BISHOP Philip Tartaglia did not mince his words.
"People's human dignity is being trampled upon and glaring errors are being made," he said, criticising the way people are assessed for Employment and Support Allowance, and he is to be commended for doing so.
Writing to the Work and Pensions Secretary, Scotland's leading Roman Catholic churchman has highlighted instances of inappropriate decisions and criticised the company, Atos, that carries out the controversial work capability assessments.
Does this latest pronouncement by the bishop denote a change of emphasis for the church, towards a more pastoral approach to the issues of the day and away from a narrower focus on proactively defending Catholic values seen under Cardinal Keith O'Brien? If so, it may reflect the mood of the new Pope, Francis, who commented passionately this week on the skewed values of a society and a news media that present a 10-point fall in the Stock Exchange as a tragedy but take a far more casual approach to human suffering.
Whether or not that is the case, the bishop has made a welcome contribution. He is right to defend those affected by this process and to point out that many will frown at the choice of Atos as a sponsor for Glasgow 2014. The company may be carrying out the Government's bidding, but it is at the hands of Atos, during work capability assessments, that so many people have felt their dignity has been infringed.
Bishop Tartaglia's intervention comes as the Labour leader Ed Miliband attempts to put clear blue water between himself and the Conservatives over the issue of welfare, after earlier announcing that Labour would not reverse the Coalition's child benefit cuts and would introduce a cap on the welfare budget. The Labour leader highlighted the need to tackle the deep long-term causes of social security spending and declared that while he believed only a minority of people who should work, didn't, the Prime Minister looked upon all those trying to find work as "skivers". The prejudice that benefit claimants of any sort are spongers or frauds has indeed developed on the Coalition's watch, and is palpably unfair. The Government's own figures show that 0.8% of the welfare budget in 2010/11 was down to fraud.
This question of tone is an important one. Not only does the mythology of the "benefit cheat" make life all the harder for those who depend upon state assistance to make ends meet, but characterises claimants themselves as the cause of the problem. The current Westminster Government has made enthusiastic efforts to heave thousands off social security but shown less of an appetite to tackle tax avoidance by wealthy companies.
The underlying causes of both must be tackled: a lack of training places, job opportunities and a sluggish economy in the case of the former and a lack of political will to deal with the problem in the case of the latter. Some degree of welfare reform is necessary. It is complex, but at its heart should be fairness and compassion. In that respect, as Bishop Tartaglia's intervention makes clear, the current Westminster Government is falling short.
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