The Green Paper: a final rollout of the workfare state

While child homelessness and poverty is at record levels Labour aims to plunder the collective resources of the working class. Luke Dukinfield provides a detailed analysis of the government’s green paper

It has become a familiar, brutal cycle: in the weeks and months preceding the announcement of the Green Paper, a barrage of reckless and vindictive press coverage was leaked to scapegoat benefit claimants and lay the ground for the cuts therein. Mental health conditions are ‘overdiagnosed’, some on benefits are ‘taking the mickey’, welfare spending is a ‘bulging bill’ over which we need to ‘get a grip’. There are echoes here of not just Osborne’s demonising rhetoric of benefit claimants ‘sleeping off a life on benefits’, but Labour’s own in opposition – such as Rachel Reeves infamously proclaiming, ‘we will be harder on benefit claimants than the Tories.’ They have followed through on this shameful promise, going further than even the Tories dared to by proposing the most vicious cuts to disability and sickness benefits on record. This amounts to £6 billion, slashing the incomes of nearly one million of the poorest people by up to an estimated £6300 a year. 

In another mirror to the rhetoric the Tories peddled to justify austerity, that the distended largesse of the nanny state needed to be reined in, so too have Labour blamed the cuts on the public debt accumulated by the Tories and the ‘maxing out of the national credit card’. Despite promising no return to austerity, these benefit cuts seem to be the harbinger of just that. The moral panic of a ‘ruthless crackdown’ on an ‘out of control’ benefits bill has been again counterposed by extolling the ‘dignity’ and virtues of work, with Labour grandstanding on the condescending catchphrase, ‘the clue is in the name, the Labour party’. 

These arguments, in their stark cruelty, seem to have badly backfired and misread the mood of the electorate. The mask slips in one key line of an 84 page document which undermines almost everything else that follows – working age benefits have flatlined in real terms, even including PIP. Any increase to PIP spending has barely compensated for the over decade-long squeeze of other working-age benefits. A population bludgeoned by austerity, where many more people during COVID-19 had to confront the realities of what it is actually like trying to survive on benefits, will not be duped by the notion that they have been too pampered by the state. Benefits are underclaimed to the tune of £19 billion per year, and it is estimated that the series of freezes, cuts and caps between 2010 and 2020, including the two child limit and benefit cap, have resulted in a £36 billion curtailing of annual welfare spending. This is plunder of the collective resources and infrastructure of the working class on a staggering scale.

Work, on the other hand, is insecure, heavily surveilled, tyrannised by metrics – protections and rights eroded, pay stagnant – depriving many of dignity rather than enabling it. Whether industrial injuries, musculoskeletal conditions, or ill mental health due to stress and anxiety, it is more cause than remedy to mass illness. These are open secrets of not just Britain but capitalist society. The system has spawned record levels of child homelessness and poverty at one pole, and a vast concentration of billionaire wealth at the other – and it is the families on the knife edge once again being punished. Disabled people are still systematically discriminated against in employment and most likely to be in poverty, with 50 per cent of those receiving the sickness element of Universal Credit (UC) unable to heat their homes and behind on bills. PIP and the sickness element of UC are the only buffer for many against sheer destitution, including many households with children. Water and energy bills are set to soar further, following unprecedented spikes in food and energy prices during the cost-of-living crisis. Such costs are heightened considerably for disabled people, and now the only means to subsidise it – PIP – is also being threatened. People know they are being swindled. 

Here Labour were betting on a risky electoral calculation that they could pit workers against unemployed, improve employment rights at little cost to the state through the Employment Rights’ Bill then smuggle through unnoticed cuts to social security. If there is any consolation, it is that this strategy seems to have been a catastrophic failure – the passing of this bill barely made news, completely overshadowed by the cuts. They have put cart before horse, betraying the many workers who rely on benefits to top up poverty wages, and the many others who are enabled to work by disability benefits like PIP. There are no jobs to go to, much less any that might afford dignity or escape from poverty, as agency work and Amazon warehouses occupy the void of deindustrialisation and trade union power remains shackled. The press may be exaggerating the scale of the divisions with reference to a ‘civil war’ in Labour – but it has certainly sparked fury across the party in the context of an outcry from civil society, with more MPs than ever likely to rebel in parliamentary votes. Bringing further campaigning pressure to bear could well swing even those opposed or on the fence.

It is telling that the Green Paper scarcely mentions benefits at all, more a treatise on employment support than anything else. Scheme after scheme in this vein – from Restart to Way to Work – have been blunt tools because they have dovetailed with increasing sanctions and conditionality. Unsurprisingly, even the DWP’s own long withheld research admits this does nothing to increase work prospects – coercion and poverty only further deter people from work. The fact that the Green Paper can only bring itself to brand benefit assessments ‘outdated’, despite the systematic distress and countless deaths these degrading and invasive processes have been linked to, is striking. 

Here it is no wonder the rate of fraud of PIP is almost negligible: it is a gruelling and punitive process with almost half of new applications being unsuccessful. The Green Paper only briefly mentions that a vast majority of those who do appeal these decisions go on to win at tribunal: the benefit system is indeed broken, but to chalk this up to its over-generosity is an egregious deceit. The self-defeating logic of austerity even on its own economic terms rears its head again: any savings from PIP are likely to just be displaced to increasing tribunal and health costs. It is an unavoidable material fact that any increase to PIP broadly reflects the worsening both physical and mental health of the population, particularly after a global public health calamity that Britain’s social infrastructure, ravaged by austerity, lacked the resilience to recover from. Falling living standards, slum-like housing, an ailing health and social care system – the many compounding malaises of austerity and poverty – have taken a profoundly devastating toll on our health.

I personally know as a benefit adviser that under the new PIP eligibility rules, where four points would be required in any one activity to qualify for the daily living component of PIP, the vast majority of people I work with would lose out. Most of these are young women with children, usually fleeing domestic violence or abuse and experiencing depression and anxiety as a result of PTSD from this trauma. Here again long waiting lists for specialist therapy, the fragmentation of mental health treatment, and the shuttering of domestic violence services due to austerity have all contributed to ill health. Some of these women are trapped in interim or temporary accommodation after being evicted by landlords profiting from hazardous and mouldy homes, their livelihoods already blighted by the two child limit. Malnutrition, respiratory conditions and behavioural problems blister in these conditions – families choked by damp and cold, mothers starving themselves to feed children stunted by food poverty, cramped in hotel rooms where there is no space to learn, cook or play. 

The £162 billion every year in unpaid care these – usually – women perform has been missing entirely from the divide and rule over worker vs. long-term sickness. This is because it undermines entirely that vilifying narrative – all the informal care, child rearing, looking after ill and elderly friends and family, that many even on disability or sickness benefit still do, stitching together the wounds in social care and holding up, unwaged, our society and economy. The Government has yet to acknowledge the knock-on impacts for those in receipt of carer benefits passported by PIP, whether loss of income or re-imposed work commitments in UC. Meting out a catastrophic blow not just to sick and disabled people, but carers too – the whole of the working class has a stake in fighting against these changes. 

Whilst we should counter the narrative that only work vests purpose – re-affirming that everyone regardless of productivity and without qualification deserves a decent quality of life – we must also defend social security as a historic demand of the labour movement for a ‘social wage’. The welfare state was not built by the working class as a vehicle to strong-arm us back into work, but as a collective reservoir of all the value we create in society and are not remunerated for – to enable a dignified retirement, to buttress us when we are disabled by work, and to compensate for all the hidden reproductive labour not recognised by the wage system. Ministers of all rosettes exhort us that there can be no ‘something-for-nothing’ culture in welfare – but we should re-frame social security as a social democratic compromise that exists precisely because we were dispossessed of control over the infrastructure, services and industry, all the resources of civilisation, that are the fruits of our collective labour. It’s about time we instead tackle the obscene profiteering, the hoarding, the rent-extracting something-for-nothing culture of the rich. 

Here the implications of the attack on contributory benefits – merging new-style ESA and JSA into a temporary ‘unemployment insurance’ benefit – have not been fully reckoned with as an assault on this fundamental principle of social security. If you became too sick to work, this would mean there would no longer be any possibility of a long-term benefit to support you throughout this sickness. The long announced abolition of the Work Capability Assessment, ridden with moral scandal after the numerous suicides it was linked to particularly under the supervision of corporate behemoth Atos (now instead running PIP assessments), will link the health element in UC to PIP. This has many concerning ramifications: if one loses PIP they lose another income stream they can ill afford through UC too – with the rate of the health element cut or frozen even for those who do remain on it. But little has been said about the fact it will mean everyone, regardless of disability, is subject to conditionality. There will no longer be any recourse in law for someone assessed as too unwell to work to be exempt from work-related requirements. Everyone will be at the mercy of their work coach’s discretion: the more stick than carrot of the workfare state for all.

There is a grim irony here in the fact that Labour, not the Tories, introduced the Work Capability Assessment, only for the criteria to be hastily tightened by ministers because they simply felt that it was not stringent enough. The express intent was to save money on the welfare bill, the assessment informed by the model of US health insurance companies, with academics forewarning that it would cause distress and even suicides. PIP was introduced specifically to render short-term awards the norm and cut costs from the old system of Disability Living Allowance for adults, where lifetime or indefinite awards were more prevalent. At once the benefit system has been clamped down on again and again, whilst there is the simultaneous distortion of reality that it is a breeze to access. 

We have been caught in a race to the bottom on welfare, both parties vying against each other to scapegoat benefit claimants for our economic ills, roll back social security and impose greater conditionality. More than just dividing the working class and diverting our attention away from the profligacy of the rich, this materially harms all working class people. Not only because many working families claim benefits, but because the threat of sanctions acts as a direct cudgel to compel people into the lowest quality, least secure jobs. Conditionality also serves a wider disciplinary function: without a safety net workers are more likely to tolerate exploitation at work for fear of losing their job and ending up on benefits. The lower social security is, the more competition between workers is intensified to accept poorer terms and conditions, driving down wages across the board. It is also third and public sector workers that will be picking up the pieces from the damage of these cuts, in a context where we are already stressed, anxious and underpaid desperately firefighting the symptoms of inequality. Rather than just defensively opposing austerity as we did in the 2010s, we also need to be bold in asserting an alternative, transformative vision of social security to win where we did not before.

Though it is concerning that many of the worst reforms proposed in the Green Paper, such as the tightening of PIP eligibility, are not subject to consultation, they will remain open to parliamentary push back and legal challenges (potentially for the lack of consultation in itself). Many similar proposed changes have been successfully resisted, including cuts to PIP in 2016. But we must be honest that we have not been strong enough to overturn some of the most impoverishing and invidious policies, such as the benefit cap and two child limit – the former of which again could be re-imposed on people if they lose PIP. The overarching direction of travel is firmly oriented towards a dismantling of the welfare state. The fact that some changes are not even matters for consultation is all the more reason that we must be proactive in building resistance outside the official channels.

Here the determined efforts of Disabled People Against the Cuts to lead the charge, assembling over 400 people on a Zoom call just this week to promote a national day of action on the 26 March, must be supported. But we also must ratchet up the pressure on local MPs and on our unions. It is not enough for General Secretaries to condemn the cuts, as persuasive as their voices can be in breaking ranks with the Labour party publicly. Rather we need a much more commanding and united social force that can exercise the necessary leverage to force the Labour party to change course. We should dispense with any illusion that they do not realise the effect of these cuts, or that they have consistently been on the side of social security – every concession has been wrested from them. 

This can not only be down to disabled activists, but must entail solidarity from all parts of the labour movement. Only with that can we draw in the resources and power we need, in the proud tradition of the Unemployed Workers’ Movements, to win. Initiatives like Unite Community and Unite for a Worker’s Economy could form the foundation for this fusion of worker and community action to coordinate larger opposition by the unions. Local authority and community worker branches within unions like Unite and Unison can be politicised by these cuts, marshalling their on-the-ground experience of the benefit system. We can win – the media tide is already turning against the cuts. The proposals are just that – proposals – that will not come into force for at least a year. Every opportunity to disrupt them, through the courts and on the streets, needs to be seized upon. Throughout we must be militant and unapologetic in our demand: to each according to their need.