The fall-out from IDS's resignation is still heavy in the air. This is about as damaging a blow to the treasury and prime minister as it is possible to imagine. It has called into question, publicly and loudly, the central message of this government: 'we are all in this together'.
The unease, even amongst tory mps , over the latest round of proposed cuts to working-age benefits, was already starting to make itself felt in the wake of the chancellor's budget statement. At the same time, divisions and ill-temper over the upcoming referendum on Britain's membership of the EU were beginning to simmer, along with covert challenges to the party leadership. IDS's resignation has ignited the conservative party into all-out civil war.
Here is his full interview with Andrew Marr, where he explains in detail why and how he came to resign.
I should point out, btw, for those on the other side of the pond, that IDS is a former leader of the conservative party. His nickname back then in the 90s was 'the Quiet Man'. Taken from a disastrous party conference speech in which he exhorted press and country to 'never underestimate the determination of a quiet man'.
In recent years he has been the face of benefit reform. The main architect of a wholesale redrawing of working age benefits which has caused an unbelievable amount of misery for a lot of people, has created an administrative backlog leaving people waiting for help for half a year or more, forced thousands of people to relocate out of cities, and thousands more out of houding altogether and into the streets. It has been the prime factor in an explosion of families, even working families, being referred to foodbanks. It is supposed by many, including a lot of mental health charities, to have been the key factor in a rash of suicides. It has been linked to a large number of deaths from malnutrician related illness, and deaths from hypothermia. In one much publicised case a diabetic died because he was unable to afford to run his refrigerator to keep his insulin cold.
Every part of the system is failing. The capability/fitness to work assessments are a national joke (people in hospital on their sick beds, receiving letters telling them they are fit to work and do not qualify for benefits - in several instances thiose letters arrived after the recipient had died). When those decisions are appealed, they are overturned in something like 80% of cases. Sanctions on benefits for jobseekers are being routinely and incorrectly applied. People are having their benefits cut for being ten minutes late to one meeting, or for not attending a meeting when they didn't receive the letter telling them to come to the meeting until two days after the date of the meeting.
IDS and his department, time and again have denied that there are any targets for applying sanctions, that sanctions are there as a tool to encourage, and that for someone to be sanctioned they must have failed to adhere to their jobseeker agreement in serious ways. Yet, time and again, staff at the jobcentre have told parliamentary committees, newspapers, and anyone who will listen that they are being pressured to apply x number of sanctions a week, that they are being given warnings and put on 'performance reviews' if they fail to apply enough sanctions.
The grand overhaul of all working age benefits being brought under one system of 'Universal Benefit', sounds fine in theory, but has been used as a way to reduce what people get, and has cost an almighty amount of money. It has sucked up vast quantities of tax payers money and is running several years behind schedule for full implemention - the whole system had to be scrapped and started again because the company deisgning the IT system failed utterly. Billions wasted.
Now IDS seems to be shifting the blame for the worst excesses of this 6 year assault on the poor firmly into the chancellor's hands.
For more on the political fall-out from this:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...irst-interview