UK heading back to Victorian poverty

..

The coalition’s benefit cuts, bedroom tax and aggressive welfare sanctions are forcing many Britons into “forced penury” as they mark an increasing return to the principles of the Victorian “Poor Laws”, leading academics have warned.

Dr Chris Grover, senior lecturer in social policy at Lancaster University and an expert on the history of national insurance, said:

“We are in a situation where for many people we are heading to a situation of forced penury that is some distance from the optimism that helped frame the introduction of National Insurance benefits in 1912.”

Dr Grover said that the current direction of attacks on the poor marked a steady return to the “principles of the Poor Laws”, the social precursor to the welfare state that are popularly linked with the Victorian era of the workhouse.

Grover added:

“Now, the political pay off seems to come with being as harsh and restrictive as possible in benefit policy. We see this trend from the days of the Thatcher governments, extended during the New Labour years, and even more acutely in the name of austerity during the coalition years.

“We are heading back to the principles of the poor law. ‘Less eligibility’, discretion and deterrence are all principles of the poor law that are visible in contemporary benefit policy…There have been discussions and some developments in policies that aim to withhold benefits from people for a range of reasons, like for not declaring problem drug use; for being unable and not learning to speak English and not engaging with support to address anti-social behaviour. In these cases, it is the behaviour of the individual that, at least in part, determines their access to benefit, rather than their needs.”

Dr Grover’s stark warning was echoed by Hartley Dean, social policy professor at the London School of Economics, who said that successive governments have

“retreated from the principles of National Insurance in favour of stigmatising means-testing benefits.”

He added: “In some senses, they have been reverting to the principles of the Poor Laws, which National Insurance was supposed to replace!”

The Haze says:

This affirms what anyone who lives in the real world outside of the Westminster / media bubble already knew – successive neoliberal governments have grabbed the hands of the clock and are busy sending this country back to Victorian times, replete with the attendant moralistic fervour for the rich and a contempt for anyone less fortunate.

We have people living in garden sheds, people reliant on food banks (the modern day soup kitchen), we have the red cross handing out food parcels, we have witch hunt like the TV show ‘Benefits Street’ and the endless hate mongering of the Daily Mail.

People of good conscience everywhere must stand up and be counted – and fight against this ugly zeitgeist with all their heart. 

Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/15/benefits-uk-welfare_n_4596173.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-politics&ir=UK+Politics