- stop unsafe cuts and closures to save money
- end the NHS funding freeze and increase spending to fund the need for health care
- end the PFI (Private Finance Initiative) swindle and stop private companies bankrupting the NHS
- repeal the Health and Social Care Act and reverse privatisation of the NHS
- protect the NHS from the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) which would allow US corporations to buy up parts of the NHS and profit from ill health
- fair deal and fair pay for NHS staff
You can read more about the campaign to Keep Our NHS public here , or watch a video explaining the impact of the Health and Social Care Act and why campaigners are trying to reverse it – eg on YouTube here
Join the facebook event for the march here
Bedroom tax – most people will by now have received their new Housing Benefit calculations, telling them how much they will be getting in the coming year and how much they will have to find from their wages or JSA or ESA income. If your Housing Benefit notification says your benefit is reduced because you have more bedrooms than you are supposed to need – APPEAL. Appeals normally have to be started within 28 days of receiving the benefit letter (though late appeals are also worth making). THIS IS THE TIME TO APPEAL!
People have won bedroom tax appeals on a variety of grounds – the commonest probably being that the room is too small or otherwise unfit to be realistically used as a bedroom. There may well be other arguments you can use, depending on your circumstances – you can even argue that it is unlawful for the housing benefit office to decide how many bedrooms you have without coming out and assessing your home themselves! There’s obviously no guarantee of winning, but it’s worth a go and it all helps to show how unworkable the bedroom tax policy is.
You need to write to the Housing Benefit office telling them why you think their decision is wrong, telling them you want a reconsideration, and saying that if you still do not agree with their decision you want to go to a Tribunal. You can also use the form which can be downloaded from the Leeds Local Government website. If you want help with an appeal, please contact Hands Off Our Homes (contact details below).
On the whole the report is fairly critical of the current sanctions regime and contains a number of steps in the right direction, amongst other things
- acknowledging and criticising the target-driven culture of job-centres
- questioning whether claimants commitments are drawn up with proper regard to the circumstances and capacity of the claimant
- recommending that Work Programme providers should have the discretion to accept “reasonable” causes for missing appointments etc
- expressing concern over the treatment of people in the WRA group of ESA, and people on JSA awaiting appeals or reconsiderations of ESA
- emphasising that there is not enough known about what happens to people who stop claiming benefits following a sanction
- criticising the two-week waiting time before a sanctioned claimant can get a hardship payment
- etc
There are thing here which we can use in our campaigning, whilst being clear that this obviously this does not go far enough. Ultimately, the report accepts a need for some kind of sanctions regime (even if the sanctions are non-financial ones such as more regular attendance at job-centres, and even if applied to fewer people) – but provides no well-founded evidence or reason to back this up. We can imagine what non-financial sanctions might look like (the benefits system is already riddled with them in the form of the multitude of time-wasting activities claimants are being forced to undertake).
The basic problem with the report is its acceptance of the concept that benefits conditionality is about “support”, or to put it differently, its failure to challenge the ideology behind such “support” in the context of the welfare-to-work apparatus. Recommendations for more intense and targeted support for “vulnerable” claimants, and more integration of work-related activities with healthcare, mental health and training may look sensible to people with little experience of the system. In practice, though, such recommendations are opening the door to ever more dangerous levels of intrusion and coercion, forcing on people interventions which they may not have chosen and which may do them harm (enforced mental health therapies are a case in point).
Ultimately, the report is full of the kinds of contradictions which will always arise unless one questions the real purpose of this massive – and massively expensive – apparatus of mainly privatised surveillance and disciplining of claimants, when it is known that the majority of people would find work independently (and those who don’t may a) have good reason for that choice or b) need support which is not linked up to pushing a welfare-to-work agenda). Instead of just tweaking the system, we need to get corporate providers out of welfare altogether, stop sanctions completely and unconditionaly, put the funding (back) into public provision of health, mental health, training and education etc, and bring benefits up to a level which gives people real choices.
Meetings and support/advice
The next Hands Off Our Homes meeting is on Wednesday 1st April at 7pm, at the UNISON offices on Woodhouse Lane (opposite the Fenton pub and university. You can contact Hands Off Our Homes for more information on 07930966205 or on the number below.
If you would like to get involved in campaigning against sanctions, workfare, benefit cuts etc – contact Leeds Welfare Fightback (details below), or Leeds Unite Community on 0113 236 4830. You can see Leeds Unite Community’s blog here, where you can also read about support and advice available at the new Unite Community centre in Farsley. In the near future there will also be advice and support available near the city centre, and regular informal daytime meetings to build campaigns on welfare and the other issues which affect our lives.
Hope to see you soon!
Ellen
Facebook: www.facebook.com/handsoffourhomes
Twitter: www.twitter.com/handsoffhome
Website: www.handsoffourhomes.org.uk
Leeds Welfare Fightback - against Universal Credit, benefit cuts and forced work 