Pat McFadden took to the Labour Party Conference stage today to deliver his first speech as Secretary of State for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). McFadden, of course, only took over the role three and a half weeks ago, so many were anxious to hear what he had to say and if he’d be any better than his predecessor, Liz Kendall.
DWP chaos at the Labour Party conference
Well, the short answer is no. Despite it being a new DWP minister, it was much of the same blustery bullshit that completely brushed over the fact that the cruel department was planning the harshest cuts ever that would destroy disabled people’s lives even further.
He started the speech by harkening back to being at the People’s Marches for Jobs of the 1980s, he said:
At a time of high unemployment, factories closing everywhere, hope was in short supply. But in the midst of all of that, people organised themselves to march to say that they wanted the pride and purpose that came with having a job.
While this is technically true, a huge driving force behind the marches was to draw attention to the deprivation and decline in industrial towns after Thatcher closed shipyards, mines and factories. The ripples of which are still seen today, not only by those who are unemployed but by working people too – and Labour has only made these worse.
A recent study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that a single person working full-time still only has 75% of what they need, whilst a working single parent only has 69% of what they need to have a good life.
The key thing here is that in the 1980s, people marched because their industries had been stripped away; this is not the same as forcing people into unsuitable and unsafe work like the Labour-led DWP wants to.
McFadden rewrites DWP history
He goes on to say that Labour must once again “put work at the heart of our mission”, which essentially means they’re going to force people into work. He then spaffs on about Atlee creating the welfare state, Wilson expanding pensions, and Blair and Brown reforming the welfare state.
What’s typical here is that the way he tells it, benefits were graciously handed to disabled people, and he conveniently misses out that disabled people had to fight tooth and nail every step of the way to get what we needed to survive. And because history is written by those who hold the pen and the power, he glosses over the fact that Blair and Brown’s welfare reforms set into motion the DWP Work Capability Assessment and the cruelties that came with that.
But lucky for McFadden, I literally wrote the fucking book on disability activism history. McFadden also acts like Labour didn’t have their hand in turning the public against disabled benefits claimants through the media, too, which it definitely did.
He goes on to brush over what the Tories did and says they left Labour with a “welfare state that was broken, battered and shamed”. Of course, he’s not talking about the tens of thousands of disabled people who were killed by DWP policies, though.
He said:
They talked about welfare reform, but what did they actually do? They promised to make work pay and then trap families in poverty. They spoke of compassion and sent children to school hungry. They talked about responsibility and left millions on benefits.
Which is weird because that’s exactly what Labour are doing, except if you look closely, you’ll see the hint that they will be “reforming” benefits even more harshly and stripping millions of the support they need in the process.
Labour is definitely waging war on benefits
He spaffs on a bit about reform and the right infighting, then moves on to Labour’s “mission”. He says they will “wage war on hopelessness”, which again doesn’t mean “support those who are struggling” but instead “force desperate people into work and threaten to cut their benefits”.
He declares that the Labour government believes in:
A Britain where no child should go without food, no disabled person should live without dignity, and no worker should labour without decency. And it’s that which drives us to extend free school meals, to provide new pathways to work and to guarantee a decent living wage.
But as always that’s as far as he goes with what “pathways to work” actually means, there’s no explanation of how they will actually support disabled people into work, especially whilst DWP Access to Work is quietly being cut and there is quite simply no reason why an employer would hire a disabled person when the government want all the responsibility to make the workplace accessible to fall on the employer.
Grossly, he announces that this “new” DWP will be:
not a dependency welfare state, but the opportunity welfare state.
And you guessed it, that means forcing people into work, through their new “skills” focused DWP.
He said:
Skills is at the heart of our economic plan, and that matters most to those without money or financial means, because this is about equality, too.
I’m pretty sure what matters most to people who are starving and destitute is support, but okay.
Wouldn’t be joking about rebellion if I were you, McFadden
We don’t find out more about this because he moves on to a really ham-fisted attempt at a joke around the benefits rebellion by saying that, actually, it’s an act of rebellion to force people into work.
And I know that some of you quite like rebellion, so we want apprenticeships that lead to real careers, training, not just once, but throughout life, taking the ambitions that we have as a country to build more homes, strengthen our defenses, ensure clean energy and equip our people to do the jobs, that is how we will make work pay.
No, I haven’t got a fucking clue what that has to do with rebellion either.
Finally, he gets to young people, by rehashing what Rachel Reeves already announced earlier today, that young people will be given “opportunities” but if they don’t take them they will lose their vital support, whilst the DWP also plans to cut UC health element for anyone under 22.
It’s not ambitious to act worse than the Tories
He finishes with:
So let us be ambitious. Let’s offer hope to those who feel forgotten or who can’t see a clear path to the future. Renew the bond between work and the welfare state, make work the pathway to dignity, security and pride, and in doing that conference together, let us build that opportunity welfare state.
The thing is, none of this sounds “ambitious”, and none of it will help those who have been forgotten. Instead, it will push those who can’t work into even more desperate circumstances and trap those who can’t afford to lose their support in low-paid work.
There is no “dignity and pride” in repackaging old Tory DWP plans and turning your back on the people you’ve pretended to care about for 15 years and leaving them to die.
Featured image via the Canary
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