The lies they tell about

WELFARE
and what theyre really doing
A government of very rich people is attacking our welfare system. They are trying to persuade you to support them by telling lies over and over again. They control most of the press and television you see so it can be hard not to believe some of what they say. So here is a short guide to the lies they tell and what they are really planning to do.

WE PAY FOR YOUR BENEFITS

Nearly everyone needs to claim benefits, pensions or tax credits at some point in their lives when they have children, when theyre ill or unemployed, when they retire. Of the 200 billion annual welfare bill, 110 billion goes to pensioners, 40 billion is for children. Only a quarter - 50 billion is for working age adults. And of that 50 billion most goes to disabled people and people in work. Less than 5 billion is paid in Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) to unemployed people. Where Benefits Go
Pensioners Children Working Age Adults

And everyone pays taxes, including people on benefit. The government JSA only talks about income tax but this represents less than a quarter of their income. More comes from VAT and duties on things like petrol and alcohol the taxes everyone pays. There are not two separate populations of benefit claimants and tax payers. We all pay in and we all draw out, at different times and to different extents.

WELFARE SPENDING IS OUT OF CONTROL AND NEEDS TO BE CUT BACK

Welfare expenditure has increased because the population has increased, and because elderly and disabled people are living longer. And the last government did allow modest increases in benefits for children and for the poorest pensioners in one of the richest countries in the world. But benefit rates for working age adults, after inflation, have not increased for at least the last 25 years. One benefit really is out of control however Housing Benefit, now costing nearly 25 billion. Soaring rents charged by private landlords are making housing unaffordable, even for people in reasonably well paid work. More and more working people have to claim Housing Benefit and Universal Credit in future - because they cant afford their rent. Every penny of this benefit goes to landlords not the claimant, in a hidden subsidy which keeps rents high. The solution is a mass house-building programme and rent controls.

BENEFITS ARE TOO GENEROUS SO PEOPLE CHOOSE NOT TO WORK

Did you hear the hollow laugh from the unemployed young person on 56.80 a week (if theyre lucky and dont get sanctions or deductions applied)? UK benefits are not generous at all they are amongst the lowest in Europe. Whenever you hear about people getting apparently large amounts it is almost always because of excessive rents especially in London and its landlords who get most of the money. The truth is most people on welfare want to work and do work, given the chance. It isnt easy though. If youre on benefits and start work, of if youre working already and claim benefits, you can lose your benefits at a rate of 85p for every extra 1 you earn - effectively you pay tax at a rate of 85%. The governments solution to this Universal Credit - wont in fact be much better and in some cases will be worse. The underlying problems are low pay, high rents and high childcare costs especially for women who have lower pay and more childcare responsibilities. The answers are decent wages, rent control and free childcare.

THEYRE ALL ON THE FIDDLE

Who? MPs? Bankers? Businessmen? In fact the official estimate of fraud in the welfare system is 1.6 billion or 0.8% of expenditure. Every benefit fraud case gets headlines in the papers but there arent actually very many. Tax fraud is much more common and for much bigger amounts but tax fraud is rarely prosecuted and never reported.

Welfare Fraud
Genuine Claims Fraud

The cruellest part of this allegation is the suggestion that many thousands of sick and disabled people are faking their problems. As well as dealing with their condition they have to cope with repeated assessments from ATOS, the governments private contractor. ATOS assessments are notorious for finding nothing wrong with people with the most serious illnesses and disabilities. Over 10,000 people have died waiting for, or shortly after, ATOS assessments.

BENEFIT DEPENDENCY
Victorian politicians once imagined that children brought up in workhouses so loved their time there that they would chose to stay on poor relief for life. A report they commissioned in 1896 found exactly the opposite. The modern version on this myth is called benefit dependency life on the dole is life on easy street; entire generations are addicted to it. So researchers have looked long and hard for evidence of generations on welfare and found, as in Victorian times, almost none at all. Benefit dependency, now as then, is just a miserable, high sounding excuse for attacking people in hard times. It is a non-existent problem. There are not millions of people committed to never working pitted against hard working families. People move on and off benefit all the time. But capitalism can no longer produce enough jobs. Politicians know this. They talk sanctimoniously about benefit dependency while proposing massively to increase the numbers of people dependent on benefits. The governments proposed Universal Credit will move millions of working families off tax credits and onto benefit, to be subject to the same draconian regime as people out of work

Whats really happening 22 billion is being cut from benefits and tax credits paid to working age adults
and children about a quarter of the 90 billion total. Benefit rate increases are restricted to 1%. Disability benefits are being cut by at least 20%. Incapacity benefit is now limited to 12 months. Council Tax Benefit is abolished. Emergency help from the Social Fund is abolished. There are multiple, sustained, cuts to Housing Benefit and tax credits. The bedroom tax is in place: this is the first step in a move to privatise social housing and loot the assets. The benefits cap is in place - for a few families with high rents who would have to claim benefits whether they are working or not Underlying all these cuts is a new, savage, regime of penalties and sanctions which is leaving tens of thousands penniless. Appeal rights are being removed and advice services cut. Cuts in the civil service, and a culture of contempt for anyone who has to claim benefits, mean endless delays and errors before anything at all is paid out. The privatised Work Programme drives people into unpaid workfare schemes on pain of losing their entire income. All these things are driving tens of thousands to food banks to survive with more to come. Universal Credit will automate this culture, with its online claims and jobsearch monitoring, while extending the regime to millions of people in work. Universal Credit makes no distinction between employed and unemployed people: there are just millions of claimants, all on low incomes, all subject to constant discipline and punishments. It is a vast, virtual universal, online workhouse and the governments plan for all our futures. The government are using the cover of their lies about welfare to degrade earnings and conditions for the entire working class. Not just the millions of people in work who will be forced to claim Universal Credit: the plan is that the culture of casual, deskilled, zero-hours and no rights employment will spread from the bottom up. And while current pensioners have been largely exempt from welfare cuts, no-one expects that to last after the next election.

What can we do? Dont believe the lies about welfare. Challenge them wherever you can. Support any
campaigns against the welfare cuts. Support anyone fighting for rights, wages and conditions at work its the same fight. And join the struggle to end the class society that creates inequality, poverty, ill health and unemployment.