Scrounger?

The UK welfare state was created in the aftermath of World War Two, implemented by Clement Attlee’s Labour Party and based upon the recommendations of Liberal William Beveridge’s famous Beveridge Report (1943). Having studied for four years at one of the top universities in the world and achieved a highly successful result at the end of those four years, I was not expecting to have to rely on the state benefit system (or what is left of it after decades of reshaping, repackaging and cutting).

However, I have found myself in that exact position due to an inability to find work since graduating. Anyone that suggests that somebody with a first class honours degree should be willing to find work in a job that they are significantly over-qualified for is wrong. But, again, that is something that I have been forced to do, and with close to no success. So, having faced that struggle to find work and been unsuccessful, I have chosen to apply for the state benefits which I am entitled to because our government is still just about compassionate enough to offer them. This post is probably not original, or even all that hard hitting if you have even a small idea of how the UK benefits system works (or indeed doesn’t work). But regardless, I’ll plough on ahead and give you in excruciating detail my experience of ‘signing on’ (they don’t call it that anymore, but we’ll get there in time).

Thursday afternoon: I search online to try and find what benefit it is that I am entitled to. I eventually figure out that it is no longer ‘job seekers allowance’, but a relatively new thing called Universal Credit. ‘Universal’ implying that everyone is entitled to it. They’re not, but whatever. I fill out the forms asking me every question under the sun, from marital status to the address of my landlord. Once this is completed, I was sent a log-in to ‘Universal Jobmatch’, which is essentially another online jobsite that lists all the same jobs that are on every other site, with the added bonus of giving the DWP a chance to keep tabs on you and make sure that you’re using those lucrative benefits on the electric bill you’re running up by being on your laptop constantly searching for work. After a quick browse through that, uploading a CV and giving the DWP permission to check what jobs I’ve been looking at, I logged off and awaited a call to set up an appointment with my ‘job coach’.

This call arrived later in the evening, where they set up my meeting for the following afternoon and made sure I was well aware of all the different forms I was required to bring to prove that it was me, that I was paying rent and all the rest of it. Can’t have anyone being devious and fraudulently getting their £53 or so per week, can we?

The appointment was set-up for Friday afternoon, and I made my way down to the Job Centre in central Edinburgh. Nearly getting run over by someone driving through a zebra crossing was perhaps not a good omen, but I pressed ahead nonetheless. The next sign was even more worrying — as I walked through the front door, I was immediately greeted by a member of staff from the private security firm G4S. I was of course glad to see that our benefits offices have outsourced their security staff from a company with such a fantastic record of compassion.

At this point, I was sent upstairs to have my meeting. After a delay and speaking to further staff from G4S, I was asked to go speak with one member of staff, seemingly being trained at the time. This is where my disillusion became particularly strong. The member of staff, as helpful and sympathetic as they were, had not received the correct training to do the job that they were being asked to do, and it certainly didn’t fill me with confidence that my claim was going to be processed successfully. This is not the fault of the worker — they did not choose to have the benefits system dismantled to the point where it has become nearly inoperable.

The idea of a system that has been ideologically broken was only furthered by the interaction I had with the next member of staff, who was bemoaning the computer system that had been rolled out as being a vast improvement but was unable to cope with the sheer number of claimants. It was as if the Government thought that their policies were going to reduce the number of claimants (the policy of humiliating and attacking those claimants not withstanding).

Further at this stage of the interview process, I was laid out the requirements for successful receipt of my Universal Credit. Firstly, the payments come once every five weeks, not once every two weeks as happened under the previous system. The first payment would not be received until the end of the first five weeks, meaning that until then I’d better find some money from somewhere or be forced to live on fresh air. Secondly, it was made clear that these payments would only happen if I was able to prove I’d committed 35 hours per week to active job searching (whether online, attending interviews, or other actions). Thirdly, I have to be willing to work forty-eight hours per week. (Standard ‘full time’ working hours are usually thirty-five to thirty-seven hours per week). Finally, and perhaps the most obscene point yet, if I refuse to go for an interview within 90 minutes travel from my home, I will be subject to a sanction of £8.20/day. That may not seem a lot of money, but when that equates to your entire total daily benefit allowance, it puts things in perspective. If I were to refuse a job interview because it was in, say, Bellshill or Ladybank, somewhere I may deem to be too far to travel, then that’s it. Do not pass go. Do not collect £8.20.

The second point here is even more stark. £8.20 per day? People are being expected to live off that? Quite simply, that is not possible. The government may claim it ‘encourages people into work’ and away from ‘a life on benefits’. But when there are not enough jobs, and the vast majority of claimants aren’t on benefits through choice, it simply shows an ideological commitment to an economic system that doesn’t function for the majority. This is why I was pleased to see the people of Greece, whether symbolically or not, reject the idea of an economic system based on austerity and punishing the poor for mistakes they did not make. I’m sure Iain Duncan Smith and co would be more than happy to live on that sum if forced to, right? The fact that our government is driving people into this situation all the while pointing their finger at the so-called ‘scroungers’, the antithesis to the ‘hard working families’ and ‘strivers’ of this world, at the same time as taking tax credits and child support away from those middle class votes that they have courted is some political sleight of hand akin to an Orwellian dystopia.

My next meeting with my ‘job coach’ (whatever that means) is on Tuesday. I’m hoping I don’t have to attend and that I’ve found work in time. I’m also confident that I will have found work by the time that my first payment is due, five weeks from now. This isn’t because of an arrogance, but because I’m perhaps still naive enough to believe that someone with experience of working in the Scottish Parliament, helping to run a national campaign group, and with a first class honours degree in History from one of the world’s top 20 universities can expect to find fulfilling employment in Scotland’s capital, or elsewhere. But others have not been as fortunate as me, and haven’t found themselves having the same opportunities to get those qualifications. Yet they’ll be forced to live on £8.20 per day, and make all the sacrifices and effort that getting that pitiful sum requires.

This is just the beginning. We saw Wednesday’s budget, the ‘first Tory budget in a generation’, tear into the welfare state (particularly the areas that give any semblance of support to young people) like never before. Things are only going to get worse. Perhaps that £8.20 will fall further, or at best stay the same against rising prices. As I continue my job search, and make use of the welfare state that was set up despite the crippling debt and national destruction brought about by the previous 7 years of warfare, I can’t help but feel anger at a government that cheers the continued destruction of our system of compassion.

For those who have read this, thank you. I hope it has either increased your understanding of the situation people involuntarily find themselves in (and perhaps helps to break down some stereotypes), or if you were already well enough informed on this, despite the poor and offensive coverage that dominates our media, it has given you an incentive to mobilise against what can really not be called ‘benefits’. What was once the world’s greatest welfare state, with the greatest, most humane of intentions, has become something to be attacked and degraded in these neoliberal times, no matter how little support it continues to provide.