Category Archives: Welfare state

Christian solidarity with Occupy London

Posted on by symonhill

A number of groups have now signed a statement of Christian solidarity with the Occupy London movement. I’m delighted to say that the statement has been welcomed by both Christians and non-Christians involved in the occupations near the London Stock Exchange.

Signatories so far are Ekklesia, Christianity Uncut and the London Catholic Worker, although we’re confident that others will join in soon. The statement has been welcomed on the Occupy London website.

The statement can be read below.

 

Christian solidarity with the ‘Occupy London’ movement 

As Christians, we stand alongside people of all religions and none who are resisting economic injustice with active nonviolence. We offer our greetings to people engaged in occupations of financial centres throughout the world.

We seek to witness to the love and justice of God, proclaimed by Jesus Christ. Jesus said that he had come to “set free the oppressed”. His gospel is good news for all people. It is a challenge to all structures, systems, practices and attitudes that lead people to exploit and oppress their fellow human beings.

The global economic system divides people one from another and separates humanity from creation. It perpetuates the wealth of the few at the expense of the many. It fuels violence and environmental destruction. It is based on idolatrous subservience to markets. We cannot worship both God and money.

We are inspired by Jesus, who protested against exploitative traders and moneychangers in the Jerusalem Temple. Christianity began as a grassroots protest movement. Nonviolent direct action can play an important and ethical role in resisting injustice and achieving change.

We stand in solidarity with the ‘Occupy London’ movement and regret that they have not been able to make their protest closer to the London Stock Exchange. We applaud their commitment to co-operating with St Paul’s Cathedral and to ensuring that their camp is safe for everyone in the vicinity. We were pleased by the cathedral’s initial welcome to the camp and hope that difficulties between the occupiers and the cathedral can be speedily resolved, keeping the focus on the need to challenge the financial injustices perpetuated by the City of London.

Coming out as disabled

Posted on by symonhill

A few weeks ago, I was sorting through some old papers and came across my first ever published article. It was a piece on Christian attitudes towards mental health, published in the (now defunct) New Christian Herald in October 1998. I was 21. It was several years before I began to make my living from writing.

The topic may surprise people who are familiar with my more recent writing. I haven’t mentioned my mental health problems publicly for a long time. Today is World Mental Health Day, and it seems an appropriate time to talk about them. This is not least because people with mental health problems, like disabled people generally, are under attack from the ConDem government and its cuts agenda.

Ill health is real and can be experienced anywhere. The mental distress I experience is real. Just like physical pain, it can be found in any society and culture. I would much rather not have it. Pain, distress and impairments do not exist solely because of society or culture.

But do they lead to disability? What sort of disability? Whether an impairment is disabling is dependent on society.

A society that stops people with mobility impairments from accessing buildings is disabling them. A culture that treats deaf and blind people as objects of pity is disabling them. An employer that refuses to employ someone with dyslexia is disabling them.

We are disabled by society.

This understanding is commonly known as the social model of disability.

The right-wing press seem intent on further disabling large numbers of people by portraying them as scroungers. The government are forcing benefit claimants to be re-assessed by Atos. Atos know that the government want people to be thrown off benefits. Their willingness to find people fit for work would be comical if the consequences were not so horrific. I recently heard from a partially sighted woman who was told by Atos that she had “no difficulty seeing”. This was the first time that any test on her had reached this conclusion and she was deprived of benefits. In York, a woman was reportedly found fit for work despite being sectioned under the Mental Health Act at the time.

The evidence is not only anecdotal. Around 40% of appeals against Atos decisions have been successful.

David Cameron last week claimed that people had been able to receive disability benefits with “no questions asked”. This is a lie. It’s a measure of this government’s approach to society that it is now considered acceptable to demonise disabled people.

In my early twenties, I did a lot of campaigning on mental health issues. I co-founded the Churches’ Campaign for Awareness of Depression (CCAD). It was a short-lived organisation, but I still think it was worth it. Since then, I’ve campaigned on other issues – such as war, the arms trade, sexuality, education and economic inequality.

I’ve not avoided mentioning mental health, but it’s not been a major focus of my work. It’s still a vital issue in my life. I have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). I experience anxiety and sometimes panic attacks. In the past, I had depression, but I’ve been very lucky and not experienced depression for some years. The severity and frequency of my mental health problems varies considerably. Sometimes I am really quite ill, while at other times my health is pretty good. I am usually somewhere in between.

My difficulties with mental ill-health have also varied a lot depending on the context of my life and work. When I worked office hours in Monday-Friday jobs, it was much harder to deal with my mental health than it is now that I am mostly freelance and can to a large extent manage my own time.

This style of work has a less disabling effect on me. I can, for example, work in the night if I can’t sleep. I can be more flexible about timing to include things that help my health, such as walking or talking with friends. Most people are not so lucky.

I am less disabled because I am not forced into work patterns that make me more ill. But I am still disabled by society’s prejudices, assumptions, structures and economic set-up. When I describe myself as disabled, I am not putting myself down or asking for pity, but describing my experience of society’s priorities.

It is no surprise that many people prefer not to mention health problems or impairments which are associated with prejudice. Some years ago, when desperately looking for work, I was reluctant to mention my mental health problems when applying for jobs. I don’t judge anyone for choosing not to do so.

But when we can identify ourselves as disabled, we take a stand against the structures that disable us. At this moment in particular, we speak out against the assault on disabled people perpetrated by Cameron and the Daily Mail. We make clear that we mention disability not as a cause of shame or pity, but out of a desire for social change.

Speaking in a different context, the gay US politician Harvey Milk said, “The most political thing you can do is come out”. Today, I am publicly coming out as disabled.

The parallel universe of David Cameron

Posted on by symonhill

Welcome to the parallel universe of David Cameron. It is a world in which the Tories stand up for the poor, lead the fight against dictatorship and stop people from being given benefits on demand. It is a world that exists in a conference hall in Manchester this week, in a few daily papers the rest of the time, and in the less well-informed parts of the right-wing blogosphere. It has nothing in common with the world that most of us live in.

The real story of David Cameron’s speech is the blunder that saw him removing his comments about credit card debt at the last minute. It appears to have taken his advisers a while to realise that being lectured on managing your personal finances by a multi-millionaire would not go down well with people struggling to make ends meet. Nor would the prospect of being told to give money to banks by politicians who have already bailed them out with billions of pounds of our money.

In terms of what Cameron did say, it is difficult to know where to start in pointing out the inaccuracies and half-truths. On at least one occasion, he told a straightforward lie. He said that people receiving disability benefits were ‘Not officially unemployed, but claiming welfare, no questions asked.’

What are these mythical benefits that are given to people without asking questions? My father was on disability benefits throughout the nineties. Many friends of mine have been on them since. All of them had not only to answer strings of questions but undergo tests and interviews, some of them ridiculously over-the-top, that in some cases made their health worse.

Cameron said, ‘Now we’re asking those questions’. He failed to mention that Atos, the company contracted to ‘ask the questions’ – and to re-assess people for ability to work – has done its job so badly that around 40% of appeals have been upheld. Atos’ approach makes clear that the government is interested in throwing as many people off benefits as possible.

Then there were Cameron’s comments on Gaddafi, for whose overthrow he appeared to take personal responsibility. The people of Libya might feel that they had something to do with it too. Cameron said that Labour were saying sorry for ‘sucking up to Gaddafi’ but nor for what ‘really’ mattered. The implication is that siding with Gaddafi is not a major problem. This would explain why Cameron’s government attempted to sell sniper rifles to the Gaddafi regime only weeks before the Libyan uprising began.

Cameron re-announced the government’s consultation on same-sex marriage. This was announced two weeks ago by Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone. Indeed, a consultation had already been announced and Featherstone was effectively confirming that it had been postponed. She promised legal recognition of same-sex civil marriage by 2015. Throwing people off benefits can be done overnight, but marriage equality apparently takes a minimum of four years.

The more I read of Cameron’s speech, the more sickened I felt. But none of it quite compared to a comment made yesterday by Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary. He claimed that the Conservative Party are ‘the party of the poor’.

This is the party of the poll tax, privatisation, mass unemployment and the great social housing sell-off. This is the party that is now leading an assault on the working class and lower middle class with policies that lead to increased homelessness, fewer jobs, lower pensions, worse public services and the abolition of benefits vital to disabled people.

The Tory Party’s core purpose has never varied over the last three hundred years. It exists to promote the interests of the rich. I’m sure that the Conservative Party includes compassionate individuals who genuinely believe that they are working for the best interests of society as a whole. But as institution, this is not how the Tory Party has worked. The Tories have opposed every major progressive policy ever introduced, from old age pensions at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the National Health Service in the 1940s, to the minimum wage fifty years later.

But Cameron and Duncan Smith are right about one thing: Labour is not the party of the poor. Labour presided over an increase in inequality. The ConDems are simply going further. Working class and lower middle class people are increasingly unrepresented by all three establishment parties. Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on these parties. Progressive political change does not start with politicians, but with ordinary people like us. It’s time to remember our own power.

A mansion tax and the realities of class

Posted on by symonhill

Britain may be broke, but the government’s desperation to cut the deficit seems to have its limits. This morning, Eric Pickles has ruled out an increase in council tax for houses valued at more than a million pounds.

This is the so-called “mansion tax” proposed by the Liberal Democrats when they were in opposition.

As Communities Secretary, Pickles is responsible for council tax. But he went further, saying in an interview with today’s Daily Telegraph that he also wants to see the end of the 50p tax rate for those on high incomes.

He described top-rate taxpayers, and people with million-pound homes, as “middle class” and “hardworking homeowners” who put lots into society but “don’t take a lot out”. These three phrases combined can easily give a misleading impression about who would be affected by a “mansion tax”. Indeed, they perpetuate an inaccurate understanding of wealth and class in British society.

Firstly, Pickles talks about the “middle class”. Only about 1% of houses are valued at over a million pounds. Similarly, only 1% of the population are rich enough to pay top-rate tax. In no sense are these people in the “middle”.

Eric Pickles is following the common practice of implying that a tax on the very richest would apply to far more people than it does. These implications help to create more opposition to such taxes (as I pointed out when the Liberal Democrats proposed the “mansion tax” two years’ ago – see http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/10256).

Secondly, Pickles regards this wealthy section of the population as a group of “hardworking homeowners”. I am sure that many of the are indeed hardworking. Some are not. Many people are low or middle incomes are also hardworking. Some are not. There is no general correlation between hard work and income within the population as a whole. The majority of people in the UK live and die in the same social class into which they were born.

But certain politicians and commentators constantly associate wealth with hard work and poverty with laziness. Despite the lack of evidence behind this, it conveniently makes inequality appear fair.

Thirdly, Pickles claims that “middle class families have put a lot into the country and don’t take a lot out”. Again, he is using “middle class” to mean the tiny percentage rich enough to pay a mansion tax or top-rate income tax. To suggest that these very wealthy people give lots to society without taking much is demonstrably untrue.

As Church Action on Poverty (CAP) point out, richer people pay a lower percentage of their income in tax than poorer people. Admittedly, income tax is higher for the better-off, but VAT is the same rate for everyone from a homeless person to a billionaire. CAP’s research suggests that the richest fifth of the population spend 7% of their income on VAT. For the poorest fifth, the figure is a whopping 14%.

Between them, a number of corporations and wealthy individuals deprive the Treasury of billions every year through tax avoidance. Of course, there are some wealthy individuals who conscientiously pay their tax without looking for loopholes, and I applaud them for doing so. But the extent of tax avoidance undermines Pickles’ claims about how much wealthy people, taken as a group, put into society.

More importantly, the very fact that the rich are rich means that they have taken more of society’s wealth than the rest of us. We are encouraged to see wealth as a personal possession. If we instead see society’s (and the world’s) wealth as belonging to society (and the world) as a whole, it is clear that some people have taken vastly more than others.

The Daily Telegraph quotes Tory MPs who believe that tax cuts for the rich will stimulate the economy and increase growth (from its current level of virtually nothing). For now, I’ll leave aside the question of whether growth is good in itself. But many of those who want to see growth would acknowledge that giving more money to the richest is not an effective way of generating it. Poorer people are far more likely to spend extra money that richer people. And only the very richest syphon off their money to tax havens, where it is of literally no use whatsoever to the British economy.

As you will have guessed, I would be happy to see a “mansion tax” and would like to see the top rate of tax increased, not abolished. However, the money these measures would raise would be minimal compared to the amount that could pour into the Treasury’s coffer if there was a serious crackdown on tax havens and other means of tax dodging by corporations and the very rich.

Ministers tell us that the economic situation is so dire that they have no choice but to increase VAT, abolish Disability Living Allowance, make massive job cuts, scrap Education Maintenance Allowance, treble university tuition fees, attack public sector pensions, cut funding for local services and basically tear the heart out of the welfare state.

But it seems that the situation is not bad enough for minsters to introduce a mansion tax, slightly raise the top rate of income tax or bring in VAT on private education and private healthcare. And the most commitment they have shown to tackling tax dodging is feeble words that seem to have led nowhere.

Their treatment of the wealthy contrasts sharply with the demands made of the rest of us. New Labour governments also seemed wedded to the interests of the rich, though their loyalty was rarely so blatant or their economic policies so extreme.

This situation makes one thing clear. The coalition’s economic policies are not primarily about addressing the deficit. They are the weapons in a vicious assault against the working class and lower middle class. In short, ministers are fighting a class war.

I have for a long time hesitated to use this sort of language. But I am now convinced that it is an accurate description of the extreme approach to society and economics that this government is pursuing. It’s time for people of all classes to stand up and say so.

———-

This blog post appeared originally as my latest column on the website  of the Ekklesia thinktank. To read more of my Ekklesia columns, please visit http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/news/columns/hill.

Benefit claimants and top-rate taxpayers

Posted on by symonhill

 A glance at the front pages of this morning’s papers gives a brief snapshot of the grotesque reality of ConDem Britain. The Daily Mail and Daily Express lead with vicious and misleading attacks on disabled benefit claimants, while the Daily Telegraph reports on Boris Johnson’s call for very wealthy people to pay less tax.

 Welcome to the UK under David Cameron, where the poorest are blamed for the nation’s problems while the richest are portrayed as victims.

The gleeful headline on the Daily Express is “Sick benefits: 75% are faking”. The Mail uses the same figures to make a similar claim. To say that these figures are “out of context” would be polite. They are deliberately deceitful.

They appear to refer to disabled people who are assessed for Employment Support Allowance. It takes a fair bit of concentrated reading through the Express article to realise that they have combined figures for those assessed fit for work with those who don’t complete their applications.

Given the bureaucratic hurdles that the assessment process involves, it is no surprise that some give up before they have completed it, particularly if they are applying because of a mental health problem or learning disability.

The Express back up their position with quotes from David Cameron, junior minister Steve Webb (who was regarded as on the left of the Liberal Democrats before he became responsible for slashing benefits) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a right-wing lobby group whose main purpose seems to be to object to taxes being spent on anyone poorer than their own members. In a feeble attempt at balance, a brief critical quote from the TUC’s Brendan Barber is thrown in right at the end.

Conveniently, the article makes no reference to the number of claimants who successfully appeal against their assessment. Around 40% of appeals are upheld. This is amazing. It reveals the unreliability of the assessments in which the Mail and Express place so much faith.

The assessments are carried out by Atos, a private company awarded a multi-million pound contract to assess ability to work – and with a clear mandate to get people off benefits, unhampered by such considerations as reality. Atos have found people with terminal cancer to be fit for work. As mental health charities such as Rethink and Mind have pointed out, they also seem particularly unable to grasp the complexities of mental health problems.

Neither Atos nor their friends in the right-wing press take account of the reality that many disabled people would love to work but are prevented to do so by inaccessible workplaces, prejudiced employers and social structures that marginalise them. Disability is caused by society’s attitudes to people with certain impairments, not by the impairments themselves.

But companies will not have their fitness as employers determined by Atos in twenty-minute assessments by unqualified individuals with a biased mandate.

As the government and their friends in the press launch this vicious assault on disabled people, the Daily Telegraph reports that Boris Johnson has repeated his call to scrap the top rate of income tax. It is 50p in the pound and only about 1% of the population are rich enough to pay it. This income tax; when it comes to VAT, everyone pays the same, from a homeless person to a billionaire.

As Church Action on Poverty have pointed out, richer people spend a lower percentage of their income on tax. The poorest fifth of the UK spend about 14% of their income on VAT, while for the richest fifth the figure is only 7%.

The Tories and their allies tell us that cuts are necessary to address the deficit, but it’s hard to take them seriously when some of them are them are keen to offer yet more concessions to those whose wealth would allow them to contribute the most to tackling the economic situation.

In this warped response to economic problems, those with the least have to pay the most.