Women

Disabled housewives

Jane McLoughlin

In spite of the promises, promises, we are still a long way from that old ideal of government of the people, by the people for the people. We still have government by bureaucracy, and the evidence appears clearly in the recent fiasco over disablement benefits for housewives.

This question came up first late last year in the Social Security Benefits Bill, which, when it was first drafted, specifically excluded disabled housewives from benefiting from the new non-contributory invalidity pensions. These are designed so that people who are so disabled that they cannot go out to work, and therefore have no National Insurance contributions, will have a right to a payment of £6.90 under the new Bill. But housewives, and women cohabiting with, and therefore presumably supported by, men were not included in this payment. Nor, as the Act stands, would such women be able to claim the new Invalid Care Allowance, which provides a payment for men who have to stay at home to look after a disabled wife, but not for the wife if the situation is reversed.

But this exclusion of housewives was negated by an amendment from a Labour rebel, Mr Lewis Carter Jones, who risked the wrath of his colleagues to pass, with Opposition help, a rider redefining incapacity to work to include the duties of housewives.

The Disablement Income Group and various women's organisations put pressure on Social Services Minister Barbara Castle, and stirred up enough feeling among backbenchers to be hopeful that the force of sympathetic public opinion must force the Government to let the amendment stand.

The 40,000 or so women involved were entitled to think the fight already won before the Social Security Benefits Bill was even debated in the House. At a press conference and reception to launch International Women's Year, Mrs Castle answered a question about the disabled housewives categorically. There would definitely be legislation this year toinclude these women in the benefits.

Though her Department appeared to know nothing of this promise within a matter of hours of that pronouncement, Mrs Castle's secretary helpfully checked, and returned with confirmation that there would indeed be. legislation this year, though it was not yet certain whether this would be included in the Social Security Benefits Bill or whether there would be separate legislation later in the year to deal with it.

In the event, when the Bill came before the Commons, the amendment entitling housewives to the benefits was included, and passed. But it wag not to be: the Government enjoyed the benefits of the publicity showing them in truth to be the party which would bow to public opinion, and then the blow fell; it is now being made clear that 'administrative difficulties' will not be eased by the earlierthan-expected legislation, and the benefit for housewives will not be implemented until 1977-78.

Very understandably, the Disablement Income Group, whose efforts to have the amendment included in the Bill involved extensive lobbying of MPs, often by disabled housewives themselves in their wheelchairs, are wondering just what they can do. "It is not my place to offend or even embarrass Barbara Castle over the way she has handled this, but one does begin to wonder who rules this country. Through Parliament, the people have said they want disabled housewives to have this benefit, and Mrs Castle publicly agreed.

Now, it seems, the Treasury and the civil servants of the Department of Health and Social Security are saying that is all immater ial. They are not going to have their plans disturbed, whatever Parliament says," said one DIG member.

And indeed Mrs Castle has changed her tune from that International Women's Year recep tion and has since told members of the DIG branch covering Burnley and Blackburn, her own constituency, that there would be no benefits for housewives for two years.

Of course she has fulfilled her promise, if she's talking of words, not deeds. There was legislation this year, but it is hardly likely that a Cabinet Minister should so totally have misunderstood everything said to her by the DIG and in Parliament that she would claim she did not understand that when the people said legislation, they meant action. The Government's difficulty is apparently over the assessment of the incapacity to do housework, and they claim this involves working out criteria for assessing that incapacity. It seems odd that this should prove so difficult, since there seems no hardship in assessing a man's incapacity to go out to work. If he can't, he can't. Why cannot the same criterion apply to the housewife?

The answer to that, says the Government, is that it will involve too many doctors in making the assessments, and there are not enough available. But most seriously disabled women as well as men are in the care of doctors, so why should it involve increased manpower to sign a form guaranteeing her incapacity? There are, after all, at most 40,000 women involved, scattered over the entire country. And what about the extra manpower involved in snooping to make sure that a disabled woman who is not married and claims benefit is not cohabiting with a man — or are such employees easier to come by than doctors?

Presumably the problem is money, and that could be a valid argument for not including these housewives in the benefits. In that case,. how was it possible for Mrs Castle to promise the legislation, and why was the financial argument not used in Parliament to decide the will of the people that this was a reform which must be deferred?

Jane McLoughlin is on the staff of the Daily Telegraph