The frantic government and media propaganda campaign around economic inactivity has picked up a pace. The Labour Party-run Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has finally published Liz Kendall and Co’s Get Britain Working White Paper. It sets out how the government plans to ‘solve’ the worklessness ‘crisis’. Predictably, it’s all the same kind of ideas that successive Conservative Party governments tried. And just like them, it’s also based on one, big lie – along with a few smaller ones thrown in for good measure.
Get Britain Working: but how?
Let’s put to one side the fact that think tank the Resolution Foundation says the government has overestimated the economic inactivity rate by nearly one million people – meaning an already overblown piece of propaganda is now even more overblown. Overall, the Get Britain Working White Paper is full of the usual drivel that successive, right-wing governments have pushed.
For example, Labour thinks one of the answers is more talking therapies like the cheap Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and the even-cheaper ‘behavioural activation‘. It has also confirmed that ’employment advisers’ will be infesting the NHS to target people as part of their health treatment; or, as the White Paper puts it:
expand access to expert employment advisers as part of treatment and care pathways, in particular mental health and musculoskeletal services. We will also continue to expand access to Individual Placement and Support (IPS) for severe mental illness, reaching 140,000 more people by 2028/29
IPS is a failed model, by the way. As the Canary previously reported, in the US (where it was founded) it made no significant impact on long-term employment outcomes. Over here, and previous data showed that only 12% of participants got, and kept, a job for longer than six months.
Moreover, breaching the sanctity of a healthcare environment with work coaches should be a massive red flag for anyone. However, it’s the talk around economic inactivity which exposes Labour’s plans for what they really are: Tory ones just dressed up with cuddly language.
Who are these scroungers?
Overall, the White Paper states that:
Over 700,000 additional people are outside the labour market compared to when the economic inactivity rate was at its 2020 low.
If we believe these figures, then we know that most of these people are either:
- Those who have retired early.
- Students who are not working.
- People living with long Covid, other health conditions, and mental health conditions.
For long Covid, there are no proven treatments or cures. Currently, the NHS provides very little for these patients. So, the government has got no way of getting these people back into work – aside from forcing quackery upon them, like CBT or other talking therapies.
Also, the White Paper states that:
33% of working age people who were economically inactive (excluding those who were retired) were on NHS waiting lists, in comparison to 19% of those who were either employed or self-employed.
But A does not equal B – ergo Labour is wrong to assume that getting NHS waiting lists down will get more people into work. It just means sick people won’t be waiting so long to be seen.
Lies, damn lies, and (lying) statistics
The Get Britain Working White Paper also states that:
Many people who are off work with long-term health conditions want to work, with 600,000 stating that they would like a job at the moment.
However, as the Canary’s Hannah Sharland previously debunked, this is a nonsense use of a statistic. That’s because a chronically ill person wanting a job and actually being able to do one are two very different things. The data the White Paper uses does not make this distinction.
Moreover, of the people who are long-term sick, the biggest rise has been not in people living with mental health conditions (contrary to tabloid narratives). It has been in those with what the government classes as “other health problems or disabilities”. This is where long Covid would fall, along other physical health conditions (away from cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and digestive ones). Autism and learning disabilities would also come under this.
Overall, the data from the Get Britain Working White Paper clearly shows that Labour has got no room to move on economic inactivity except to:
- Force sick people back to work.
- Make students get jobs, too.
- Drag people out of retirement.
But for health conditions particularly, thinking that pushing some scam talking therapy and putting employment advisers in the NHS will make a difference is at best deluded, and at worst being wilfully obtuse. Talking therapies DO NOT HELP PHYSICAL ILLNESSES. It seems bizarre that this even has to be said – but clearly it needs to be.
The greatest trick
However, one of the central and most worrying constructs of Get Britain Working is this (the bolding is ours):
For individuals, having a job helps provide a sense of purpose, value and control. It provides financial resilience, enabling families to improve their living standards and escape poverty. The benefits also go beyond a pay cheque: research shows that good employment is good for physical and mental health and promotes full participation in society and independence.
Liz Kendall and Keir Starmer have also pushed the idea that work is a health outcome in the media.
However, the idea that working is good for your health is simply not true – especially in the UK. As researcher Kitty S Jones wrote, the DWP itself helped create this fallacy:
There is plenty of evidence that indicates government policy is not founded on empirical evidence, but rather, it is ideologically framed, and often founded on deceitful contrivance. A… [DWP] research document published back in 2011 – Routes onto Employment and Support Allowance – said that if people believed that work was good for them, they were less likely to claim or stay on disability benefits.
So a political decision was made that people should be “encouraged” to believe that work was “good” for their health. There is no empirical basis for the belief, and the purpose of encouraging it is simply to cut the numbers of disabled people claiming… [benefits] by “helping” them into work.
Inadvertently, the White Paper exposes that the lie actually goes back further tan 2011. But again, it was fomented by the DWP. It was just five years earlier than first thought.
Get Britain Working: based on a fundamental DWP lie
A 2006 research paper, funded by the DWP, concluded that:
work is generally good for physical and mental health and well-being. Worklessness is associated with poorer physical and mental health and well-being. Work can be therapeutic and can reverse the adverse health effects of unemployment
Again, this is nonsense. Clinical psychologist Dr Jay Watts told the Canary that by saying work is good for your health the DWP is reinforcing:
the message work is the central goal of a meaningful life. This increases the shame, guilt and anxiety disabled people already feel. Even more so under a welfare system that equates worklessness with worthlessness. It is exacerbating mental health problems. The goal of mental health services has always been to improve quality of life and reduce distressing symptoms…
This ‘back to work’ obsession places huge demand on patients to fulfil the neoliberal dream. One whereby health is linked to how much one can contribute to the public purse. But this is foreclosing the reality of long-term disability. We do not, would not, hear that chemotherapy is worth funding because it helps the public purse through getting people back to work.
To be clear, despite what the Get Britain Working White Paper claims:
- Work is not good for your physical health if you are already physically ill.
- People are not working because they’re ill. They’re not ill because they’re not working.
- Giving a person a horrible ‘McJob’ is not good for their mental health.
Again, it seems bizarre any of this needs saying – but that’s the rabbit hole we’re down.
The claimants looked from man to pig
Overall, Labour’s Get Britain Working White Paper is no different to anything the Tories tried – except the language has been toned down a notch. Just a notch mind – because as think tank the Social Market Foundation said in a statement to the Canary:
There remains, however, some concerns about the government’s rhetoric and its approach to sanctions. While the Prime Minister has promised to end the cycle of “blaming and shaming”, warnings of “clear consequences” for those who don’t seek support could perpetuate the stigma surrounding welfare recipients.
There will still be the threat of sanctions hanging over DWP claimant’s heads. Any MP who in their right mind still believes making someone even more destitute will encourage them to get a job should not be an MP. Over decade of data on sanctions proves they do not get people into work.
But here’s the thing: the idea that Britain has got a worklessness crisis, and sick people must get a job, is all based on lies, manipulation, and self-interest from those in power. It is highly likely that cuts to people’s benefits will follow next year.
Why? Because on top of everything else, the estimated number of job vacancies is 831,000. This is dwarfed by the number of people claiming unemployment-related benefits (Jobseeker’s Allowance etc). This is now 1.5 million people.
The point being, there are not enough jobs for actual job seekers, let alone the economically inactive people Labour wants to push into work. The government can argue it will create them. But that’s currently pie in the sky – and even if it does happen, it won’t be anytime soon.
Get Britain Working is selling the public a lie – made up of lie on top of lie on top of lie – to once again paint chronically ill and disabled people as workshy scroungers. It’s just that, unlike the Tories, Labour aren’t saying it quite so loudly this time.
Featured image via the Canary
