[12]
ALJAZEERA
TORY DISDAIN FOR THE POOR IS FUELLING UK’S
COST OF LIVING CRISIS
23 MAY 2022
SEE FOR THE WHOLE TEXT, NOTE 10
POLITICSHOME
”CRUEL” TORY WELFARE CUTS TO BLAME FOR POOR FAMILIES
GOING HUNGRY, DAMNING REPORT SAYS
20 MAY 2019
The Government’s “cruel and harmful” welfare policies have left tens of thousands of poor families hungry, a damning new report has said.
Global charity, Human Rights Watch, said successive governments had “violated” the right to food, but took particular aim at the Tories.
It listed a string of welfare policies over the past decade, including the introduction of Universal Credit and the benefit cap, as being behind a surge in hunger in England.
In a new report, the charity said many of the families affected were headed by single mums.
The cuts, which it said were motivated by austerity, had amounted to a 44% reduction in support for children and families, it added.
Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch, Kartik Raj, said: “This rise in hunger has the UK government’s fingerprints all over it.”
He added: “Standing aside and relying on charities to pick up the pieces of its cruel and harmful policies is unacceptable.
“The UK Government needs to take urgent and concerted action to ensure that its poorest residents aren’t forced to go hungry.”
Human Rights Watch also accused the Government of having “largely ignored” mounting evidence of falling living standards among the poorest residents.
It pointed to the “skyrocketing” use of food banks and multiple reports from school officials that “many more” children are arriving at school hungry and unable to concentrate.
The charity conducted more than 120 interviews in three areas of high depravation in Hull, Cambridgeshire and Oxford, and looked at stats and government data to compile its report.
It heard from young single mothers who feared they would lose custody of their children if they openly asked for food aid or admitted they were going hungry.
The report said ministers had cushioned some of the hardest-hitting policies, including rolling back the two-child limit on welfare payments and measuring food insecurity.
But it urged the Government to go further by addressing the “significant structural problems” of its welfare policies.
It called for an end to delays for Universal Credit payments and for benefits to keep in line with inflation. It also urged ministers to develop an anti-hunger strategy with legal weight.
A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: “We’re helping parents to move into work to give families the best opportunity to move out of poverty.
“And it’s working – employment is at a record high and children growing up in working households are five times less likely to be in relative poverty.
“We spend £95 billion a year on working-age benefits and we’re supporting over one million of the country’s most disadvantaged children through free school meals. Meanwhile we’ve confirmed that the benefit freeze will end next year.”
THE ARTICLE ABOVE REFERS TO THIS HUMAN RIGHTS
WATCH REPORT
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
NOTHING LEFT IN THE CUPBOARDS
AUSTERITY, WELFARE CUTS AND THE
RIGHT TO FOOD IN THE UK
2019
SEE ALSO NOTE 10
[13]
WIKIPEDIA
MARGARET THATCHER
[14]
THE GUARDIAN
THATCHER PUSHED FOR BREAKUP OF WELFARE DESPITE
NHS PLEDGE
PM declared the health service was ‘safe with us’ but secretly pressed on with radical proposals, archives reveal
Margaret Thatcher secretly tried to press ahead with a politically toxic plan to dismantle the welfare state even after a “cabinet riot” and her famous declaration that the “NHS is safe with us”, newly released Treasury documents show.
The plan commissioned by Thatcher and her chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe included proposals to charge for state schooling, introduce compulsory private health insurance and a system of private medical facilities that “would, of course, mean the end of the National Health Service”.
Some of her cabinet ministers believed they had buried the plan, drawn up by a seconded Treasury official, Alan Bailey, from the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS), at a special cabinet meeting on 9 September 1982.
Nigel Lawson in his memoirs said the paper of “long-term public spending options” had been buried after what he described as “the nearest thing to a cabinet riot in the history of the Thatcher administration”. In her own memoirs, Thatcher claimed to have been “horrified” by the CPRS paper and insisted that she and her ministers had never seriously considered it.
The CPRS paper had been partially leaked and she was only able to quell the subsequent furore by famously pledging the “NHS is safe with us” at the October 1982 Tory party conference. Downing Street briefed that the toxic plan had been “shelved”.
Photograph: Handout
But Howe’s Treasury private office papers released by the National Archives on Friday confirm that not only had that special cabinet meeting taken place to discuss the plan but that two months later, far from being buried, Thatcher was still secretly trying to press ahead with it.
The Treasury papers show that once a clutch of tricky byelections were out of the way she was keen to keep pushing the plan and held a series of meetings in December to “to soften up the big three spenders” under her chairmanship “to resolve any immediate political anxieties”.
The papers also show after the 9 September cabinet showdown Howe rejected an approach from the Adam Smith Institute, the rightwing libertarian thinktank, to back their “slightly oddly-named Omega Project” despite it being personally endorsed by Thatcher’s own economic adviser, Sir Alan Walters.
The Omega Project papers said the plans were modelled on research by a rightwing US thinktank for the incoming Ronald Reagan administration. It also argued for many state services to be replaced by “more efficient alternatives from the private sector”.
Howe rejected the approach in a note on 29 September not because he objected to their proposals to dismantle the welfare state but because he feared its “ill-researched proposals, which will be portrayed as strongly resembling our own, might prove an embarrassment”. The then chancellor added: “Every proposal will be seized on and hung (round) our necks. Cf CPRS Report. I see v. (underlined twice) great harm.”
The Treasury papers show that “no real action” was taken on the CPRS “radical right manifesto” until November 1982. “The prime minister (we understand privately) did not want to stir this up before the cabinet discussions on the 1982 survey, nor risk any adverse publicity while the last two byelections were pending. The leaks of the CPRS report did not help,” a senior Treasury official, Peter Mountfield, told Howe in a confidential note entitled “Follow-up of cabinet discussion on long-term public expenditure”.
The prime minister has arranged a series of meetings with the main spending ministers to discuss the follow-up to the discussion in cabinet on 9 September. The ministers involved are Sir Keith Joseph (7 Dec, 11 am), Mr Fowler and Mr Nott (14 Dec, 9.30 and 15 Dec 5.30.). You and the chief secretary will be invited to each meeting.”
Joseph was education secretary, Norman Fowler was health secretary and John Nott was defence secretary. The CPRS paper proposed to cancel Trident and halt the growth in defence spending.
“The only paper formally before the meetings will be the original interdepartmental report on long-term trends in public expenditure … The CPRS paper on options is technically a non-paper, but will be in everyone’s minds (and no doubt in their briefing folders too),” Mountfield told Howe.
The chancellor was told the objective of the meetings was “designed to soften up the three big spenders. Without their support the operation will not work. Your main aim, I suggest, should be to ensure that no sacred cows are prematurely identified. Given the prime minister’s concern about the NHS, this may be difficult. But we want to make sure that the ministers concerned do not close off any options at this stage, and, if possible, put their personal weight behind the exercise.’’
These papers flatly contradict Thatcher’s claim that the CPRS proposals were never seriously considered by ministers. The Treasury files released on Friday do not record what happened at the meetings with the big three spenders.
But a Treasury official’s note on 28 October 1982 to the then chief secretary to the Treasury, Leon Brittan, gave an indication of the depth of internal opposition Howe and Thatcher faced. “DHSS (health and social security) officials say there is no chance that Mr Fowler would agree to a further study of this idea. I imagine in the circumstances, and especially given the prime minister’s speech at Brighton it is difficult to press them.”
In his memoirs, Howe reflects that although the row had postponed the “fundamental debate” he had hoped to start, until after the 1983 general election, “nothing from the Treasury’s point of view is ever as quite as bad as it seems”.
He reported that the impact of what he called the “CPRS furore” had ensured ministers made no new spending pledges and had “set the pace for our forthcoming 1983 manifesto”.
END OF THE ARTICLE
THE GUARDIAN
THATCHER PUSHED FOR BREAKUP OF WELFARE DESPITE
NHS PLEDGE
PM declared the health service was ‘safe with us’ but secretly pressed on with radical proposals, archives reveal
Margaret Thatcher secretly tried to press ahead with a politically toxic plan to dismantle the welfare state even after a “cabinet riot” and her famous declaration that the “NHS is safe with us”, newly released Treasury documents show.
The plan commissioned by Thatcher and her chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe included proposals to charge for state schooling, introduce compulsory private health insurance and a system of private medical facilities that “would, of course, mean the end of the National Health Service”.
Some of her cabinet ministers believed they had buried the plan, drawn up by a seconded Treasury official, Alan Bailey, from the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS), at a special cabinet meeting on 9 September 1982.
Nigel Lawson in his memoirs said the paper of “long-term public spending options” had been buried after what he described as “the nearest thing to a cabinet riot in the history of the Thatcher administration”. In her own memoirs, Thatcher claimed to have been “horrified” by the CPRS paper and insisted that she and her ministers had never seriously considered it.
The CPRS paper had been partially leaked and she was only able to quell the subsequent furore by famously pledging the “NHS is safe with us” at the October 1982 Tory party conference. Downing Street briefed that the toxic plan had been “shelved”.
Photograph: Handout
But Howe’s Treasury private office papers released by the National Archives on Friday confirm that not only had that special cabinet meeting taken place to discuss the plan but that two months later, far from being buried, Thatcher was still secretly trying to press ahead with it.
The Treasury papers show that once a clutch of tricky byelections were out of the way she was keen to keep pushing the plan and held a series of meetings in December to “to soften up the big three spenders” under her chairmanship “to resolve any immediate political anxieties”.
The papers also show after the 9 September cabinet showdown Howe rejected an approach from the Adam Smith Institute, the rightwing libertarian thinktank, to back their “slightly oddly-named Omega Project” despite it being personally endorsed by Thatcher’s own economic adviser, Sir Alan Walters.
The Omega Project papers said the plans were modelled on research by a rightwing US thinktank for the incoming Ronald Reagan administration. It also argued for many state services to be replaced by “more efficient alternatives from the private sector”.
Howe rejected the approach in a note on 29 September not because he objected to their proposals to dismantle the welfare state but because he feared its “ill-researched proposals, which will be portrayed as strongly resembling our own, might prove an embarrassment”. The then chancellor added: “Every proposal will be seized on and hung (round) our necks. Cf CPRS Report. I see v. (underlined twice) great harm.”
The Treasury papers show that “no real action” was taken on the CPRS “radical right manifesto” until November 1982. “The prime minister (we understand privately) did not want to stir this up before the cabinet discussions on the 1982 survey, nor risk any adverse publicity while the last two byelections were pending. The leaks of the CPRS report did not help,” a senior Treasury official, Peter Mountfield, told Howe in a confidential note entitled “Follow-up of cabinet discussion on long-term public expenditure”.
The prime minister has arranged a series of meetings with the main spending ministers to discuss the follow-up to the discussion in cabinet on 9 September. The ministers involved are Sir Keith Joseph (7 Dec, 11 am), Mr Fowler and Mr Nott (14 Dec, 9.30 and 15 Dec 5.30.). You and the chief secretary will be invited to each meeting.”
Joseph was education secretary, Norman Fowler was health secretary and John Nott was defence secretary. The CPRS paper proposed to cancel Trident and halt the growth in defence spending.
“The only paper formally before the meetings will be the original interdepartmental report on long-term trends in public expenditure … The CPRS paper on options is technically a non-paper, but will be in everyone’s minds (and no doubt in their briefing folders too),” Mountfield told Howe.
The chancellor was told the objective of the meetings was “designed to soften up the three big spenders. Without their support the operation will not work. Your main aim, I suggest, should be to ensure that no sacred cows are prematurely identified. Given the prime minister’s concern about the NHS, this may be difficult. But we want to make sure that the ministers concerned do not close off any options at this stage, and, if possible, put their personal weight behind the exercise.’’
These papers flatly contradict Thatcher’s claim that the CPRS proposals were never seriously considered by ministers. The Treasury files released on Friday do not record what happened at the meetings with the big three spenders.
But a Treasury official’s note on 28 October 1982 to the then chief secretary to the Treasury, Leon Brittan, gave an indication of the depth of internal opposition Howe and Thatcher faced. “DHSS (health and social security) officials say there is no chance that Mr Fowler would agree to a further study of this idea. I imagine in the circumstances, and especially given the prime minister’s speech at Brighton it is difficult to press them.”
In his memoirs, Howe reflects that although the row had postponed the “fundamental debate” he had hoped to start, until after the 1983 general election, “nothing from the Treasury’s point of view is ever as quite as bad as it seems”.
He reported that the impact of what he called the “CPRS furore” had ensured ministers made no new spending pledges and had “set the pace for our forthcoming 1983 manifesto”.
END OF THE ARTICLE
SUTHERLAND ECHO
REVEALED: HOW MARGARET THATCHER PLANNED
TO ABOLISH WELFARE AND THE NHS
25 NOVEMBER 2016
Margaret Thatcher secretly continued to pursue politically explosive plans to dismantle the welfare state even after ministers thought they had been killed off by a cabinet revolt, according to newly-released official files.
The proposals – drawn up by Whitehall’s think tank the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) – were among the most contentious and the most radical to be considered by MrsThatcher’s Conservative government during her 11 years in office.
They included scrapping free universal healthcare and requiring people to take out private insurance, charging for education, and ending the annual uprating of benefits in line with inflation, as well as sweeping defence cuts.
The CPRS paper baldly stated: “For the majority the change would represent the abolition of the NHS. This would be immensely controversial.”
When chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe, who commissioned the report, introduced the proposals at a specially convened meeting of the cabinet on September 9 1982 there was uproar.
Nigel Lawson, then the energy secretary, later recalled in his memoirs that it was “the nearest thing to a cabinet riot in the history of the Thatcher administration”.
And when the so-called cabinet “wets”, who opposed Mrs Thatcher’s hardline economic policies, contrived to leak details of the report to The Economist it sparked a public outcry.
In an attempt to quell the political storm, Mr Thatcher felt compelled to use her speech to the annual Conservative Party conference in Brighton to declare the NHS is “safe with us”.
Mrs Thatcher later claimed to have been “horrified” by the CPRS plan which was deemed so contentious it was designated a “non-paper” in Whitehall.
But while the “wets” believed they had seen off the proposals for good, Treasury papers released by the National Archives at Kew, west London, show the prime minister and her chancellor continued to work behind the scenes to keep them alive.
On November 26 1982, P Mountford in the Treasury informed Sir Geoffrey that MrsThatcher had set up a series of meetings with the key ministers involved – health secretary Norman Fowler, education secretary Sir Keith Joseph and defence secretary John Nott.
“This series of meeting is designed to soften up the three big spenders. Without their support the operation will not work,” Mr Mountford wrote.
“Your main aim, I suggest, should be to ensure that no sacred cows are prematurely identified. Given the prime minister’s concern about the NHS, this may be difficult.
But we want to make sure that the ministers concerned a) do not close off any options at this stage, and b) if possible put their personal weight behind the exercise and encourage their officials to co-operate fully with the Treasury.”
Others however saw little prospect of success. GW Monger warned: “DHSS (Department of Health and Social Security) officials say there is no chance that Mr Fowler would agree to further study of this idea.
“I imagine that in the circumstances, and especially given the prime minister’s speech at Brighton, it is difficult to press them.”
While Sir Geoffrey remained adamant that radical reform was needed if public spending was to be brought under control, he was alarmed when the free market Adam Smith Institute intended to set out its own plans for privatisation and deregulation.
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His political adviser Robin Harris said that while the portentously named “Omega Project” could be “politically useful” to the Conservatives in the run-up to a general election, there was a real danger it could “fall on its face”.
“The timescale proposed is very tight; one has legitimate doubts about the competence of some of those involved; and ill-researched proposals which will be portrayed as strongly resembling ours might prove an embarrassment,” he wrote.
Sir Geoffrey scrawled in the margin: “Every proposal will be seized on and hung round our neck. I see v great harm.”
END OF THE ARTICLE