The opponents of welfare reform are outraged that 1 in 5 'jobseekers' are sanctioned because they are not, er, seeking a job. They are beside themselves that these same people consequently make up a large part of the alleged million plus hungrily queuing up for food parcels. That a post-election Tory government would find cuts of £12 billion to the welfare budget hasn't gone down well either. Not least because this would include removing benefit entitlements from young people, i.e. those (ironically enough) with the keenest sense of their own entitlement.
There are claims and counter-claims. The Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus, with their tougher approach to sanctioning, are accused of targeting 'the vulnerable'. On the other hand, there is reason to believe that the claims made about hunger 'stalking' our streets are more than a little exaggerated. The introduction of Universal Credit has met with much criticism about the expense of the computer system needed to implement it. But the patronising view of its critics has not merited comment. This is despite their being opposed to monthly payments, regarding those claiming it to be incapable of looking after their money for more than a week at a time. And state-dependent social landlords complaining that they will be bankrupted by rent arrears if benefit is paid direct to their tenants rather than to them.
The so-called Bedroom Tax deserves all the criticism it gets. Forcing people out of subsidised social housing into the increasingly expensive private rental sector needlessly disrupts people's lives and increases the housing benefit bill too. People with disabilities have complained that they use their 'spare' room for essential equipment; separated parents whose children come to stay find themselves targeted; as do, say the victim feminists, the 'vulnerable' women supposedly forced to move back in with their abusive partners. But how helpful is it to turn policy failure into a story about its victims? These stories may be true up to a point, but wallowing in them has not done anything to address the underlying housing crisis. If the critics of the removal of the spare room subsidy spent less time emoting and more time calling for lots of houses to be built, there might just be fewer claimants to pity in the first place. But that wouldn't do would it? I suspect the leftish opponents of welfare reform get more out of pitying the poor, than the poor get out of being pitied. I haven't even mentioned the furore over those on sickness and disability benefits undergoing work capability assessments. The carry-on is even more mawkish.
It's not that some people aren't vulnerable. Getting old or having a particular condition can be inhibiting and quite literally disabling for some. But individuals needn't be defined by it as welfare reform critics seem determined to do. There used to be a belief that, with the right support, such obstacles needn't stand in the way of somebody playing a full part in wider society. It was no accident that the women's' and disability rights movements of the past were determined to gain access to the workplace not to benefits. That this is no longer the case tells us something important about the sense of incapacity on the part of those who might in the past have fought for something more than ever greater dependency on the state. Indeed today's leftish campaigners and commentators for all their fuss about welfare reform, are apparently unmoved by the social costs of welfare itself. While it has been said that the welfare issue 'looms large' in the election debate, there has been no discussion at all about the profound impact of idleness on people's lives. Such talk would no doubt be considered offensive to the feelings of those affected. Opponents of reform are more likely to be heard worrying that young people are 'disengaging' with the welfare system under the threat of sanctions. As if this were a bad thing.
If only welfare really was an election issue. It is time that the supposed beneficiaries of benefits were allowed some dignity and control over their own lives. By sparing claimants any blame for the situation they find themselves in, or describing them as vulnerable victims of forces beyond their control; they are also denied any responsibility for getting themselves out of it or any scope for overcoming difficulties in their lives. The fatalism implied by such a narrative is paralysing. Their capacity to move on, put bad times behind them, or just get a job is denied from the outset. It is the social costs of the welfare system and the culture it instills, not the impact of the attempts to change it, which should be most troubling for those with a genuine concern for those dependent on it. There is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy in the critics of welfare reform projecting their prejudices onto the welfare poor. Indeed it is the response of those who find the reforms so objectionable that, if anything, compounds the deadening effect of welfarism on claimants and onto the communities of which they are a part.