At the start of the British Welfare State – the 1911 National Insurance Act – the medical help available was pretty limited. Much more important were cash benefits for people who were unable to work.
A secure income for people who are sick or disabled is still very important. Repeated Government initiatives over the last 50 years to clamp down on what is seen as abuse of the benefit system have not been very successful. The whole notion of capacity to work has become problematic. If Stephen Hawking can hold down a job then there cannot be many people who are physically incapable of work. But not everyone has his intellectual capacity. Denigration of vulnerable people has become very politically attractive. Given that the great majority of those unable to work have mental health problems this seems counter-productive at best.
Benefits and Health Seminar 2012
- A WELSH BENEFITS SYSTEM MAKES SENSE
- Personal Independence Payment – a fair deal for people with mental health problems?
- Speech to SHA AGM 2018
- DWP’s claims about Universal Credit
- Universal Credit? Never heard of it
- Britain’s social (in)security system: welfare conditionality and its impact on social citizenship
- The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions
- The Politics of Poverty
- Attitudes to social security in Britain today
- Universal Basic Income: Is it the only cornerstone of a just society?
- Citizen’s Basic Income: A brief introduction
- The truth about benefits sanctions
- Universal Basic Income: The Cornerstone of a Just Society?
- Towards a policy on Social Security
- ‘Dangerous’ new changes planned to force sick people into work – or into poverty
- The Work, Health and Disability Green Paper
- Welfare Reform
- Object to coercion, support the right to work
- Personal Budgets of the future
- Why we’re opposed to “Jobs on prescription”
- Support the WOWpetition
- The influence of the private insurance industry on the UK welfare reforms
- A tale of two general election years
- Changing Britain Together
- What is welfare spending?
- No Access to Work
- DWP’s Benefit Sanctions
- Independent Living
- Amendments to Labour Policies
- Work Capability Assessment
- The impact of welfare reform – time for action
- Government Reviewer Opposed Rollout of Employment and Support Allowance
- Investigating the real reason for the misery of ‘fit for work’ assessments
- Life Expectancy
- Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Parents, Their Children And Welfare Policies
- Austerity policies and Liverpool citizens
- Health and Social Security
- Memorandum On War Pensions
- The need to tackle Health Inequalities
- No more crook’s tours to pick up UK benefits, Lilley pledges
Background Material
- Disabled People Against Cuts
- DWP Unspun Everything the government doesn’t want you to know about work and benefits
- Benefits stigma in Britain
- Millions of working families one push from penury, Guardian research finds
- Report of our earlier conference: Advice and Information for Health Service Users
- The impact of national welfare reforms on Wolverhampton, alongside other disruptive factors, 2011-2017
- Welfare advice in primary care: A qualitative study of service user and staff perceptions
- Benefits in the Future – very detailed analysis of benefit changes
- Assessing the health benefits of advice services: using research evidence and logic model methods to explore complex pathways
- Evaluations of advice services in primary health care settings 2000
- Basic Income paper by Hermione Parker 1992
- The Beveridge Report 1942
- Poor Law Amendment Act 1834