Using state benefits to ‘improve behaviour: first ‘work or lose your home’, now addicts are told treatment or sanctions!

Govt announce plans linking benefits to drug rehab treatment

In another worrying sign that the Govt is intent on linking welfare entitlements and sanctions to behaviour, the Home Secretary Jaqui Smith is to announce plans for drug addicts to incur benefits sanction sunless they agree to treatment. Under the new programme, (part of a wider drug strategy) upto 50’000 problem drug users will face losing welfare benefit payments for up to six months if they consistently refuse or fail to participate in drug rehabilitation/treatment programmes, to be applied on the US style "three strikes and you're out" principle

However, commentators and experts have pointed out that addicts once in drug rehab programmes, do not actually receive incapacity benefit (IB), this goes to the treatment provider. Further, that user’s leading very chaotic lives will just increase the prevalence of crime to ‘feed their habit.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/27/drugsandalcohol


Work or lose your home?

 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2252761,00.html

This follows on from Housing Minister Caroline Flint’s proposal that unemployed council tenants should lose their homes if they fail to look for work. The Guardian notes that since the Welfare Reform Act (WRA) legislation was passed last year the payment of benefits can now be tied to new conditions about learning skills and seeking work. Although , much of the media and political commentators have dismissed this as ‘kiteflying’ and unworkable, a look at Chapter 5 of the latest Green Paper, Ready for Work: Full employment in our generation would indicate it is indeed a Gov’t aspiration:

‘These policies will strengthen the link between housing and employment support, particularly at the point of entry into social housing. Jobcentre Plus will play a key role in enhancing links with housing organisations, including exploring ways of providing access to employment information in housing offices and improving referral processes between housing and Jobcentre Plus services. We intend that pilots to test these approaches will begin in 2008.’

Swan says

Sanctions and conditionality are now clearly at the heart of this increasingly authoritarian Govts welfare reform programme and some of it certainly has an slight echo of the old Eastern Bloc Regimes. While noting that Swan are not experts on drug use, treatment programmes, etc, we think our basic principles stands here:

SWAN supports the principle of offering good quality support to claimants who feel ready to accept it. To us, the central issue is one of control. We cannot emphasise strongly enough the importance that many, many claimants attach to having tome to make life decisions and for pressure-free time in which to make a recovery, and the extreme stress and anxiety which they experience when this is threatened. SWAN believes that disabled people themselves are the best-placed people to decide on suitable programmes and work-related activities, to be undertaken at their own pace and at the right time.

We would prefer a humane benefits system where the current mistrust and fear of the DWP is replaced by a genuine feeling of being supported. This will require some considerable work on the DWP’s part, and will certainly not be helped by the threat of sanctions. We believe that claimants will gladly accept good-quality support to return to work if they feel ready, and if this support is offered by agencies that they have no need to fear, and that this will entirely negate the “need” for sanctions.

www.swansheffield.org.uk