Introduction
The review of welfare spending in the United Kingdom, published in 2010, constitutes one of the most severe and prolonged cutbacks in provision ever seen in advanced economies. Regardless of the ideological argument between redistributive ‘tax and spend’ policies or market-based, reduced tax policies, the kind of economies planned in a short period of time will impact on all members of a welfare state. The headlines of the welfare spending plans include £11.03 billion worth of changes through tax and spending rebalances within four years. The speed and extent of this restructuring means that decisions will be taken quickly and impacts will be immediate (HM Treasury, 2010).
The scale of these changes, as Taylor-Gooby (Reference Taylor-Gooby2011: 63) argues, goes further than simple economies and has become a ‘major reorganisation of virtually all public sector services designed to change the rules of the game and eliminate future pressures for welfare spending’. If the welfare changes are to be understood as a major change in the rules of the game, with resulting long-term implications for relationships between individuals and the state, then it is important to recognise whose relationships and which models of citizenship are being changed. It is clear that impact does not fall equally on all classes of people. There has already been considerable work showing differential impact on women (Stratton, Reference Stratton2010; Fawcett Society, 2012; Stewart, Reference Stewart2012). Dorling and Thomas (Reference Dorling and Thomas2011) set out convincing evidence that poorer areas and those with a history of Labour voting are hardest hit. O’Dea's (Reference O’Dea2010) statistical work indicates clearly that service cuts will damage the living standards of the bottom decile almost twice as much as those in the top decile.
Given evidence of inequality for other groups, it could seem unnecessary to put forward a case for lesbian, gay male and bisexual (LGB) people. Statistically they will form part of other groups: women, geographic groups, disabled people, the old and the poor (Gates, Reference Gates2010, explores the experience of LGB identity in different demographic positions). Commonly, gay male individuals can be presented as high earners with few or no family responsibilities. While this may be true for some, it is clearly not an adequate picture of the whole LGB population. Stonewall research indicates that LGB people are likely to be overrepresented among users of mental health services and may suffer family breakup and difficulty obtaining housing (Stonewall, 2006). However, the presence of a minority within minority groups is not in itself a cause for concern, and there is little evidence here on which to base a demand for special consideration.
There are two ways in which LGB people form a group with specific relationships to welfare services. Firstly, the trajectory of movement from criminalisation and medicalisation of homosexual acts to the current discourse of equal rights and recognition has been fast and has not always been matched by public acceptance. There is evidence that LGB people expect poorer treatment from public services, including social housing, criminal justice and health services (Hunt and Dick, Reference Hunt and Dick2008), and report less positive experiences of National Health Services, including pain control (Department of Health, 2010). These points are also true of trans-people (T), whose claim to a group identity is recent and growing. Second, there is academic discourse that interrogates links between the concepts of heterosexuality and citizenship (among others see Richardson, Reference Richardson2000; Phelan, Reference Phelan2001; Johnson, Reference Johnson2002; Richardson, Reference Richardson2004 Richardson and Monro, Reference Richardson and Monro2012). It is this link, as much as the practical implications of welfare changes, that is the subject of this article. The impact of welfare changes is open to different analysis, but they can be seen as a moment of ‘systemic’ reform (Pierson, Reference Pierson1994: 13), one that alters relationships between citizens and the state and reshapes conceptualisation of a citizen. This moment is framed by equal rights legislation that demands interrogation of the impact of welfare reform on sexual orientation.
Framing is made possible now, and in the British context, because of the impact of the Equality Act (2010). This Act explicitly includes sexual orientation and trans-gender status as ‘protected characteristics’. Public authorities are required to assess impacts of policy on people with protected characteristics. Further, they are charged with actively working towards eliminating differences between groups. For the first time, authorities will be looking for the impact of welfare changes on LGB people. While this facilitated gathering the evidence used in this article, it is not without difficulty.
Monitoring for sexual orientation in the workplace is rare. To date, there has been no question related to sexual orientation in the Census. The 2010 Integrated Household Survey found that more than 480,000 people considered themselves to be gay (as both a male and female category) or lesbian, and a further 245,000 were bisexual. Musingarami (Reference Musingarami2008) estimated that there may be as many as 1 to 1.4 million LGB people over the age of 60 in the UK. Aspinall (Reference Aspinall2009) presents an overview of ways of estimating the population, but concludes that figures are currently unreliable. Office of National Statistics (2011) data indicates that there is a high population of LGB people in some urban centres, in particular London, Brighton and Edinburgh, but the validity of such statistical evidence is questioned by Joloza et al. (Reference Joloza, Evans, O’Brien and Potter-Collins2010). Birch et al. (Reference Birch, Gates and Ost2004) produced a pictorial representation of LGB people in the United States, but there is no comparable work generally available in the UK. It is unlikely that any local area could produce reliable figures of their LGB population, or know how large a proportion of other populations were LGB.
The project that provides the data for this article was a first attempt to gather a systematic picture of the impact of welfare spending changes on the LGB population of one urban area. An impact assessment was undertaken by the University of Bradford and the Bradford LGBT Strategic Partnership (Equity Partnership) to lend weight to negotiation with the local authority.
Statistical invisibility makes writing about LGB people and welfare spending a difficult task, compounded by a relationship to welfare that is very rarely a direct result of sexual orientation. The case for raising issues is twofold: firstly their position in terms of practical relationship to welfare spending is largely unknown; secondly interrogation of that position can inform discussion of welfare citizenship.
This article presents an account of practical steps taken to gather data to present during an impact assessment of the implementation of the spending review in one region. The second part of the article presents the data collected to analyse the impact of spending cuts for LGB people in as far as they can be forecast. All of these practical steps are placed in the context of citizenship and heterosexuality explored in the final part of the article.
In writing this, it is important that differences between LGB people should also be recognised. Richardson and Munro (Reference Richardson and Monro2012) use intersectionality as a tool to explore equal opportunity issues between diverse LGB people, showing how assumptions about the whole identity category can disadvantage different groups within it. In this article, information has been drawn from people in very different social positions and groups to illuminate specific issues of sexual orientation and welfare. So, while respondents represent a wide cross section of the community, sexual orientation is the focus of research. Other identity positions are obscured. This is unusual in welfare research, where more usually the focus includes the positioning of respondents. Despite this focus, it is a mistake to assume that either this small research speaks for all LGB people, or that all LGB people are affected in the same way by welfare spending or welfare citizenship. Even within the ‘brand’ LGB (Richardson and Munro, Reference Richardson and Monro2012: 41), bisexual (bi) people occupy a different legal and social position from lesbian and gay male people. Chamberlin (Reference Chamberlin2009) indicates that their space is bounded by misunderstanding, giving little or no voice in political commentary. In the research that informs this article, bi voices have not identified themselves, although the Equity Partnership as an organisation offers the major representation of bi people in the area.
Methodology and gathering material
The evidence in this article is drawn from the attempts made by the Equity Partnership to collect evidence to inform local authority impact assessment of projected cuts. The Equity Partnership is a regional group based in Bradford, with a remit to raise awareness of LGB and now T (denoting transgender) issues in policy arenas. This research was undertaken in partnership with the University of Bradford, and was designed to meet the local authority requirement for impact assessment of spending decisions. Three levels of cuts were considered:
1. individual impact on users of welfare and services;
2. impact on services provided by LGB focused agencies;
3. impact on general services that could lead to disproportionate impact on LGB services.
Information on all three areas was sought from three constituencies of research respondents: individuals, workers in specifically LGB services, and workers in agencies with a broader remit. Often individual respondents reported in more than one group. Some respondents in agencies with a broad brief did not identify as LGB. Research partners were drawn from a wide constituency of positions, including faith groups. Information on these positions was not collected in this research because the focus was explicit and narrow: how will the austerity measures, local and national, impact on LGB people as individuals, service users and service providers?
Formulating ethical and rigorous research plans that provide information for policy, with the added time constraint built into a local authority consultation framework, is a particular challenge. A pragmatic approach to this means that the value of any given research methodology will be based on empirical and practical efficacy (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, Reference Johnson and Onwuegbuzie2004). Under this framework, researchers would choose methods that offer the best opportunities for answering the research question(s) under investigation. In this case, the requirements of the local authority gave a focus on research that took in a broad sweep of individual experience tailored by the identity factors of sexual orientation. The mix of methods chosen provides insight into the individual experience of being LGB and a user of welfare, while also giving space to the interests of those focusing on providing welfare to LGB people.
Individual impact was collected through questionnaires given to LGB people, and from accounts given to leaders of LGB forums: youth clubs, older LGB groups, specific LGB interest groups. The questionnaires were short and focused on one issue. While individual evidence was and is effective, it was also important to avoid inaccurately picturing the LGB community as needy or helpless. The researchers had reservations about the limitations of an ‘individual hardship’ approach in developing a contextual picture. In the event, ten individual accounts were presented through questionnaires, although there is some anecdotal evidence that more people experienced and reported individual benefit change.
Representatives of groups of and for LGB people were invited to attend an evening meeting focusing on the impact of ‘cuts’ to welfare spending. The meeting was facilitated by Equity Partnership staff because the evening would not only supply research information, but also provide a potential forum for communication and coordination across the region. Possible conflict between these aims was minimised by separating the functions. The first part of the evening concentrated on the potential of welfare spending changes to impact on the core business of groups represented and their clients. The second part of the evening explored possible responses. About thirty community groups were represented, directly or indirectly.
Representatives of voluntary and community groups who will have LGB staff, clients or members met in a separate arena. Meeting these groups had a double purpose: to raise awareness of their LGB constituents, and to interrogate the wider impacts of changes. Material here was hard to collect because very few groups were aware of specifically LGB members. Therefore it was important for the researchers themselves to begin to identify differences between an impact that would be felt by all group members and an impact felt differentially by LGB members. This was good practice for later negotiations, where influencing local policy depended on clarity about the specific LGB impact. In the final instance, evidence from about twenty other groups is included here.
Neither ignorance of LGB presence nor overt prejudice were major barriers to data gathering in this project. Rather, invisibility of LGB perspectives on social welfare was made evident by the ways in which silence was created and maintained. Silence is not only a specific lack of voice, but as Simpson and Lewis (Reference Simpson and Lewis2005: Reference Simpson and Lewis1253) argue, it is ‘discursive practices [that] eliminate certain issues from arenas of speech and sound’. Issues are eliminated by difficulty in counting and difficulty in recognising any explicit link between sexual orientation and welfare provision. Deep mechanisms of silence support dominant understandings of familiar concepts. This analysis makes it possible to argue that invisibility in conversation about welfare provision echoes and supports invisibility in any wider conceptual discussion of whom welfare supports and enables.
Among discussions of sexuality and citizenship, Johnson (Reference Johnson2002) is particularly relevant because she draws on feminist and sexuality theory to show that the agenda of citizenship, and by extension welfare citizenship, is specifically heterosexual, thus claiming LGB identity means losing good citizen status. Similarly, Decena (Reference Decena2008:1) argues that ‘the rhetoric of coming out, and the perceptions of internalised homophobia linked to those who do not, are mobilised to produce an ethical sexual citizen, not a gay man’. These analyses develop Smith's (Reference Smith1994: 207) argument that governments are involved in developing a ‘good homosexual’ political subject. Building on this, it could be seen that breaking the silence about LGB issues in debates about welfare provision breaks a consensus about what relationships of citizenship the welfare state supports. It is this that leads to questions about the kind of welfare relationships that are posited for the future.
Certainly some individual LGB people were reluctant to discuss welfare and sexual orientation as linked. One claimant commented:
They will assume I’m heterosexual and if I tell them any different they will be shitty with me.
LGB people sometimes present as advantaged over heterosexual couples. One of very few examples is that a male and female person sharing a house will be assumed to be in the position of husband and wife and will receive benefit as a couple; whereas two individuals of the same gender are less likely to be assessed as a couple unless they state their relationship explicitly, and could therefore claim separate allowances. However, the small financial advantage gained by invisibility can be lost easily. A woman claiming disability benefits described officials coming to her home to question her single status because she had underwear shorts drying on her line. The official assumed that these were not hers but belonged to a man living with her. This could have resulted in a cut in her income. Individual claimants rarely reflected identifying as LGB and receiving good treatment. Even where sexual orientation was a key factor in the claim for benefit, for instance for housing, individuals felt prejudiced in stating that factor.
At the opposite end of the scale, community groups whose focus was not LGB expressed a wish to know how non-heterosexual clients received their services. Even where sexual orientation could be a factor in service given it was rarely recorded. Workers expressed discomfort in ‘asking the question’. It is clear in other fields (Beckett, 2012) that sexual orientation must be stated to be perceived. Most LGB people are only recognisable if they choose to make themselves so. The need to make a constant statement of identity is in itself a barrier to assessment of specific impact when looking at welfare.
The findings
A very wide range of issues was raised across all three research groups. Major themes included:
• direct changes for individuals in benefits in money or kind;
• changes in provision of and cost of council run services – from swimming pools to community centres and groups;
• changes in health related services – mental health in particular;
• changes in community services;
• employment issues.
Individual impact
The most obvious and widely feared individual impact is represented by changes to housing benefit. For example, after January 2012 single people under thirty-five can only be paid rent for a bedsitter or room in a shared house (in July 2012 the government discussed plans to remove housing benefit from people under twenty-five altogether). While some LGB people in this age group are in a position to buy property or pay rent, there is evidence that a disproportionate number of this constituency without jobs, with mental health issues, or after family breakup would be LGB. Certainly young LGB people are overrepresented among those excluded from family relationships and therefore not able to access family housing or support. The Albert Kennedy Trust reports that 85 per cent of young people have faced some level of rejection by their parents because they have identified as LGB (Albert Kennedy Trust, 2012). This change clearly had immediate impact on some LGB focus group members, who feared having to move to accommodation in cheaper and potentially less safe areas.
Less obvious but well reported were changes to community support. This was seen as making it harder to access specific support. For example, one group member expressed concern that the team that provided their home care had been centralised into other provision. His fear was that new carers would be less aware of the position he and his disabled partner held in the city, and so less willing to provide support to attend social centres and meetings a long way from home. Similarly, increases in access costs to, for instance, swimming pools, coupled with closure of local provision, were seen as limiting LGB people's ability to socialise. As one man put it:
My neighbours, they’ll find straight people to talk to anywhere. Me, I only like the swimming group at . . . because I know there are more like me there.
Access to transport was reported as a big issue for elderly or disabled LGB people. Often, the concern was that it would no longer be possible to access city-wide networks without having to ‘tell them I’m queer every time’.
Impact on specific LGB services and groups
Community groups in this region at the time of the research were immediately concerned that cuts in public spending jeopardised their funding. These groups reported specific fears related to their own client groups, as the following recorded comments show:
Cuts in mental health services are especially concerning for LGBT communities because they are so much more likely to experience mental health problems than the general population.
This comment reflects both perception of the local position and national research (Remafedi et al., Reference Remafedi, French, Story, Resnick and Blum1998; Fergusson et al., Reference Fergusson, Horwood and Beautrais1999; D’augelli, Reference D’augelli2002; McNamee, Reference McNamee2006; King et al., Reference King, Semlyen, Tai, Killaspy, Osborn, Popelyuk and Irwin2008).
Where larger services delivered smaller LGB specific support, there was concern that the smaller service would be subject to disproportionate cuts. These comments are by service workers who do not identify as LGB:
The danger is that for services with just one or two workers, if they are made redundant the entire service disappears.
One service [provided by a local branch of a national charity] cut outreach workers – all communities had less but LGB had none.
While these groups were clearly aware of a threat to their members, and to the wider context of welfare, they were less specific in highlighting impact on themselves as service providers.
Impact identified by non-LGB service providers
This group identified a series of contextual concerns and spent some time discussing how their LGB clients could be identified and protected. This may have been a product of the individuals who took time to attend the focus group, but also may be representative of awareness of how little is known about LGB people as service users. The effect of this was that evidence gathered here was not specific to particular people or kinds of welfare. The opportunity to speculate provided the researchers with broad contextual ideas rather than precise coverage.
In the first instance, there was concern that the impact of welfare spending cuts would damage social cohesion. Different groups would compete to mount the strongest lobby. LGB people were not seen as a powerful lobby because their relationship with welfare did not depend on their identity as LGB in the same way as, for instance, disabled people's relationship depends on their disability. The more complicated argument cited earlier in the article, that claiming non-heterosexual orientation undermines status as a citizen, was not used explicitly here, but it was possible to interpret that thread from some comments:
People expect them just to be in families, but our young people aren’t. (Representative of a service for LGB young people)
They either have to be the same [as heterosexuals] and not get what they need or they have to shout about it and get blamed for being mouthy. (Representative of a generalist organisation)
But the language used was not one of citizenship and rights, rather one of need.
Related to the potential for competition and conflict between categories of need, was the fear that LGB people would become more reluctant to ‘come out’ and to identify themselves. This was seen as detrimental to individual health and welfare, as well as having impact on society or social relationships. The Equality Act (2010) gives a direct duty to avoid policy that discourages community cohesion, so the prediction that welfare changes will set groups in opposition to each other is important. While the argument that being LGB might mean that people had specific needs from welfare services was implicit in the discussion, responsibility for raising those issues was located with individuals. This complicated example was given by a representative of a general organisation:
Why would they come out? Well why would you? You can get something that everyone gets – it may not be the best for you, but you don't have to put up with the shit you might get if you do come out. But then next time, you know, maybe you can't put up with a general service and the services for you aren't there any more.
Much has been written about the reality of identifying as LGB since Sedgwick (Reference Sedgwick1991) argued that coming out of the closet, identifying oneself as lesbian or gay, was an act specific to sexuality and a defining factor of LG identity. In particular, Seidman et al. (Reference Seidman, Meeks and Traschen1999) discuss dissonance between assimilation of LGB people into heterosexual society or the potential for claiming gay identity and becoming an outsider. Meeks (Reference Meeks, Seidman, Fischer and Meeks2011: 59) describes such disclosures as deeply personal, but states that ‘coming out is also social’. In his argument, the public statement of identity helps to form the identity category. In other words, if individuals do not identify themselves, then the category is lost. This seems to be the fear expressed in this example: that LGB people would be poorly served in welfare relations that did not contain awareness of the identity category LGB. Related to this point was the written comment received after the focus group:
A problem faced by LGBT groups facing spending cuts is that if those services/groups disappeared there would be less of an outcry than for some other services because those fighting the cuts would be ‘outing’ themselves.
The example given was of a large national organisation that is cutting local advisors. LGB services are reported to have been cut more severely than, for instance, services to BME groups.
Much of the above discussion depended on awareness that LGB people are a minority within other minorities. LGB people are present in every group that experiences inequality. Sometimes this has no repercussions, but sometimes measures taken that are agreed by, or suit, other members of the minority, are against the interests of LGB people. The example used in the focus group concerned interpreters. It is planned to place interpreting services in local community centres as a cost-cutting exercise welcomed by many BME groups. However, some LGB people, and particularly LGB members of some BME groups, are fearful that the local nature of such services will compromise their identity within their own community, where they may not be ‘out’.
This focus group identified three areas where changes in the direction of welfare spending could have specific detrimental impact on LGB people:
Central benchmarks for some service standards have gone under this government, that's why things like Stonewall Index are so important.
Time pressures can affect attitudes of service providers. Little things can affect people using the services so deeply.
Less money could mean less training of staff (in relation to sexual orientation training).
Welfare and employment
Welfare and employment are inseparably linked together. Arguably, they cannot be discussed separately. In this context, particular issues and concerns were named. To some extent this reflects Colgan and Wright's (Reference Colgan and Wright2011) finding that public service employers were the first to instate strong equal opportunity policies and working practices, and so became careers of choice for LGB people. Many of the participants in local support roles and networks are also employees of, or reliant on, local authority provision. In this research, this showed in a strong theme linking employment and welfare service.
It is clear that the spending review will result in a reduction of jobs at all levels in the public sector. Hopefully, this will be facilitated through early retirement and voluntary redundancy schemes in the first instance. These schemes will be implemented on a whole department or organisation basis and will be subject to impact assessment in specific organisations. On the face of it, this is not a place where LGB people will experience differential treatment. However, the group expressed concern that LGB people might be selected for redundancy for reasons connected to the way they conducted their business, and that this discriminatory selection could be masked under other reasons. Again, this relates to the idea that to claim LGB identity is to become visible and that visibility has costs as well as benefits. As one employed woman put it:
They can keep the wife and mother or they can keep the mouthy dyke. What would you do?
While strong employment protection and the Equalities Act should protect LGB people from recognisably unfair selection for redundancy, a perception that differential treatment may happen was widespread. Related to this was the fear that LGB people would self-select for such schemes as a way of leaving workplaces where custom and practice had made the atmosphere difficult. One organisation reported that redundancy and early retirement had cut the membership of their LGB staff network by 25 per cent in six months. This led to discussion of funding and support for staff networks, which were felt to be unfairly selected for cuts.
Participants also saw equality and diversity units, staff and practices as being targets of cuts in welfare organisations. While customer service was expected to continue to be resourced, the ‘backroom’ business of protecting diversity in work would be a casualty. This led to discussion of the potential for different diversity groups to be serviced differently, and for different groups to have different ‘voice’ or power. The provisions of the Equality Act (2010) name nine ‘protected characteristics’ of diversity. It was accepted as impossible that all nine characteristics would receive equal concern and protection. This echoes concern expressed in the previous group about the implications of current welfare policy for social cohesion.
Finally, concerns were raised about changes in working practices brought about by reductions in funding. For example, ‘essential car user’ grants and supported parking schemes were being reduced. A working man who would be affected by this change reported:
How does a big bloke explain he's scared to go back to his car at night unless he comes out?
These changes in working practices are likely to have been assessed for impact on diverse groups. Identification of impact for individuals depends on them declaring themselves to be in that group. Mechanisms to ensure that systems protect people depend on the people themselves making a case for protection. In this sense, the austerity measures of the spending review undermine universal claims to protection.
Reviewing welfare expenditure
Throughout this research, the recurring theme has concerned the positioning of individual identity-based claims against the demands for welfare retrenchment. The welfare state contained in the Beveridge Report (Reference Beveridge1942) was not founded on individual claims, but on universal ‘giants’ or themes, and on an implicit theorisation of ‘family’ as being central to state welfare. The identifiable diversity strands or ‘protected characteristics’ that command claims to consideration now were not a factor to be considered then. Indeed, LGB people were criminalised or medicalised at that time. The report claimed universality in the sense that it protected from the ‘cradle to the grave’ and undermined specific social problems, not that it supported specific social groups.
Development from that point to this is outside the scope of this article, but the programme of the present government has been extensively discussed (Taylor-Gooby and Stoker, Reference Taylor-Gooby and Stoker2011). There is no doubt that current cutbacks are of ‘exceptional scale, speed composition and distributional impact’ (Taylor-Gooby, Reference Taylor-Gooby2011: 63). These changes in direction indicate a point where notions of universality have been complimented by a sophisticated discourse of identity and diversity. Therefore it is possible, legally necessary, and ethically important, to consider how welfare delivery impacts on social relationships and concepts of citizenship.
Portero (Reference Portero2012: 1), writing about disabled people, asks ‘could this global crisis be an excuse for states to disregard their international obligations in the protection and realisation of Human Rights’? Disabled people have a clear claim here, supported by the European Disability Forum. LGB people who are also disabled will benefit from this support and this claim, as will lesbian women who can show that the way in which current policy distorts women's equal opportunities also applies to them. It is harder to establish a point from which LGB people can begin to demonstrate their unique relationship to welfare as LGB people rather than as part of other groups. Arguably, this has always been so: Beveridge's (Reference Beveridge1942) universality masked different identity claims. The difference now is that LGB people have rights and equalities that are equal to those held by other citizens, not that welfare provision has recognised or supported them as LGB people.
However, this difference is present and has implications. Recent legislative changes have created a climate where LGB claims to citizenship and support from the welfare state could be contained in the ‘universal’ welfare state. This is reflected through the Equality Act (2010) and compounded by the introduction of civil partnerships, changes in parenthood facilitated by availability of fertility treatment and changes in adoption and policy law and process. The result is, potentially, to place LGB people alongside heterosexual families. In the process of reaching this point, the very struggle to achieve those aims has underlined specific interests of LGB people. This leaves an uneasy ‘fit’ between LGB identity claims and universal citizenship.
The research that informed this article was itself made possible because of recognition, through the Equalities Act (2010), of LGB as holding a specific relationship to welfare processes. A recurring theme has been the need to make a personal statement of identity in order to get suitable provision. Coupled with that is recognition that making a personal statement could get harder as austerity measures impact on different groups. In this sense, it seems clear that the current austerity measures constitute a threat to social cohesion because all groups with a claim to citizenship are not treated equally.
Conclusion
The evidence drawn from this small study indicates that changes in welfare spending currently being implemented impact on LGB people differentially from the majority population: in particular, aspects of Housing Benefit delivery are worrying. These impacts are not only felt by individual claimants, but also impact on ability to contribute to and take part in social activities, and are felt by employed people and service users alike. Indeed, there is little distinction between service users and service providers.
The changes also alter the relationship between LGB people and welfare as a function of the state. By relying on individual (in)visibility in order to claim services, the welfare state introduces a version of universalism that favours those who do not ‘come out’. On the other hand, a condition of claiming and protecting services that meet the needs of LGB people is to ‘come out’.
A repeated concern of representatives of ‘mainstream’ groups providing LGB services was the potential for damage to social cohesion caused by the austerity measures. Specifically, the relationship between claiming LGB identity and receiving appropriate services was seen as problematic. To ‘come out’ was to risk poorer treatment, but not to ‘come out’ risked the loss of services dedicated to LGB needs. While further research is needed, this small impact assessment raises some issues that are in direct conflict with other parts of existing government policy, such as the Equality Act (2010).
