DWP: We’re closing UP

Terms change, and so do policies and social attitudes. The 2003-2006 government campaign Targeting Benefit Fraud became Targeting Benefit Thieves (2006-2009). As with ‘illegal immigrants’, not only the practice but the person him or herself became the target of state criminalisation and demonisation.

The latest incarnation of the campaign targeting ‘benefit thieves’, or ‘benefit fraudsters’ or ‘criminals’, conveniently called “We’re closing in”, was launched in September last year in 30 local authority areas. In January this year, ten more local authorities joined in, and the list is growing.

In 2006-7, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spent £6,860,000 on its media and PR campaign targeting ‘benefit fraud’, which included glossy, customisable posters and TV commercials. It was the most costly of all DWP publicity campaigns for that year. A 2008 DWP report assessing the scheme was titled “Ready to work, skilled for work: unlocking Britain’s talent”, although a more apt title might have been, “unlocking Britain’s intolerance”. To quote Anti-Fraud Minister James Plaskitt, the campaigns run by the Department to counter ‘benefit fraud’ are “designed to positively reinforce honest behaviour, to create a climate of intolerance to benefit fraud and to undermine its social acceptability.”

The lengths to which the government is prepared to go in its pursuit of this mythic threat to social cohesion and stability can sometimes cross the boundary into science fiction. Last year a new technology to combat ‘benefit cheating’ over the phone was piloted for a number of local authorities. The Voice Risk Analysis (VRA) technology, which spots changes in a caller’s voice “enabling trained operators to decide whether a call is high or low risk”, was developed by Capita Group in conjunction with Digilog UK.

Meanwhile, Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell has stepped down from the cabinet, allegedly in protest at Gordon Brown’s leadership. Last month the Telegraph reported, in the latest MPs expenses fiasco, that the minister had claimed second-home expenses for a London flat, despite having sold it in October 2004. Oh, and he ‘forgot’ to pay the capital gains tax. That’s, of course, not benefit-cheating. Politicians don’t do that, do they? Apparently only poor people do.

COP15: A darker tomorrow

It’s no joke. Global advertising leaders have joined forces with the UN in the run-up to the crucial UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last December, dubbed Kyoto II. Last September, at the instigation of the International Advertising Association (IAA, an advertising business association with 4,000 members in 76 countries), UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with over 20 representatives from the world’s largest advertising groups to discuss climate change and Copenhagen.

The list included WPP’s subsidiary Ogilvy, which won the bid to work with the UN leading up to the summit and has been contacting ‘thought leaders’ in climate change campaigning and business to formulate its proposals. The same advertising group, through Ogilvy Primary Contact, is the creator of BP’s recent greenwash campaign “Creating A Brighter Tomorrow”, with adverts implying that an energy mix of fossil fuels ‘offset’ by ‘renewables’ (such as biofuels!) is just super.

And it’s not just Ogilvy’s deadly corporate grip that’s squeezing any remnants of life from COP15. The talks have already been riven by other corporate interventions as revealed in the Corporate Europe Observatory’s timely and excoriating new report Climate Summit Inc. The report delineates the Danish government’s active pursuit of business involvement in Copenhagen and its role in the creation of the World Business Summit held on 24-26th May, which sought to engage companies in the business of influencing the climate agenda.

At the UN September meeting, the executive director of IAA, Michael Lee, set an enthusiastic tone: “The idea of this meeting [...] has its origins in the plain and unmistakable fact that good and responsible advertising and communications can accomplish great things.” It can accomplish great things, indeed: it can paint black, white and fossil fuels green.

The CEO report can be found at www.climategreenwash.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/climate-summit-inc.pdf