1 week Ago By Adam-t-forrest
Glasgow’s east end once boasted Scotland’s biggest steelworks. The Parkhead Forge was surrounded by bustling factories and tenements, back when Glasgow was known as the second city of the British Empire.The Parkhead Forge no longer exists, though the name lives on today as a shopping centre.
The days of full employment are long gone too. Almost one in three people in this area are living on benefits.The east end of Glasgow is one of the places where Labour’s welfare reforms – £5bn in cuts to the disability benefit Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and the incapacity element of universal credit – will be felt most intensely.
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addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }Lisa Laird, a 45-year-old from the east end, is worried. She points to where she used to work, Parkhead’s bingo hall next to The Forge shopping centre.Lisa has been out of work since a fall a few years ago caused nerve damage in her back.
She also struggles with depression and anxiety, relying on both universal credit and PIP.“If they cut benefits, it makes life that much tougher,” she says. “It’s not really fair.
They’re picking on people who don’t have much. Some people just can’t work.”Lisa Laird, from Glasgow’s east end, is worried about universal credit and PIP cuts (Photo: The i Paper)She adds: “People are going to be stealing or selling drugs to get by.
More people will have to go to food banks. It’s terrible.”if(window.
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adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }Mohammad Razaq, a 68-year-old who has lived in Parkhead after his family came over from Pakistan to settle in the east end in the early 70s for most of his life, has seen big changes in the jobs market.
“Some factories and industry was still there then – but you could see it disappearing fast,” he recalls. “There’s some new houses and the shopping centre, but the well-paid jobs aren’t there.”Mohammad was a bus driver for 40 years before his recent retirement but feels for young people growing up due to the rise in the cost of living.
“The minimum wage is buttons now, considering how much everything costs. It’s not enough to get by,” he said. “The MPs are on £90,000 and they have no idea how hard it is.
I don’t think there’s too many people cheating the [benefits] system. If they cut benefits, it just makes things harder.”Mohammad Razaq is worried about the lack of well-paid jobs in Glasgow’s east end (Photo: The i Paper)Glasgow’s east end can reasonably claim to be the birthplace of the modern benefit system.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith was so shocked by the poverty he saw on a 2002 visit to the Easterhouse housing estate that he was moved to tears.The senior Tory’s so-called “Easterhouse epiphany” led to the creation of universal credit when he became Work and Pensions Secretary in 2010. The shake-up was aimed at making sure people were always better off in work than on benefits.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); }But Duncan Smith’s welfare revolution has not sparked an employment boom and in Glasgow, the facts for the poorest parts of the city remain sobering.The latest Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation shows that in the Parkhead and Dalmarnock neighbourhoods – the heart of the inner east end – 31.6 per cent of working-age adults are on benefits.
They are classed as “employment deprived”, dependent on out-of-work benefits or disability payments. In one smaller east end ward, Shettleston North, a staggering 47 per cent live on benefits – the highest level in Scotland.Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 31.
7 per cent of people across Glasgow are economically inactive. Though this figure includes students and pensioners, it is the highest level seen in over a decade.Easterhouse in 2010 in Glasgow’s east end – where poverty moved Sir Iain Duncan Smith to tears.
That same year, he launched universal credit (Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty)Professor Chik Collins, director of Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH), said the city is still living with the legacy of the redevelopment schemes of the 1960s and 1970s which saw the skilled working-class families moved out to new towns like East Kilbride and Cumbernauld.“We found in the archives a Scotland Office document from 1971 that warned the city would be left with ‘the old, the very poor, and the almost unemployable’,” he said, on the research he co-authored that explains why Glasgow has such high rates of premature deaths.“That legacy means there is some truth to the idea that worklessness can cascade through the generations – but we need to be really very careful in avoiding simplistic and reductive answers,” he said.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l3"}); }Warning Labour that benefit cuts would not push people into jobs, Prof Collins added: “Getting people into work will require intensive support, a lot of investment in training, a lot of investing in young people – all of which is expensive.“Cutting welfare and services builds up enormous social costs even in the short term and definitely in the long term.”The Parkhead area has one in three working-age adults on benefits (Photo: The i Paper)Scotland may yet still avoid some of the sharpest benefit cuts.
People north of the border on PIP have been moving across to the Adult Disability Payment (ADP), after some social security payments were devolved to the Scottish Government.The SNP-run administration has yet to say what changes may have to be made to ADP as a result of Labour’s plans to restrict access to PIP.But campaigners fear the budget reductions set to be passed on to the Scottish Government from Westminster could see eligibility changes made to ADP too.
Euan Mitchell, a 29-year-old campaigner at Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) Glasgow, said there was a lot of “fear and uncertainty” among claimants.The former paid carer suffers from neuropathy, pain from nerve damage, on his right-hand side. He acts as an unpaid carer to his brother, but he is keen to re-train and find work in the health sector in future if he can.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l4"}); }“Cuts will not magically create new jobs,” said Mitchell. He added: “There are some disabled people just not able to work. Trying to force people to work more than they can will drive people to need more help from the NHS and social care.
”#color-context-related-article-3575366 {--inews-color-primary: #E33A11;--inews-color-secondary: #F7F3EF;--inews-color-tertiary: #E33A11;} Read Next square NEWS .inews__post__label__dispatch{background-color: #0a0a0a;color: #ffffff;}DispatchInside Birkenhead, the town set to bear brunt of Labour's benefits cutsRead MoreMany lone parents will be hit by cuts to universal credit, set to happen UK-wide. One single mother in Glasgow, who has a son in primary school, depends on both ADP and the out-of-work benefit.
The mum in her forties suffers from chronic pain from a hip disorder, anxiety and depression. The former social care worker said she would “love to get back into work” when her son is older.“But I just don’t know whether the pain, whether the disability, will allow me to,” she said.
“It’s can be really, really hard to pay the bills [on benefits]. A £50 bill comes in and it can throw you out. There are times I will go without eating to feed my son.
”“It feels like the Government are picking on people on benefits, suggesting we’re to blame for the country’s money problems. But they should look at claiming more tax from people earning millions of pounds.”Conditionality around universal credit payments pushes single parents in part-time jobs to try to increase their hours.
But a lack of flexible work puts them under huge pressure – something benefits cuts will only make worse, according to One Parent Families Scotland (OPFS).“Decisions by the UK Government to cut welfare are causing a lot of anxiety among parents we support,” said OPFS’ chief executive Satwat Rehman.if(window.
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adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l5"}); }However, the Centre for Social Justice (CJS) believes universal credit has a positive legacy.
The think tank set up by Duncan Smith said it had allowed people to keep some benefit money while in jobs, helping “smooth the journey” from welfare into work.CJS policy director Joe Shalam said the primary labour market challenge facing Glasgow, as with the rest of the nation, “is the rise in economic inactivity – in particular due to long-term sickness”.A UK Government spokesperson promised £1bn would be invested in employment support.
They said reform of health and disability benefits “supports people back into work, while putting the welfare system on a more sustainable footing so that the safety net is always there to protect those who need it most”.Scotland’s Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said the SNP administration still needed time to work out how to respond to Labour’s plans – but called on Sir Keir Starmer to drop the “irresponsible and damaging cuts”..
