Thanks to the budget, in an hour the Conservatives will finally disclose the details of their £12bn expected social security cuts – two months after they were elected. We can call this the success of austerity’s demonisation of benefit claimants. George Osborne got through an election campaign promising deep and accelerated cuts to the welfare state while never explaining how he’d do it.
It is thought that in a bid to appear reasonable, a cut of £8bn will now be made over two years, but what has been leaked ahead of the budget gives an insight into where we are heading. The benefit cap – a policy that could push as many as 40,000 children into poverty – will likely be cut again to £20,000 per family (£23,000 for those in Greater London) – that’s notably £3,000 lower than the limit the Conservatives set out in their manifesto.
Despite Osborne’s figures being what we might call less than accurate, the chancellor seems happy to claim the existing cap has got 30,000 people off benefits and into work. That is the aim of the policy – what in Department for Work and Pensions-speak is termed “behavioural change”. The cuts to social security are no longer disguised as economic necessity. It is openly a moral mission. Taking the money people need in order to feed their children is “incentive” for the rung of society too lazy to get themselves out of poverty.
Work is best. Whether it pays enough to cover the bills is irrelevant to ideology. That tax credits – a subsidy for the 5 million fulltime workers who do not earn enough to live on – are also lined up to be cut in today’s budget is proof of that. The Conservatives have no interest in widening opportunity, raising living standards, or bringing fulfilment to the working classes. Fetishising the job market is simply the other side of a coin that is demonising the benefit system.
Where does this end up taking us? Assessors are asking terminally ill people applying for benefits when they expect to die. This is not satire. One woman who was applying for personal independence payments – the benefit meant to pay for the extra costs of disability or illness – for her terminally ill daughter was asked when she expected her child to die. This was asked in front of her daughter. Frank Field, the new chair of the parliamentary select committee overseeing the DWP, has written to Iain Duncan Smith asking to see the guidance that may have led the assessors to think this line of questioning was “legitimate”. It was legitimised by every cut taken over the past five years and each that Osborne will proudly announce today. The Conservatives have built this climate meticulously – one that says to claim benefits is to forgo basic human dignity.
To take from those who can least afford it is now actually defined as fairness. “We’ve got to have a welfare system that’s fair for those who need it, but also fair for those who pay for it,” Osborne told the BBC on Sunday. The message is that we are individuals set against each other. Private renters versus social tenants. Disabled versus healthy. Low-paid workers versus benefit claimants. It does not matter that these binary slots are meaningless. The point is division: it is not government that should be your target. It is your neighbour.
But what if your neighbour earns minimum wage and relies on tax credits to pay the rent? And you yourself are disabled, losing sleep over the thought of your next benefit assessment? The problem with making cut after cut is that what starts as the epitome of individualism can – by the law of numbers – eventually build solidarity.
Disabled people, the unemployed, parents with young children, low-paid workers. It is increasingly clear the so-called “benefit claimant” is actually each of us. George Osborne’s early mantra may yet come back to haunt him. We really are all in this together.
