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SubscriptionsCategory: Welfare
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‘MPs and the Media Cast Benefit-Claimants as Freeloaders – This Discrimination Is What Keeps Them Out of Work’
The media has gone on the attack after the welfare U-Turn, but they’re not telling the real story, argues Mathilda Mallinson
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Worth Reduced to Work: A Disabled Person’s Experience of the Welfare Cuts Debacle
Penny Pepper explores the impact of the watered-down Welfare Bill and questions the very notion of ‘work’ as a marker of human value
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Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives are ‘Cynically Misrepresenting’ Statistics With Plan to Ban Non-Brits From Claiming Disability Benefits
Experts suggest Conservative frontbenchers are deliberately misleading the public
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Non-Disabled People’s Delusions That Disability ‘Is Nothing To Do With Them’ Only Harm Disabled People
As Government cuts to disabled people’s benefits lead to more dehumanising rhetoric, Penny Pepper reminds us that disability is an embedded reality of human experience as much as it always has been
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‘No-One Voted for These Cruel Cuts – We Need a Wealth Tax Instead’
Keir Starmer must change course from this performative cruelty towards the sick and disabled, argues Neal Lawson
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‘Unsurprising Seasonal Anxieties for the Disabled and Elderly’
In her monthly column, Penny Pepper wonders what new threats disabled and elderly people will face as the season turns
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It’s Not Just the Two-Child Limit: Another Controversial Welfare Policy Hitting Hundreds of Thousands of Families
Amid a Labour rebellion over the two-child welfare cap, new figures reveal the number of families still hit by the Coalition Government-era housing policy
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‘In the Sixth-Richest Country in the World, How Can You Build a Welfare State on Food Banks?’ The Stats that Reveal Just how Widespread Food Poverty Is In the UK
Combined Trussell Trust and Independent Food Aid Network data lays bare the breadth of food banks in the UK – themselves symptoms of a far deeper food poverty crisis
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‘Keir Starmer’s Defence of the Two Child Benefit Cap is Indefensible’
The Labour leader’s refusal to commit to scrapping George Osborne’s austerity-era policy risks committing hundreds of thousands more children into poverty
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‘With his Poll Ratings Sinking, Sunak Goes For One More Attempt at Scapegoating the Vulnerable: The “Skivers” Revisited’
The Prime Minister’s announcements on sickness and disability benefits were not just another assault on an already punitive welfare system – they were nuclear-level gaslighting, writes Mary O’Hara
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‘Mel Stride’s Remarks on the Public Using Mental Health to Avoid Work Hide a Culture of Failure and Secrecy at the Department He Runs’
The founder of an employability and recruitment solutions consultancy lifts the lid on what is it like to work with the Department for Work and Pensions
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‘Fighting the Five Giants: It’s Time to Renew Our Social Contract’
Every one of us will experience illness, damage, impairment, disability and, inevitably, old age, writes Penny Pepper
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All the Bad News Jeremy Hunt Buried in His Autumn Statement
Details buried in the Chancellor’s statement show we are heading for years more of tax rises, low growth and public sector cuts thanks to his Government, reports Adam Bienkov
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The Government’s Reforms to Work Capability Benefits Assessment Could Worsen the Mental Health Crisis for Already Vulnerable People
The proposed changes ‘are symptomatic of the continued systematic violation of disabled folk’
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Sunak’s Government Accused of ‘Hiding’ from Damning United Nations Inquiry on Treatment of Disabled People
From the Bedroom Tax to Work Capability Assessments, the Government is accused of systematically failing disabled people
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Failing Learning Disabled People: The Contradictions of 1945
We should celebrate the birth of the NHS and the welfare state – but also acknowledge it has too often let learning disabled people down in the worst way imaginable, writes Stephen Unwin
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Labour Hints that Starmer DOES Want to Scrap Two Child Benefit Cap Amid Mounting Rebellion
Keir Starmer’s spokesman opened the door to a potential U-turn on his plans to keep the controversial cap, following growing criticism from Labour MPs
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‘The Price of Sausages: The Telegraph’s Calculator of Hate’
Attacks on disabled people have all too often dressed themselves in the clothes of good housekeeping – as the newspaper’s tax calculator suggests
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‘Keir Starmer is Missing His Big Chance to Rebuild Broken Britain’
The Labour leader is missing a once in a generation chance to set out much-needed radical reforms for a broken nation, argues his former advisor Simon Fletcher
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Government Spending Tens of Millions a Year on Disability Benefit Appeals
The money could be ‘much better spent providing the support that disabled people need to take part more fully in society’ – Chaminda Jayanetti reports
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REVEALED: Sanctions on Older Benefits Claimants Rise Amid Government ‘Concerns about Labour Supply’
The Department for Work and Pensions has refused to publish its own research into the effectiveness of sanctions, reports Chaminda Jayanetti
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Barriers to Work are Trapping Children in Poverty
New data has revealed the barriers single parents face in getting back to work, while rates of in-work poverty exposes Tory ‘myth’ that work is the route to riches, Sian Norris reports
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Majority of Brits Report Winter Crisis is Impacting Health and Wellbeing
New ONS data reveals how cold homes and food insecurity is impacting people’s physical and emotional health
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For Thousands of Young Children, Poverty is All they have Known
New data from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reveals the extent of poverty in families
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REVEALED: No Government Help with Rising Energy Bills for Hundreds of Thousands of Immigrants
Households with ‘no recourse to public funds’ due to their immigration status will not be eligible for state help to alleviate rising costs
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Homeless Deaths Increase by More Than 50% Since 2013
New Government data shows how deaths of homeless people – including to Coronavirus – continues to rise. Sian Norris reports
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REVEALED: The Staggering Rises in Rent Shortfalls Caused by Housing Benefit Cuts
With the cost of living crisis pushing up rents and Local Housing Allowance frozen since 2020, more and more of the poorest private tenants are struggling to make ends meet
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‘You’re Seeing People Who Wouldn’t have been Struggling Before Who Now Need Help’
Sian Norris returns to the town where her family once lived to learn how the cost of living crisis is impacting the lives of ordinary people and their communities in north Wales
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Liz Truss’ Economic ‘Shock Doctrine’ is Pushing the UK to the Brink
As the Bank of England takes alarming steps to stabilise the economy, the Prime Minister is preparing for a devastating new era of austerity, reports Adam Bienkov
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Britannia Unchained Review: Imperial Nostalgia and the Unravelling of Social Progress
Sam Bright unpicks the Truss-Kwarteng manifesto, finding a worrying obsession with Britain’s distant economic past
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‘The Government’s Punishment of the Poor is Only Just Beginning’
Liz Truss’ regime has already picked its losers, says Thomas Perrett
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‘The Dark Heart of Trussonomics: The Mainstreaming of Libertarian Theories of Social Darwinism and Apartheid’
The legacy of the Nazi ideology of eugenics – popularised by Charles Murray’s controversial book ‘The Bell Curve’ – goes some way to explaining Trussonomics, writes Nafeez Ahmed
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Government Denies £4 Million Cost of Living Support from Sanctioned Welfare Claimants
Punitive sanctions are compounding the financial problems of some of the most vulnerable people, reports Nic Murray
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Can People Afford a Benefits Cut in a Cost of Living Crisis?
With studies now suggesting that austerity measures led to 330,000 excess deaths and the ongoing crisis in child poverty rates, Sian Norris reports on concerns over further potential welfare cuts
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Kwarteng Rewards Wealthy Men While Punishing Poorer Women
The mini-budget is another worrying sign that the new Government is downgrading the importance of women’s rights, reports Sascha Lavin
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Truss’ Attitude to Workers is a Medieval Mindset With a Modern Day Makeover
AV Deggar argues that the Conservative Party’s beliefs about a work-shy population echo a bygone age
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How ‘Claps for Carers’ Didn’t Result in Better Conditions or Pay
The summer of strikes has come to social care – with striking careworkers fighting for better pay and against precarity, reports Thomas Perrett
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On the Frontline of the Battle for Benefits
Chaminda Jayanetti speaks to those affected by the Government’s failing system of assessing support for some of the most vulnerable people in our society
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Five Years on From Grenfell: A Community Betrayed
Former Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad reflects on the broken social contract that has underpinned the Grenfell tragedy and the five years since
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High Value Fraud Ignored as Government Chases Welfare Cheats
Tom Robinson investigates the disproportionate state investment ploughed into benefit fraud, while other anti-fraud efforts suffer from austerity
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The Ignored Long COVID Crisis
The Bank of England has warned of COVID-related labour shortages in Britain, but why aren’t we taking its long-term effects more seriously? Sasha Baker investigates
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‘We Can’t Live Like This’: Universal Credit Falls Short of Cost of Living Price Hikes
Rising energy bills, increased food costs – and yet benefits have not risen with inflation, leaving families struggling to make ends meet, Sian Norris reports
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Food Bank Britain
Rachel Morris considers the malaise of modern Britain as the Conservatives initiate Austerity 2.0
