Council tax has been the final straw for some pensioners whose incomes have fallen in real terms and now lag behind earnings
The European Community spends T e3o bilent year on the Common
Agricultural Policy subsidising rich farmers. Five farms in the United Kingdom receive an annual subsidy of over one million pounds. The gutter press pays little attention to this benefits system for the rich.
However they do pay a great deal of attention to our other benefits system, which 2 allegedly is so generous that it attracts asylum seekers from all corners of the globe to d Britain.
Allegedly vouchers, Jobseekers Allowance, Housing Benefit, Income Support, Tax Credits, the State Pension here are the envy of the world.
The New Labour Government goes along with this myth. They want to avoid real scrutiny of this benefits system that leads to misery for millions and benefits the rich as much as the poor.
If we have such a generous benefits system, why were 12.5 million people in Britain below the official poverty line in 200I-2002? The official poverty line is defined as 60% of median income - currently £114 for a single person, and £273 for a couple with two children. In the European Union only Portugal and Greece have proportionately more poor people than Britain. Pensioner Poverty
Many pensioners are below the official poverty line because their pensions have not increased in line with wages. The Tories policy is now to restore the link between the State pension and earnings, but this is too radical a measure for the Blair Government. Pensioner Credit, pensioner households will only be 6400 better off a year as a result, according to Andrew Smith MP, the Minister in charge of the DWP. However this depends on if pensioners claim the Pensioner Credit.
The Government targets assume one million pensioners who are entitled to it will not receive it. Many pensioners will not claim due to the complexity of the forms, knowledge of its existence or the social stigma attached to claiming benefits. Similarly 600,000 families failed to claim the old Working Families Tax Credit.
The Government has allowed pensioners to be hard hit by rises in Council Tax and utility bills. A stark example of New Labour's failure to address pensioner poverty is the number of pensioners expected to die this winter due to the cold weather:
A recent report by the Faculty of Health
THE ANTI IT!!! claims 45,000 will die unnecessarily, mainly due to fuel poverty. The report says 'a higher proportion of the UK population dies as a result of cold than in either Finland or Russia.
To paraphrase a famous advert "Tell Sid, thousands of pensioners die each year from Thatcher's gas and electric privatisations, and Labour's failure to reverse them'.
Labour has claimed work is the route out of poverty. However at a recent Select Committee a spokesperson for Citizens Advice stated " we regularly see people who are in work suffering poverty because of the administration of the system letting them Although Labour has introduced a new down, people who ought to be getting tax credits but are not, and others who ought to be getting other support but are not for various reasons'. Tax Credits
In 2003 hundreds of thousands of applicants received their tax credits late due to the faulty computer programmes of EDS, a private company that ran the Inland Revenue's IT services.
Another private company Capita has lost a series of IT contracts delivering housing benefits in London Boroughs to in-house teams due to their mismanagement creating huge delays in processing claims.
Such delays in benefits/tax credits to low paid workers keep families in poverty. Many have to give up jobs as a result. However private IT companies continue to make a fortune out of the Blair benefit system.
Another private company recently won the contract to run the Inland Revenue's IT service worth £3 billion over ten years.
Blair has been a great advocate of the deregulation of the British labour market that has led to an abundance of low paid, parttime and casual jobs. Blair is desperately trying to help the capitalists fill these positions.
New Labour's tax credit system is a means to encourage the unemployed, disabled, lone parents and pensioners into these jobs on the promise they will be better off.
Yet surveys have shown where families try to escape the poverty trap by one or more adults getting a low waged, insecure job, they often end up worse off. 52% of poor children live in homes where at least one adult works.
The tax credit system is designed not to help the poor, but employers who pay their workers abysmal wages. Rather than forcing such miserty employers to pay a living wage, the State is taking the burden of paying some of the workers wage. The job may then look more attractive financially to the above groups. Subsidising the Rich
Unfortunately Blair's benefit system is also subsidising landlords who charge exorbitant rents, private care home owners who make their residents pay through the nose, and private nursery owners that rob working parents.
As an avowed Thatcherite, Blair does not DONT CADI'
Council Tax
1 Tax NT RA Г!! wish the State to intervene in these sectors. Rather than build affordable public housing, care homes or nurseries, New Labour prefers pay out huge amounts in benefits/tax credits to the poor who immediately have to hand it over to private capitalists running such enterprises
Often housing benefit payments do not cover the cost of an individual's rent and tax credits only cover seventy percent of the cost of childcare provision. Such shortfalls again lead to poverty and the latter is affecting the ability of parents to take up or remain in jobs. Excluded from Benefits
Whilst the Government has been encouraging some groups through a policy of subsidies to take up low paid, part-time or casual jobs - it has taken a different approach to other groups
By denying benefits to full time students under 18 year olds and some asylum seekers, many have been forced into such work for subsistence.
In the mid 1980's few students worked, but now vast numbers sweat for companies like Macdonalds. A Natest survey in 200l showed the numbers of students working had doubled in a year to almost 50%.
Over one hundred thousand 16-18 year olds have signed up to for Modern Apprenticeships where they work full time for pitiful rates of pay. The Greater Manchester Low Pay Unit found the average * " poverty… languishing alone'. 17 year olds wage on this scheme was on just €2.86 per hour:
David Blunkett admits the catering and hospitality industry, particularly in London and the South East is reliant on the clandes tine employment of asylum seekers and ille gal immigrants These workers can be exploited as the State provides little or no support for them.
Asylum seekers cannot claim income sup port, but must survive on vouchers that are worth 30% less than the value of this benefit According to a Reader's Digest Mori Pol (November 2000), most people overesti mate the amount of financial support received by asylum seekers, believing that they receive on average over £110 per week - nearly three times the actual amount.
An Oxfam report in 2002 showed 95% o asylum seekers could not afford to buy shoes or clothes Benefits stop riots
In 1795 the ruling class introduced the Speenhamland system to stop spreading bread riots by the poor. Meagre payments were made to 'every poor and industrious man. It was an early benefits/tax credits systemish 0SE11 S
Today Blair and the politicians of Britain's ruling class recognise they cannot remove benefits from all the poor without massive civil unrest. However they keep benefit levels low to force people into work.
This keeps the ruling classes taxes low and profits high. Child Poverty
Blair is forcing all Lone Parents to have compulsory interviews at jobcentres (and sick claimants on Incapacity Benefit and Income Support). However this approach is failing to make more Lone Parents join the ranks of the employed. Many Lone Parents may want to work but find it impossible due to having to bring up large or young families prohibitive childcare costs etc.
These Lone Parents must rely on Income Support and if it fails to go up their whole family suffers. 80% of the kids of lone par ents who are in poverty are in workless households
New Labour is spending millions on the gimmick of the Child Trust Fund, but neglect ing immediate help to many Lone Parents and their needy children by failing to raise income support levels
Save the Children has criticised the Government for trying to push a certain pro portion of people over their child poverty target and leaving 'those in really severe
page 21 of the scan
A report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies concludes children who live in the poorest UK households have less chance of escaping poverty than when Labour came to power. Child Support Agency
Needy children have also been let down by the private IT provider of the Child Support Agency. In 2003 IT problems contributed to a million backlog of cases. Two billion pounds worth of debt was written off by the Child Support Agency last year. 70% of families are not receiving the maintenance they are lawfully entitled to. Blair's benefits system is here again miserably failing children. Jobcentre Minus
The main Government agency dealing with benefits is Jobcentreplus, a merger of the price from the Government.
The latest pay dispute shows workers in the benefits system are poorly paid as well. Also the Government wishes to cut Jobcentreplus staff by 14% in the next few years. 500 out of 1500 Jobcentreplus sites are to be closed, producing a worse service.
The public does not see such statistics on the television just Blair opening a lavishly funded new Jobcentreplus office. The TV does not show the overcrowded offices that have £300,000 spent on their refurbishment rather than the million pounds spent on this televised office. Spin and Reality
New Labour likes to grab favourable headlines and it has lots of wonderful little schemes to do just this. Last year London Jobcentre Plus funded ethnic minority outreach teams, projects to encourage employee retention and Action Teams to help particularly deprived wards.
However at the same it failed to retain 600 The human equivalent of battery farming: a call centre at work. clalist resistance February 2004 2l