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Hospital Law Change, Living Wage Protest

On Tuesday 11th March 2014 I attended two protests, the first at Parliament against a change in the law on closing hospitals, and the second calling for a living wage for cleaners at Chelsea College.

Stop Hospital Killer Clause 119 – Parliament

Hospital Law Change, Living Wage Protest

Unite, GMB, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign and other hospital protest groups protested outside Parliament against Clause 119 inserted to change the law over hospital closures into the Care Bill, which was having its third reading in the House of Commons.

In 2014 the High Court ruled that health minister Jeremy Hunt had acted illegally in proposing a downgrading of maternity and A&E services at Lewisham hospital because the neighbouring Queen Elizabeth Hospital Woolwich was going bust.

So Jeremy Hunt decided to change the law, and inserted Clause 119 into the Care Bill to give the special administrators overseeing an English NHS Trust in financial difficulties powers to close, merge or alter the services at any other hospital to balance the books without any proper consultation or regard to the social and health effects.

It was a measure which went entirely against the whole idea that local people and local GPs would be in control of health services in their own areas, something which had been stated to be at the centre of Tory/Coalition health policies. The local commissioning groups it says will be at the centre of local health provision will have absolutely no say over what happens to the services that they commission when this clause is invoked.

Though many saw these local groups rather as ways to make the continuing process of passing the NHS over to private companies easier than providing any real local control.

Clause 119 was a panic measure drafted in a fit of pique after Health secretary Jeremy Hunt was defeated in his attempts to raid the thriving Lewisham Hospital to meet the huge PFI debts of some other hospitals in South East London. The attempt to close Lewisham with the deterioration in services for the people in the area provides a clear and obvious example of why actions of this kind should remain illegal.

Lewisham’s closures were stopped by powerful local opposition which brought doctors, local councils, Millwall Football Club and the whole local community out onto the streets – and also making donations to enable Hunt to be taken to the courts. And taken again to fight his unsuccessful appeal against the original decision.

The protest on 11th March 2014 began with a period of silence to mark the death early that day of RMT General Secretary Bob Crow. Speakers at the rally included a member of the Shadow health team, other MPs, consultant Jackie Davis of the National Health Action party, Rachael Maskell, Unite Head of Health, and several NHS activists including Jill from Lewisham and Sandra from Charing Cross.

Stop Hospital Killer Clause 119

Pay UAL Cleaners a Living Wage – Chelsea College of Art

A short walk down Millbank, just past Tate Britain, took me to UAL Chelsea College of Arts where GMB and the University of the Arts Students’ Union were calling on the College to ensure that their cleaners, employed by Bouygues Energy & Services, are paid the London Living Wage.

The cleaners were then being paid on the national minimum wage, which for those over 21 was £6.31, less than three-quarters of the London Living Wage, calculated annually by the Greater London Authority, then £8.80 per hour.

The protesters went to call on Vice-Chancellor Nigel Carrington, who after a few minutes came out to talk with them. He told them he thought that they had some good points, but that he did not employ the cleaners and could not grant them the living wage. He also said that he cleaners were paid more then there would be less money to spend on other things, including the student courses and provision.

The protesters responded that many organisations insist that contractors pay the living wage to all employees, and that contracting out of services is simply a way to exploit employees – paying lower rates and giving them worse conditions of employment – while keeping the institutions hands clean.

They were told they could go in to the staff forum meeting so long as they put down their banners, placards and megaphones, and the students decided to do so. The rest of us left.

Pay UAL Cleaners a Living Wage

Prisoners in Iraq, Ireland & Egypt & Atos Day of Action

Wednesday 19th February 2014 saw me travelling around London for protests calling for the release of political prisoners in Iraq, Ireland and Egypt before a protest at Atos’s offices led by DPAC.

Solidarity vigil for Shawki Ahmed Omar – Elvaston Place

Prisoners in Iraq, Ireland & Egypt & Atos Day of Action

The vigil outside the Iraqi consulate in Kensington was a small one, with only four people taking part while I was there, though a few more were expected later.

Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen held and tortured in Iraq by US and Iraqis since his arrest in 2004, was then held in Abu Ghraib. Arrested by US soldiers while on a business trip he was held by the US in Iraq and tortured but never charged. Later in 2010 he was sentenced to 15 years in jail after a trial where he was unable to defend or even properly identify himself as the US had refused to hand him back his passport. When they left Iraq and handed him over to the Iraqis, who tortured him more.

His treatment has been described by former Attorney General of the United States Ramsey Clark as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent United States history. It is a case where the US government essentially lied to the US Supreme Court to cover up torture and to be able to turn an American citizen over to people who they knew would torture him.

I had previously met Omar’s wife and daughter – who has never seen her father – on some of their series of protests outside the US Embassy. So far as I am aware he is now still in prison in Iraq.

Solidarity vigil for Shawki Ahmed Omar

Free Margaretta D’Arcy picket – Irish Embassy

My next stop was at the Irish Embassy, a short walk from Hyde Park Corner. It was the third picket there to demand the immediate release of Margaretta D’Arcy, imprisoned for protesting against illegal US flights from Shannon Airport, and now in Mountjoy Women’s Prison, Dublin.

D’Arcy, a long-term peace campaigner, member of the Committee of 100 and Greenham Common veteran and writer, actress, playwright and film director, was then 79 and suffering from cancer and arthritis. Two years earlier she had been arrested and imprisoned for lying down on the runway at Shannon in a peaceful direct action by members of Galway Alliance Against War. They were protesting the violation of Irish neutrality by US military flights using the airport.

She was again imprisoned in 2014 after she refused to sign a bond not to trespass again on the airport property in further protests against the US flights. She was released on 22nd March, but later imprisoned again and released in July 2014.

Free Margaretta D’Arcy picket

NUJ demands Egypt release jailed journalists – Egyptian Embassy

A few minutes walk took me into Mayfair and to a protest organised by my own union, the National Union of Journalists, calling for press freedom in Egypt and the release of all jailed journalists, including the four Al Jazeera journalists.

One of these had been in prison for 6 months, but the other three were arrested on 29th December 2013 and were among 20 journalists charged at the end of January with a string of offences including being a “member of a terrorist organization, disturbing public peace, instilling terror, harming the general interests of the country, possessing broadcast equipment without permit, possessing and disseminating images contrary to the truth.“

The NUJ General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet and Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn took a letter up the steps to the main door of the embassy for a photograph but then had to walk to a less impressive neighbouring door to actually deliver it.

This was one of a number of protests organised by journalists in cities around the world. Some of those present had their mouths gagged with tape. The journalists were only finally released in 2015. Wikipedia has more on the case.

Reporters Without Borders now report “Egypt is one of the world’s biggest prisons for journalists. The hopes for freedom that sprang from the 2011 revolution now seem distant.” They say that 24 journalists are currently held there in jail.

NUJ demands Egypt release jailed journalists

Atos National Day of Action – Triton Square

Finally I made my way to Triton Square, just north of the Euston Road, close to Warren Street station.

A day of action there at the London HQ of Triton was a part of a day of action with protests at each of the 144 ATOS assessment centres around the country. The protesters called for the company to lose its contracts to carry out the tests and to be prosecuted for the way they had been handled, and for the resignation of the minister concerned, Iain Duncan Smith.

Among the many groups supporting the nationwide day of action were Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Black Triangle, Atos Miracles, the Green Party, NUS, Occupy New Network, PCS and Unite.

The tests, based on tick boxes on a computer form had been widely discredited with a report commissioned by the government pointing out serious flaws. They fail to take account of the complex and differing natures of illnesses and their individual effects and are particularly poor with the assessment of mental illness.

Many of those found ‘fit to work’ have been obviously completely unable to do so – with over ten thousand in the last year for which figures were released dying within six weeks. The government reaction to the adverse publicity after these figures for 2011 were released was simply to stop issuing figures for later years. These numbers include some who committed suicide after being unfairly assessed by Atos.

The Atos administered tests take no account of proper medical evidence. The protesters call for the assessments to be made by qualified medical doctors, ideally by “the GP who regularly sees and treats the sick or disabled individual in question” who they say “is the only person able to decide if an individual is fit for work.”

At the end of the long protest, those remaining moved to the wider square in view of the Euston Road and released yellow balloons in memory of those who have taken their lives because of ATOS unfairly refused them support as Paula Peters of DPAC read a poem about the deaths.

Much more about the protest at Atos National Day of Action on My London Diary – and, as always, more pictures.

Coal Drops, Libraries and Housing – 2018

On Saturday 3rd Novemeber I got to London earlier than anticipate and had time for a little walk before photographing the first protest I had come to cover, over the cuts to public libraries. Later I went to photograph another protest about the plans to demolish many London council estates under so-called ‘regeneration’ plans which involve demolition and rebuilding by developers with little social housing.

Euston to Kings Cross Coal Drops – Sat 3 Nov 2018

Problems on my railway journeys into London are rather common, often involving considerable delays. Last weekend a replacement bus for part of the way meant that my usually slow journey scheduled to take 35 minutes to travel 20 miles instead took an hour and a half. But on Saturday 23rd November 2018, there was something of a miracle. When I arrived at the station a train which should have arrived half an hour earlier was just pulling in and an announcement told me it would be running non-stop to Waterloo.

Where possible I like to arrive at events perhaps 10 or 15 minutes before the advertised start time make sure I don’t miss anything. Travelling across London is often a little unpredictable, with odd holdups so I usually allow plenty of time. I’d arrived at my station a few minutes early, and with the non-stop service got me to Waterloo around 25 minutes before I expected. The normal timetable schedule gives a 5 or 10 minutes slack to make it less likely that train operating company has to pay fines for late running, and without stops the journey is significantly faster. Together with an Underground train that came as I walked onto the platform I arrived at Euston with around three quarters of an hour to spare.

This gave me time for a walk to the newly opened retail development in the former King’s Cross coal drops. I’d photographed the disused coal drops many years earlier, taking pictures of the demolished bridges across the Regents Canal and the still standing drops on the north side where coal brought from the North in railway goods waggons was transferred into carts for delivery across London. At first the waggons were lifted and tipped, later waggons had opening doors in their bottoms to dischage directly in the waiting carts and lorries.

My walk also took me through Somers Town, which has some of inner London’s more interesting social housing and past the new Francis Crick Institute before reaching the canal and a new walkway to Coal Drops Yard and Granary Square, and gave some views of the gasholders relocated across the canal from Kings Cross, some of which are now filled with flats. I made my way back with just enough time to visit the toilets in St Pancras Station before going to the meeting point for the Library protest at the rear of the British Library in Midland Road.

Euston to Kings Cross Coal Drops

Save Our Libraries march – British Library, Sat 3 Nov 2018

The march and rally against cuts in library services, which are a vital part of our cultural services, especially for working class schoolchildren and young people was organised by Unison and supported by PCS and Unite, but they seem to have done very little publicity and the numbers were far fewer than expected.

Unfortunately the march clashed with another event I wanted to cover and I had to leave a few minutes before it was due to start. Perhaps more joined the protest for the rally at the end of the march outside Parliament.

Save Our Libraries march

No Demolitions Without Permission – City Hall, London. Sat 3 Nov 2018

‘Axe the Housing Act’ had called a protest to demand an end to the demolition of council estates unless these were approved by a ballot of all residents, and for public land to be used to build more council homes rather than being turned over to developers to make huge profits from high-priced flats.

Most of those who came were from London council estates under threat of demolition by Labour London councils and speaker after speaker from estate after estate got up and spoke about the lies, evasions and often illegal activities of London Labour councils bent on demolishing their council estates.

*Green Party co-leader and London Assembly’s Housing Committee chair Sian Berry*

Instead of looking after their working class populations Labour councils are time and time again forcing through demolition of council estates, enabling developers to make huge profits by building flats for sale largely at market rent, with a small proportion of high rent ‘affordable’ homes and a miserably small number of homes at social rent, promoting schemes which cut by thousands the number of council homes.

*Tanya Murat, Chair of Southwark Defend Council Housing*

Although a new policy was about to come in to insist their should be residents ballots, London Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan had responded to this by fast-tracking 34 demolition schemes by Labour councils before it was implemented. He allowed some schemes to go forward without a ballot, and had failed to insist that all residents were allowed to take part in such ballots.

*Former Lambeth Council leader and veteran Labour politician Ted Knight*

Among the groups taking part in the rally were Class War and the Revolutionary Communist Group, both very much involved in campaigns across the capital on housing, and among the most effective at raising the issues involved in London’s housing. For some reason the rally organisers would not allow representatives of either of these to speak at the event, which led to a loud confrontation when Labour supporter Ted Knight came to speak. More below on this.

At the end of the rally people marched around City Hall with their banners.

No Demolitions Without Permission.

Class War protest Labour Housing record – City Hall, Sat 3 Nov 2018

Although Class War supporters were one of the larger groups taking part in the ‘No Demolitions Without Permission’ rally at City Hall they and others were denied any opportunity to speak as a part of the official rally.

Class War have been the most active group in supporting and raising the profile of campaigns in London against estate demolition mainly by London Labour councils who are responsible for the great bulk of estate sell-offs and demolition involving over 160 council estates – social cleansing on a massive scale. Among those protesting at the rally with Class War was Leigh Miller, recently illegally evicted from Gallions Point Marina under orders from the Labour Mayor of London.

*Leigh Miller, recently illegally evicted from Gallions Point Marina and Lisa McKenzie hold the banner high*

It was no surprise that when a prominent Labour politician got up to speak, Class War erupted, shouting him down to make clear that it was Labour who was responsible for estate demolitions. It was perhaps unfair on Ted Knight, a former Lambeth Labour leader who together with other councillors defied Thatcher and was surcharged and banned from holding public office for 5 years.

*Ted Knight (right) and Martin Wright (left) shout at each other*

Knight has supported Central Hill Estate residents in their fight against Lambeth Council’s plans for demolition, singing from much the same hymn sheet as Class War on housing issues. As Lambeth council’s leader he was clear that “Nothing is too good for the working classes” and estates such as Central Hill reflect this. And there was a little of old scores in the verbal attack on him by Whitechapel anarchist Martin Wright.

*Finally at the end of the rally, Leigh Miller did get a chance to speak.*

As a number of those estate residents allowed to speak at the rally pointed out, homes will only be saved if people become more militant and engage in the kind of direct actions which Class War advocates – and not by rallies like today’s outside a closed City Hall.

Class War stood to one side at the end of the rally when most of the rest taking part marched around the empty offices, they were calling for a rather different revolution.

Class War protest Labour Housing record

Police & Public Sector March, 4,000 Days

PPolice & Public Sector March, 4,000 Days of the Parliament Square Peace Campaign approaches – some of my pictures from Thursday 10th May 2012.

Police March Against Cuts and Winsor – Westminster

*Occupy supporters in plastic helmets joined the police march*

An estimated 20,000 police from all 43 forces in England & Wales marched through central London in protest at 20% cuts in police budget and proposed restructuring following the Winsor review. Occupy, Right To Protest and others joined in to protest for justice in policing.

Police are not allowed to strike or belong to a proper trade union, but the Police Federation can organise demonstrations like this when thousands of off-duty police, some with family members made a impressively large if rather dull protest past the Home Office, the Houses of Parliament and Downing St. Most wore one of the 16,000 black caps produced for the protest, the number of officers expected to be lost over the next four years as the police budget is cut by 20-30%.

*Police officers attempt to intimidate the Space Hijackers*

Like other public sector workers, police had suffered a two year wage freeze, as well as increases in pension contributions and many have also had large cuts in overtime. As well as those protesting, police were also on duty controlling the protest, though it was unlikely to get out of hand. But there were others as well as police, including the Space Hijackers who had a stall giving advice on how to protest, and also Occupy protesters who were calling for “a fully, Publicly funded, democratically accountable Police force who’s aims and objectives enshrine the right to peaceful Protest in some sort of People’s Charter!”

Others were there to protest against various aspects of police corruption and faced some aggravation from the officers on duty as well as some protesters. The Defend The Right To Protest group reminded police marchers of Alfie Meadows, Sean Rigg, Ian Tomlinson, Jean Charles de Menezes and many others killed or seriously injured by police officers. Officers on duty made some attempts to intimidate some of the non-police protesters – and also photographers covering the event.

More at Police March Against Cuts and Winsor

Public Sector Pensions Strike and March – St Thomas’ Hospital to Westminster

Public sector workers in Unite, PCS and UCU were on a one-day strike against cuts in pensions, jobs and services, and picketed workplaces and marched from a rally at St Thomas’ Hospital across Westminster Bridge to Methodist Central Hall for a further rally.

Some of the pickets had begun at 5am, and a few were still in place as I walked past workplaces in Westminster – including the Houses of Parliament to meet the marchers coming over Westminster Bridge.

As they marched, many chanted “Sixty-eight – is TOO Late”, as retirement age is set to increase to 68 and beyond, while retirement contributions are increasing. They are also losing out because the government has decided to index pensions to the lower CPI inflation figures which mans they get around 15-20% less. Over 94% of Unite’s NHS members voted to reject the government’s proposals and take strike action today along with members from the Ministry of Defence and government departments as well as others from the PCS and UCU.

More on My London Diary at Public Sector Pensions Strike and March.

4000 Days in Parliament Square – Parliament Square Peace Campaign

Brian Haw came to Parliament Square to begin his protest there on the 2nd June 2001, and the Parliament Square Peace Campaign he started had been there for almost 4,000 days, with a presence night and day, 24 hours a day since then.

After Brian’s death from cancer the protest was continued by Barbara Tucker and other supporters who have maintained the protest on those various occasions when Brian or Barbara was arrested and held overnight. Over the years the campaign has been subjected to frequent illegal harassment by police officers, Westminster Council officials and thinly disguised members of the security service, and laws have been enacted intended to bring the protest to an end.

A few hours before I arrived, police had come and spent 90 minutes “searching” the few square meters of their display in the early morning, and three days later, at 2.30am on Sunday 13 May, police and Westminster Council came and took away the two blankets that Barbara Tucker, no longer allowed to have any “structure designed solely or mainly to sleep in” by law was using to survive in the open. Clearly a blanket is not a structure, and police and council have also removed other items of property. Later her umbrella was also taken away. Barbara’s health deteriorated and she eventually had to leave the square, and the protest finally ended early in May 2013.

4000 Days in Parliament Square

Sparks and Students – 10 Years Ago

*Police surround a grass roots rally before the main Union rally by electricians at the Shard*

Ten years ago today on 9th November 2011 my work began at The Shard next to London Bridge, where ‘sparks’ (electricians) were protesting over plans by 7 major employers to tear up national agreements and impose worse conditions and pay cuts of at least 26 %.

*Electricians listen to Unite union speakers*

Before the official rally by the Unite union where speakers included several of the union’s leading officials as well as General Secretary of Unite Len McCluskey there was a separate rally with grass roots speakers. Numbers grew as the official rally began and there were over a thousand when it set off to march to another rally at Blackfriars.

I left the march on Borough High St and headed north over the river to join a large march by student protesters against fees increases and cuts in services. Police had shut down most of central London before this started and there were no buses running and I had to walk around two miles to meet the marchers.

Students were angry about the cuts, particularly about the loss of the Educational Maintenace Allowances but the policing seemed completely excessive. I wrote: “There were perhaps 5000 students, but as the march approached me coming down Shaftesbury Avenue they were largely hidden by the police, with a row of mounted officers leading, followed by several further rows of police in front of the marchers. More police walked along each side of the march, and others stood on the pavement, with lines blocking side roads and others in the doorways of offices, banks and some shops.”

The mood of the marchers seemed to me to be rather cheerful and relaxed, and this was reflected in the humour in many of the posters. Although there were a number of provocative actions by police – including a snatch squad rushing in to grab several marchers – which injured me and some other marchers, as well as various occasions on which they slowed or halted the march, eventually bringing it to a complete stop and ‘kettling’ it in Holborn, which caused it to get a little heated.

The protesters had been angered to hear that six hundred electricians who had tried to cross the river after their rally in Blackfriars to join the student protest had been stopped at Blackfriars Bridge and London Bridge.

The police seemed to get completely disorganised at this point and I was able to walk past a police line along with several hundred of the protesters while the officers grappled with a few holding them back before more police arrived. After waiting for some time in the hope that others would join them, they continued the march to its intended destination at the Moorgate building of London Metropolitan University where they danced to the sound of a bicycle-hauled sound system while I walked a little further to Finsbury Square where Occupy London had been camping since 21st October.

People in Finsbury Square were worried that the the 4000 police officers in London from the march would turn their attention to trying to evict them. I told them it was unlikely they would make an attempt with so many students on the street. Later I saw videos of students being kettled at Moorgate and individuals being attacked by snatch squads of plain clothes police who had posed as protesters but there was no action against Occupy London.

The huge policing of the two marches was clearly a reaction to the criticism of their failures at Millbank and Tottenham, but it came at a considerable cost, bringing movement in much of central London more or less to a halt for most of the day. Much of the City was still closed as I walked along Old Street with traffic outside the area moving at rather less than walking speed. Policing by consent has to involve letting peaceful protest continue and here was clearly an attempt to prevent it.

Students March Against Cuts & Fees
Sparks At The Shard

Deaf & Disabled March & a Harvest Festival

Saturday 26th September 2015 wasn’t one of my busiest Saturdays, but the two events I photographed were very different, and took place some distance apart. The first was in the centre of London, at Westminster and was a protest over the discrimination by the Tory government against disabled people.

It was clear from the start of the coalition government that came to power in 2010 that the Tories were out to target the disabled, and that they saw them and the benefits they were getting as a drain on our taxes they were keen to diminish. They declared that cuts in government spending were essential, blaming the previous New Labour government for the results of the world-wide banking crash which in reality was caused by the exploitation of an unstable system by greedy bankers and using this as an excuse for largely counter-productive austerity.

Looking at ways to make cuts, they picked on the disabled as they thought they would be an easy target and could bring large savings. But the disabled have turned out far more resilient than they expected, with groups like Disabled People Against Cuts turning out to be formidable opponents and getting considerable public support.

This particular protest was over the the cutting of the DWP’s Access to Work scheme which enables disabled people to work on an equal basis to non-disabled people. They want to work and have careers and to make a contribution to society, but cutting this essential support will prevent them doing so. And as the protesters pointed out, every £1 spent on Access to Work results in a return of £1.48.

*Local resident Christine Taylor of Stop Heathrow Expansion points at the Heathrow plan*

A long tube journey, changing to go almost to the edge of London on the Piccadilly line and then catch a bus to Sipson took me to Grow Heathrow in Sipson. It was a reminder that although London once led the world with its Underground system, it has failed to keep up with the times and now so many other cities have more modern and faster systems. When I first went to Paris we used to laugh at the quaint Metro clattering slowly and noisily around under the city, but now Parisians used to the RER must enjoy at least a little smile at our creaking system – and perhaps gloat that some of their system is now financed by the profits from Londoners using RATP run buses. Germans too profit as DB Arriva run the Overground as well as buses as well as three rail franchises.

Grow Heathrow was celebrating another harvest at their occupied nursery site with ‘music, pumpkins and pizza’ as well as an open ‘No Third Runway!’ discussion. They had squatted the derelict site in 2010 and five years later were still resisiting eviction with their court case then adjourned until the following summer. Half the site was evicted in 2019 but the rest continued until the final eviction in March 2021.

I was late (thanks to that slow journey) for the start of the discussion on Heathrow, but got there in time to hear much of it and take pictures – and as a fairly local long-term resident to make a very small contribution to the debate led by John Stewart of HACAN and other campaigners including Christine Taylor of Stop Heathrow Expansion and Sheila Menon of Plane Stupid. I grew up under the flightpath a couple of miles from touchdown and have lived the last 47 years a similar distance from the airport. Established by deception it has long been clear the airport is in the wrong place, and now even clearer that we can’t continue expanding air transport if we want to avoid climate catastrophe.

It is hard to take the government’s environmental policies seriously when they continue to support the expansion of air travel and transport and plans for another runway at Heathrow. We should be looking urgently at ways to cut our dependence on air freight and reduce travel, as well as ways to reduce the carbon emissions involved in the lower amount that will continue. This is one of the government policies that seriously undermines its national and international credibility at the forthcoming COP26 climate talks.

Grow Heathrow showed how people could live in different ways and evolve stronger communities and more democratic systems, although few would want to live as ‘off-grid’ in the rather spartan conditions of the residents here. But although we might not all want to make our own charcoal, nor go back to running vehicles on it, producing biochar is one of the few practical methods currently feasible of carbon capture and storage.

Grow Heathrow celebrates Harvest Festival
Deaf & Disabled Access to Work protest

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

Universal Discredit

*T-shirts spell out StopUniversalCredit’ in Tate Modern Turbine Hall on the Unite Day of Action against Universal Credit, 24 May 2018*

There were some positive ideas behind the introduction of Universal Credit, a new social security payment system first announced by the then Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, in 2010, claiming it would make the social security system fairer to claimants and taxpayers. It aimed to simplify the system by replacing six existing benefits for working-age people who have a low household income: income-based Employment and Support Allowance, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, Income Support, Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit and Housing Benefit. It would also taper off gradually as people moved into employment, removing the ‘cliff edge’ of losing benefits when going back into work.

But both Duncan Smith and Welfare Reform Minister David Freud, had failed to grasp the complexity of the varied and often varying circumstances of those in low paid and often insecure employment, particularly those on zero hours contracts or other sporadic or seasonal work, or with fluid family arrangements. Nor did they make clear that the main driver behind their changes was to simply cut the cost of benefits. And it now seems likely it will end up being more expensive than the benefits it replaced.

Following the Welfare Reform Act 2012, UC roll-out began to selected claimants at pilot job centres in 2013, and problems rapidly became apparent. There were entirely predictable problems with the IT system and the implementation costs were six times the initial forecast at £12 billion. The roll-out was intended to be more or less complete by 2017, but is now expected to take until 2024. Cuts were made to the initial system by George Osborne in 2015, making the transition to work less generous and removing some of the payments for child support, though these were partly restored in 2018 by Philip Hammond. And in 2020 there was a temporary £20 increase as a response to Covid.

What is clear is that the introduction of UC has caused a great deal of hardship to claimants, some temporary, some permanent. It has led to many being unable to keep up rent payments with a great increase in evictions and homelessness. UC has been the main driver of the huge increase in the need for foodbanks. It has forced some women into prostitution and made some claimants turn to crime to keep alive – while some have starved to death.

UC has had a particularly hard effect on families with children, particularly those with more than two children since 2017, and also on self-employed claimants and others with fluctuating incomes. Overall there have been both winners and losers, with around half losing out and a little over a third gaining compared to the replaced benefits.

One of the major problems for everyone has been the long wait before any UC is paid, partly because of the change from a weekly to a monthly benefit. Even where the process works smoothly, the delay between making the claim and receiving money is six weeks, and around a fifth of claimants have had to wait around 5 months or more. There are now emergency loans available – but these mean that when people do get their payments they are reduced to repay these advances. There are also many whose benefit has been cut or stopped for largely trivial reasons through a savage system of benefit sanctions imposed by job centres.

Many other problems have also been caused by UC – you can read a long list of criticisms in the Wikipedia article. As well as evictions and homelessness it has resulted in an increase in domestic violence and a steep rise in mental-health problems. And, as the National Audit Office reported, there is no evidence Universal Credit has met its aim of helping people into work and they say it is in many ways unwieldy and inefficient and is unlikely to provide value for money.

It is clear that UC is in need of a complete replacement, and that it’s monumental failure should have led to the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith in 2015 after the DWP admitted publishing fake testimonies of claimants enjoying their benefits cuts and statistics showed 2,380 people died in a 3-year period shortly after a work capability assessment declared them fit for work, but instead he was knighted in 2020. Under the present government we are unlikely to get more than very minor tinkering that will quite likely create more problems that it solves. One of the proposals under debate is that of a Universal Basic Income, along with targeted welfare payments (some of which are still in existence) to cover those with additional needs. Earlier this month the Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford announced that this would be trialled in a pilot scheme in Wales.

Universal Credit rally & march
Universal Credit protest at Tate Modern