House of Commons

Work and Pensions Select Committee

 UC in-work progression: “A new kind of welfare, delivered by a new kind of public servant”

The Work and Pensions Select Committee today says the employment support service for in-work claimants of Universal Credit (UC) holds the potential to be the most significant welfare reform since 1948, but realising this potential means a steep on-the-job learning curve, as the policy appears to be untried anywhere in the world. 

The employment support service, delivered through Work Coaches in Job Centre Plus, will encourage working claimants to increase their earnings through taking on extra work or gaining higher wages. UC claimants will be required to take mandatory actions to these ends. While such support and requirements are common for out-of-work claimants, for in-work claimants this is a radical policy departure.

Supporting in-work claimants will require Work Coaches to have additional and enhanced skills. Should the pilot be developed into a full national service, around one million working people will be subject to some form of in-work requirements. This will be resource-intensive at a time when DWP budgets are stretched.

Given there is no comprehensive evidence anywhere on how to run an effective in-work service, the DWP will be learning as it develops this innovation. The Committee says:

-  for the reform to work, it must help confront the structural or personal barriers in-work claimants face to taking on more work, such as a lack of access to childcare and limited opportunities to take on extra hours or new jobs.

- the question of applying proposed sanctions is complex: employed people self-evidently do not lack the motivation to work.  The use of financial sanctions for in-work claimants must be applied very differently to those for out-of-work claimants

  - a successful in-work service will also require partnership between JCP and employers to a degree not seen before.

Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee said, “The in-work service promises progress in finally breaking the cycle of people getting stuck in low pay, low prospects employment. We congratulate the Government for developing this innovation. As far as we can tell, nothing like this has been tried anywhere else in the world. This is a very different kind of welfare, which will require developing a new kind of public servant.”

ABC Comment: The usual nonsense. People are trapped in low pay jobs, upward mobility is a thing of the past. DWP staff are the same people with new titles and (the same old) attitudes.  People are just getting less money. 

The Trussell Trust was founded in 1997, by Paddy and Carol Henderson while working with street children in Bulgaria at Sofia Central Railway Station. Named for Carol's mother Betty Trussell from whom they had received a legacy, the couple's work spread to the United Kingdom after the couple were contacted by a British mother who was struggling to feed her children.

After researching the issue of short-term hunger in the area, Paddy founded the first of the trust's food banks in the garage and shed of his Salisbury home.

This graph from the Trussel Trust gives a lot of information about food bank usage. 

House of Commons

Work and Pensions Select Committee

The Committee will hold its first hearing with new Work and Pensions Secretary, Stephen Crabb on Wednesday 11 May 2016 at 09.30am in the Wilson Room, Portcullis House.

The topics covered will include:

• What the new Secretary of State considers his greatest inheritance at the DWP
• What the biggest challenges and top three priorities are now
• The question of “intergenerational fairness” in pensioner incomes,  which have gone up significantly in relative terms over recent years.  Are we reaching the limits of what can be taken from working-age benefits?
• Universal Credit is now less generous than what it will replace and there is concern that work incentives have been eroded. Has UC become an expensive “tidying exercise”? How will UC incentivise claimants on a reduced budget?
• Other issues arising from the Committee’s current inquiries and recent reports, including the Committee’s report on UC in-work progression published ahead of the session tomorrow morning

The European Union is a "force for social injustice" which backs "the haves rather than the have-nots", Iain Duncan Smith has said in a keynote speech (10/05/2016). According to the BBC, Duncan Smith appealed to people "who may have done OK from the EU" to "think about the people that haven't".

But Labour's Alan Johnson said the EU protected workers and stopped them from being "exploited".

As Minister for the DWP Ian Duncan Smith was accused of making up statistics and making up stories claiming that Jobseekers santioned by the DWP were actually pleased in that it had modified their behavour. These 'made-up' stories were later exposed as complete fabrications. 

Prior to joining EU workers in the UK did not even have paid holidays and there has been a wealth of legislation that has improved and protected workers from both discrimination and explotation. 

Johnson also rejected the "haves and have-nots" argument, saying major trade unions were backing Remain because the EU had a "social dimension that's protected workers".

ABC Comment: Few people trust Ian Duncan Smith anymore and the idea that Duncan Smith has suddenly found a set of feelings towards the disadvantaged, a group that he practically percecuted during his reign as minister, is unlikely to gain much traction. 

Word is spreading about the ABC and we are continuing to build relations in Europe. 

On the 22nd June to the 12th July, ABC founder Simon Collyer is part of a team (*3) led by Sir Anthony Seldon, walking from the Switzerland border to Nieuwpoort, Belgium, along the lines of the Western Front (1916). 

NEWS RELEASE

Inspired by a letter from a soldier in WW1; historian and leading educator and author Sir Anthony Seldon will undertake a walk across the Western Front, as it was in 1916, from Switzerland to the English Channel - a total of 450 miles - in homage to this soldier, Alexandar Douglas Gillespie and to the millions of soldiers that lost their lives in WW1 1914-1918.

The walk will take place during the Summer of 2016 and will coincide with the 100th anniversary of the battles of the Somme and Verdun.

Sir Anthony Francis Seldon, FRSA FRHistS FKC, is a British schoolmaster and a contemporary historian, commentator and political author, known in part for his biographies of John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is the author of over 30 books on British history and other topics. Most recently, he has written Beyond Happiness and Cameron at 10. He is the former head of Wellington College in Berkshire, and is currently the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham.

The walk was first described a hundred years ago by Second Lieutenant Douglas Gillespie, the night before he died at the Battle of Loos, in a letter to his headmaster back at school. He wanted a Via Sacra (sacred road) to be established after the war, along which all would walk to remind them of the grief that war causes. 

The motive for the walk is to remind people about the consequences of war and to commemorate all those who fell. If there is a message in the walk, it is that there is a danger to countries retreating into nationalism, as they did in the years leading up to 1914. 

Contact: Simon COLLYER, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For more details, call Simon Collyer, on: 01206 509623

KEY WEBSITES & VIDEOS

Website: www.viasacrawalk2016.org.uk (http://www.viasacrawalk2016.org.uk/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/193371047699603/

Sir Anthony Seldon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Seldon

Sir Anthony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvH634opiCA

Tom Heap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqeAStiCfYY 

Sir Anthony Seldon

Anthony Seldon is the author of over 30 books on British history and other topics. Most recently, he has written Beyond Happiness and Cameron at 10. He is the former head of Wellington College in Berkshire, and is currently the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham.  He is also an Executive Producer on Journey’s End, working with Guy De Beaujeu of Fluidity Films.  It is due to be filmed later in 2016. 

Inspired by the story of an ancestor who was wounded on the Western Front in 1915, Anthony has always been interested in the history of the First World War. In 2013 he wrote, with David Walsh, The Public Schools and the Great War. While working on this project, he came across Alexander Douglas Gillespie’s story. This has inspired him to walk the Western Front himself, to see what remains of the 450-mile frontline that once occupied the attention of the world.

Alexander Douglas Gillespie

In 1914, Alexander Douglas Gillespie was a bright man with a promising future. At Winchester College, he won the King’s Gold Medal for Latin Verse, the Silver Medal for Latin Speech, the Warden and Fellow’s Prizes for Greek Prose and Latin Essay, and the Duncan Prize for Reading. He was elected in 1908 to a Scholarship at New College, Oxford, and took his degree in 1912 with a First Class in Classical Moderations and a Second in Literae Humanitores.

He was reading for the Bar when war broke out in 1914, and volunteered his services at once, obtaining a commission in the 2nd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He went to the front the following February and was killed at the Battle of Loos on the 26 September 1915. With no known grave, he is commemorated on the Loos Memorial.

His most famous letter, published in the Wykehamist of 14 June 1915, was written to his Headmaster and was subsequently picked up by the national press for its vision of what might be done with the Western Front after the War. He suggested a via sacra (sacred road) between the lines. ‘I would like to send every man, woman and child in Western Europe on a pilgrimage along that via sacra, so that they might think and learn about what war means from the silent on either side.

A volume of his letters entitled “Letters from Flanders” was published in 1916.

Source: Anthony Seldon and David Walsh, Public Schools and the Great War, p. 133

The SNP has today called on Work and Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb to “rethink the Universal Credit debacle” in light of recent research showing how watered down the Tories’ new flagship benefit has become. A Children’s Society report found that 100,000 disabled children who currently receive support through Disability Living Allowance will have their support halved under the new Universal Credit.  And last week’s devastating report from the Resolution Foundation found that under Universal Credit, half a million working families would be significantly worse off, even with tax allowances and the increase in the minimum wage. With responsibility over disability benefits being devolved to the Scottish Parliament, the SNP will create a Scottish Social Security Agency which rejects the punitive approach taken by the UK Government - putting respect and dignity at the heart of Scottish welfare.
 
Dr Eilidh Whiteford MP, the SNP’s spokesperson on Social Justice and Welfare, said:“Disabled children and low-income working families should not be made to pay for the Tories’ austerity and tax cuts for the rich – Stephen Crabb must urgently look at fairer alternatives.“Even with tax allowances and an increase to the minimum wage, half a million working families will actually be significantly worse off under Universal Credit – a truly devastating blow to the UK government’s flagship benefit.“It is clear that the UK government needs to completely rethink the Universal Credit debacle and it is time for Stephen Crabb to look again at the impact these reforms will have on disabled children and low-income working families.”

While to poor are expected to trudge to food banks, Dinner in the Sky now operates in 55 countries. 

This puke inducing idea has one floor. There are no toilets. That seems to rather asking for trouble in the sorts of dinners we go too.

Lets hope they give the good folk of Brussels umbrellas at their next bash. 

They might well need them, not to mention wet weather gear and a Sou'wester if your caught standing underneath. 

Have any bright ideas about getting Europe growing again?:

 If so, submit them to McKinsey Global Institute by July 31 for a chance to win €60,000. The consulting giant says its essay contest is “aimed at crowdsourcing solutions to one of Europe’s biggest political and economic conundrums.” If you win, Europe’s economy may or may not be saved, but at least it’ll help your own spending to grow.

Asking Nicholas Cage [as Superman] probably isnt the right answer either? 

THE US Jobs market: The economy added 160,000 jobs in April, the Labor Department reported Friday, down from 208,000 jobs in March. Unemployment was at 5 percent, unchanged from March. The figures were worse than expected; April’s jobs numbers are the lowest in seven months. Analysts had predicted employment growth of about 200,000 jobs, and an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent, according to a survey of Bloomberg economists. However, average hourly private-sector earnings were up eight cents; in March, they were up six cents.

Analysts are now racing to declare that the lackluster figures ice any chances of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates at its June meeting.

Both Duncan Smith and Grayling have refused to comment.

Ian Duncan Smith and Chris Grayling