When asked about ‘benefits’ in polls many people seem to disconnect from the meaning of the term, and the lives of those they are in place to help. Newspaper coverage, and government rhetoric, consistently uses the term as a catch-all which distances people from the reality of support for worklessness, children, disability and the low-waged.
A similar situation has developed in business. The government is committed to cutting ‘red tape’, outlining an idea that bureaucracy is killing businesses in the UK, and often linking it to a characterisation of a European Union that is only interested in interfering with our entrepreneurial zeal and libertarian ideals.
But what is red tape really? It has many parts, including some that, considered individually, are valued highly by large numbers. The coalition has cut it by reducing access to employment tribunals, and by reducing access to the legal aid which supports those who access tribunals; this is likely to mean more people can be unfairly sacked with no recourse to action, swelling the ranks of unemployed people at a time when all government activity should be directed at reducing them.
Both cuts may meet with broad public approval when shouted about endlessly from apparently credible sources – sticking it to the undeserving and raising two fingers to Europe being ingrained in our national psyche – but the collective nature of their definitions is likely to contain the seeds of future unpopularity.
Much has been made of the popularity of benefit cuts – The Sun reported on its own poll on 7th April which found that 6 in 10 people thought they were too generous and 8 in 10 were in favour of the £26,000 cap – but again, the questions asked were about ‘benefits’ rather than being more specific.
The TUC has already found, through its own research, that most people oppose real-terms benefit cuts when the benefits are named. This backs up the idea that the very word ‘benefits’ has become so contaminated, due to the deliberate efforts of politicians and newspapers, that it no longer bears any relationship to its true meaning.
Is it possible that the government, even while cutting tax credits, is trying to perform a sleight-of-hand which persuades workers that their growing poverty is somehow the fault of the workless? Wages too have fallen behind inflation during this economic depression, rising an average of 1.2% last year while inflation is currently at 2.2%.
Don’t forget, those polls which present scientific-sounding statistics ask questions on the ‘feelings’ people have towards benefits, and politicians who back them often talk about how many people ‘feel’ that benefits are too high or ‘feel’ that the system is broken.
It is easy to forget too that the right to an adequate standard of living is enshrined in law; the UK is a signatory to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights which includes this.
The decrease in the standard of living planned by the government through the benefit cap and below-inflation rises may in fact be breaking the law, with many claimants reporting they already have to choose between heating and eating. Our benefits campaign calls on the government to immediately assess the amount needed to live on, to make this the basic payment for all claimants, and for this to be increased every year by the amount of unemployed people’s real cost increases each year.
The double whammy of tax credit cuts and low wage rises mean working people are being squeezed hard, and feeling the pinch. Their anger is being directed away from the companies that employ them – most of which are still profitable – and the government which is cutting their in-work benefits, and towards the blameless unemployed.
Perhaps the most incredible example of this came during the recent Philpott manslaughter case, when Chancellor George Osborne asked whether the state should be subsidising the lifestyles of people like Philpott, and questioned whether benefits influenced his behaviour.
This came despite the fact that, given that the majority of state payments into that household came through tax credits to the two working women who lived there, any changes that aimed to target their situation would surely penalise Osborne’s ‘strivers’ rather than the ‘shirkers’ he is fond of characterising.
Given the assault on terms, the word ‘benefits’ may have become so contaminated that it has outlived its value. It may be time to change it; this has happened before, with ‘social security’ more widely used previously.
So what to call them? The new term needs to combine reasonable, inclusive words that haven’t been dirtied by politicians and newspapers, and then it needs protecting from assault by those who oppose any form of support to the poor through ensuring fair minded people present arguments in its favour at every opportunity.
Our suggestion? Social protection. But what’s yours? Please comment below and tell us if you would rename benefits and what word or words you would choose.