Praying for welfare reform.

This Lent, prayer and reflection can both hearten those already campaigning on behalf of the poorest in society and open the eyes of those who are unaware of injustices such as PIP reforms, says Virginia Moffatt …

Four years ago, a group of disabled campaigners produced a ground breaking report – ‘Responsible Reform’, also known as ‘The Spartacus Report’ (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/files/response_to_proposed_dla_reforms.pdf).   The Spartacus Report took one aspect of the coalition government’s welfare reforms – moving from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to Personal Independent Payments (PIP)– and demonstrated in painstaking detail, why it would be so devastating for sick and disabled people. Thanks to a creative social media campaign, the report went viral after it was published on the Ekklesia website, with a retweet by Stephen Fry resulting in so many downloads, that the site crashed.

At the time, the majority of commentators and politicians had dismissed welfare as an issue of little importance. Thanks in no small part to negative media headlines and tough talking from some MPs the general mindset was that benefit claimants were scroungers and cheats.  Labour were so nervous of challenging this rhetoric, that the coalition government’s Welfare Bill was receiving little opposition, and campaigners were struggling to be heard. Spartacus changed all that.   Though the government pushed through its reforms despite honourable opposition from the House of Lords, Spartacus helped change the political discourse – today, no-one would consider welfare a non-issue.

In the four years since we’ve seen why. The Welfare Reform Act of 2012 and its successor of 2016, have brought in a series of changes that have hit the poorest in society. The Work Capability Assessment and sanctions regime so brutally exposed in the film, ‘I,Daniel Blake’ continue to do untold harm to people up and down the country.

Since the film was made, PIP reforms have added to sick and disabled people’s misery. As the Spartacus Report pointed out, DLA was developed by John Major’s government as a benefit for all sick and disabled people in recognition of the costs of living with a disability. Like child benefit, it was given to everyone regardless of income (indeed David Cameron, the former Prime Minister, claimed it for his son Ivo). Removing it would mean many working people being unable to pay for the assistance they needed to dress, wash, use their motability car, and as a result, many would lose their jobs. All of this has come to pass, and though the change was supposed to save the government money, it has actually cost more (http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-az/impact-of-pip-on-social-care.html ).

Meanwhile, another government ‘reform’ – universal credit – has been rolled out despite warnings that the system doesn’t work and benefit recipients whether they are in work or not will suffer.  (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/universal-credit-debt-claimants-benefit-system-government-pilot-flaws-southwark-croydon-dwp-report-a8015476.html). If anything, the bleak picture of an uncaring benefits system portrayed in Ken Loach’s 2016 film is even worse today.

And yet, because of the campaigns led by sick and disabled people, today, they now have many supporters in the media and among opposition MPs.  Last week as Laura Pidcock, MP led a debate on PIP in the House of Commons, many commentators were aghast by the fact that some Conservative MPs laughed and jeered. When disabled activists Paula Peters and Keith Walker confronted minister Sarah Newton  afterwards, she was quick to walk away, though not before promising she would sit down and talk to them: https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/activists-explain-why-they-clashed-with-minister-after-pip-debate/.

Newton’s response to the activists is all too familiar from Conservative politicians, many of whom are so far removed from the everyday experiences of benefit recipients that they seem unable to comprehend what their legislation is doing to people. Which makes it all the more urgent for those of us who do know, to stand alongside campaigners and raise our voices too. Because as Laura Pidcock said in the debate last week (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlrHqU9tffQ), if we don’t, history will not judge us kindly.

Nonetheless, this is a long hard struggle and it is hard sometimes to keep going. So yesterday, I was glad of the readings in church which could have been written for anyone trying to work for justice. Job speaks for many of us at the times when things seem bleak. 'Swifter than a weaver's shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind.' Which is why we need the Psalmist to remind us:

'Our Lord is great, all powerful, his wisdom beyond all telling.

Yahweh sustains the poor, and humbles the wicked to the ground.'

Paul then reminds us that preaching the good news is a responsibility which has been put into our hands, and Jesus of the importance of prayer to sustain us.

Next week, sees the beginning of Lent with many of you embarking on the Lent course I have written based around the film I, Daniel Blake. While much of the focus of the course is around two specific aspects of welfare 'reform' (the work capability assessment and benefit sanctions), PIP and universal credit are also highlighted, and wider issues of oppression are discussed. It is my hope that a combination of reflection and prayer will both hearten those already campaigning about welfare 'reform' and open the eyes of those who are unaware. And in this way, together, we can add our voices to those of sick and disabled people who have been calling for justice for far too long.

Virginia Moffatt is author of Nothing More and Nothing Less: A Lent Course based on the film I, Daniel Blake, newly available for Lent 2018 in paperback. She contributed to Simon Barrow’s Feast or Famine? How the gospel challenges austerity also newly available for Lent 2018. Meanwhile, she was editor-in-chief of the key note book at Greenbelt 2017, Reclaiming the Common Good: How Christians can help re-build our broken world, available now in paperback.