Tony Blair Re-Announces "Welfare Reform"

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Tony Blair Re-Announces "Welfare Reform"

Editorial:
Two Views of Society and Responsibility

TUC Comment on Prime Minister’s Speech on Welfare Reform

Scottish Call Centre Workers Suffer Continuing Health Problems

List of Scottish PFI Failures Grows

Tony Blair on Monday re-introduced the debate over welfare reform, speaking about "rights and responsibilities", but not mentioning, for instance, his plan to deny child benefits to the parents of unruly children.

He instead focused his speech on a Jobcentre Plus announcement when visiting a new-format Jobcentre Plus office in Streatham. He said that the open-plan Jobcentre Plus offices will be extended throughout Britain. Downing Street said that it never sought to portray Tony Blair’s speech as the source of new policy. Instead it developed the theme of "rights and responsibilities".

Regarding the proposals dealing with incapacity benefit, Disability Alliance chief executive Lorna Reith said that government research had shown that incapacity benefit fraud was an irrelevant issue. She said, "We would argue that the government has to put more resources into job retention, stopping people losing their job in the first place."

Regarding the emphasis on getting the sick and lone parents back into work, Child Poverty Action Group director Martin Barnes said, "We remain concerned about the potential use of sanctions, particularly as hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people will be required to attend compulsory interviews for the first time. The use of sanctions must be an absolute last resort and only applied with a very light touch."

The speech of Tony Blair represents an intensification of the anti-social offensive in which individuals are forced to fend for themselves, and treated as no more than fodder in the job market in the interests of the rich maximising their profit.

The Downing Street website in reporting on what Tony Blair said on Monday when speaking at a new Job Centre Plus in Streatham, South London, rightly drew attention to Tony Blair’s vision of the new welfare state as "one which helps people to help themselves". Rightly, in the sense that people "helping themselves", and the new welfare state "enabling" them to do so, is at the heart of the Prime Minister’s message. For it to work, he said, "the concept of mutual responsibility has to go all the way through the system". This idea of "mutual responsibility" is one where the government’s responsibility is to "provide real opportunities" and the individual’s responsibility is to "grasp those opportunities". Thus, the fending for oneself is made central for the individual, whereas the government has no responsibility for the welfare of the individuals in society but to ensure that "opportunities" are there for individuals to "grasp". If individuals fail to grasp them, well, then they have only themselves to blame. The government, with its proxy the Jobcentre Plus and its customer focus and empowered front-line staff (the fruit of the "investment and reform" combination), has kept its side of the bargain. It has provided the "enabling welfare state, spreading opportunity", as well as "the idea of reform of public services". This "idea of reform" is concentrated in focusing on the "jobless". If the "jobless" do not take what the government is offering, or at least what can be found by the Jobcentre Plus, then the "jobless" will be sanctioned. This can be described as perfecting the mechanism whereby the reserve army of the unemployed is used as a lever, as a conscious policy of government, to drive down the level of wages in society as a whole.

As opposed to this medievalist view of society and the individual, a view which is being elaborated to serve the needs and interests of finance capital, there is an enlightened view of a socialised society. This view recognises the enormous potential of modern society to provide every possibility for individuals to look after themselves without having to fend for themselves. In elaborating the "Third Way" between the "right", which stood for "social division and chronic unemployment", and the "left", which argued for rights "but were rather weaker on responsibilities", Tony Blair has to pay lip service to an "enabling welfare state" which also "encompasses those who used to be left to fend for themselves". Here he is referring to "lone parents, people with health problems, disabled people". But the content of his reforms is not to unleash the potential and responsibility of society to ensure that everything is provided – for example, in terms of child care available to all, health care at the highest level for all, all the means by which the needs of the differently abled are met so society does not put impediments in the way of all people fulfilling their potential as human beings. No, the content is to "help them to help themselves" in this so-called "bargain" between government and individuals. In this, it should be noted, the Prime Minister wants to appear beneficent in singling out these sections of society. In doing so, he only betrays that government is wanting to limit resources available to meet the claims of all human beings, according to their specific needs. Not only that, but the aim is to enable these sections of society to appear on what is termed the "job market", the "chance to get off benefit and into work". The government is doing so without ensuring that at least everyone is guaranteed a livelihood, or that whatever is required for the "cost of living" in such a market is actually paid, individually and socially, not least to the people who are lone parents, ill, or differently abled. The government of Tony Blair with its "Third Way" programme, neither "right" nor "left", in the end stands accused itself of being "rather weak on responsibilities" and of leaving human beings to "fend for themselves".

Tony Blair wants to "transform their [people in poverty] horizons, aspirations and hopes" not by ensuring that the crime against humanity of endless poverty and widening gap between rich and poor is eliminated. It is to be done by driving up "social mobility" so that people – those that grasp the opportunities, the go-getters – get better jobs and "save and build up a nest egg". According to Tony Blair this is "the great force for equality in dynamic market economies". In this way the government can "save" billions of pounds a year in social programmes.

The issue in reforming or renewing society is not "raising people’s expectations and their self-belief, by giving them the tools to help themselves". This is all baloney. The issue is to transform society so that the reduction of individuals to "clients" on the job market in the service of the financial oligarchy is ended, and the human factor/social consciousness is liberated. Public social services must be available to all as of right in whichever form they are needed, and certainly food, clothing and shelter is guaranteed. For this it is not Britain playing a "leading role" in Europe and the world which is required, in the sense of Britain’s imperial status being restored. If the revolutionary transformation to a socialised society is accomplished so that society’s potential is unlocked, then this would be a "leading role" worth fighting for.

Commenting on the Prime Minister's speech on welfare reform, John Monks, TUC General Secretary, said on Monday:

"The TUC welcomes the PM's speech on welfare reform.

"Unions believe in employment, and we argued that paid work was the best route out of poverty long before it was a popular message for politicians.

"The new service the Prime Minister described is very attractive. For years the divide between benefits offices and Jobcentres forced people claiming a benefit to traipse backwards and forwards between them, wasting their time and building up their frustration. An integrated service has long been an objective – but it took this Government to deliver it.

"We agree with the Prime Minister that there should be a fair balance of rights and responsibilities, but very few people will have to be forced to use a service as good as the one he described today. All the evidence we have shows that most unemployed people desperately want jobs, most lone parents want to return to employment as soon as it fits in with their families' needs and hardly anyone on disability benefits is faking their disability. Of course, there are exceptions, and we need penalties to deal with them, but most benefit claimants will welcome the new service Tony Blair outlined today.

"The Prime Minister's emphasis on helping Jobcentre Plus clients to get higher-skilled, better paid jobs is particularly welcome. Jobcentre Plus has made great progress in getting people from welfare into work, but good jobs are the key to keeping them there. We want every JCP client who can benefit from employment to be helped down a road that begins with being unemployable, moves on to being job ready, from being job-ready to actually having a job, and from a job to a career.

"Any moves by Government to increase access to rehabilitation – a key element of Beveridge's vision for the welfare state that has never been fulfilled – is welcome. Work should be adapted to workers rather than forcing workers into jobs that cause or worsen their injury or illness. It shouldn't just be about rehabilitation, though. Government needs a joined up approach to prevention, rehabilitation and compensation."

Three quarters of Scotland's call centre workers suffer from stress at work, according to a new survey carried out by UNISON. Nearly two thirds also have pain in their hands, wrists or back the survey says. More than 80% of the 500 people surveyed also said that background noise levels made listening and speaking a strain.

UNISON on Monday launched its Call Centre Charter called Raising the Standard which promotes six key principles to raise standards for Scotland’s 46,000 call centre workers. The key areas the Charter calls on employers to address are:

• fair pay and conditions,
• positive approach to a worklife balance,
• better job design,
• opportunity to join a trade union,
• training and development, and
• health and safety.

UNISON, Scotland's largest public service union, published on June 5 a further list of PFI failures including two projects where the in-house staff have had to clear up the mess. In a regular briefing to its 96 Scottish Branches, the union also refutes the claim that risk is transferred to the private sector in these deals – claiming that "risk transfer" is only an excuse to load extra costs onto the public sector comparator.

They are also asking their branches to identify any likely "conflict of interest" caused by an authority appointing private firms as auditors who also have substantial PFI businesses.

"Across all the public services there are failure after failure," Dave Watson, UNISON's Scottish Organiser for Policy and Information, said. "In East Renfrewshire, the council is in dispute with Jarvis after a PFI school roof blew off." He added, "In Dundee the Baldovie waste to energy plant is in financial crisis. And there are more and more PFI chickens coming home to roost."

"The current dash for PFI schools is also going to be bad value for the taxpayer," Dave Watson said. "All the projects we have seen add a 'Risk transfer' cost to the public sector alternative which masks the cost difference between the public and the private sector. But the 'Risk' doesn't get transferred. In all the Outline Business Cases we have seen, if the contractor goes bust or fails to deliver an adequate service, the authority picks up the tab! Some Risk!"

UNISON has also highlighted the fact that a number of Scottish public authorities have appointed companies to audit their books, when those companies have substantial PFI business in Scotland. The union has asked its branches to flag up any potential conflict of interest.

"PriceWaterhouseCoopers have 22 appointments as external auditors to Scottish Public bodies," UNISON’s Scottish Organiser said. "They are also involved in 132 PFI projects across the UK."

In March, UNISON had also pointed out that in all the planned schools PFI schemes the union had seen, local councils bear the burden of paying compensation if the scheme fails – even if it is the fault of the private contractor. UNISON had found that councils have utilised accounting ploys and financial sleight-of-hand to weight the findings in favour of PFI schemes.

Dave Watson said, "Councils are accepting all the risks on behalf of the council taxpayer – a fact that is usually hidden away in an appendix and not drawn to councillors' attention. In addition they are adding in 'notional' risk transfer figures to overcome the fact that the private schemes are more expensive than the public sector comparators, and they are using an accountancy method that favours PFI bids. Even after these sweeteners, these schemes still have an affordability gap. And councils bridge this by cutting back on services, lowering quality and squeezing space."