The Labour government is absolutely determined to impress its big business backers and show them that it is ready to take action against ‘slackers’ and ‘terrorist suspects’ and their families – for the benefit of the country of course.
The Treasury’s Economic Secretary, Ed Balls, has just announced that relatives of ‘listed’ terrorist suspects, are to have their state benefits removed to make sure that taxpayers’ money is not getting into the hands of terrorists.
First of all, a terrorist suspect is by definition a person who has never been found guilty of a terrorist offence, either by a jury or even by a non-jury court.
The Labour leadership, having overthrown innocent until proven guilty, have embraced its opposite, guilty until you can convince the state otherwise.
They have also embraced guilt by association as far as the husbands, wives, daughters, sons, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles and cousins of the suspects are concerned.
This is not just guilt by association, it is also an example of a state imposing a completely illegal collective punishment.
But these suspects are not alone on the Labour hit list.
There are also the 2.7 million listed ‘suspect idlers’ who are currently claiming Incapacity Benefit.
New Labour intends to deal with all 2.7 million suspects by ending Incapacity Benefit by 2007.
The initial target aims to get one million sick or disabled people into jobs. If they refuse and insist that they are sick, their benefits, including Housing Benefit, will be stopped.
By 2008 every person who was on Incapacity Benefit will be on an employment and support allowance and be looking for work.
This change will save the state an estimated £7 billion a year, which will be handed over in subsidies to big business.
The only exemptions will be for the very severely disabled, presumably those without arms and legs.
This is the regime that Labour has planned for the sick and disabled.
They plan to ‘replace Incapacity Benefit with a new employment and support allowance. . .
‘Change the way we assess people for the new allowance so we measure how much they can do, rather than writing them off as incapable . . .
‘Strengthen the “something for something” deal to help people back to work, with compulsory work-focussed interviews, action plans and work-related activity appropriate to each claimant’s condition. Claimants who are not exempt will be obliged to participate or risk having their benefits sanctioned.’
Currently, 2.7 million claim Incapacity Benefit at an annual cost of £12.5 billion. This is less than £100 a week, less than a city businessman will pay for a first course for his dinner. Eliminating Incapacity Benefit and driving the sick out to work will save £7 billion a year.
‘Further steps to increase employment opportunity – such as providing more support to lone parents and breaking down the barriers to work experienced by older people – will be implemented through secondary legislation.’
The bill will also contain measures replacing Housing Benefit in the private rented sector with a new inferior Local Housing Allowance.
It will ‘Create new sanctions for anti-social tenants who refuse to address their problem behaviour after they have been evicted.’
It will ‘Strengthen the “two strikes” rule so people who commit a second benefit offence within five years of being convicted of the first one can have their benefits withdrawn or reduced. The current time limit is three years.’
Government attacks on the benefits of the working class, the sick and the poor must be defeated.
The way to do this is for the working class to bring down the Blair government to go forward to a workers’ government that will carry out socialist policies.
