Iain Duncan Smith, the self-styled “quiet man” of British politics has spoken. You may have failed to register his squeak above the clamour that greeted Rowan Williams’ editorial in the New Statesman, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury criticised the Tory-led coalition’s use of “seductive language” to differentiate between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, but in the same magazine IDS explained just why he feels it necessary to remove the “security” from the “social”.
“Everything this Government does sits in the shadow of our need to cut the deficit we inherited from Labour”, he stated in the very first sentence of an article commissioned by Dr Williams. Having begun his defence of the coalition’s assault on the welfare state with a lie, he proceeded to tell a very tall tale indeed. Whether or not Duncan Smith – a rich member of a very rich Cabinet – actually believes the version of events he presents, or whether he is simply repeating, without comprehension, what his masters have told him, matters not a jot to those on the receiving end of his personal brand of “social justice”. Fortunately, in the absence of a proper disclaimer from his editors, we have the Archbishop to thank for not allowing his comments to pass unchallenged.
“I’ve never claimed a benefit in my life”, a member of the “deserving” rich told me at the weekend, before using her Freedom Pass to hop on a local bus and return to her Oxfordshire home. She could have driven to Oxford in her shiny red BMW, but parking in the city is a nightmare, including at weekends. And besides, why waste money on petrol when the bus is free? “But isn’t free travel a benefit?” I asked. And so are the winter fuel allowance and a free television license, both of which this lady of not inconsiderable means had been claiming, as was her right, for a number of years. “That’s different”, she snapped. “I’m entitled. After all, I’ve paid taxes all my life.”
No doubt this lady was exactly the kind of voter the Work and Pensions Secretary had in mind when he wrote that: “There are two people in this new welfare contract, the taxpayer and the claimant. Taxpayers seek only fairness.” Far be it from me to rob this lady of her sense of entitlement, but you don’t need an income equivalent to hers to be a taxpayer. In fact, you don’t require an income at all. We are all taxpayers, and – no surprise here – the lower your income, the higher proportion of it you can expect to give the Treasury in the form of VAT. Which means that, in a very real sense, there is no such thing as the “undeserving” poor at all. The poorer you are, the more self-sufficient you are required to be. And yet the poor are now expected to justify their every expense, if not their actual existence.
I recently enjoyed a night out at a gig with a group of friends, one of whom had recently lost a well-paid job in newspaper marketing. “I’m surprised to see you here this evening”, she was told by one of our party. “I heard that you’re signing on now.” Perhaps my friend’s mistake was not to dress in sackcloth and ashes before leaving the house. After all, as every girl knows, black is very slimming. No one need ever have known that this feckless woman was still forking out on three square meals a day. The hussy!
The judgements that Duncan Smith and his Cabinet colleagues, supported by a baying media, would like us to make are predicated not on what is morally good, but on personal and political likes and dislikes. And these have been allowed to prejudice policy in the most appalling way, without any regard for actual causation. Hence, a chronic drug abuser or alcoholic can expect to lose a significant benefit entitlement, which will, we are assured by this millionaire politician who once visited a council estate in Glasgow, prevent them from engaging in self-destructive behaviour. It will not. In fact, just writing this makes me want a drink, at a quarter to nine on Sunday morning.
IDS would do better to look at the causes of the behaviour he wishes to eradicate – poverty, low self-esteem, academic under-achievement, enforced worklessness and eviction from a secure family home due to a cap in housing benefit – before offering up tired old prescriptions. Duncan Smith has even gone as far as suggesting that: “Giving people on benefits more money can be counter-productive”. Well, yes, I suppose it can be, if the recipients blow the lot on a subscription to Sky. But to suggest the primary purpose of reform is to make sure poor people don’t suffer from the terrible problems that can be caused by receiving more money is offensive in the extreme.
In his New Statesman piece, IDS went on to talk about housing benefit. “It isn’t kind to a benefit claimant to put them in a house they couldn’t afford to pay for if not on benefits, only adding to the disincentive for them to take a job.” It is also unfair to hard-working families that commute to work and pay for those on housing benefit to have to pick up the spiralling bill – one that has nearly doubled from £11 billion to £21.5 billion in 10 years. There’s a simple answer to that one – build more council houses.
This attempt to weed out the “undeserving” poor from the “deserving” poor will simply add to their wretchedness. We are expected to believe that the poor are poor only because of a lack of effort on their part, whereas the additional effort required simply to survive in IDS’ vision of a future Britain means the poor will suffer more as they find themselves increasingly without incentives and unable to avail themselves of the limited opportunities available to them.
