Menu
Sign In Pricing Add Podcast

John Pring

Appearances

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

1230.838

On a very basic level, people aren't getting the support they need. And PIP is there to contribute towards the extra costs that disabled people face in their daily lives. The extra costs around the house, for instance, if you're not able to do your own cleaning or you can't look after your own garden or or you need to take taxis more often than most people.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

1250.437

All these kind of things are really, really important. And that's what PIP is there for.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

1495.697

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, without doubt. Because otherwise we're going to be doomed to repeat what has happened over the last 30 years. And there are two big waves of DWP reforms coming up. There's going to be an employment white paper coming up in the autumn, and then there's going to be a disability benefits paper coming up in the spring. For one thing, the MPs don't know the past history.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

1516.564

So if the MPs voting on these measures don't know the past history, then how can they judge whether these measures are going to be helpful or not? And that's why we've been... trying to, and some brilliant activists did it crowdfunded to get a copy of my book to every MP in the House of Commons. Hopefully some of them will read it.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

1734.417

I've got something interesting on this. Something I dug up in the National Archives from, I think it was the early 2000s, maybe. At that point, they were talking about tribunal cases, I think, that were coming down on the side of claimants about 50% of the time. And they said at the time, well, yeah, 50%, we're comfortable with that. But if it ever got to 70%, then I...

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

1755.503

I think, you know, we would have a problem and we would need to do something about it. But it has got to 70% in the 2010s. And recently, I think it's that right, Caroline, that some of the tribunal, the percentage of cases taken to tribunal by benefit claimants appealing against those benefit decisions, it's got to about 70%.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

505.287

Oh, vital. I mean, they're a safety net. There's income-related benefits and there's disability-related benefits and they're both absolutely crucial to disabled people and they would not be able to survive without them. And as the research has shown, you know, sometimes, you know, when they are taken away, they do not survive.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

705.424

I think that's the kind of key question my book's about, really, this idea of slow bureaucratic violence. The first death I found was 1996. There were a couple of others early 1997 before Labour came into power. And I think the harm, the violence built gradually, slowly over those years and then gradually In the post-2010 austerity years, it kind of exploded into violence.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

731.598

And I don't think that's an exaggeration at all. Those years between 2010 and 2013, 2014 were just horrific.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

748.07

Some of it is sanctions. A lot of them are about the assessment process. So a lot of them were people who took their own lives. One or two who literally starved to death, who had their benefits removed. Errol Graham, for instance, from Nottingham. He missed his assessment. He had severe mental distress and he locked himself in his flat. He missed a work capability assessment.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

772.007

They cut off his benefits. They cut off his gas. And I mean, it's so distressing to think about it. But over the course of about nine, 12 months, he literally starved to death. That's the violence we're talking about. Yeah.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

808.939

The first company that everyone always talks about is Atos, which is a French company. And they have fortunately now been removed from that process. The last government recently retended all the contracts. But Capita is another one that was involved. Maximus is another. It's an American huge outsourcing giant.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

828.215

We also need to talk about Unum, which is a massive insurance company, again, American based. and was lobbying the government very, very hard from the mid 1990s to make the assessment processes as tight as they possibly could. And that would encourage people to take out their private insurance policies because they realised that they might not get the support they need if they became ill.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

945.711

There was a change in policy under the coalition that pressured staff to refer more claimants to have their benefits sanctioned. So the performance of the job centre staff was measured by what they called off-benefit flows. So the number of claimants who stopped receiving an out-of-work benefit, even if they'd not secured a job. And that led to a huge increase in sanctioning rates.

Pod Save the UK

Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring

963.897

We're talking 2010 to 2013. And it reached more than a million sanctions in 2013, which is about 345% above the average level 2001-2008. And this kind of top-down pressure on staff acted as what they called a moral anesthetic, which they say made invisible the needs and interests of the claimants they were sanctioning.