a paradoxical situation in which an individual cannot or is incapable of avoiding a problem because of contradictory constraints or rules.

The DWP issued a Press Release today,  Employment and Support Allowance for claimants who challenge a decision containing the response to an FoI request.

The request was "We have confirmation that the DWP is actively considering axeing  employment and support allowance (ESA) payments for claimants who challenge a decision that they are fit for work.  Instead, claimants will have to try to sign on for jobseeker’s allowance, where they will face a harsh new regime which, from later this month, will include potential benefit sanctions of up to three years.  Please clarify if any of these assertions are true?"

And the response was, in part, "Following the introduction of mandatory reconsideration, payment of ESA will cease once a decision is made that the claimant does not have limited capability for work. If the claimant wishes to dispute this decision they must request that the decision maker looks at it again (mandatory reconsideration).   Whilst the decision maker is reconsidering the decision, ESA cannot be paid as there is no legal basis to do so.  ...... During the mandatory reconsideration process, whilst ESA cannot be paid, claimants have the option of applying for alternative benefits, such as Jobseekers Allowance, however they must meet the conditions of entitlement."

The conditions for claiming and receiving JSA? 

To qualify for JSA you usually have to be:

• 18 or over (but below State Pension age)
• able and available for work

When you apply for JSA, you must go to an interview to complete your claim.

To keep getting JSA you must go to a Jobcentre office (usually every 2 weeks or when asked) to show how you’ve been searching for a job. This is known as ‘signing on’.

So, perfectly clear then ... if you are challenging a decision on your claim for ESA or the reclassification of your Incapacity Benefit status, which has declared you "fit for work" you can't receive ESA, but you can claim for JSA, provided you can give an assurance that you are (1) able and (2) available for work, and (3) show evidence you are actively and conscientiously looking for work.

Joseph Heller, who he? 

So, what did Dave say, and what did he mean by it?

On Monday 27th May the Independent published an article under the heading How benefits crackdown ‘humiliates’ Britain's disabled Army war veterans. The article opens:

Degrading back-to-work welfare assessments that are stripping former soldiers of their benefits have been denounced by leading veterans’ charities. Thousands of ex-servicemen are being pushed to the breadline after being judged fit for work by the government-appointed company Atos. Severely wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, who were once entitled to incapacity benefits, are being told they no longer qualify under new assessments carried out by Atos on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Today the Daily Mail has also published a similar article:

Anger as record number of maimed troops are denied disability benefit in Government's controversial assessments

A record number of wounded war veterans have been denied disability benefits in the past year after undergoing tests carried out by the Government’s controversial assessment company. Hundreds of injured ex-soldiers are being declared fit for work by Atos Healthcare in spite of physical and mental injuries they suffered in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Last night, the Royal British Legion (RBL) announced a 72 per cent annual rise in former soldiers having their applications to receive Employment Support Allowance (ESA) turned down.

One Daily Mail reader reacted to the story thus:

"Both IDS & Cameron publicly stated last year, that any service personnel injured on active service would be exempt from the ATOS procedure and that both their benefits and any War pensions would remain unaffected.... How do you know when a Politician is lying?......Their lips move!
- JoeBlogs, Bournemouth, 02/6/2013 10:52"

And actually when the Indie piece appeared it had brought to mind a memory of David Cameron making some form of pledge concerning the benefits treatment of injured ex-servicemen. And sure enough I was able to retrieve Severely injured troops exempted from extra disability tests under new benefits from The Guardian on 18th July 2012.

Severely injured soldiers are to be exempted from tough new disability test as David Cameron moves to ensure that controversial welfare reforms do not apply to the military.

Downing St has persuaded the Ministry of Defence to ensure only the results of existing military tests – covering the most badly wounded troops – will be needed for assessments for the new disability benefits.

Seriously injured troops will also be given a guaranteed disability payment worth around £131 a week under the reforms.

But in fact despite the G using the phrase “new disability benefits” that Guardian piece was all about a pledge from Cameron that injured ex servicemen and women would not be subjected to the “new test” related to the introduction of the Personal Independence Payment – the successor to Disability Living Allowance, and NOT a pledge to exempt them from the Work Capability Assessment.

The WCA was devised when the Labour Party decided to phase out Incapacity Benefit and replace it with Employment Support Allowance by having a test designed to ascertain whether Incapacity Benefit recipients should be switched to receiving either full unconditional Employment Support Allowance, because they were judged as expected to remain “unfit to work” or a lesser conditional level of Employment Support Allowance payable to those who although adjudged not presently fit to work when tested were expected to become fit to work or with Job Seekers Allowance in the cases of those given the WCA and adjudged immediately fit to work.

The PIP test – the process which Cameron had actually declared would not apply to ex – servicemen - does seek to ascertain how someone’s disability or injury limits their ability to live “normally” and provides additional support towards mobility etc. People both in and out of work are eligible.

Bodies representing ex-servicemen obviously believe those injured or disabled on active service should be exempt from all "degrading" welfare conditionality tests– those relating to the extent of their disability and also those relating to their “fitness for work”. It will be interesting to see whether a “public campaign” along those lines develops, and what the reaction of Number 10 and the DWP to it is.

And what the logic and arguments for “agreeing with” or “disagreeing with” the campaign to exempt former service personnel from conditionality tests which are "degrading" are, depending on which way Number 10 and the DWP decide to go.

"What's so wrong with 'creative statistics"" asks a bewildered Grant Shapps

"Picky Picky Picky Bureaucrats once again making everything unnecessarily difficult and complicated by this insistence on factual facts as opposed to propagandist fiction" says Conservative Party Chairman, adding "no wonder this country is in such a mess, when a respected government Minister gets upbraided for putting his name to a SpAd generated fairy tale designed to reinforce the shirkers, skivers, scroungers and cheats message the party has never peddled".

(Ha ha ha ha, it's that man again Update) The BBC are now running a piece about Grant's number-juggling which is drawn to your attention largely because it contains a marvellous quote from Iain Duncan Smith clone Liam Byrne:

Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said: "This is a government that doesn't like to let the facts get in the way of a good story... but it really is outrageous that the Tories have been caught yet again misusing statistics for their own ends."

Yes, it truly is outrageous when governments get caught fabricating evidence. Thankfully, the Labour administration 1997 - 2010 was never guilty of such a thing, and certainly never got caught out doing it, then or since.

Update Update - Some even better Liam Byrne on the official One Nation: The Labour Party site.

Ten reasons to hate the Tories (2)

Point 2 from Cameron's Blueprint for Britain was this:

" We will reassess 2.6 million people on incapacity benefit to see if they are fit for work. Every out-of-work claimant capable of doing so will be expected to work or prepare for work."

Note the sheer arrogance:"We will reassess...". Wot? Three hundred Tory MPs are going to "reassess" nearly nine thousand claimants each, are they? Even if they had the time to do it, are they all medically qualified?

Let me remind you at this juncture that the Tories dreamed up Incapacity Benefit (or whatever it was called back then) in the 1980s to reduce the number of people claiming unemployment benefit, and the number of claimants had already risen to 2.6 million by the time the Tories were last in government in 1997, so there's hypocrisy involved here as well.

What does "expected to" mean? Nothing. I "expect" my kids to do their homework, but "expecting" alone doesn't help much. The phrase "prepare for work" is even more chilling of course, because what this means is that the Tories can shovel loads of money to businesses that run these "back to work" schemes. Businesses which might just find a place or two on their board of directors for a Tory MP. A bit like David Blunkett over at Action4Employment Limited.

Hey, here's a plan: start by being honest (yeah right) and instead of rebranding Incapacity Benefit as Employment & Support Allowance, just merge all "key benefits" into a single working age benefit at a flat weekly rate, and end the ludicrous rule that long-term IB claimants get paid a higher rate. Then increase people's willingness to work by scrapping the ludicrous distinction between "out-of-work" and "in-work" benefits; and reducing (or scrapping) means-testing; and increase employer's willingness to employ more people by reducing (or scrapping) all the rules and regulations and reducing (or scrapping) Employer's National Insurance and the National Minimum Wage.

"The End for Sicknote UK"

Promises The Sun.

A couple of good ideas here, but it's only scratching at the problem. Bearing in mind that Nulab are going to be out for good in two years' time, we can ignore the idea about the present gummint "ending Incapacity Benefit by 2013". When the Tories get in, the economy will, as like as not, be in a real mess. IB was abused by the self-same Tories to mask true unemployment back in the 1980s (the number of claimants increased from 600,000 in 1979 to about 2.6 million in 1997, it hasn't changed much since then), what's there to say they won't continue with this fraud?

Secondly, anything James 'Photoshop' Purnell says is to be taken with a pinch of salt. Or preferably not at all.

What's the MW policy on this?

1. Double the personal allowance.

2. Reduce income-means testing to no more than the basic rate of tax*. For millions of employees, actual and potential, who currently face marginal deduction rates of 70%** to 100%, this would on average treble their effective hourly pay - which ought to get half (?) of the five million benefit claimants willing to work again.

But is it enough to make work worthwhile? There still have to be jobs for them, so let's continue with MW's business tax policies ...

3. Scrap VAT, first on services and ultimately replace VAT on new goods with a lower rate to cover refuse collection costs. Assuming that the price-elasticity of everything is roughly unity (I don't know what else to assume), this would increase output by about 15% by volume - there'd be at least the same amount of money to spend on goods and services that are 15% cheaper. The private sector employs about 22 million people, that's potentially 3 million more vacancies.

4. Scrap Employer's NI (which would be more or less fiscally neutral, and if not, who cares? There is plenty of corporate welfare we can scrap). This would increase the number of people that businesses otherwise want to employ by at least 10%.

Steps 3 and 4 will reinforce each other, heck knows what the overall increase in employment will be, but surely we'd have something approaching 'full employment' (whatever that is). Assuming that a service business has to make a 20% mark up on salaries to cover overheads and make a profit, the break-even price it would have to charge for £1's worth of gross wages would drop from £1.66 to £1.20!

Finally, if we are to have a welfare system at all, the least-bad system must be a universal, unconditional, non-taxable, non-means tested flat rate cash benefits for all low- and non-earners, regardless of household composition and wealth.

Council Housing & Housing Benefit stick out like a sore thumb here; they will never be universal. Housing Benefit is the benefit that should be replaced with Workfare jobs - surely it is better for the State to give people £90 a week for doing something however marginal the benefit to society than to pay people to sit at home? Once this has sorted itself out for private tenants, then this could be extended to Council Tenants as well, the State would just be a landlord like any other.

* The purists say that there should be no personal allowance at all - everybody should get the CBI and pay the same rate of tax. Details, details.

** Basic rate tax, plus Employee's NI plus Tax Credit withdrawal.