"The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of people—and especially of government—always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended." - so says the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, although we are all surely aware that this can happen, whatever course of action we follow. Or perhaps not - the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the last century and the disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in this are examples to the contrary. Failure to think ahead before proceeding with well intentioned actions, as the old saying says, has paved the way to Hell itself.
Recently, I came upon two Guardian articles, written with the most laudable of aims, which could well have unforeseen repercussions.
One, by Diane Taylor, dated on the 6th of this month, is titled: "The DWP – a bureaucracy of outstanding brutality"; the other, by Aisha Gani and written on the 7th January is titled "DWP told woman she was not ill enough for benefit on day she died". Both are well written, and sincerely concerned for the victims of apparent DWP malevolence.
Diane Taylor's article is a moving account of how a young African woman she calls Hawa, illegally trafficked to the UK as a sex slave, escaped, was granted asylum, and turned to the DWP for support, only to be denied benefits. Taylor says:
"It eventually emerged that Hawa’s benefits had been pulled because she had not shown the DWP a letter she had recently received from the Home Office extending her refugee status into indefinite leave to remain. But why were her benefits being axed for failing to comply with an instruction that was never received? It was explained that the benefits could be applied for again but the process would have to start from scratch".
Aisha Gani's article covers a subject that featured more widely in the media: the outrageous case of tragic 67-year old Dawn Amos whose sickness benefit was cancelled in a letter sent on the day she died. Gani writes:
"Sent on the day she died, it notified her that her allowance was being withdrawn based on “treatment, medication, symptoms and test results”.
Both these cases are deplorable, and I completely support what these journalists have done. What worries me is that these articles, and others like them, could well have highly unpleasant consequences for ordinary DWP staff.
Now, if you type "Guardian" and "DWP" into Google, you will see that the Guardian has run a number of articles attacking the actions of the DWP and the politicians whose policies they implement. They are unique in doing this, as right-wing newspapers (guess who!) usually attack the DWP for lavishing huge amounts in benefits on scroungers, migrants and bloody foreigners in general. The problem is, as I see it, that it is the front line DWP staff who have to follow the directives handed down to them and suffer the backlash from the public.
In May 2014, I posted an article - "Biting the Helping Hand"- which looked at violence against public sector workers. I looked at the rate of assaults on teachers, police, NHS staff, and the DWP. Assaults against DWP staff at that time were showing an increase, but I have been unable to locate figures for 2015. With apologies for this, I quote myself here:
"The DWP's own stats showed staff reported 476 assaults in 2012/13 - up from 228 in 2009/10, before the coalition took power and began changing the benefits system...Of the 476 assaults reported last year, 80 resulted in cuts and bruises and 23 in an injury greater than a cut or a bruise..."
I have written about this since, but omitted to describe the effect that these incidents have on DWP staff. From "The Sunday Post" of two years' ago, I found this:
"Policies to slash the benefits bill have led to a rise in assaults. Increasing violence in job centres is leaving staff scared to go to work...Last year alone there were more than 20,000 attacks."
I am not suggesting that Diane Taylor, Aisha Gani and other Guardian journalists are inciting these attacks or condoning them, but I wish they would make a distinction between politicians who frame policy, senior staff who order that policy to be carried out, and the poor staff at the sharp end who have to follow their directives. As a Guardian reader of many years sitting and standing, I expect far better.
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Regrettably, there is no shortage of such stories.
ReplyDeleteI joined the DHSS in 1980. During that decade, the Department was reviled by some on the Left, journalists who wished to assert their social conscience credentials, and in dramas such as Boys From The Black Stuff. The DHSS was seen as exemplifying all that was wrong about Thatcher's Britain. For a while, I was the supervisor of a section that administered Supplementary Benefit, the forerunner of Income Support. My staff would interview applicants for new and repeat claims for benefit in the morning and would assess those claims in the afternoon. If possible, my staff tried to ensure the cases were sent for payment by the close of day. If the claimant really couldn't wait, we could sometimes pay the claimant that day. Grants were available after a qualifying period for beds and bedding, furniture and household appliances when they wore out. In brief: despite no computers, we could provide a prompt service, same day if necessary, and grants for essential household items.
Ever since then, the benefit system has been eroded. Social Fund loans replaced grants, and finally were handed to local authorities with a budget about half of what the Department had paid out in its final year of running the Fund. Claimants – now called the more friendly-sounding customers – have been increasingly been put through more and more hoops to prove their entitlement. The system is littered with a range of trip wires that will stop your benefit and send you, like some ghastly game of snakes and ladders, back to square one. Benefit processing offices have been moved out of the communities they served where you could go and speak to the staff or the supervisor concerned, and into large benefit factories: these are too far to travel to, and have no public facing staff even if you were to try. Access is by telephone that you have to pay for, with lengthy waits until someone is free, and you cannot get to speak to the same person you had previously spent some time explaining your problem to at your own expense: you have to start all over again.
Despite computerisation, payments can take many weeks to be processed, with scarcely any provision to see you through until your first payment. Staff are overloaded, and another phone call is an unwelcome delay for stressed staff trying to meet difficult targets: under such circumstances, empathy for the plight of the voice at the other end of a phone line becomes very difficult: it becomes easy to forget there is person behind it. It must be remembered that this is precisely how the Government wants the benefit system to be. The stigmatisation of claimants, the rhetoric of strivers and skivers, the treatment of the sick and disabled as people without sufficient aspiration – Rise, take up thy bed, and walk! - and the obstacles placed in the way of claiming benefits are all quite intentional. They are not the consequences of uncaring staff who deliberately aim to frustrate the good intentions of a benevolent government. Staff who do not follow their instructions as laid down, or who fail to meet their difficult targets, will have action taken against them; if the required improvements to performance are not made, they will be dismissed.
I was declared surplus by the DWP in 2008, and friends who still work there tell me I got out at the right time. Lucky me! Not so lucky them, and even less so those British citizens who find themselves having to rely upon a system that has become increasingly vindictive through the application of a seriously flawed ideology. This shower of a government knows very well that if you turn public opinion against an identifiable group of people, you can get away with almost any bad treatment of them: after all, haven't they brought it on themselves through their own indolence?
The articles quoted in Geoff's main post are imperfect for the reasons that he has very clearly pointed out, but if they remind people that our benefit system can throw up such vile injustices, then they serve a valuable function.