Picking the right target
The government's focus on showing how tough they are on migrant workers and people in receipt of benefits is either a clever distraction from the real issues or a politically prejudiced and vindictive assault on easy and vulnerable targets. With an economy stagnating and unemployment remaining high with particularly severe challenges for young people looking for work, for the Government to make tackling up on access to public services for migrant workers the 'central theme' of their parliamentary programme for the year ahead beggar's belief.
Overwhelmingly migrant workers make a positive contribution to the UK economy. Many employers have commented about the strong work ethic and about the importance of being able to access a broad pool of labour to fulfil their skills shortages. It's not just in low-paid, relatively menial work that migrant workers but also in medium and high-skilled jobs. The problem with the Tory-led anti-migrant rhetoric is that it creates an unjustifiable slur on all migrants, presenting them all as being in the UK on some kind of benefits holiday and playing in to the increasingly divisive, racist and counter-productive diatribe of the far right that are present and active in the region.
Similarly, the constant haranguing of anyone in receipt of benefits is equally unfair. The vast, vast majority of people who qualify for social security payments are not 'scroungers', most are actually in work but enduring such low pay that they need their wages topped up to meet minimum income standards just to get by - low paying employers have wages topped up by as much as £6billion each year. Those who aren't in work overwhelmingly want to be, but the insecure, vulnerable nature of low-paying employment is not just a disincentive it also fails to offer a route out of dependence on welfare to have a reasonable standard of living.
All the talk of benefit fraud is totally misleading too. The government's own figures show that fraud accounts for as little as 0.7 per cent of the benefit bill. Contrast this to the increasingly out in the open cost of tax evasion to the exchequer. With still more to come out it is already known that at least £25billion of tax revenue goes uncollected every year due to tax avoidance and evasion - the real figure is more likely to be nearer £100billion. That's where the government should be concentrating its attention, not the penny-pinching mean approach to pressurising the most vulnerable in our communities.
The choice of priorities is illuminating. There was nothing in the Queen's Speech to give any encouragement to a stagnant economy, nothing to help those hard pressed and desperate long-term unemployed people back into work, nothing to tackle the growing problem of poverty in the UK, merely a pointed and prejudiced attack, scape-goating those least able to defend themselves against the constant onslaught from this Tory-led Coalition.
It's the wrong set of policies at the wrong time and will make matters worse, not better.
Kevin Rowan
Head of Organising and Services
TUC
Stay Updated
Want to hear about our latest news and blogs?
Sign up now to get it straight to your inbox