Society
‘With his Poll Ratings Sinking, Sunak Goes For One More Attempt at Scapegoating the Vulnerable: The “Skivers” Revisited’
With a general election looming, it once again appears to be open season on benefits claimants and disabled people.
During a weekend welfare policy blitz, the Prime Minister pledged a new slew of curbs on benefits for disabled and chronically ill people if the Conservatives win power again. He also doubled-down on retaining the controversial two-child benefit cap, a key driver of child poverty.
The opening salvo came courtesy of a speech on Friday when Rishi Sunak decried what he called the country’s “sick note culture”, declaring that he was on a “moral mission” to reform the benefits system and tackle the “spiralling” £69 billion disability welfare costs.
Something had to be done, he said, about the growing numbers of economically inactive people who are long-term sick – in particular those deemed to have mental health problems and especially young people, too many of whom were “parked on welfare”.
If the specific language around disability and welfare sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
With terms like "sick note culture" and "parked on welfare", Sunak was operating straight from the benefits-bashing playbook wielded with great effect by consecutive Conservative administrations to demonise benefits claimants.
Since the onset of austerity 14 years ago, variations on the same toxic rhetoric have been deployed to justify years of savage cuts to social security and public services. The same rhetoric has been repeatedly leveraged to pit so-called 'hard-working’ people against anyone in need of state assistance.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation described Sunak's speech as “an irresponsible war of words on people who already aren’t getting enough support”.
As he faces record low polling numbers, the Prime Minister appears intent on giving the ‘skivers versus strivers’ trope one last whirl. In one section of his speech referring to mental health, he warned against "over-medicalising the everyday challenges and worries of life".
Among the proposals put forward – which were immediately slammed by disability charities and labelled by one as “a full-on assault on disabled people” – was a possible withdrawal of major ongoing benefits.
Sunak announced a review of Personal Independence Payments (PIP), whereby some payments might be changed to one-off rather than ongoing. As a non-means-tested benefit to help people with extra living costs due to disability or ill health, the possibility of the removal of regular essential payments sparked an understandable outcry from disabled people’s organisations.
Other proposed measures included closing benefits claims for individuals still out of work after 12 months who fail to comply with conditions for accepting available work. Another would make it harder to obtain a sick note. Sunak also asserted that the Government would look at shifting responsibility for classifying individuals as not fit for work away from GPs to other "work and health professionals".
According to the Prime Minister, too many GPs have been signing people off work by default. Yet, as many have pointed out, such an assessment belies reality.
James Taylor, director of strategy at disability charity Scope, noted for example that “much of the current levels of [economic] inactivity are because our public services are crumbling, the quality of jobs is poor, and the rate of poverty among disabled households is growing”.
However, not only did Sunak's speech represent another assault on an already ungenerous and punitive benefits system, it was also nuclear-level gaslighting.
After a decade-and-a-half of the Conservatives in power, actively shredding the social safety net, it was with profound cognitive dissonance that Sunak declared that “the values of our welfare state are timeless. They’re part of our national character” and that “we’re proud to ensure a safety net that is generous for those who genuinely need it – and fair to the taxpayers who fund it".
As concerning as the speech was, it was soon followed by an article in The Sun on Sunday, penned by Sunak, in which he reiterated some of its key tenets while also aiming fire at families in poverty. Despite calls for it to be abolished, he vowed to keep the controversial two-child benefit cap.
The two-child limit, introduced in 2017, restricts means-tested benefits to families with fewer than three children. According to the Resolution Foundation think tank, the policy leaves larger families £3,200 a year worse off, per additional child, making it a factor in rising child poverty. In 2013-2014, 34% of children in larger families were in poverty. By 2028-29 the foundation estimates that this will soar to a staggering 51%.
Abolishing the two-child limit would cost the Government in the area of £3.6 billion for 2024-25 (if at full coverage). If the policy was abandoned, it could mean as many as half a million fewer children in poverty. It should be a no-brainer politically to lift that many kids out of poverty, yet Sunak seems determined not to act.
A protestor in a wheelchair and police during a demonstration in which a group chained themselves together across Regent Street, London, in protest against the Government's welfare reforms. Photo: John Stillwell/PA
Responding to The Sun on Sunday article, Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, observed: “With child poverty at a record high, the Prime Minister has now clearly decided that making kids poor is his political priority. The two-child limit makes it harder for kids, punishing them for having brothers and sisters. It’s time to scrap this nasty policy.”
The kind of demonising, divisive rhetoric used by Sunak and others in his party to justify budget cuts and welfare reforms has tended in the past to find fertile ground with a significant portion of the electorate. This latest attempt at scapegoating, however, stinks of desperation.
The Prime Minister is clearly grasping at straws. What’s less clear is whether Labour will finally commit to abolishing cruel and unnecessary policies like the two-child limit if the party forms the next government. If nothing else, Rishi Sunak has thrown down a gauntlet.
Mary O’Hara is the author of 'The Shame Game: Overturning the Toxic Poverty Narrative’. The 10th anniversary edition of her book, 'Austerity Bites: A Journey to the Sharp End of Cuts’ in the UK will be published in September by Policy Press
Incapacity to empathise…
I thought this was clever and cogent: Sunak, like so many top Tories, has hardly ever worked. He has just gambled successfully….... Read more
The constitutional shame of the Rwanda Bill
The irony of lifting a video from ‘Best for Britain’ is all too apparent. But then the utter stupidity of the Rwanda scheme rather deserves it. It is beyond me how on the one hand Rwanda is completely safe, yet it is supposed to provide a deterrent to supposedly ‘illegal’ immigrants. How, if it is... Read more
‘The Prayer Ban at Michaela Community School Will Not Set a Landmark Precedent’
The High Court’s ruling that a ban on ritualistic prayer at Michaela Community School in Wembley is lawful – following a legal challenge by a Muslim student – has created a storm of controversy in recent days.
Muslims and human rights advocates have bemoaned the outcome, with many seeing it as a flagrant attack on the right to manifest one's religious belief in public, particularly if you’re a Muslim.
Those on the right of the Conservative Party have celebrated the ruling as a win for ‘British values’ – a concept they seem to believe excludes Islam.
Despite their differences, there is one idea that these groups share: the belief that this is a landmark case that establishes a strong legal precedent.
However, as a lawyer with 20 years’ experience and the CEO of the Islamophobia Response Unit, I argue that this is not the case. In fact, I believe that this ruling will soon, and for good reason, fade into distant memory.
Katharine Birbalsingh, founder and headteacher of Michaela Community School. Photo: Paul Davey/Alamy
Last year, a Muslim pupil at Michaela Community School decided to challenge the school’s ban on ritualistic prayer, arguing that it indirectly discriminated against the school’s Muslim cohort, which makes up around 50% of its 700 students.
Some right-wing commentators celebrated the prayer ban. Some also praised headteacher Katherine Birbalsingh for imposing it.
The pupil’s case was, from the beginning, a very narrow one.
Although Muslims are required to pray five times per day, she accepted that strict school rules meant that she would not be able to fulfil this obligation. Nevertheless, she argued that the ban on ritualistic prayer violated her right to religious belief under the European Convention on Human Rights. That it indirectly discriminated against Muslim pupils under the Equality Act of 2010. And that it failed to have 'due regard’ to the need to eliminate discrimination, also under the Equality Act.
In the end, the court surprisingly rejected all three of the pupil’s claims, essentially on the basis that she could, if she chose to, attend a different school that did not hinder her religious practices.
The court said that the pupil "at the very least impliedly accepted, when she enrolled at the school, that she would be subject to restrictions on her ability to manifest her religion”. But this was a strange argument to make considering that the ban was imposed after the girl enrolled at the school.
Michaela Community School’s well-documented strict behavioural regime is so unique to that institution that other schools in England and Wales simply could not rely upon it to deny prayer facilities to their pupils.
The High Court heard an abundance of evidence detailing the strict policies that provided the context making the prayer ban possible. To give just a few examples, pupils are required to move around the school’s building, and enter and exit all rooms, in a single-file formation.
Michaela Community School also maintains a 'rule of four no more’, which means that pupils are not permitted to socialise in groups of more than four.
Lunch break is set at a rigid 25 minutes, and pupils are not allowed to move freely around the school premises during this time.
Constraints on space mean that pupils are not able to move to their next lesson at once, so that the start and end times of each lesson are staggered on a minute-by-minute basis, with movement around the school being heavily coordinated.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg of what can quite comfortably be described as draconian behavioural regulations. Given these rigid demands on pupils’ time and movements, it is not difficult to see how finding time to engage in group-based, ritualistic prayer at specific times throughout the day – as is required by Islamic precepts – becomes very difficult, if not impossible.
The school contends that these rules are the beating heart of the school’s ethos. This point matters greatly because, if the court had ruled in favour of the girl who brought the case, this would have meant the removal of the prayer ban. Such a decision would have caused widespread disruption to the school’s rigorous – and, some might argue, excessive – behavioural codes of conduct. Muslim students needing to pray would have to violate Birbalsingh’s policies aimed at regimenting student movement around the school.
The court took all of this into consideration and the judgment’s balance tipped in favour of the school. But nowhere else in Britain are you likely to find another case of this nature. It is therefore not a 'landmark’ case because the deciding factor largely came down to the history of Michaela Community School’s uniquely austere rules.
Rather than standing as an example for others to draw upon in order to ban prayer facilities, this case and this school stand very much alone.
Majid Iqbal is the CEO of the Islamophobia Response Unit
Special Report: Our Society’s ‘Non-Human’ Population – A National Scandal Ignored
There are so many other things our politicians and media would rather focus on.
The colours of the St George’s flag on a football kit. The scones served in the cafés of the National Trust. The flights that need to take off to stop the boats. The ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ that are the sole focus in the national crisis of child sexual abuse.
Approximately 1.5 million people in this country have a learning disability. When do we ever hear about them?
We hear about them when there is momentary exposure of the horrific reality they face in securing their basic rights and care.
A scandal broadcast on Panorama. A beautiful young man losing his life for no reason at all.
But, as Sara Ryan, Connor Sparrowhawk’s mother, points out in the May 2024 print edition of Byline Times, the scandal is too shocking; too close to us. To what it means to be a human and vulnerable, and to be vulnerable to other humans not valuing your life enough.
So we quickly look away. The media cycle moves on. Politicians utter their broken promises.
But the lives of our fellow human beings, who are consistently being failed, are the lives of those human beings. Their everyday lives. Just like all of our everyday lives.
Read our exclusive special report by Saba Salman, Stephen Unwin, Sara Ryan, Dr George Julian and Ramandeep Kaur into the ignored national scandal of our society's 'non-human' population in the May 2024 edition of Byline Times. Available as a digital edition by online subscription now, or in stores and newsagents from 23 April
Read our exclusive special report by Saba Salman, Stephen Unwin, Sara Ryan, Dr George Julian and Ramandeep Kaur into the ignored national scandal of our society's 'non-human' population in the May 2024 edition of Byline Times. Available as a digital edition by online subscription now, or in stores and newsagents from 23 April
One of my biggest senses of achievement with what Byline Times has accomplished in the past five years, is the spotlight it has been able to throw, in new ways, on how people with disabilities are treated.
This special report has been a long time in the making and the opening of a new play, Laughing Boy, exploring the life and death of Connor Sparrowhawk, has provided an apt opportunity to bring together this newspaper’s work on this area. Do go and see it if you get the chance.
Because the fact is that all the evidence points to one thing: that some of our fellow human beings are treated as less than human by the systems of politics and culture that surround them.
And so there is a shocking conclusion we must all confront: in the 21st Century, we are happy to tolerate a society in which part of our population is seen and treated as non-human. What does that say about us?
By dehumanising them, we dehumanise ourselves. It is a national scandal we ignore to our shame and harm.
‘Laughing Boy’ by Stephen Unwin, adapted from ‘Justice for Laughing Boy: Connor Sparrowhawk – A Death by Indifference’ by Sara Ryan, runs from 25 April to 31 May at London’s Jermyn Street Theatre; and from 4 to 8 June at the Theatre Royal Bath
‘Gideon Falter Came to a Pro-Palestine Demo Looking to Provoke – And the Media Gave him What He Wanted’
An antisemitism campaigner's clash with the Metropolitan Police yards from a pro-Palestinian march on 13 April was about a lot more than him looking "openly Jewish". I know, I was there when it happened.
Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), was blocked by a police officer and threatened with arrest in Aldwych, London – with the exchange caught on camera.
Footage published by Sky News showed Falter telling police officers that he wanted to make his way to the other side of where pro-Palestinian protestors were marching. The police did not less him pass and offered to escort him via another route, avoiding the protestors to ensure that he would be "completely safe".
During the exchange, one of the officers said Falter was being "disingenuous" and trying to "antagonise" others as he "took it upon himself" to walk "right into the middle" of the march and was "openly Jewish".
The incident sparked calls for the Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, to resign, and Scotland Yard has apologised twice.
Falter is the vice chairman member of the Jewish National Fund UK, which reportedly raised more than £1 million to fund ‘Israel’s largest militia’.
During the incident, he appeared to be flanked by a number of security guards in dark glasses and a videographer who later provided footage by the CAA to the press.
I happened to witness a small portion of Falter’s interaction with the police as I moved along the protest route.
As I had come towards Aldwych, I noticed the pro-Israeli protest with a number of Israeli flags, as well as a few Pahlavi Iranian flags featuring the face of the son of the last Shah of Iran. I saw one man being led away from the pro-Israel counter-protest by police, his wife following him. As I got nearer, I saw that some people from both sides were hurling insults and trying to antagonise each other.
Stewards on the march were encouraging pro-Palestine demonstrators not to engage with the counter-protestors.
The clash at the Pro-Palestine march has led to calls for the Commissioner of the Met Police to resign. Photo: John Lubbock
It is clear that some Israel supporters are unhappy with the level of support for Palestine being demonstrated by the weekly marches, and are openly advocating that the police should ban demonstrations which former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has called "hate marches".
Following the incident, Falter told TalkTV that the Met Police should "ban the marches". Such calls have been going on since last November when Rowley refused to bow to calls to ban a demonstration held on Armistice Day.
This week’s headlines announcing that Falter had been prevented from crossing the demonstration route because he was "openly Jewish" have allowed all those people who previously called for the Met to ban marches to now call for Rowley’s resignation.
But there is more to the story than Falter’s categorisation of it as him being "simply Jewish in the vicinity of these marches". Falter's presence at the march had a number of contextual factors, of which looking "openly Jewish" was by no means the most important. It is, however, the only one which he chose to draw attention to
Falter claims he was not there to counter-protest, but why was he then trying to cross the march right next to the counter-protest, where antagonists on both sides were shouting at, and insulting, each other?
He claims he did not have a film crew, yet footage published of the incident by the BBC and others is credited to his organisation. Other videos show Falter at the centre of a group of people attempting to wade into the demonstration.
Protest movements seeking social and political change, which employ large street demonstrations to show their support, are used to agents provocateurs who aim to show the movement in a bad light by getting close to protestors and antagonising them. A man wearing a three-piece suit, with a number of security guards in tow, would look out of place almost everywhere except possibly entering a celebrity nightclub.
The attempts by Falter and some elements of the media to reduce his behaviour to a simple matter of him being Jewish appears to have an obvious political aim – to paint opposition to the Israeli state as motivated by racism.
I believe this is a political tactic employed by those who support the actions of the Israeli Government, which does a huge disservice to the fight against the real problem of antisemitism which exists globally.
The Jewish diaspora in the UK contains political factions which are highly critical of the Israeli Government and its actions in Gaza, and many hundreds of British Jews are regularly seen on these demonstrations.
The 13 April protest had a large contingent from the Jewish bloc, who gathered at a separate starting point before joining in with the head of the demonstration as it left Russell Square. Taking photos at the head of the march, I heard a loud cheer go up as the Jewish bloc joined the main march.
Attempting to paint pro-Palestine demonstrators as antisemitic, then, is an attempt to divide a large and diverse group of people calling for an end to the bombing of Gaza.
I didn’t stay to see the end of Falter’s confrontation with the police, because stewards advised us to move on and not engage with counter-protestors looking to antagonise people.
But Falter seems to have got exactly what he came for: a filmed confrontation which made a police officer look bad, and which is now being used to call for the sacking of the Met Commissioner.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism was contacted for comment.
I’d rather be French…
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That’s not fair!
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The state has become a killing machine…
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