Views, Visions and Values.

Monday 20 January 2014

Housing benefit ban on jobless migrants: Ministers' new crackdown to stop Britain's welfare system being magnet to citizens of other EU states, Daily Mail

New rules mean EU arrivals claiming jobseeker's allowance will not be able to receive housing benefit as well
Those who get jobs but then lose them will only be entitled to housing benefit for six months
Ministers hope the measures will cut migration to the UK from EU states
But both Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa May say more needs to be done

PUBLISHED: 23:14, 19 January 2014 | UPDATED: 00:14, 20 January 2014

Jobless immigrants are to be denied housing benefit.

Writing in the Mail today, Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa May say Britain’s generous welfare system should no longer be a magnet for citizens of other EU states.

The Work and Pensions Secretary and the Home Secretary claim Labour doled out millions of pounds ‘for people to sit on benefits’ while opening the door to mass migration.

They pointed to incendiary figures showing the number of Britons in jobs plunged by 413,000 between 2005 and 2010, while the number of working foreigners soared by 736,000.

Less appealing: Ministers have outlined a tough new crackdown on migrants claiming benefits in a bid to get annual net migration down to the tens of thousands

New rules: Home secretary Theresa May, pictured left, and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith, pictured right, claim the Government's reforms to welfare and immigration systems are beginning to pay off

They said this was a shameful betrayal and evidence that immigration can displace some British workers and depress wages for the low-skilled.

Under the new rules, to be introduced in April, new European arrivals claiming jobseeker’s allowance will not be able to receive housing benefit as well.

Those who get jobs but then go on to out-of-work handouts will be able to claim housing benefit for up to six months.

After this they will have to show they have a genuine prospect of work.

Housing benefit helps cover accommodation costs for people who are out of work or on low incomes.

Strict: Under the new regulations, EU arrivals claiming jobseeker's allowance will not be able to claim housing benefit as well

Under emergency regulations that took effect on January 1, all new EU migrants now have to wait for at least three months before they can claim out-of-work benefits.

In their article, Mr Duncan Smith and Mrs May say the Government’s reforms to the welfare and immigration systems are beginning to pay off.

Between 2010 and 2013, the number of Britons in jobs rose by 538,000, while the number of working foreigners increased by 247,000.

The figures are even more striking for the year 2012-13 with 348,000 more British workers and only 26,000 from abroad.

Employment minister Esther McVey has claimed the Government's long-term economic plan has helped create 1.6million private sector jobs

The ministers say the new £26,000-a-year cap on household benefit claims has affected 33,000 families and encouraged up to 19,000 to return to work.

A limit on economic migrants from outside the EU, changes to the rules on family and student visas and a crackdown on bogus colleges have helped bring down net migration by nearly a third from its peak.

However, Mr Duncan Smith and Mrs May admit there is ‘much more to do’ to meet a Tory target of getting annual net migration down to the tens of thousands.

Ministers have set out a series of measures to limit migrant access to public services and benefits to try to reduce further so-called ‘pull factors’ to the UK.

Landlords will be fined up to £3,000 if they rent a property to an illegal immigrant, while non-EU migrants will be expected to pay a levy of £200 a year to access the NHS if they do not have private healthcare.

The changes to the housing benefit rules will not affect UK and Irish Republic nationals, or European migrants genuinely self-employed or in a job.

European nationals who have been working in the UK, and are subsequently made redundant and claim benefits, will not be affected.

Historically, EU migrants have been able to lodge a claim for the benefit as soon as they arrive in Britain and pass a ‘habitual residence test’ under EU rules.

The Government’s reforms mean they will not be able to make a housing benefit claim at any point unless they are in work.

Employment minister Esther McVey said the Government’s long-term economic plan had helped create 1.6million private sector jobs.

This shameful betrayal

By IAIN DUNCAN SMITH AND THERESA MAY

It was a shameful betrayal of thousands of British workers. For years Labour presided over a labour market where the number of foreign people in jobs rocketed to record levels – while thousands of British workers were left on the sidelines, facing the prospect of long-term unemployment.

Today – as Work and Pensions Secretary and Home Secretary – we publish a devastating analysis which lays bare the shocking scale of Labour’s failure.

But this analysis also demonstrates how this Government’s long-term economic plan is putting things right.

Welfare reform and controlling immigration are at the very core of this plan – and if we are to strike the right balance for a strong, sustainable economy, we cannot look at these issues in isolation.

Both Home Secretary Theresa May, pictured with Prime Minister David Cameron, and Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith claim Labour doled out millions in benefits while allowing mass migration

Labour failed to recognise that if you have a welfare system that doesn’t make work worthwhile or support people into jobs, you pay the price elsewhere.

With one hand, Labour doled out millions of pounds for people to sit on benefits. With the other, they opened the door to mass migration, with those from abroad filling jobs which our own people didn’t want or couldn’t get.

In just five years between 2005 and 2010, for every British person who fell out of work, almost two foreign nationals gained employment.

Now, the Home Office and Department for Work and Pensions are working together to put this travesty right.

Already, we are seeing success in reforming welfare and restoring the incentive for British people to get back to work.

Iain Duncan Smith argues that the Government is now reversing the damage done under Labour

Take the benefit cap: already 33,000 households have had their benefits cut so they receive no more than average earnings, and 19,000 potentially capped claimants have returned to work.

As a result, as our economy picks up, we have reversed the damaging trend under Labour. The latest data shows that of the rise in employment over the past year, over 90 per cent went to UK nationals.

We’re also putting right the mess Labour left on immigration. Of course immigration, over the generations, has made a tremendously rich contribution to our country, both culturally and in terms of the talent it brings – but it must be controlled.

We know that the idea there’s a set number of jobs to be divided up and handed around is wrong, and things are far more complicated than the simplistic notion that all immigrants come and ‘take British jobs’.

But evidence from the Migration Advisory Committee and other academic studies has demonstrated that immigration can displace some British workers in the labour market. So we have tightened up the system... and the latest figures show our reforms are working.

For those migrants who do come here, we’re ensuring they are unable to take unfair advantage of our system by accessing benefits as soon as they arrive.

For example, we introduced rules so that from January 1 this year we are banning individuals from receiving out-of-work benefits until they have been living in the UK for three months. And we will go still further: from the beginning of April we will be removing entitlement to housing benefit altogether for this group.

In addition, EU migrants can only claim jobseeker’s allowance for six months unless they have genuine prospects of finding work. No longer can people come here from abroad and expect to get something for nothing.

Together, these new immigration and benefit checks will clamp down on those trying to exploit the system. We can ensure that Britain’s growing economy and dynamic jobs market deliver for those who work hard and play by the rules.

Lions and donkeys: 10 big myths about World War One debunked, Dan Show BBC News

Much of what we think we know about the 1914-18 conflict is wrong, writes historian Dan Snow.

No war in history attracts more controversy and myth than World War One.

For the soldiers who fought it was in some ways better than previous conflicts, and in some ways worse.

By setting it apart as uniquely awful we are blinding ourselves to the reality of not just WW1 but war in general. We are also in danger of belittling the experience of soldiers and civilians caught up in countless other appalling conflicts throughout history and the present day.

It was the bloodiest war in history to that point

Fifty years before WW1 broke out, southern China was torn apart by an even bloodier conflict. Conservative estimates of the dead in the 14-year Taiping rebellion start at between 20 and 30 million. Around 17 million soldiers and civilians were killed during WW1.

Although more Britons died in WW1 than any other conflict, the bloodiest war in our history relative to population size is the Civil War which raged in the mid-17th Century. It saw a far higher proportion of the population of the British Isles killed than the less than 2% who died in WW1. By contrast around 4% of the population of England and Wales, and considerably more than that in Scotland and Ireland, are thought to have been killed in the Civil War.

Most soldiers died

In the UK around six million men were mobilised, and of those just over 700,000 were killed. That's around 11.5%.

In fact, as a British soldier you were more likely to die during the Crimean War (1853-1856) than in WW1.

Trenches in WW1

Men lived in the trenches for years on end

Frontline trenches could be a terribly hostile place to live. Often wet, cold and exposed to the enemy, units would quickly lose their morale if they spent too much time in them.

As a result, the British army rotated men in and out continuously. Between battles, a unit spent perhaps 10 days a month in the trench system, and of those, rarely more than three days right up on the frontline. It was not unusual to be out of the line for a month.

During moments of crisis, such as big offensives, the British could occasionally spend up to seven days on the frontline but were far more often rotated out after just a day or two.

The upper class got off lightly

Although the great majority of casualties in WW1 were from the working class, the social and political elite was hit disproportionately hard by WW1. Their sons provided the junior officers whose job it was to lead the way over the top and expose themselves to the greatest danger as an example to their men.

Some 12% of the British army's ordinary soldiers were killed during the war, compared with 17% of its officers. Eton alone lost more than 1,000 former pupils - 20% of those who served. UK wartime Prime Minister Herbert Asquith lost a son, while future Prime Minister Bonar Law lost two. Anthony Eden lost two brothers, another brother of his was terribly wounded and an uncle was captured.

'Lions led by donkeys'

George V and his generals, Buckingham Palace 1918

“Start Quote

British commanders were thrust into a massive industrial struggle unlike anything the Army had ever seen”

This saying was supposed to have come from senior German commanders describing brave British soldiers led by incompetent old toffs from their chateaux. In fact it was made up by historian Alan Clark.

During the war more than 200 generals were killed, wounded or captured. Most visited the frontlines every day. In battle they were considerably closer to the action than generals are today.

Naturally, some generals were not up to the job, but others were brilliant, such as Arthur Currie, a middle-class Canadian failed insurance broker and property developer.

Rarely in history have commanders had to adapt to a more radically different technological environment.

British commanders had been trained to fight small colonial wars, now they were thrust into a massive industrial struggle unlike anything the British army had ever seen.

Despite this, within three years the British had effectively invented a method of warfare still recognisable today. By the summer of 1918 the British army was probably at its best ever and it inflicted crushing defeats on the Germans.

Gallipoli was fought by Australians and New Zealanders

Australians and New Zealanders mark Anzac Day in Gallipoli, 2011

Far more British soldiers fought on the Gallipoli peninsula than Australians and New Zealanders put together.

The UK lost four or five times as many men in the brutal campaign as her imperial Anzac contingents. The French also lost more men than the Australians.

The Aussies and Kiwis commemorate Gallipoli ardently, and understandably so, as their casualties do represent terrible losses both as a proportion of their forces committed and of their small populations.

Tactics on the Western Front remained unchanged despite repeated failure

Never have tactics and technology changed so radically in four years of fighting. It was a time of extraordinary innovation. In 1914 generals on horseback galloped across battlefields as men in cloth caps charged the enemy without the necessary covering fire. Both sides were overwhelmingly armed with rifles. Four years later, steel-helmeted combat teams dashed forward protected by a curtain of artillery shells.

They were now armed with flame throwers, portable machine guns and grenades fired from rifles. Above, planes, that in 1914 would have appeared unimaginably sophisticated duelled in the skies, some carrying experimental wireless radio sets, reporting real-time reconnaissance.

Huge artillery pieces fired with pinpoint accuracy - using only aerial photos and maths they could score a hit on the first shot. Tanks had gone from the drawing board to the battlefield in just two years, also changing war forever.

The World War One Centenary

British soldier in France, August 1914, preparing to go to the front line

The WWI Centenary: Discover new perspectives on the war

No one won

Swathes of Europe lay wasted, millions were dead or wounded. Survivors lived on with severe mental trauma. The UK was broke. It is odd to talk about winning.

However, in a narrow military sense, the UK and her allies convincingly won. Germany's battleships had been bottled up by the Royal Navy until their crews mutinied rather than make a suicidal attack against the British fleet.

Germany's Army collapsed as a series of mighty allied blows scythed through supposedly impregnable defences.

By late September 1918 the German emperor and his military mastermind Erich Ludendorff admitted that there was no hope and Germany must beg for peace. The 11 November Armistice was essentially a German surrender.

Unlike Hitler in 1945, the German government did not insist on a hopeless, pointless struggle until the allies were in Berlin - a decision that saved countless lives, but was seized upon later to claim Germany never really lost.

The Versailles Treaty was extremely harsh

The treaty of Versailles confiscated 10% of Germany's territory but left it the largest, richest nation in central Europe.

It was largely unoccupied and financial reparations were linked to its ability to pay, which mostly went unenforced anyway.

The treaty was notably less harsh than treaties that ended the 1870-1 Franco-Prussian War and World War Two. The German victors in the former annexed large chunks of two rich French provinces, part of France for around 300 years, and home to most of French iron ore production, as well as presenting France with a massive bill for immediate payment.

Treaty of Versailles, 1919

After WW2 Germany was occupied, split up, her factory machinery smashed or stolen and millions of prisoners forced to stay with their captors and work as slave labourers. Germany lost all the territory it had lost after WW1 and another giant slice on top of that.

Versailles was not harsh but was portrayed as such by Hitler who sought to create a tidal wave of anti-Versailles sentiment on which he could then ride into power.

Everyone hated it

Like any war, it all comes down to luck. You may witness unimaginable horrors that leave you mentally and physically incapacitated for life, or you might get away without a scrape. It could be the best of times, or the worst of times.

Many soldiers enjoyed WW1. If they were lucky they would avoid a big offensive, and much of the time, conditions might be better than at home.

For the British there was meat every day - a rare luxury back home - cigarettes, tea and rum, part of a daily diet of over 4,000 calories.

Absentee rates due to sickness, an important barometer of a unit's morale were, remarkably, hardly above peacetime rates. Many young men enjoyed the guaranteed pay, the intense comradeship, the responsibility and a much greater sexual freedom than in peacetime Britain.

Find out more from Dan Snow on how so many soldiers survived the trenches and Michael Mosley on the plastic surgery techniques pioneered in WW1.

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