DWP Labour policy is being influenced by Iain Duncan Smith

  • Post last modified:September 25, 2024
  • Reading time:13 mins read


To little notice on social media, Iain Duncan Smith’s notorious dark money think tank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) posted up at the Labour Party conference. On Sunday 22 September, it hosted an official fringe event around DWP-related issues.

Unsurprisingly, this was as the Canary already anticipated – specifically, the CSJ plugging its latest reports to the new Labour government. And it appeared to be exactly what we predicted too. That is, a lobbying affair for laying into chronically ill and disabled people claiming benefits.

Worst of all, as the CSJ cosied up to Labour, who was flogging its very same reports in the rightwing corporate media? None other than Iain Duncan Smith himself of course.

Iain Duncan Smith’s think tank schmoozing with Labour

The CSJ’s fringe event in question was disingenuously titled:

How Can We Re-Unite Britain?

Its CEO Andy Cook chaired the session, with speakers including Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) minister Stephen Timms and Labour mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham:

The Progressive Policy Institute’s Claire Ainsley, as well as Times journalist Rachel Sylvester also sat on the panel:

In other words, it was the CSJ’s usual circus of centre-right schemes on show:

Notably, as the Canary pointed out ahead of the fringe event, the CSJ and its panellists were promoting the think tanks latest reports.

The main report offers 50 recommendations for the new Labour government. These cover policy ideas in multiple areas across work, housing, crime, education, and family. Predictably, it put tackling so-called “health related economic inactivity” as one of the priorities under its work umbrella.

The second report pushed a work programme model – which the Canary has found highly contentious – not least due to the likely harm it could do to chronically ill and disabled people.

Bogus DWP fit for work figures

What’s more, like clockwork, as the CSJ was schmoozing with Labour at conference one of the think tanks right-wing press lapdogs was laundering its DWP reports to the public.

Enter CSJ corporate media mouthpiece the Telegraph. The very same day, it put out an article harping on about long-term sickness and unemployment. Its headline proclaimed:

Up to one million people wrongly classed as too sick to work

In the article, the outlet unveiled the supposed “hidden unemployment” figure. This, it suggested is:

at least 800,000 people who are out of work but want to get a job

Specifically, it argued that these were:

missing from the headline unemployment rate in 2022

However, its basis for this is entirely bogus. Where, pray tell, did its hit piece on chronically ill and disabled benefit claimants come from? You guessed it – the CSJ reports, naturally.

Previously, the Canary pulled apart more CSJ-fed corporate media spin with this figure – unsurprisingly, in both the Times and the Telegraph. As we noted then, this used wildly extrapolating assumptions, from a flawed survey of just 2,012 benefit claimants. You can read more about its blatantly erroneous calculations here.

However, in this instance, the Telegraph and CSJ have leaned into another study to back up its bullshit claims. Here again, both the study itself, and the CSJ’s interpretation of it, are enormously problematic.

More flawed assumptions from the CSJ

Specifically, it concerns a 2022 analysis from the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University. This purports to calculate the “real level of unemployment” in the UK for 2022.

In particular, it estimated that:

there are some 790,000 ‘hidden unemployed’ on incapacity benefits. These are men and women who might have been expected to be in work in a genuinely fully employed economy.

Obviously, for one, this is a far cry from the CSJ and Telegraph’s supposed “800,000 people who are out of work but want to get a job”. Moreover, these people are not, as they also claim, missing from headline employment figures at all. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has simply included these amongst those off work owing to long-term sickness.

Clearly, the CSJ has an agenda here. It wants to shunt this group of people into the workforce. To do this, it’s suggesting the ONS has wrongly categorised them. This is patently false, for a whole host of reasons.

For one, the ONS classes them among its “economically inactive” category – specifically sub-divided off as owing to long-term sickness. This simply means people out of work, who aren’t actively looking for it, because they have health conditions or disabilities impacting them. The CSJ’s notion is that if the ONS could recategorise some of these as “unemployed” – then the government can coerce them into work.

Most alarmingly of all however, the study uses standardised mortality rates (SMRs) as a measure for calculating the number of long-term sick people who are unable to work. Essentially, any number of people on ill health-related benefits above the SMR for each area of the UK, it considers the so-called “hidden unemployed”. These are people claiming these DWP benefits it suggests would be capable of employment.

What this means is that it only classifies those with life-limiting illnesses as too sick to work.

Of course, this is clearly a ludicrous assumption in itself. There will be many chronically ill and disabled people living with conditions considered non-life threatening who won’t be able to work.

Nonetheless, the CSJ is pushing this botched analysis anyway. In short then, unless you’re on deaths door, the CSJ is saying you can and should be in employment.

Iain Duncan Smith rears his DWP ‘grim reaper’ head again

Crucially, it’s apparent what will result from this series of flawed, yet dangerous claims from the CSJ.

Cue, a certain DWP “grim reaper” and CSJ founder to double-down with his disgusting ableist rhetoric. The article quoted Duncan-Smith in response to the reports. It said that:

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the Government must do more to get people back into work.

He said: “Too many people on sickness benefits are written off”, he said, adding that the current benefits system did not have the right incentives for people to even start looking.

The former work and pensions secretary added: “Just let them go to work, for God’s sake. Help them get into work, get better pay, and then they will come off benefits naturally.”

The implication of the CSJ’s “hidden unemployed” propaganda is precisely this. It’s a pretext for another wave of IDS style repressive benefit reforms squarely aimed at chronically ill and disabled people.

Where he says “the right incentives” – he means more punitive sanctions. When he bleats on about getting people into work so they “come off benefits naturally”, he’s playing into the constant drip of right-wing rags and politicians trivialising chronic illness and mental health conditions.

What’s more, the Telegraph revealed his and the CSJ’s hand. It wrote that:

The think tank is urging the Government to continue to invest in programmes such as Universal Support, which offers tailored help for the long term sick and disabled.

Again, it was exactly as the Canary said – pushing for the right-wing’s repackaged work programmes. Of course, as we delved into, there’s hardly anything progressive about these schemes, and they’re likely to ramp up the harm to chronically ill and disabled people.

Starmer’s IDS DWP tribute act

There’s now little doubt the new Labour government is in the thrall of Iain Duncan Smith’s wildly oxymoronically-titled DWP trojan horse-tank.

It was painfully evident in both the lead up to, and during Starmer’s keynote speech at conference. There was the usual crackdown crock of shit on benefit fraud – with hints of Labour resurrecting one of the most oppressive ideas in recent Tory benefit claimant-bashing times. In particular, this was its mass surveillance plans for the bank accounts of social security claimants.

More than this however was as the conflation of DWP benefit fraud with people who can’t work from long-term sickness, as the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey pointed out. You can bet it’s the CSJ’s bogus 800,000 to a million long-term sick he was talking about here.

There was also no coincidence the CSJ, and one of its key corporate media mouthpieces was banging on about  “economically inactive” people days before the prime minister slipped that very concept into his speech. Again, the excellent Charlton-Dailey completely eviscerated this too, writing how it is:

the most bullshit phrase for those not working as it’s not as if we stop paying bills when we’re on benefits.

Then, before the dust could settle after his speech, the prime minister went near full-on IDS on this to the BBC’s Today programme. He opined that the:

basic proposition that you should look for work is right

People need to look for work, but they also need support.

That’s why I’ve gone out to look at schemes where businesses are supporting people back into work from long-term sickness.

Needless to say, the insidious ideology of Iain Duncan Smith is now front and centre of this “changed” Labour government. The CSJ spouting its agenda at the party’s conference plainly demonstrated this.

What it all means for chronically ill and disabled people is only too obvious. It’s continuity callous Tory Labour picking up where the last cruel and viciously ableist government left off.

Featured image via the Canary





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