UK Poverty Post

Party Conferences – a world away from real life

It was while I was standing in the Conservative party’s ‘Welfare Reform’ reception in Manchester, drinking free beer and eating beige Canapés whilst listening to Theresa May talk about testing the capacity to work of everyone on incapacity benefit within two years, that I began to feel distinctly uneasy…

Both the Conservatives and Labour party have a policy to retest everyone on incapacity benefits. And it was also in Manchester yet a world away from mini quiche and free beer that I had met a young woman who had fallen foul of such a policy in the past – and through falling through the cracks had landed in dire poverty.

Louisa [name changed] had lost a child from cot death, and as a result of this she had become depressed to the extent she developed agoraphobia. When I met Louisa she had had her benefits taken away from her for failure to attend an assessment of her agoraphobia in central Manchester because of her illness. Now she was supporting herself and a child on only the child benefits.

It is never unpopular for politicians to say they will be tough on people on benefits; but in our experience, people on benefits are often not lazy and milking the system, but claiming because they are in genuine need. By being tougher these people, some of the 40% of those on incapacity benefits because of mental health problems will fall through the cracks as their illnesses are less easy to prove. I would have done anything to introduce Louisa, or indeed Vince to the  to the people in this room who were talking about making sure everyone had a chance to work, without a understanding of what it really meant.

There is lots to welcome in conservative welfare reform – especially making more funding available for those whom it is more challenging to get into work, and there is a lot we welcome in the Centre for Social Justice’s dynamic benefits report.  However, the government must support people into work and not punish them for being poor.