Faith Hope and Charity

So we go again to beautiful  St Mary’s Church in Stoke Newington.

The Hackney Migrant Centre adjoining gives a lunch to people who can’t work or sign on due to their immigration status. I have missed lunch, and am grateful for a free salad with vegetables. Many of the clients however have nothing but time on their hands, and no money for food. For me and for the clients, there is a the space to have a grin, and a full belly, as we discuss their legal problems.

The Hackney Migrant Centre provides somewhere that people with concerns over their immigration papers can come together once a week to share a meal with volunteers and lawyers (and lawyer volunteers). Visitors are met by shrewd elderly ladies who have seen a great deal, bright eyed idealists and a great team in the kitchen.

Ali is a heart doctor. He can’t work because refugees are not allowed to work until their asylum claims are recognised. Never mind that the NHS is screaming for help.  In the old days, if the Home Office hadn’t sorted out your claim after six months you could get a work permit.  It makes sense for Ali to be working on dodgy tickers until the officials find his file. Instead he waits by the telephone for the call that never comes.

Abai is from Eritrea. He was arrested for belonging to the Pentecostal faith. Like many documented cases he suffered beatings, forced labour, and the notorious “helicopter” – hog tied and hung by his elbows. There were screams then.

Abai’s asylum claim has been recognised. 28 days later he was homeless, as the UK Border Agency had ceased supporting him. A man with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and military training is sleeping in the street. Yet  again.

Although a Victorian gothic spire rises gracefully nearby, the event is non denominational.  Muslims, Budhists and atheists rub shoulders well enough.

At the table you might hear Rumanian, Arabic or Turkish. What catches my ear is that in this Babel that is London, there is a camaraderie and mutual support between women and men from Brazil to Mozambique.  Stressed out people come together, for companionship as much as for the free advice and meal.

The Anglican spires of St Mary’s have been around since 1853. In deep Victorian squalor, there were the seeds of self improvement and charitable acts coming together, dragging our society forward  from conditions Charles Dickens wrote about, and these seeds took root. 

The project by the Church is downsizing its kitchen to soup and bread, and can’t help as many people as before.  Only 40 people every Wednesday - that’s a lot of people to see in three hours folks.

British children wake up hungry every day because their mothers gave birth when not married to the British fathers.  95% of immigration cases will lose their Legal Aid funding this April due to Legal Aid cuts. 70% of family law cases will lose Legal Aid funding.  Legal Aid for disabled asylum seekers with housing problems is being deleted, and so they have no enforceable rights. The kids plod on, ignored.

It's easy to feel sad and overwhelmed. Last year during a meeting in Parliament I looked the junior Legal Aid minister Jonathan Djangoli in the eye, and told him that his advice cuts would lead to increased crime and prostitution. He told me that he wanted advice steered away from lawyers and towards charities such as Law Centres and Citizens Advice Bureaux. The penny hadn't dropped for him that these people are lawyers too.

It's hopeless, really.

Yet here is a charity where people of goodwill come together to support each other. 30 minutes a client won't do it for most people's problems, but we are here now and there is a seed of hope.

Half remembered passages from the King James Bible echo Corinthians 13:13: "And now abideth faith, hope and charitie, these three, but the greatest of all is charitie."

Spare a thought for Faith, Hope and Charity in 2013. We can behave as humans towards each other or not. The choice is up to us.

And if you have five pounds please consider this link  https://secure.thebiggive.org.uk/donation/to/9372/Hackney_Migrant_Centre

Usury

Kenny is only twenty. After two years looking he has managed to get a job. He works 60 hours a week in a bar. They are keeping him on and he is getting a raise. In an economy where kids just can’t find work he is someone who deserves all the support we can give, yet when I see him as Duty Solicitor he is in rent arrears and risks losing his home.

It turns out that when he finally got the job he took a small pay day loan to celebrate and thank his parents for supporting him. Then, when he had to repay the loan, which had an apr of 200% he had no money left from his wages, and had to take another loan. Soon all his money was going to shady companies whose dodgy representatives door-stepped him and even his parents. He looks haunted.

Kevin is a pensioner, living with his adult son. Because his son works in a shop and earns reasonable wages Kevin gets little in Housing Benefit – the son is expected to contribute the rest in a part of the regulations known as a non dependant deduction.

Yet Kenny is in rent arrears that climb steadily. He too may be evicted. His son too has taken out pay day loans, and finds his income being hoovered up by the lender. The son is terrified of taking time off work to get debt advice in case he is fired. In any event the queues at the local CAB are round the block.

Kyle is a postman separated from the mother of his six year old daughter. Over the summer his kid started to visit more regularly and he took out a small pay day loan so he could give her a few treats. It looks to me as if he is trying to make sure his relationship with his daughter does not suffer because of differences with her mother, he’s trying to do the right thing as a responsible dad.

You guessed it. He’s in rent arrears too.

Perhaps 1/50 or 1/60  of the clients that I now see as a duty solicitor are in thrall to brutal lending companies which may be called Wronger, or Conga or what have you. These are working class people in social housing with modest salaries who literally can’t put food on their table because of punitive rates of interest on pay day loans.  These are far more deadly than crack; a small taster is enough to hook you for life.

Back in Law School they taught us that there were rules about usury, and the legislation then in place was enough to crack down on most of the unlicensed loan sharks that we saw in the 60’s and 70’s. Today, if you look around your high street, you will see that pay day loan companies are a growth industry, popping up like barnacles alongside betting shops- that other modern mecca to despair.  They will tell you that what they are doing is selling services specifically designed for very short periods- yet perhaps half of their income comes from repeat borrowers.

Far from being curbed by the existing legal machinery, we see that Newcastle football club has looked at putting a pay day loan company on their shirts. The dodgy criminal with a cosh in his pocket of old has undergone an alchemical change, and acquired a glossy corporate face and sugared words that hide pure poison.

Standing up in court I tell the District Judge the plain facts. How wages meant for rent and other essentials evaporate the moment they arrive. In every case we get an adjournment so that the tenant can get debt advice.

Yet if I have managed to achieve something today, tomorrow paints a bleaker picture.

Firstly, although Legal Aid presently funds debt advice, from April 2013 this will be so scarce as to be non- existent.  For every 100 housing cases funded by Legal Aid, the government is awarding 4 debt cases. We will be hamstrung before we even start.

Secondly, alternative sources of credit for people on benefits or low incomes will become almost non-existent. The Government Social Fund which used to provide cheap loans and grants will soon disappear, and Credit Unions are shutting up shop all over the country.

While the Bank of England’s interest rates are as low as at any time since its foundation, corporate sharks are trawling the economy, and we see no sign that Government is prepared to use any of the levers available to it to stop this from happening.  

As a child I was raised a Catholic, and I remember well the story of Jesus scourging the money lenders from the temple for the sin of usury.  If I had been raised a Moslem the concept of any interest rate would have been anathema- far more so these new vampire squids that feed and feed and make corporate merchant bankers  models of restraint and probity by comparison.

The truth is that anyone with a moral compass will recognise these greedy pay day loan companies as deeply wrong. Why can’t we do something to stop them.

Mad & Sad

 This is why it is important that there is Legal Aid for people with benefit problems who are appealing to benefit Tribunals. These are the cases that will not get help from April next year.

Peter is schizophrenic. He doesn’t always take his meds. He was evicted on my watch a few years back for rent arrears (he didn’t sort out his benefit documents because- quite frankly- he’s a bit mad). We got him back under a roof after he was released from hospital.  Now he has failed his benefit test because at his benefits interview he told the ATOS  professional he’s right as rain, able to work.  They took him at his word (kerching!).

Peter comes into our office wearing a builder’s safety helmet, bright yellow, like the Village People. He jabbers  on.  Anybody with common sense can tell he’s very ill.

The difficult legal issue we have representing him is that he has told the authorities that he is perfectly well. We must tell the tribunal that, contrary to our instructions, we think our client is very ill indeed.

Complicated legal issues arise.

Paul is a dedicated teacher. His wages vary and the details of his family composition vary, and he sends details of the changes in his circumstances to the Housing Benefit Authority from time to time, as he should do. 

After a few years he receives a 28 page letter telling him that he owes £17,000.

The legal issue at Tribunal is, firstly,  is there an overpayment  of benefits-yes- and secondly is it recoverable. The common sense rules are that if there is an official error these sums are not recoverable- unless Paul should have reasonably understood that the officials were at fault.

More complicated legal issues are in play.

At the Tribunal hearing the Judge  decides that Paul could not have reasonably known  that he was being overpaid. The debt is written off. He keeps his home.

Peter and Paul  have kept their homes because lawyers argued the law in a Tribunal and won. Yay!

From next April we will be banned from defending Peter and Paul. The rules will be so refined that unless an unrepresented appellant gets funding for  a second appeal Tribunal, you can kiss your ass and your home goodbye.

The Parliamentary issue is this. When the long winded titled Legal Aid and Punishement and Sentencing of Offenders Bill was fought through Parliament promises were made that appeals on to benefit tribunals on a a point of law would be funded.  

Now in the details we learn that almost no-one will be represented. It was all a lie.

It makes me sad, it really does. This was what Legal Aid was invented for. Helping mad people and teachers keep their homes to make society better.

Appres nous, le deluge.

Call Centre

On the phone to a Housing Benefit department, to find out why my client is going to be evicted this month. Peter got too sick to work and claimed benefits, which have taken a few months to kick in. I want to know why nobody is answering my letters about his Housing Benefit claim.

Instantly my heart drops. Digital sirens assure me that a East London Council uses fab data protection procedures, I am invited to use touchtone options that steer me seamlessly from rubbish collection to ongoing claims information. The promise of a real live human voice is always there, but proves tantalisingly beyond my reach. Just at the point that I am about to speak to a human being a cheery mechanical voice bids me good day and refers me to their website.

As any fule know, Council websites are often designed to prevent rapid access to services. You try to find any information about the rights of homeless families put on the street through no fault of their own, and you would not know that the Council must house them.

After an hour I manage to speak to a human voice. She sounds surprised and scared, and tells me it would be better if I called at a low demand time (say midnight).

None of my letters have been logged on by the Council.  Thus the guy on the phone can't  discuss Peter’s case with me. Not even when I point out that a family will shortly become homeless because the Council keeps losing its mail.

“What do you suggest then?” I ask Mr Call Centre. “I’ve faxed you, I’ve written to you, this week Peter took copies of my letters to you and was turned away. How can you help me to stop a family from becoming homeless?”

Mr Call Centre advises me that Peter should have visited his local office and asked to call the Housing Benefit Department for a special appointment (since the cuts, a free citizen can’t come in off the street with his documents, you need a special appointment). This cheers me up. “Can I make an appointment for my client Peter? He will bring copies of the documents”

Mr Call Centre pauses. No-since they haven’t had any letters I am not authorised to make an appointment for Peter to bring in the documents that they have lost. He makes a special point of saying that if I were a real lawyer I would understand this. That’s me in my place.

I politely thank Mr Call Centre. Quixotically I dictate a letter of complaint, send it by email and by fax with copies of all the previous correspondence, advise my client to make an identical telephone call begging for an appointment, then hurl my telephone against the wall.

I don’t know what makes me more  angry. That a so called trained lawyer has had to spend an hour on the phone to speak to Mr Call Centre talking rubbish, or to think that every other resident with Housing Benefit problems must spend an hour on the phone they can’t afford.

Sir Robin Swayles declared some time ago “I have an ambitious vision for this borough, and that's because Newham's people are ambitious and forward-looking too. I'm determined to deliver the very best services and make sure local people get the most out of the Olympics and regeneration of the borough.” 

As I scotch-tape my telephone together, it seems that the true problem is that with cuts starting to bite in East London’s poorest boroughs,  local services are delivered behind the opaque barrage of call centres where staff do not have the training to make practical common sense decisions.

Dwindling numbers of trained Council officials that know how to call the shots are cloaked and inaccessible because of Mr Call Centre.  Should they not be open and transparent and admit that the service they are giving is increasingly inadequate?

 Dream on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspired

Down to City Edge on Mare Street last Saturday  for the Inspire event.

The building used to be a hub of a community college just across the road from where  the Council benefits office used to be, close to St Joseph’s  Hospice in Mare Street. That’s too many used to be’s in my book, but this is broke UK.  The Hospice is still there, and it has a nice garden. 

City Edge is a conference centre squeezed to the back of an expansive office building where space has been lost to small shops. A hand drawn sign refers me to a narrow access route down the side of the building. I sit down on the sidewalk  to roll up with my liquorish papers and mild tobacco, an astute and competent security officer questions me, then leaves me alone with my nicotine addiction.

Before I know what’s what, I’m in a pleasant sunlit space in a large room, where stalls have been set up. There are some 150 people milling around.  I am pleased to see so many charities setting their boards up to help young people find a job.  I am particularly thrilled to see a banner for Equity, and to chat to a guy in Taggart .

Unexpectedly dancers  burst onto the floor, formidable women in their fifties dressed as Mary Seacole, young girls with great poise and dignity strutting and swinging. There is a flurry of African drums, one played by a studious boy in spectacles.

Before we know it the dancers have the audience up on the stage, instructing them on the art of viewing  your derriere as the chalk that draws on the blackboard, 1-2-3-4.  It turns out this dance troupe opened and closed the Olympics.

The event was Inspire, a community initiative bringing together groups such as DIG, private tenants who are coming together to give self help over issues such as rip off rents, shady practices over deposits and a support network for tenants who need help talking to their landlords.

Wilma bought a flat, then lost it. Struggling with serious structural problems with her property she faced shoddy building standards, an indifferent freeholder and eventually unemployment. She’s sofa surfing right now, but working on a play about the loss of dignity that comes from being evicted onto the street. She hopes to join a co-operative. I bet her play will be a corker.

Wendy is under 35 and was renting a small bedsit paid for by Housing Benefit. Under new Housing Benefit rules (the “room rate”) she was expected to move into digs with other people her age. She asked the Council for transitional help and they said they would-  after months of delay and four days before the Court date. Too little too late, she was evicted and now has no secure home.

We write on big pieces of paper with magic markers, swap tips.

In this Borough, home of the Silicon Hub of Hoxton, many private tenants cannot afford  the accommodation, however rotten, that is available on the market. Young people and those in early middle age who rely on benefits are expected to crowd in with strangers, yet comparatively few landlords make such arrangements available. The ones that genuinely do run houses in multiple occupation (HMO’S)  often run brutal slums.

I leave after a couple of hours, knocked out after the flu virus . Why is it that so much young to middle age talent is wasted, when dancing children make it all look easy?

Who ate all the pies?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ship Shape

Aiden has a job. In fact he has two.

He has a British wife, and British children. Born in a former colony, he came to this land with a valid visa and settled. He pays his tax and national insurance.

He is resident in these green lands of Albion on a spouse visa, which enables him to lawfully work. In the fullness of time he is entitled to apply for leave to remain and settle, and this he does.

What could be fairer? Aiden has played by the rules. Yet one day he is suspended from his job, because his employers think that his papers are not in order.

The trade union warns that a profound unfairness is in train. His employers are blind to his explanations, for they are frightened of the new rules that say that, if your working papers are not all ship shape, they could be fined and prosecuted.

Aiden's papers are all ship shape, as it happens. He put in his application for permission to remain in time, it's all documented. The rules say that if you apply before your visa expires, you will continue with that same status until the Secretary of State makes a decison- even if this is after the date of your previous visa. The reason for this rule is obvious- the government takes a long time in making its decisions, and almost all the people who played by the rules and put in their application in time would otherwise become overstayers .

His trade union refers Aiden to us, and we explain the rules to the employer. It's a bit sad then that his employers move to dismiss him .

Their problem is that when they check with the government enquiry line the application has not been logged into the government's database.

It's even sadder that after Aiden's MP intervenes and asks the UK Border Agency to confirm that they have received Aiden's papers, they send a letter acknowledging receipt, telling him that his papers are all in order, and refering his employers to a database designed to confirm to employers that they are not breaking the rules.

It's even sadder that when his empoyer enquires twice of the government hotline , Aiden's details still haven't been entered. Sack the varlets!

Finally at the eleventh hour the database is updated, and Aiden can go back to work. I can't imagine how he might be feeling about his employers, or about our government.

On this occasion lawyers, trade unions and an MP saved Adie's job in the nick of time.

Last week the Legal Services Commission announced 40% cuts in Legal Aid cases they will fund in Hackney from next April. Tomorrow then, a father of two may be sacked, because although he is lawfully present in the UK, Legal Aid is being deliberately cut to the bone, to ensure that it is not possible to find the facts and tell the truth.

A story about a father of British children, playing by the rules for his family, will not be told with the voice of law, because of Legal Aid cuts.

Piss & Vinegar

Here's me coming back from my holidays then, full of piss and vinegar.

Client A has lost her sickness benefits , known as Employment Support Allowance, or ESA. In order to win sickness benefits, the names of which change like the blowing winds, a real inability to operate in the workplace in spite of all is now required .

I have no problem with this in principle. Our decent British system should try to to sift those who should work, those who could, and those who can't.

The way in which measurement of disability now goes is a number of tests called descriptors. Score 15 points if you can answer questions from whether you can pick up a milk jug with one hand, to whether you get upset and cry in the queue at Tesco's.

It's all like the gymnastics at the Olympics, save that you have to compete for failure, in order to win that dubious prize, last place. You win as little as £65 a week, for the recognition of your disability.

Client A scored no points on her incontinence descriptor, because although she pisses herself on occasion, and more so at night, she has not "voided her bladder" completely, in a regular fashion. Thus, she has only pissed herself a little, but not voided her bladder every time she has to meet the work czar at ATOS.

Client B had his leg blown off by a landmine. He stumps around defiantly, and keeps failing his tests because he turns up to his interviews. If he failed to turn up, he would be failed anyway.

The Paralympics are supposed to make us all warm and fuzzy about this once in a lifetime opportunity to see the victory of human endeavour over adversity.

The bitter truth is that in the same year that Oscar Pistorius was allowed to compete in the mainstream Olympics, after defeating the laughable claim that he was advantaged by having his lower legs removed and substituted by two curly sticks, ATOS may be gaining kudos from being an official sponsor.

The "tightening" of the descriptors means that, whether or not ATOS staff fairly apply the rules in their assessments, and there is plenty of evidence that the interviews are slap  dash affairs done by rote, disabled people will still fail. For example, in the category manual dexterity points used to be awarded for being unable to turn a star headed tap, being unable to pick up a £1 coin, turn the pages of a book, use a keyboard or mouse, and being unable to pour a 0.5 litre open carton. Consideration is also given to the ability to perform one or more of these tasks with only one hand. In the new rules the categories have been significantly narrowed. Thus a person must be completely unable to press a button with one finger , or turn the pages of a book, or pick up a coin, or use a pencil or keyboard or mouse.

It may be objected that a person who is profoundly disabled yet able to press a button with at least one finger has a possible future working with computers say, or in a call centre. Certainly I would accept that people with disabilities are often desperate to work, and where ways can be found for this to happen they should have that opportunity. But most recipients of Employment Support Allowance will be expected to take part in some work related activity anyway in the present scheme. By making the Work Capability Assessment even harder to pass, a claimant is instead forced to claim Job Seekers Allowance, forced to constantly seek employment where in practice there may be very little work that is available or suitable for their skills.

Sometimes DWP staff dealing with JSA claimants realise that there is simply no point in a claimant who was failed their ATOS test claiming work related benefit, and advise claimants to make a fresh ESA claim which will, in the fullness of time, be refused again. Yes, the system is so bad that one part of the Jobcentre is deliberately frustrating the actions of another.

Forty per cent of people who appeal the withdrawal of benefits win at Tribunal. Seventy per cent win if supported by a Law Centre, CAB or similar. As Law Centres and CABs are being deliberately closed down in Legal Aid cuts, do the maths. This Government wants disabled people to fail their benefit tests.

And that is like rubbing salt into fresh wounds. Or, shall we say, vinegar.