Neoliberal timeline: food poverty UK

On Wednesday, Oct 21, “a majority of MPs [including Herefordshire’s MPs] voted against [the ‘sticking plaster’ of] directly funding free school meals over the school holidays until Easter 2021,”(1) and yet on Wednesday, Oct 14, the Express had written, “Benefits are important to millions of people right across the country. However, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to take action which could mean the bank accounts and social media of claimants are monitored” (2).

All very convenient at this time for a vindictive government that penalises poor people while such monitoring goes against the General Data Protection Register (an EU regulation) and non-declaration of income can be regarded as a claimant’s DIY ‘sticking plaster’ in desperate times. I offer the following timeline to outline what neoliberal government does not want us to know.

In November 2006, welfare rights adviser Neil Bateman reported on the impact of 21m phone calls (44% of all incoming calls to Jobcentre Plus helplines) going unanswered in 2004-5 (“Delays in processing claims and changes of circumstances – six weeks is common – leaving people destitute….”);(3) and in May 2007 of a rise in charities providing food to poor families [under Tony ‘Tea with Margaret Thatcher’ Blair’s government].(4)

In October 2007, David Cameron as Leader of the Opposition ignored the destitution caused by Jobcentre Plus failings and declared that ‘tougher sanctions’ against benefit claimants’ would help create a fairer economy.(5)

Post 2010 General Election and during David Cameron’s national leadership, and Universal Credit’s statutory delays, how did ‘tougher sanctions’ impact on society? In January 2015, Glasgow U. Law Professor Dr David Webster reported that:

• Sanctions imposed on benefit claimants by the DWP exceed the number of fines imposed by the courts
• sanctioned claimants are treated much worse than those fined in the courts with much harsher penalties
• decisions are made by officials who have no independent responsibility to act lawfully; since the Social Security Act 1998 they have been mere agents of the Secretary of State
• ‘Mandatory Reconsideration’ is a major barrier to tribunal justice. 

He concluded:

“Sanctions undermine physical and mental health, cause hardship for family and friends, damage relationships, create homelessness and drive people to Food Banks and payday lenders, and to crime. They also often make it harder to look for work. Taking these negatives into account, they cannot be justified.

“Benefit sanctions are an amateurish, secret penal system which is more severe than the mainstream judicial system, but lacks its safeguards. It is time for everyone concerned for the rights of the citizen to demand their abolition.”(6)

Now, Charlie Spring in the November-December 2020 issue of New Internationalist magazine reports: “[T]he UK has long seen patchworked food assistance, especially within faith communities. But foodbank provision rose steeply following the recession of 2008 and the austerity that followed. In 2011 major food-aid network The Trussel Trust reported nearly 130,000 instances of people receiving food. By 2015 this had jumped to 1.1 million and by March 2020, the annual figure sat at 1.9 million.”(7)

What will News Forwards from Alan Wheatley readers do about these injustices? What drove Florence Nightingale to accomplish what she did? She answered quite simply, “Rage.”(8)

Driven by rage and love

Alan Wheatley

Notes

1. https://www.theyworkforyou.com/divisions/pw-2020-10-21-154-commons  
2. https://www.express.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/1347568/DWP-warning-benefit-monitoring-bank-account-social-media-investigation
3. https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2006/11/16/jobcentre-plus-poor-service-continues/
4. https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2007/05/17/the-growth-in-charities-providing-food-to-poor-families/
   
5. https://theonlygreenroom.blogspot.com/2007/10/benefit-claimants-need-firmer.html
    
6. https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/benefit-sanctions-britains-secret-penal-system
7. New Internationalist magazine November-December 2020 issue print edition is available through good newsagents and/or by subscription via https://newint.secureorder.co.uk/INT/9156/
    
8. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=%22florence+nightingale%22+rage