Universal credit & domestic abuse

[QuarksandLeptons]

Good article in the Financial Times

www.ft.com/content/aaaaf2fa-4c63-11e8-8a8e-22951a2d8493

Brief summary:
10% of the households receiving the benefit are couples. The new system puts it all into one account which means that in the event of it going into the account of a controlling & abusive partner, the abusive partners can end up not sharing the money, leaving women and children vulnerable. There are cases documented of women and children going hungry and not having money for nappies or sanitary items.
Worse, women & children end up being forced to stay in dangerous circumstances because they don’t have the money to leave.

How can changes like these be made to the system without thinking through the real life consequences to huge numbers of women & children? Surely, this would have been flagged up if relevant women’s groups had been asked to comment on proposed changes

Corbyn’s Labour is virtually identical in position on the political compass to attlee’s Labour...

I agree with Offred - they do know what they are doing.

It's the zealotry of the Victorian mission to improve the poor. And the current left is almost as bad as the right.

Women genuinely have no-one to vote for. On all fronts.

Article 1 protocol 1 of European convention on human rights- right to property (includes benefits)

Art 14 of European convention on human rights- no discrimination in relation to convention rights on grounds of sex.

Or alternatively equality act indirect discrimination- a practice that puts someone with a protected characteristic (sex) at a disadvantage compared to someone who does not share it.

There might be a case here just needs a domestic violence victim claiming UC to get to a law centre (not necessarily a practical possibility) and find out. Strict time limits can apply.

For anyone else, support the human rights act so that we at least have such protections and not a watered down bill of rights.

I’m not at all surprised. Our entire benefits system is a living nightmare for thousands of people, UC is one of the worst.

Also can help by not voting Tory, obviously.

And please think carefully about what the trans lobby is calling for. Even if they do not remove the sex based protections, sex discrimination basically ceases to exist if people can self ID into changing sex.

In practice that is.

The whole point of sex based protections is they are designed to protect from discrimination based on sex characteristics. If we have self ID to change sex suddenly sex characteristics for women include Male biology.

We might keep pregnancy as it is separate but it’s not the only way women suffer sex discrimination.

I agree with Offred - they do know what they are doing.

Me too. Not to say they aren't incompetent too, but there was an ideological push behind this.

And please think carefully about what the trans lobby is calling for. Even if they do not remove the sex based protections, sex discrimination basically ceases to exist if people can self ID into changing sex.

This. Males with a GRC no longer have the protected characteristic of sex - male. They have the protected characteristic of sex - female. So the more male bodies in the female sex category, the more the idea of sex protections for reasons grounded in our female sexed bodies is undermined.

I am pretty convinced this self ID stuff is getting so much traction because for the right they know it abolishes sex discrimination in practice even if they keep sex discrimination in the letter of the law. The left are struggling to understand the implications because the equality portfolio has expanded from simple economic equality to include all sorts and they haven’t got to grips with all those issues.

If trans people think self ID will result in some kind of benefit to them then I think they need to think again. They will be thrown under the bus along with women in the end.

It potentially eroded the protection for gender reassignment too. In practice.

And protection from male violence that is motivated by misogyny for everyone no matter who they are

Corbyn’s Labour is virtually identical in position on the political compass to attlee’s Labour…

I thought that but seeing how ineffective Corbyn was re the Salisbury incident reminded me of Attlee trying to appease Hitler. Attlee did change when he realised the threat. I know a rebuild of the welfare state is needed but what about women and Corbyn's stance??

insights into how the whole thing is not just imploding but actually taking us back to Victorian Workhouse days (my phrasing).

That is exactly what all the so-called 'austerity' was all about. A return to the 'good old days' of a disposable workforce, that would do anything to get bread on the table. Australia is working on a similar model, as the Junior UK.

And this, from Offred
They know what they are doing. They know the effects. It really bothers me that people think it’s just because they don’t really understand how bad it is. The reality is that they think these effects are desirable, they believe disabled people are useless eaters and they want there to be fewer of them, they hope that they will die, they believe the poor should be exploited to breaking point, they don’t care if they die. This is because they believe the ‘natural order’ is disrupted by social security and this is unfair on the elite who are entitled to enriched status by accident of birth. They have allowed new money some status (though note the frequency of the ‘self-made’ losing their money due to not being in the old boy’s network) because it gives them a way to spin this crap to ordinary people.

by about 100 times.

Nobody can be that stupid, as to assume these punitive measures are just 'unintended side effects'. They are actually the desired effects. Make no mistake.

IMO it remains to be seen re labour and all equalities issues. Early indications are not great but I am watching and waiting as economic equality, which they are better at under corbyn, remains a very important issue to me.

data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/work-and-pensions-committee/universal-credit-rollout/written/71286.html

Not confined to women but a lot of detail here.

Thanks LangCleg

Those recommendations (I’ve pasted them below) seem in line with what has been discussed on this thread. I wonder whether there is anything in place to force the government to implement changes

“Our recommendations

Make the Universal Credit telephone support line a free number, so that claimants do not incur unaffordable financial costs for essential support.
Adopt a flexible approach in respect of UC payment allowing recipients to be paid fortnightly or monthly in line with their preferred choice.
Allow the option for the housing element of UC to be paid directly to social and private landlords (with claimant choice to receive the housing element directly).
Within joint claims routinely make payments of UC the main carer, rather than the main earner (with claimant choice to opt in for main earner to receive the payment on request).
Introduce entitlement to a basic level of UC from day 1 of new claim payable as a benefit rather than loan. This will incentivise the need for new claims to be processed quickly and help avoid the poverty and increased debt that currently often ensue as UC claimants wait for an initial personalised payment or as when Advanced Payments are deducted from future UC benefit.
Recalibrate the operation of in-work UC to remove the threat of financial sanction from those already in paid employment and ensure that claimants are not sanctioned for: non-attendance at Jobcentre Plus interviews due to their existing paid or unpaid work (e.g, caring) commitments; or inability to apply for extra employment when that is incompatible with existing employment contracts.

More broadly we urge the UK government to:

Undertake a fundamental review of the appropriateness of applying welfare conditionally in general and benefit sanctions in particular to disabled people, lone parents with young children and in-work recipients of Universal Credit.”

The whole paper assumes ‘arbeit macht frei’ IMO.

It’s tinkering around the edges re conditionality and problems regarding whether the benefits system incentivises work...

Those responsible for the system will read the analysis and think ‘good it is doing what we designed it to do’.

The whole point of UC being that the things this paper identifies as problems are the things it is designed to achieve.

The aim is not to get people working, it is to make people’s lives insecure so that poverty can be further harnessed as a resource to exploit for the wealthy.

Every time people assume work is the route out of poverty they buy into the lie.

If work were to be a route out of poverty the entire structure of the economy would have to be radically different and all signs, including UC, are that it is getting worse rather than better.

Thanks Offred

That's really depressing. But I really hope it can change.

I don't think the average voter realises how bad this is. I also don't think the average voter wants hardworking people (and it seems to generally be women) to be penalised for things that are no fault of their own, to the detriment of the state. Because after all, looking at those costs lost on domestic abuse, the government's current stance on welfare actually COSTS the country billions of pounds. A case needs to be made that it is the fiscally sensible thing to do to support people when they are down on their luck. By doing so, the revenue of the country would actually increase (Of course it is the humane and moral thing to do too but that seems to be lost on some elements of the electorate)

I wonder what Richard Murphy has to say about this

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/richard-murphy/

He has a good approach to moral tax issues normally. Although I haven't been keeping up with him recently.