At Oldham foodbank, Universal Credit is the biggest problem by miles

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Was at Oldham foodbank last week (there’s a long interview from that session here).

I also had a long chat with Glenn, who is one of the foodbank volunteers.

He told me that:

  • about 75% of foodbank parcels went to people who were struggling because of Universal Credit problems. Rent arrears was a major issue.
  • the foodbank had seen about twice as many people this year as last year, largely for the above reason.
  • the foodbank came close to running out of supplies at times. People donated around Christmas and New Year, because there was a lot of awareness at that time, but things were different during other months.
  • more and more people who used the foodbank were in work. Glenn gave the example of people who were in cleaning jobs. Some people had two cleaning jobs, but could not meet their bills on their wages.

This certainly gels with service user reports.

I’ve published a lot of interviews on this site with people who’ve had to use Oldham foodbank in the last year or so. Literally everyone I’ve spoken to at each visit has been in debt – debts which have often run to thousands of pounds. Reasons have included rent arrears because of Universal Credit delays or LHA gaps, council tax arrears, court fines for arrears and PIP and other benefit delays. I’ve posted links to a few of those interviews below.

This welfare reform disaster has to be turned around one way or another. You can’t have people on the edge like this, especially with another freezing northern winter taking hold. Seriously. If the aim of welfare reform was to push people in poverty into debt, fear, agony and death, we’re at Mission Accomplished.

Enough.

#UniversalCredit, sanctions, rent arrears, radiation therapy, 8 people living in one small flat…what the hell does this achieve?

 

“I miss one bill [to] pay another.” Universal Credit and debt, debt, debt. More #foodbank interviews

 

When the stress of applying for disability benefits is dangerous to disabled people’s health…

 

Ten week Universal Credit start delay, rent arrears as a result, advance loan repayments, tax credit debt…How debt is built into Universal Credit

“I got sanctioned nine months altogether – sanctioned, sanctioned, sanctioned.” And £2k rent arrears. No money for fares to work. More stories from the foodbank

 

 

60 thoughts on “At Oldham foodbank, Universal Credit is the biggest problem by miles”

    • Same story almost everywhere Trev. And yet there are those who are still under a delusion that Universal Credit can be ‘fixed’. The problem is, as Kate sets out above, it already has been fixed, it’s achieving what was intended all along. Any ‘fix’ in a positive sense would require a complete rebuilding of the system. I know I keep repeating this, but Nye Bevan’s words about Tories and vermin just seem so apt.

      There is part of me, and a part that I have extremely ambivalent feelings about, that hopes the Tories will ignore all the current criticism and plough on with the implementation of UC. That might seem at a glance as being very misanthropic, but people are already suffering needlessly under UC, and calls for reform are just prolonging the agony.

      The whole UC scheme seems to me to be leading to far worse a crisis than ever the Poll Tax ever was, but this is masked by the whole Brexit debacle unfolding in front of our eyes. And though the two may seem unrelated, it’s my guess that Brexit will have a huge impact on how UC is perceived, if, as some predict, Brexit, (if it actually happens now) causes an economic meltdown, more people will be affected by UC and it’s truly draconian measures.

      At a strike protest I went to in Cardiff in support of workers, (and largely un-unionised workers at that) in hospitality (Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Weatherspoons, TGFI, and McDonalds) there was an, (to me) an amazing lack of awareness about UC and its draconian regime of conditonality, especially how it will affect people like them, the precariat. People were genuinely in disbelief about the conditonality, the constant need to search for ‘more or better paid work’ and the penalties for not measuring up to some DWP worker’s arbitrary standards. And to cap it all, this amongst people who were striking in support of better working conditions and much better pay. As if most of them would be doing those jobs if they had a real choice, if there was indeed ‘more and better paid’ work available.

      UC is fundamentally just a reiteration of the idea that the poor are responsible for their own economic predicament. No amount of messing is going to change that. But, referring back to my feelings of ambivalence; after reading Kate’s piece, I don’t think any attempt by the DWP to turn the ship around is going to make the slightest bit of difference. UC is now seeming more or less doomed anyway, so yes, by all means pull back on the implementation so that fewer people suffer.

      Perhaps now is the time to go on the offensive with a list of demands from the grass roots? Maybe key elements of UC can be reformed and changed so that the regime is less severe, sanctions are abolished and the crazy out of touch idea that everyone is paid monthly and can use, let alone owns a computer is robustly refuted.

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      • I too have encountered some people who are clueless about UC and the effects of Welfare reforms in general, those who have beenin longterm employment for some time either don’t have time to read the news, don’t know anyone in their circle who is affected, or don’t think it’s got anything todo with them. It also seems to be a turn-off of a subject to some, maybe that’s because the Tories, the Rightwing media & poverty-porn tv have done such a good job in marginalizing Benefit claimants and conditioning the masses to ‘other’ the alienated poor?

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        • The thing about ‘the masses’ is that they are just as reliant on the welfare state as anyone. They may not claim ‘benefits’, but they still need the NHS, they still need state education, they still want their state pension in the future, but they seem to think they’re self sufficient. People aren’t just clueless about UC, they’re clueless about the entire welfare state, who it’s for, and what it provides.

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          • Most people seem to baulk at the idea that the state pension is a benefit, and are clueless that the annual Social Security spend includes state pensions, indeed, it’s a huge part of that spend. I guess you could say the clue is in the name, ‘Department of Work and Pensions’.

            Some people seem to go ballistic at the mere suggestion that the state pension is a benefit. Anyone would think they were scroungers!

            But yes, this arbitrary separation of people into the deserving and undeserving creates toxicity. It would help hugely if the organised Left could continually repeat that the social security system is there for everyone: listen to the speeches or read the words of Aneurin Bevan and it is crystal clear that the society he envisioned was one where everyone was included, and no-one left behind. Modern politicians just don’t measure up.

      • on the other hand, nearly 40 years of neoliberalism has resulted in a de-Politicized Proletariat, which may have been part of the plan all along.

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        • I think you’re absolutely correct there Trev. 40 years of drip, drip propaganda from Tory politicians, and a pliant media have seemingly lobotomised the proletariat, but then wasn’t it always thus? European countries had revolutions, but not Britain, even though conditions were certainly bad enough. Wasn’t Engels writing about Salford and Manchester rather than Solingen or Munich?

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    • Good to see that sanctions are a target for removal. They achieve nothing. Also, the ludicrous insistence on 35 hours a week work related activity is way over the top. Are there really that many jobs out there? It would seem not, as the much vaunted ‘full employment’ is a myth. If we had genuinely reached full employment conditions, then rates of pay would be increasing and the likes of Uber and Deliveroo and other exploiters of people on zero hours contracts would be struggling to find staff.

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  3. Something I don’t understand is about the £2 Billion that Osborne cut fromUC. If that 2 Billion was put back, what difference would it make? Are they all saying that 2 Billion would make UC function? That people would no longer haveto wait several weeks for payments? Or that part time workers would get more in UC ? Or what?

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      • And it wouldn’t make a deliberately cruel system any better.
        The only way you can so-called encourage people off benefits is to make the benefits system as vindictive as IDS and his crew intended. As the Tories see it the old benefit system gave people the alternative of not working. Universal Credit forces them to take any McJob or lose £10.20 per day. This is the basic fact of it – take any job part-time or zero hours rather than skive it on benefit. This is why you won’t get much change from the DWP.

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        • You’re right, that’s exactly what it’s all about & what it’s designed to do. That’s why they don’t give a toss about how much suffering & hardship it’s causing.

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    • I think the idea was that it would help to encourage people in work as they would lose less, but Osborne taking £2bn out of the intended budget made it so that the system was less ‘generous’ though even that would have been relative, as it would have been less generous that Tax Credits.

      Overall though, UC was never intended to improve things, that was just a USP designed to sell it to Daily Mail readers and other idiots.

      It’s the details of UC that are most concerning for me, such as the unnecessarily long wait until the first payment, plus it being a monthly payment; many people in lower paying jobs are still paid weekly, some even in cash. What was so wrong with fortnightly payments, or even weekly? As payment is made by a computerised system the cost is negligible, so that excuse is out.

      Why can’t rents be paid directly to landlords? Personally I prefer to manage paying my own rent, as there is always then the possibility of withholding it – not strictly legal, of course, when you’re receiving poor service, you need leverage. But some people value the security it brings to have their rent paid directly, so why not?

      That leaves us with sanctions and their causes, all of them to do with the DWP. No-one I have spoken to has agreed that 35 hours a week jobsearch related activity is justified, indeed, all of them thought it rather ludicrous, with some of them asking, rhetorically’ where all the jobs are that would fill that amount of time. Basically people are being encouraged to make things up: lie. And the sanctions themselves. What a stupid idea, as if someone further impoverished than when actually receiving their UC will feel more motivated to getting work. .

      No, UC even ‘properly’ funded was just a means of maintaining the army of low paid doing the jobs that are vital, but aren’t valued. It was never going to be fair. It’s even been compared as a ‘kind of’ UBI, (which just goes to show the general ignorance surrounding UBI) which of course it isn’t. a UBI would be a very sensible solution. No doubt it would cost a lot, but no more than the UK can afford, and it would go a long way to abolishing poverty, as it would provide enough to live on, and allow someone to be instantly better off through paid work, as any pay would be additional. It wouldn’t be bureaucratic, which of course UC is. It would also empower workers. As Yanis Varoufakis has said, it’s important that workers have the freedom to say no to things like crap pay or conditions, and a system of UBI would do that. UC on the other hand, penalises you viciously if you dare to refuse a job offer, no matter how crap the pay and conditions are – and UC is designed to do this. If we had a system of UBI employers would have to considerably up their game when it comes to employing people, ameliorating somewhat wage-slave conditions.

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      • Universal Credit was never really about helping anyone, it’s about enslaving & exploiting people by forcing them into accepting low paid insecure work, or starve.

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  4. So much for the Budget then. Austerity’s not over, UC is still a bag o’ shite. Benefits are still frozen. As you were.

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  5. Upon becoming 65 I am automatically transferred from Employment & Support Allowance (Support Group) status to State Pension but will not stop campaigning against UC, even while that transition for me means I shan’t be transferred to UC from that ‘legacy benefit’.

    As well as my State Pension I will also require Housing Benefit, and would not be surprised if those that want Contributory State Pensions to be privatised will seek the further erosion of both the basic State Pension and Housing Benefit.

    Meanwhile also, the DWP is bragging about cutting youth unemployment by 50% when in fact what the Tories have done has been essentially to massage the figures while making it more difficult for youth to claim benefits of any kind. Against that backdrop, is there any wonder that teenagers are becoming increasingly caught up in the drugs trade both as suppliers and users? Tories are making the illegal drugs market profitable while not ‘making work pay’.

    And in places like rural Herefordshire, lousy transport links will make more UC claimants miss appointments and thus get sanctioned.

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  6. The DWP always reminds me of the church. It’s the way they sell the whole idea of work, as it were something profound and holy. A good in itself, something to be aspired to almost on a spiritual basis. That work must be earned, through struggle and hardship. (Or sanctions and late payments ). But that in the end comes redemption from the moral evil of unemployment, and the curse of idleness.
    It’s no wonder that they are blind to the suffering they are causing. Or to the real effects of their cruel policies. As far as they are concerned, they are doing the Lord’s work.

    Proverbs 12:24 ‘The hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor.’

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    • True. I always got the feeling that IDS thought he was Jesus Christ or at least a very close personal friend on direct dial.

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      • If IDS thinks he’s even remotely similar to Jesus at all, he certainly has a very unusual idea of the life and work of Christ!

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    • Actually that is the fundamental principle behind all of this; the Protestant Work Ethic. Even though IDS himself is a Catholic, which Blair also converted to in an attempt to save his soul, they are all a part of the British Establishment that is founded upon the PWE, the Queen being not only Head of State but also of the Church of England.

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      • Not quite. Yes, Christians believe in work, but we believe, even more, in helping the poor and sharing what we have with others. That’s why churches are playing host to so many foodbanks and homeless shelters. That’s why the Church of England has written and spoken out against the Tories’ welfare policies. We believe people should look for work, but we don’t believe in making people destitute. Nobody believes that Universal Credit or any of the other Tory welfare reforms have anything at all to do with the Bible.

        It’s fair enough to observe some similarities between faith and adherence to a political ideology, but please rest assured that nobody is standing at the pulpit on a Sunday saying anything positive about Tory welfare policy!

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        • Oh I wasn’t meaning individual churches at a grassroots level, I see firsthand the Harvest Festival donations floodingin to the foodbank. I was referringto the PWE at a more esoteric level as described in the Masonic/Rosicrucian teachings revealedby Max Heindel for example. Protestantism has its roots in Alchemy & Hermeticism going back many centuries, and was seen as Heresy by the Roman Catholics becauseof the notion of working one’s own way to Heaven, Raising Oneself through Work in the Light of Knowledge, essentially Luciferian. Key figures in bringingtthis to the West in modern times include people such as Tomasso Campanella, Geordano Bruno, Dr. John Dee, Sir Francis Bacon, the InvisibleCollege, et al, and more recently Manly P. Hall, Max Heindel, Nicholas Roerich, for example. The materialis all out there available to study if you have a decade or so to spare, a good starting point for the novice (Neophyte) might be the book Talisman by Hancock & Bauval, then read all the source material,ffrom Bacon’s New Atlantis to Blake’s New Jerusalem, and more.

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          • Yes, I have heard of the Protestant Work Ethic. However, it doesn’t justify punishing the poor. It doesn’t negate CHARITY as a concept central to our faith.

            The Tories’ welfare reform is not coming from the theology behind the Christian faith. I don’t think it comes from anything beyond free market capitalism and the politics of envy and hate.

            I’ve never heard anyone use faith or theology to try to defend benefit cuts. What people tend to do is try to say their support for benefit cuts has nothing to do with the requirements and values of their faith.

          • I know it sounds like conspiracy theory stuff but the info is out there for anyone to see, if they time it takes to research, and are able to unders tand it. There are influential people inhigh places who hide behind conventionalChris tiani ty whilst following a Secret Doctrine. The use all sorts of metaphors but It’s all about the notion of Spiritual growth through suffering, so they help us out by providing the suffering and blessing us with difficulties for our own good. Seriously.

          • Ha-ha! Yes, there are always people out there who twist religion to fulfil their own agenda.

            Personally, I think most of the Tories are far too busy worshipping Maggie to even care about Christianity.

  7. I see that Labour having now abandoned the idea of scrapping Universal Credit, are now offering the more modest target of ending the benefit freeze instead.
    In all honesty if they do get in, what are they really going to do ?

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    • I really do wonder about what they will do and what they can do. That’s if they get in at all or with the kind of majority they’d need to reverse some of this shite.

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      • At the moment, Labour is very busy talking about Trump. Not that voting for Labour would make an ounce of difference to politics in America! So it doesn’t give voters here in the UK any reason to vote Labour.

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    • I agree it doesn’t bode well but we’ll just have to wait and see what they put in their manifesto. I have a feeling that we are stuck with Universal Credit. The Tories have deliberately and systematically wrecked our Social Security and Labour let them. Foodbanks have become an acceptable norm in our Society and I can’t see how it’s ever going to change.

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      • Fucking right. They’ve flogged Royal Mail and many other things that might have slipped under the radar (Air-Sea Rescue is now Privatized), they even tried to Privatize National Forests, they’ve fucked Social Security, and the NHS is next on the list. Get the bastards out.

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        • Parts of the NHS are already in pri ate hands. Virgin have taken over a kit of sexual health clinics and children’s clinics. Virgin are also thinking
          About taking over the female cancer screening programmes

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          • Important to note that this is the NHS in England only. The NHS in Wales will remain firmly in the public sector. I don’t know what the situation in Scotland and Northern Ireland is, but I suspect there is a commitment to keep the NHS in the public sector in those countries too. If it can be a public service in three of the four UK nations, then why not in England too?

    • This kind of story is becoming depressingly common. It seems to me that the biopsychosocial model based WCA is responsible for a lot of horrors, giving the practitioner i.e. the person carrying out the assessment far too much power and influence over the way the assessment is both carried out, and the result. Far too many WCAs end in finding sometimes very sick and disabled people ‘fit for work’. In any sane system, surely the huge numbers of ‘false positives’ (especially when these are underlined by the numbers of cases where appeals against decisions are made) this would be cause for a rethink, such as when in the early 20th century the US Army introduced aptitude testing, and found that the test they adopted was flawed, as it resulted in the funneling people into the wrong roles for their abilities.

      It’s utterly disgusting that the WCA is still being used in its original form, as its sole utility seems to be to reduce the costs of disablility payments to sick and disabled people. Surely the death toll of those who died soon after assessment should have started alarm bells ringing? Whilst some criticism has been made by opposition parties, none so far has escalated it to be a national scandal, which of course it is, along with the rest of the reform of the social security system. Worryingly, it was Mansel Aylward, (who got a knighthood) of the Unum sponsored Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University who came up with the WCA that is used. That he was effectively paid by Unum should be pause for thought in the first place. There is criticism of the way the company operates in its home, the USA:

      https://lindanee.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/unums-internal-physicians-practice-voodoo-medicine/

      and some conglomerated, but interesting, if old info here:

      https://downwithallthat.wordpress.com/category/dubious-academics-universities/unum-provident/page/2/

      Worryingly for me, (especially in view of my recent comment about the Welsh NHS being independent of England) Mansel Aylward is now chair of the Bevan Commission, which has the ear of the Welsh government when it comes to advice on healthcare provision. Not only is this a case of ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ with such a character being in a position of such influence, it’s also somewhat mind boggling that someone with such an apparently diametrically opposed standpoint should chair an organisation that claims to champion the principles of Aneurin Bevan who founded the NHS.

      All this as part of the government’s big idea that when it comes to social security provision, “One size fits all”. But we know it doesn’t, and that’s probably one of the biggest criticisms we can make. The old system for which it is claimed that UC is a replacement was very complex, mainly because it developed in the full realisation the people come in different shapes and sizes and that their circumstances vary wildly. The old system might have been a bit creaky, but it was widely understood, and it did, after a fashion, work.

      Perhaps once Brexit is out of the way, (preferably voted down in a referendum) we’ll be more focused on dealing with the mounting catastrophe that is Universal Credit? There’s certainly a lot of growing opposition, now that ordinary folk, and not ‘skivers and sgroungers’ are going to be affected.

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  13. The Sanctions regime is coming under fire:

    https://intensiveactivity.wordpress.com/2018/11/06/mps-hit-out-at-pointlessly-cruel-benefit-sanctions-regime/

    But no one is saying anything about the JSA freeze or the pathetically low rates that JSA is paid at to begin with, I mean I’m not even Sanctioned but am struggling to survive on the paltry sum of just £65 per week. It’s supposed to be £73 p/w but many of us don’t even get that because of deductions for DWP Social Fund loans that we’ve been forced to take because £73 is not enough to live on in the first place! Right now I haven’t even got enough for bread & milk and I’ve got a week & half to go to next payment. Then you hear about company bosses getting £75 Million bonuses, MPs on 78 grand a year, and all these filthy rich cunts like Sir Philip Greed and that other fucker who’s in the news at the moment (Aaron Banks is it ? Whoever the fuck he is). It takes the piss big time.

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    • Akibsolutely spot on Trev, £73.10 isn’t anywhere near enough to live on. In a comment I made recently (it might have been here) I noted that had the JSA rate current in 1996, (£47.90) gone up in line with inflation than the rate would be £87.66. Still not a huge amount, but considerably better than the current rate. Yet even so, there are politicians trying to tell us that the rate that benefits are paid at haven’t significantly altered in value. Okay, so £13 odd isn’t exactly the national debt, but it’s all relative, and for some of us that sum would amount to a fortnight’s electricity, to put things in context.

      I’m not claiming benefits atm, as I had a moderate inheritance a couple of years ago, and I’ve been living on that, as well as trying to find work… (At 61 I’ve discovered that few employers are interested.) I made a big mistake in not signing on again back in early January, just before Cardiff was made a full UC area, so I’d have to sign on for UC, which isn’t a pleasant prospect, as I insist on doing this sort of thing in Welsh, and the system doesn’t work too well in English! I have to admit that the whole sanctions regime aspect of it is worrying, and find it hard to fathom at the kind of mind that thinks that anything good could ever come from the deliberate impoverishment of people to the point of destitution.

      How on earth is deliberately and cruelly stressing people out, making them hungry and potentially homeless ever going to make them more likely to get work, or, indeed convince employers that they’re fit to do any job?

      The situation is ludicrous, it really is. And yes, politicians etc really fo take the piss bigtime.

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      • Like you say Padi, on the grand scale of things 13 quid a week is bugger all, but That’s £26 per fortnight and it would certainly make a difference to me. Better still though if it was an extra £26 per week, so JSA @ £99 per week instead of 73, much more realistic.

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    • There is a BBC Wales documentary being shown on Monday 12th November, and it will be on iPlayer soon after. ‘BBC Wales Invesitgates: Universal Credit – What’s the Benefit’ 9:30 pm. It’ll probably pull its punches, but who knows, it might be excoriating, but I’m not going to hold my breath, but it is an indication at how, increasingly the media are starting to comment now that it’s the ‘hard working’ are about to be affected by this abomination.

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    • Also the boss of a house-building company who was “forced to resign” over his obscene £100million bonus (surely he doesn’t need to keep working anyway, with all that in the bank?)

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