as others!

That’s fair enough but parents of minors are not appointees.  The DWP have two systems.  Appointees under the Claims and Payments Regulations and Parents acting for minors as those under 16 cannot claim benefits.  A DWP officer told me that they record the systems separately and don’t usually do home visits for the latter.  If this is so it is just another example of the thoughtless blundering of the Department.  As the writer says, the DWP are purporting to have more power than it actually has and should be radically reigned in.

They never seem to get any letter right do they? I’m sure over the years they have said they were going to involve end users, but this never seems to happen and the letters seem to get more difficult year by year.

Stevegale - 02 August 2012 02:05 PM

They never seem to get any letter right do they? I’m sure over the years they have said they were going to involve end users, but this never seems to happen and the letters seem to get more difficult year by year.

Absolutely.  I once repped on a case where the commissioner (as then was) actually applied the doctrine of estoppel to prevent the “Secretary of State…. from denying that the decision issued in his name” meaning “what it says”.

nevip - 02 August 2012 01:07 PM

That’s fair enough but parents of minors are not appointees.  The DWP have two systems.  Appointees under the Claims and Payments Regulations and Parents acting for minors as those under 16 cannot claim benefits.  A DWP officer told me that they record the systems separately and don’t usually do home visits for the latter.  If this is so it is just another example of the thoughtless blundering of the Department.  As the writer says, the DWP are purporting to have more power than it actually has and should be radically reigned in.

For the sake of pedantry, even if treated differently, I think parents etc may be appointees - see Reg 43(1) C&P regs.  They seem to be included in the appointee review process cited above. 

Otherwise no dissension from the general views.

Tony

Hi Tony

You are not being pedantic and thanks for pointing that out.  The conversation I had with the DWP officer came about as a result of a failed renewal claim of a 16 year old with a physical disability whose mother told me she was his appointee.  She had signed some forms of authority for me for the appeal.  The DWP officer rang me and told me that where there was no recorded issue of mental incapacity then the presumption was that the 16 year old was now the claimant in his own right.  That seems right as regulation 43 ceases to apply once the child has turned 16.

Even so, it is really annoying the heavy handed way that the DWP go about things and the hectoring tone it takes.  The presumption that it can talk to claimants almost with disdain, as somehow they are viewed as forelock tugging supplicants who should be eternally grateful that the wider, morally upright public should be subsidizing their existence, offends deeply.  Who the hell is the government to presume that the wider public occupies some kind of moral high ground who give everything from the State and take nothing in return?

We all take something (health care for example) and most contribute.  Most parents of disabled children have paid or do pay taxes.  Why should they get it in the neck from a government full of rich and over privileged public schoolboys who either indulge or collaborate in tax avoidance by themselves or their morally bankrupt friends?  If you’re the loving parent of a disabled child who is worn to a frazzle by the hard work and time consuming commitment that caring brings you would seethe with rage if you got one of those letters.  How dare any government and this one in particular, dare to speak to anyone like this?

What worries me in all this is the strong suggestion that disability benefits are being misspent as the Independent article points out.  Particularly as it fuels prejudices and is an obvious gambit to support further cuts.  I work among social workers, some of whom take an over prurient interest in the way users spend their benefits and are thus disinclined to help make further claims.  It goes without saying that they do not feel that a similar scrutiny should be applied to how they spend their wages - both payments ultimately coming out of taxation!

I don’t want to suggest those colleagues are any different from the general populace, it’s just that they are in a position of some power and responsibility - and it is only some of them.

What is happening around disability benefits is not only a crude divide and rule strategy as the incomes of the poor are cut but dangerously fuels more sinister attitudes evidenced by the rise in hate crime.  I know these views are hardly novel - just seems to be a constant stream of reasons to repeat them.

Tony

Feel free to be as unpopular as you like hbinfopb.  Chortle.  It can often be quite liberating.

Slightly off topic but still about ‘messages’ and underlying values, I’ve noticed how the new 1950s look DWP leaflets are sending out another message. We all know the country is broke etc. etc. but the switch from the former Benefits Agency leaflets (customer service approach) is very stark. Under BA there were far too many leaflets at probably huge expense, but we now have the austerity look ones which look like they were produced by the politburo and send out an entirely different message to anyone brave enough to claim a benefit. I’m sure the government approve, however.

BF57B attached.

nevip - 03 August 2012 09:15 AM

Most parents of disabled children have paid or do pay taxes.

One thing which we can all forget in the debate about welfare reform and taxpayers subsidising the benefits system, is that benefit claimants are taxpayers too.  Many are in low paid work and pay Income Tax and/or National Insurance and even those not in work pay billions in VAT and other indirect taxes, frequently paying a higher proportion of their disposable income in tax than wealthy people do. 

The increase in VAT to 20% of course means they have been paying even more since January 2011.

It would be a lot more sensible, political dogma aside, to replace quantitative easing with increased benefit rates.

QE is supposed to encourage banks to lend money to small businesses who will still have problems finding customers who can afford to buy their products.  Extra money for benefits recipients will

A) get spent.  People need things they can’t currently afford.  Banks seem to be hanging on to the QE money to help their balance sheets.

B) be spent in the local economy.  Poor people spend locally, better off people spend more at a distance on holidays, foreign hi tech etc.

C) Money spent in the local economy will generate, or preserve, local jobs.  More wages more local spend etc.

It seems to me to be an economic win-win but the government seem to be happier taking money out of the economy by cutting benefits which means that less money gets spent so that business and jobs vanish,  or need to borrow money from the banks making them profitable but at what cost?

Nice point Gareth however it flies in the face of the governments “make work pay” mantra, even though under universal credit it wont. Cutting benefits, not increasing them unfortunately is their answer to the above.

Gareth’s points raised above are also backed up by research. See the following report in respect of financial gains by Glasgow Welfare Rights, published in 2001:
http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/27A22A8A-FD01-4F5D-9E96-CEE878BDF515/0/WRFOAReport.pdf

Gareth Morgan - 08 August 2012 09:39 AM

It would be a lot more sensible, political dogma aside, to replace quantitative easing with increased benefit rates.

QE is supposed to encourage banks to lend money to small businesses who will still have problems finding customers who can afford to buy their products. Extra money for benefits recipients will

A) get spent. People need things they can’t currently afford. Banks seem to be hanging on to the QE money to help their balance sheets.

B) be spent in the local economy. Poor people spend locally, better off people spend more at a distance on holidays, foreign hi tech etc.

C) Money spent in the local economy will generate, or preserve, local jobs. More wages more local spend etc.

It seems to me to be an economic win-win but the government seem to be happier taking money out of the economy by cutting benefits which means that less money gets spent so that business and jobs vanish, or need to borrow money from the banks making them profitable but at what cost?

Gareth is absolutely right and another option would be directly funding social landlords to build housing and in the process reduce pressure on rent levels and HB expenditure.

One only has to look at the experience in the USA where the government has actually increased and extended social secuity coverage as a mix of anti-poverty and economic initiatives. Not only has unemployment fallen faster than in the UK, but their economic growth rates have improved and are far better that the UK’s - and that was before Melvin King forecast zero growth rates yesterday.

Unfortunately, all the UK’s political parties are locked into an ideological and classist view of the benefits system fueled by negative, incorrect “shameless” stereotypes of benefit claimants on the fiddle, en masse.