No dialogue of equals with DWP

I have today written to the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions after being threatened, along with millions of others this week, with exile from the land of milk and honey that is jobseeker's allowance if I don't adhere strictly to the rules.

When I first read it I was shocked at the meanness of the letter, the lack of humanity, the complete absence of decency.  I realised that this style and form of communication is but a sample of the kind of thing which breaks the spirit of people and in some cases ends their will to live.  Read page 1 here and page 2 here.

Rather than let it go unchallenged, I decided to reply to the Secretary of State.  What follows is my letter to him.  I do not expect a reply from him but from one of his many staff.  I shall share it with you.  If that encourages you and those dear to you to write to Iain Duncan Smith in similar terms, we shall have achieved something.

some of the people reading this ‘letter’ may well
choose to die by their own hand than endure
much longer such a degrading and inhumane
culture as you have created

I ‘signed on’ again yesterday, 25^th October 2012, confirming to staff at the Dalkeith Job Centre + office that I was still actively looking for work, having become unemployed since April this year.  As part of my session with the member of JC+ staff, I was handed a double-sided paper and asked to sign confirming that I had received the ‘letter’ in question.   It was briefly explained that the ‘letter’ was about new sanctions which now apply should I fail to meet the conditions attached to receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance.

I asked if, once I had the space and time to read and absorb the ‘letter’, I would be able to respond to it.  Staff seemed unsure what the correct response to my question was, it seeming obvious that a meaningful 2-way dialogue between unemployed people and your Department of Work & Pensions is unusual to say the least.

I have now had the chance to read the ‘letter’, which I have presumed should have been signed by you.  For some reason it is unsigned.  Never a good indicator that a mature dialogue of equals is being encouraged or made available.  With the help of the internet I was able to establish your current address.

Your letter is not in fact a letter at all.  It is a crude proclamation of all sorts of dire consequences should people – do remember we are people, each and every one of us – ‘fail to meet the conditions attached to receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance’.  It is clearly inspired by the kind of thing the Sherriff of Nottingham was said to have had nailed up in public places to dissuade the local population from supporting that socialist Robin Hood.

It reminds me what I must do to qualify for Jobseeker’s Allowance.

It then lists errors or failures of mine which will lead to my losing benefit for 13 weeks, 26 weeks, or even 156 weeks, explaining that the length of exile from qualification for benefit will be based on whether I have committed theses errors or failures for the first, second or third time in the last 52 weeks.  In turn, this headline of threats is followed by the unfurling of even more detailed illustrations of wretched and depraved acts on my part which would lead to my exile from the benefit safety net for the various periods which you have decided will fit the crime I will be deemed to have committed.  Nothing in it offers any remote acceptance that I might be a decent human being doing the right thing.  Do MPs get this kind of brutalist communication from the office responsible for monitoring expense claims ?

It is a most despairing, heartless and mean epistle from a government minister and crudely disseminated to a considerable cohort of diverse people, the vast majority of whom would rather be in work.  It reflects badly on you and your government that on neither of the two sides of the ‘letter’ do you offer any hope, any articulation of decency, or any indication or trace of humanity, in that some of the people reading this ‘letter’ may well choose to die by their own hand than endure much longer such a degrading and inhumane culture as you have created and inspired in your department and which this latest ‘letter’ epitomises.

I acknowledge your ‘letter’ to me this week. 

In turn, I reply.

In future, I would ask that you and your staff treat me with a modicum of dignity and respect.  Even though I am unemployed, I remain a human being.  Leastways that was what it looked like when I looked in the mirror this morning.  In this particular instance, I would ask you to address letters to me properly, using my name and address.  The technology available to government requires minimal effort to achieve such a simple outcome.  The dividends from such an approach are immeasurable.

In future, I would ask that you or an appropriate staffer sign such letters and provide me and others with contact details, including email, which allow for responses and so create a culture of dialogue.  I presume you and your colleagues do not simply want to hector me and other unemployed people via the rather cowardly megaphone of unsigned letters.

In future, when you plan to issue further threats, warnings or proclamations which demonise me and other unemployed people, can I suggest that if you truly seek to reduce the number of unemployed people as opposed to throw more jerry cans of petrol on the flames of prejudice against unemployed people, your messages should include as much positive statements on real support, meaningful assistance and client-centred guidance as I and others may need to secure employment, as it does currently with negative hectoring and threatening ?  In this two page ‘letter’ there was nothing positive addressed at the circumstances of my particular case and which showed an awareness of the efforts I have been making to get back into work.  I am reduced to a cipher in your model of the world and in your style of communication.  I cannot and will not accept that.

I happily accept all of my responsibilities to be active in seeking work and to minimise the demands I make on the state to support me during this time.  I challenge you to accept that you too have responsibilities as well - to ensure that the culture and practices within your department need to undergo fundamental change to ensure that I and millions of others are treated with dignity and respect while accessing the services your department provides.

The Barber, the Baroness and the Philosopher Fish Fryer

Just when you start to think that just maybe things have bottomed out, that they can't get any worse, under this 'coalition' government they do.

The government has been taking an amphetamine-fuelled Sweeney Todd-like approach to the budget, the role and the staff of the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC].  So deep and brutal are these cuts that some doubt the EHRC will be able to retain its Paris Principles status as a body recognised by the UN as a national institution for the protection and promotion of human rights.

At the same time and since coming to power in 2010, government has been tearing pages out of the Equality Act 2010, with the most recent provisions binned including the protection of workers from 3rd party harassment.  

Trevor Phillips

The Chairperson of the EHRC since 2006, Trevor Phillips, was allowed to leave his job in September 2012, with Home Secretary Theresa May in no way inclined to re-appoint him for another term.

Against this blood-spattered backcloth, who does Culture Secertary & Equalities Minister, Maria Miller, unveil as her preferred successor to Trevor ?  Onora O'Neill, Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve, has emerged to that inevitable chorus of 'Who ?' from those labouring in the parched vine-yards of equality.  A life peer, O'Neill was educated at the fee-paying St Paul's Girls' School in west London, before reading philosophy, psychology and physiology at Somerville College, Oxford. She also studied at Harvard University.  When one examines her various biographies, there is scant reference to activity in or major contributions to what might be recognised as practical work on equalities.

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve

The decision to ask a Baroness to lead our equalities and human rights independent regulator was subject to pre-appointment scrutiny by the parliament's joint committee on human rights.  A transcript of that session can be found here.

It offers some insight into the insular world of politics and the sharing out of jobs for 'people like us'.  For instance, asked if she was expecting to continue with other work alongside being Chairperson of the EHRC, Baroness O'Neill said : 

"Certainly.  It is a two-day-a-week post and I have plenty of other fish to fry."

For a two-day week job the Baroness will pocket a rather tasty £56,000 a year.  She'll be able to buy shed-loads of chips to go with the fish she plans to fry during the rest of her working week.

When asked to identify the skills she would bring to the job, Baroness O'Neill said : 

"By trade, by training, I am a philosopher. I do a lot of political philosophy. I have written and thought about the arguments for various conceptions of human rights across some decades. I have also written on equality. I have the intellectual background."

First time I have ever heard a philosopher describe themselves as a tradesperson.  Something tells me we would have much more reason to hope for the future of the EHRC and of equalities and human rights if a Polish plumber was asked to lead the organisation.

Baroness O'Neill also went on to claim a practical background : 

"I have chaired a number of middle-sized organisations in the voluntary sector and on the cusp of public and private — in particular, Newnham College, Cambridge; the British Academy; and the Nuffield Foundation —with smaller budgets but not out of range, and I have a very strong commitment to good governance and good collegial relations."

So, practical as in chairing organisations.  No evidence of practice in eliminating discrimination, promoting equality of opportunity or in fostering good relations.  Not much to pick between her fitness in this role and that of the homeopathy loving Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary.

When asked about the relationship between equalities and human rights, the Baroness, who had previously claimed to "communicate clearly", offered the following response :

"I am not sure I find it useful to talk about a right to equality.  Of course, it comes out as meaning a right to equal respect and equal opportunity, but it is not, so to speak, on a footing with other rights, and it is—what shall I say?—a context without which the very development of human rights would be impossible. My view is that some equalities are impossible: “Which of you by taking thought can add but one cubit to his stature?” Equality of height is not a possible aspiration. Equalities of other sorts are probably undesirable: if all our voices had the same timbre, imagine how difficult it would be for the people listening to this particular hearing.  Other equalities are possible but not very important.  Then there are important equalities, morally important equalities, of which I would put the right to equal respect for all persons absolutely at the top. So we have to distinguish among equalities.  It is why I will always try to talk about equalities in the plural, because it is not just one thing."  

Clear?  As mud.  And she now leads the EHRC.  

At no time does the Committee ask the Baroness how she would, for those people beyond the closed world of Westminster, explain what might be seen as a fundamental contradiction with the idea that a fish-frying member of the anachronism that is the House of Lords should be asked to lead the EHRC.

A Letter from Scotland - Bathgate no more, Linwood no more, Equality no more

Nicola Sturgeon - elected not
 to redeem the £280 + million
 equal pay IOU

In the last few months, Scottish government has tried to stir up the apathy on an independence referendum by re-shuffling the brat pack that is the cabinet.  It attracted slightly less media interest than did the buffoonish Mayor of London getting stuck on a zip wire at the Olympics.

Until the re-shuffle, Nicola Sturgeon, Cabinet Secretary for Health, had responsibility for equality tucked away in her jaggy tweed suit pockets.  Nicola's footnote in history will not be because of anything she did to eliminate discrimination or deliver such as equality of opportunity.  She will probably be remembered as the woman with the power to have made equal pay happen in Scotland's NHS, but who elected instead not to redeem the £280+ million equal pay IOU.

And who has been handed that IOU ?  None other than Scotland's own economics guru, the 'shovel ready' Alex Neil.  It was Alex who said, in a bad tempered evidence session in March 2011 with the Equal Opportunities Committee as he tried to bounce them into accepting poorly drafted specific equality duties for Scotland, on some of the criticisms of plans for impact assessments the Committee had heard :

'Shovel Ready' Alex Neil

I do not accept the criticism—quite the opposite. The criticism is ill founded.

For those who follow these things, the 'ill founded criticism' was heeded by the Committee, the draft specific equality duties thrown out, and Alex sent away empty handed.

Keen to see which of the new re-shuffled brat pack now had equalities in their bag, I checked the Scottish government web site.  In what is clearly a tribute to Stalin, equalities have been air-brushed out of the various portfolio splits.  Time to get the Proclaimers to revisit 'Letter from America'?  Bathgate no more, Linwood no more, Equality no more.

Bathgate no more, Linwood no more, Equality no more.

When I asked Scottish government why we were not asking ministers to build equalities any more in Scotland, I was told :

The portfolio responsibility for Equality remains with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Well-being.  I have contacted Mr Neil’s private office and they will ensure that the website is updated and that Equality is added.

the staff in the government's equalities
unit had not noticed they now had
no political master and were adrift and
abandoned on the high seas of
government's flotsam and jetsam

 It strikes me as odd that it should have been dropped in the first place.  One can only hope that other equally important responsibilities have not been left on the bus.  It does also make me wonder why the staff in the government's equalities unit had not noticed they now had no political master and were adrift and abandoned on the high seas of government’s flotsam and jetsam.

The response was dated 11th October.  The web site page remains unchanged.  Equality remains a low priority and is clearly unloved, unwanted and adrift in the high seas of discrimination and prejudice which pollute Scotland's public sector.

Scotland's closets overcrowded with people too scared to come out and reveal just who they are

As a result of recent research into equal pay audits on gender, race and disability, I have come to conclude that there is powerful evidence that discrimination remains structural, institutional and thriving in the workplace culture of today's public sector in Scotland.

The EHRC has reminded public bodies that discrimination exists in any number of ways in the workplace, and that it can be found in the pay systems public bodies use.  The EHRC’s draft Code of Practice on Equal Pay says, on page 9, paragraph 11 : 

Although this code relates to equal pay between women and men, pay systems may be open to challenge on grounds of race, age or other protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

The research provides a timely reminder that there is another hugely important perspective to unearthing discrimination in pay systems other than the obvious one of conducting an equal pay audit.  I believe that there is more than a whiff of discrimination wafting through the corridors of public sector workplaces and their policies, practices and culture.  When great swathes of any public sector workforce are unable, unwilling or simply afraid to identify themselves by the commonly used equalities criteria, then that public sector employer gives safe haven and succour to prejudice, bigotry and discrimination.

My research reveals that in Scotland's councils and health boards, 21% [51,022 people] of council staff are unwilling to identify their ethnicity.  In health boards the proportion of staff unhappy about identifying ethnicity is at 32.36% or 46,270  people.  In other words, after more that 30 years of 'work' on race equality in the public sector, close to 100,000 people working in Scotland's public sector cannot be persuaded to positively identify their ethnicity to their employers.  

When it came to people being asked to identify if they had a disability, 26.21% of council staff [62,353 people] are unable, unwilling or afraid to positively identify in this way.  In health boards the proportion of staff afraid to positively identify rockets up to 61.98%, or 91,232 people.  Disability equality 'work' in the public sector goes even further back than the decades of 'work' on race equality, and yet in 2012 over 153,000 people can't be persuaded to identify their disability status to their employers.

For whatever reason, people working in the public sector are clearly not trusting their employer to know who they are in terms of mainstream equality criteria.  I believe it reflects not only a lack of trust, but also that this lack of trust is based on an observed failure to evidence equality of opportunity for all as a real lived experience for people in their workplaces.  It reflects an experience of discrimination for many people which is systemic across the major structures of public life.  Scotland's workplace closets are overcrowded with people who are too scared to come out and reveal to their employer just who they are.

The conclusions in my research on remedying this flaw in work being done by public bodies to meet their legal duties on equal pay are :

There would be merit in government considering the setting up of a centrally located additional support and advice resource for public bodies to ensure that they can win the positive support of their workforce in reducing the levels of ‘unknown’ counts to less than 10% by 2015, and to less than 5% by 2017.  This central resource could draw heavily on the good practice of those public bodies which currently have low level ‘unknown’ counts.

Alongside that, and for those public bodies with high ‘unknown’ counts, there would be practical merit in them using the requirement to set Equality Outcomes as a vehicle for demonstrating a high level organisation commitment to reducing the ‘unknown’ counts in workforce profiling.  This would provide stakeholders with a clear measurable target which can not only be tracked over time but also leads on to provide an evidence base of equality not only in such as equal pay but also in occupational segregation and career development.

Unequal pay in the NHS leaves women with nothing but a £280+million IOU from Nicola Sturgeon

Aneurin Bevan

Almost 3 years ago, Nicola Sturgeon was Scotland's government minister for, amongst other things, the NHS and for equalities.

At the time Nicola was explaining to the parliamentary Equal Opportunities Committee why women in Scotland's NHS would have to wait just a bit longer before their pay packets would find the same amount in them as the men working alongside them and doing the same or similar work.  In October 2009, Nicola [who appears to harbour serious delusions in encouraging those around her to make positive and complimentary comparisons between her and Aneurin Bevan] responded to a question from the Committee :

'It was indicated [at a previous Committee round-table discussion on equal pay reviews] that advice had been given to NHS boards not to perform equal pay reviews to ensure that agenda for change remains equal-pay-proofed. I want to clarify that that is not the case. There remains an issue about the extent to which such reviews can be carried out while agenda for change reviews are under way, but there is a clear expectation that all boards will get on and complete those reviews as quickly as they can, and that they will go beyond the letter of the law to ensure that they are exemplary employers that live up to all the duties required of them.' [6^th October 2009]

In recent months I have conducted research across all of Scotland's councils and health boards to clarify just what the equal pay gap is in Scotland's public sector currently.

Three years on from that very clear and unequivocal assurance given by Nicola Sturgeon to the Scottish Parliament, I have found that across the NHS in Scotland’s 22 Boards, just 2 [9.09%] of the Boards were able to provide data on the gender pay gap. This shows a gender pay gap of either 4.3% at NHS 24 or 12.9% at the NHS State Hospital. This means that just 1 Scottish NHS Board has a gender pay gap which comes within the 5% criteria set by the EHRC.

Remember what she said :

there is a clear expectation that all boards will get on and complete those reviews as quickly as they can, and that they will go beyond the letter of the law to ensure that they are exemplary employers that live up to all the duties required of them

One can but conclude that she was either misleading the Committee - and the citizens of Scotland - or she was not really able to make the 22 NHS Boards do her bidding.  Any other scenarios warmly welcomed, and I promise to publish the best ones.

Nicola Sturgeon - on the right

It is sad.  Making equal pay a reality for the 140,000+ women and men working in our NHS would have been a significant footnote to Nicola Sturgeon's term in office as Cabinet Secretary for Health.  Instead her monster of a footnote on leaving that office will be that she abandoned over 109,000+ women working in the NHS with pay systems which have still not been subject to an equal pay audit.

It is more than just the absence of equal pay audits.  The whole idea of equal pay legislation has been to put into the pay packets of women the money which has been systematically stolen from them for decades.  The scale of the theft involved is far from the proverbial peanuts.

If one uses data provided by the Office for National Statistics, this shows that the average weekly earnings across the UK are £539 a week.  In Scotland the figure [at April 2011]  was £517.50, for men.  For women in Scotland, the government reckons that the equal pay gap in 2011, based on average earnings, was 10.7%.

This translates to a difference, a pay theft, of £55.37 per week.  Apply that differential to the 109,000 women left behind by Nicola Sturgeon.  The 109,000 women whose pay systems have not been subject to equal pay audits.  The 109,000+ women in the NHS whose employers have certainly not evidenced getting near the letter of the law, never mind going beyond it.

109,000 women, each due on average £55.37 a week, roughly.  Let's make it easy.  Let's call it £50 a week.  For each woman, that would mean equal pay would give her an additional £2,600 a year in her pay packet.  Imagine the difference that would make to women, right now, in the middle of a massive recession.  Then times all of that by at least 109,000.  In any one year, using 2011 earnings data, women working in Scotland's NHS are having their earnings ripped off to the tune £283,400,000 a year.  

If my arithmetical dexterity strikes you as somewhat dodgy and reads more like the voodoo economics used way back by Ronald Reagan and now revived by George Osborne and John Swinney, you might want to check out a 2011 report published by the EHRC on equal pay.  Their arithmetic offers this illustration of the thievery going on : 

In a woman’s working career from age 18-59 it is estimated that she would lose approximately £361,000 in gross earnings compared to an equivalent male.

Using that indicator, the scale of theft visited on the women working in our NHS would amount to £39,349,000,000.

History tells us that Nye Bevan, the government minister with responsibility for the creation of the NHS, resigned in 1951 from government when the then Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell announced the introduction of prescription charges.  History will show that Nicola Sturgeon left her post as Cabinet Secretary for Health in Scotland knowing full well that over 109,000 women workers in the NHS were being cheated out of equal pay to the tune of over £280 million a year.

No longer safe to be different

The enforcer of equalities law in the UK, the Equality & Human Rights Commission, has been brought to its knees by the coalition government's butchering of its budgets.

As of today, the neutered EHRC's hands are being tied behind its back.  The helpline it used to operate across the UK has been shut down and replaced by a private sector company, SITEL, which has its home down with the good old boys in Nashville, in the US.  The UK branch office of the multi-national contact centre specialists is in Watford.  It would be.

SITEL knows bugger all about equality.  It knows a lot about telephone contact centres and making money.  They have managed to persuade a number of UK voluntary sector organisations to take some of their tainted money and advise them and the SITEL employees who answer the helpline on how to deal with callers needing advice on all matters under the fast fading sun of equalities and human rights in the UK.  In other words, SITEL doesn't do equalities.  It answers phones.  That speaks volumes for the criteria used by the coalition government to award the contract for the new helpline.

It will also come as no surprise to know that SITEL does not recognise trade unions.  Tennessee has a long and bloody history of never allowing trade unions to thrive, in any sector.

If you need help with an employer deciding that they can't be bothered doing an equal pay audit, call SITEL on 0800 444 205.  If they take too long to answer the phone, you can write to them at : FREEPOST Equality Advisory Support Service FPN4431.

If you need help with a service provider not being bothered to provide their service in a manner which suits your particular communication support needs, call SITEL.

If you find SITEL doesn't do what it says on the side of the re-cycled fried chicken carton in which your advice is eventually offered, don't bother phoning the EHRC.  By our silence and our inactions, we have allowed the coalition government to diminish the policing of equality in the UK to risible levels.  

It is no longer safe to be different in the UK.