Category Archives: Public spending cuts

When you’re older and unemployed, the DWP actively takes the piss. More interviews from the jobcentre

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Have posted below a transcript from another recent interview at Stockport jobcentre. I’ve been leafleting there with Stockport United Against Austerity.

The interview was with Brian (name changed), 54.

Brian was signing on for JSA.

I’m posting Brian’s story to show again the senseless demands that the DWP makes of older unemployed people who really haven’t got a hope in hell of finding work – especially using the jobcentre’s failed methods.

I meet a lot of people in their 50s and 60s who sign on for unemployment benefits.

A lot of these older claimants worked in manual jobs in their day. Brian did. He left school at 15 and went to work building dry stone walls. He joined the army. Then, he worked as a security guard.

Employers cut manual workers loose as they get older. Their health often starts to deteriorate (Brian was disabled after an accident at work. He’d been found fit for work at a recent ESA assessment). People can’t compete for manual jobs with applicants half their age.

That’s one of the many reasons why their chances of finding decent work and pay are zilch.

People know this.

Brian certainly did. “The trouble is that once you get past 50, you’re knackered,” Brian said.

He felt that people from his sort of background – without education and literacy skills – really struggled as they aged:

“..what really knackered us up… [was that] we had poor schooling. Really bad.”

Jobcentres know how the land lies, of course – but still they force people in Brian’s situation to take part in so-called jobsearch activities.

Jobsearch activities never lead to employment – they can’t, by definition – but people must still trudge to their jobcentres to complete them. “Pointless” doesn’t begin to cover these perverse drills. This is the DWP making older, sick or disabled people dance for its entertainment.

Brian was one of many people I’ve spoken to at Stockport recently who had to attend the jobcentre to engage in a famously meaningless activity – to sit at a computer and apply online for tens and hundreds of jobs while jobcentre staff watched.

Nobody I speak to ever gets a job this way. EVER. People don’t even receive an automated acknowledgement a lot of the time. They just sit there clicking Send buttons on job applications until staff say they can stop.

Thousands of people at jobcentres around the country are forced to apply online for jobs this way each week. They must even pay for the privilege. At Stockport, people have to fork out £4 for a bus ticket to and from the jobcentre. People must travel in from miles away.

Said Brian:

“[In the days] when we had the [paper] job applications, I could hand those in. I would hear something back in a couple of days. I either got the job, or I didn’t get the job. [Now] I’m applying for five times as many jobs, [but] never hear a thing…it’s all on the computer. You’re not going to get a job just on internet.

Even job coach…she said, “I can’t understand why you’re not getting replies.”

I said, “when I was back in the 80s, 90s, it was about 15 to one [applying] per job at a rough estimate. Now you’re going for 350 to one. Everybody’s applying for the same fricking jobs, but half of you won’t hear….

It’s crap, honestly, what they have in there [at the jobcentre]. It’s not worth the space it is written on…there’s just not enough jobs out there…you’re applying and you get no replies… the system’s broken.”

It certainly is.

It is definitely broken for people who’ve been written off – older, disabled people who the system has decided belong on the scrapheap forever. Brian told me another story. He said that the jobcentre wouldn’t help him cover costs for his security badge, so that he could work in security again. He’d paid the money himself.

Renewing a badge costs about £220 – money Brian had struggled to find. God knows what goes on with these security badges. I find the whole system bizarre. It seems that sometimes, jobcentres pay for badges and sometimes they don’t. I’ve spoken to people whose badges the DWP has paid for and to people who’ve had to pay for their badges themselves.

Brian said he’d done a “different” course. Perhaps it wasn’t a DWP approved course. Or perhaps the DWP had decided that Brian’s age and health didn’t warrant a financial outlay.

Whatever the case, nothing was easily fixed. Nothing is ever easily fixed at jobcentres.

Brian was stuck where he was. Forever.

Everyone in these situations is stuck – stuck in this mindless plod between home and jobcentre every day, or week, or fortnight, or whatever, to go be seen applying online for hundreds of jobs that very likely don’t even exist.

There’s no exit from this terrible path. I feel very strongly that government conspires to keep people on it. It’s a criminal waste of time and lives.

Brian said that his work coach told him that the jobcentre would put his name forward for a careers’ course – but that he’d have to wait to find out if he’d been selected:

“…[my work coach said] Your name’s got to be picked out of a hat…I’ve got more chance of winning lottery than getting on that…” Continue reading →

Don’t care if you have to pick your child up from school. You must attend the jobcentre so we can watch you apply for jobs you won’t get

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Another story from recent leafleting outside Stockport jobcentre with Stockport United Against Austerity:

JSA and Universal Credit claimants say the jobcentre is presently forcing claimants to attend the jobcentre at least once a week to sit at computers and apply online for job after job. Jobcentre advisers watch while they do this.

People say they weren’t told why they had to attend these sessions in the first instance. They were just instructed to get to the jobcentre at a set time, or else.

Such regimes are not new. Most people who sign on are forced into these compulsory attendance activities. I interviewed people at North Kensington jobcentre who had to attend the jobcentre every single day to sign on. It really is Big Brother stuff – the DWP forcing claimants to a location where they can be seen. Can’t be long until government decides that people who sign on should be tagged.

None of this is about helping people find work, of course. It’s about a government department standing over people who are already trapped.

At these compulsory onsite jobsearch sessions, people just sit at computers and send off one job application after another. They literally never hear back about any of them. Often, they don’t know if the jobs they’ve applied for actually exist. People have to engage in this perfectly meaningless activity on work programmes and at work courses as well. I’ve sat with people as they’ve done it.

“Petty tyranny” is the phrase.

The depth of this pettiness (if there is such a thing as deep pettiness) never ceases to amaze. Jobcentres find any excuse for it at any level.

At Stockport recently, I spoke with one woman who’d just started these compulsory attendances.

She was on edge as it was. Her son had autism. His ESA had been stopped. So had her carer’s allowance and housing benefit. She was signing on for JSA to try for some income.

Now, she had another problem.

Her jobcentre adviser had set her next mandatory jobsearch-at-the-jobcentre session at exactly the time when she had to collect her ten-year-old daughter from school.

She said the jobcentre knew perfectly well that she had a schoolage daughter, but refused to change the time for the compulsory session:

“I’ve got to come here at three o’clock – but how am I supposed to pick my daughter up? They [the jobcentre] don’t care.

This is the only jobcentre [in Stockport]. If I walk, it will take me about 45 minutes. It took me an hour today on the bus, because of the traffic. What I’m going to have to do is take my daughter out of school early to come here. She’s missing out on her education.”

I’ll have to make some excuse up [to tell the school].”

I have a great many conversations like this with benefit claimants: stories about the DWP making already difficult situations even more difficult for people in agonising ways. Still, the DWP gets away with it.

This woman had problems enough. She was appealing the DWP’s decision to stop her son’s ESA. She was trying to sort out problems with his PIP and carer’s allowance.

Now, she had to drag her child out of school, and lie to the school about the reasons why, to get to a jobsearch session that in itself was pure charade. Non-attendance at that session would very likely mean a sanction.

This incident may sound small, but it absolutely wasn’t. It was part of a picture. Once the DWP has people, it never stops putting the boot in. Every part of their lives is fair game.

All hail the DWP – actively making it near-impossible for people with no money to start or keep work

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Talked to two people about the above while leafleting with Stockport United Against Austerity at Stockport jobcentre today.

The first woman had just got a job as a careworker – but the jobcentre wouldn’t pay £60 for the fastrack CRB check she needed. With that fastrack CRB check, she could start work in about a fortnight. Without it – she wasn’t sure what would happen.

That £60 was a lot to her – “it’s about a week’s JSA,” she said. That kind of money is make or break for a lot of people. This woman was heading into the jobcentre to argue the toss again.

The second woman was in part-time work. She needed Personal Independence Payment for support because she had severe epilepsy. She was finding it impossible to get PIP, though. She’d had a lifetime Disability Living Allowance award, but government, of course, cancelled lifetime DLA awards and forced those DLA recipients to apply for PIP.

She made a PIP application – and had been waiting three months to find out whether or not she’d receive PIP. She was still waiting. The DWP had told her the wait would be longer. The stress of the wait and not having enough money was making her epilepsy worse. She’d had to cut her hours down, because her health was deteriorating badly.

So it goes at this end of austerity. Government likes to say that anyone who signs on is a loser and a wastrel by definition. In fact, government and the DWP play an active role in making sure that people who have nothing crash out entirely. It really does feel like that.

Mental health problems – but benefits sanctioned. In hospital with asthma – but benefits sanctioned. No money – but benefits sanctioned. ENOUGH.

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On benefit sanctions:

Leafleting on Friday at Stockport jobcentre with Stockport United Against Austerity, I spoke at length with two (more) people who have been left destitute this year by benefit sanctions.

Craig was in his 20s. Anne was 50 (I’ve changed both names).

Craig was a Universal Credit claimant. Anne received jobseekers’ allowance.

Craig said he’d been sanctioned twice this year. His current sanction would run into June. He said he was getting about £30 a week to live on.

Anne was trying to survive on hardship payments of £40 a week. Her sanction was from March until June.

Both Craig and Anne had appealed their sanctions. Both had lost their appeals.

This Just. Never. Ends.

It’s still all too easy to find people in these situations – people who are forced to live on the edge because their benefits have been sanctioned. They can barely afford food. They certainly can’t afford to heat their homes adequately.

These are human rights issues. So is the fact that inflicting such hardship on people who are out of work and money is widely considered acceptable and even desirable. The world needs to wake up to that abuse.

Sanctions achieve nothing. They don’t address the real issues – the lack of work (especially for people who are disabled, or older), the failure of support (particularly for people with mental health issues and/or support needs) and the malaise that inevitably defines an outlook when people have been unemployed for a while and know that every single one of the DWP’s compulsory jobsearch activities is a charade.

I can’t make that last point strongly enough.

Attending jobcentres meetings, or pointless work courses, or compulsory websurf session where you must sit at a jobcentre computer and send endless CVs to people you’ll never hear back from – none of these mandatory jobsearch activities go ANYWHERE for so many people. Just about everyone I’ve talked to at Stockport so far has mentioned these aspects of jobsearch.

Every meeting, course, or web session is a slap in the face because of that.

Sanctions as punishment for people who are trapped in this circuit is out of all proportion to the “crimes.”

Stopping people’s already-meagre incomes and pushing them further under the breadline for the minor sins of missing jobcentre meetings, or forgetting sicknotes, or whatever, is the real criminal act.

Still, the state enjoys it. It certainly gives itself free licence.

Like most people I meet in these situations, Craig and Anne relied on friends or family when their money was stopped.

Craig said:

“Basically, I’ve been living off £120 a month since January… [It’s] dreadful. If it weren’t for my mum and dad, I would be…[he shrugged].

Anne said:

“It’s £40 a week [I get in hardship money]. I’m on Pay As You Go [for] gas and electric – ten pound a week on them two. Then you’ve got £30 a week on food… I even had to borrow £4 off her [Anne’s daughter] to get up here about my money [the bus ride to Stockport jobcentre from Anne’s place cost about £4]. I went to the bank on the Wednesday and I thought “Oh No.” I didn’t even have the £4. I had to borrow it off her. Don’t like asking, but what can I do.”

Continue reading →

Behind the scenes with frontline service users in austerity: excerpts from interviews and covert videos and recordings

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The post below – Linda’s story – is an excerpt from a story in a collection project I’m working on.

The project collects interviews I’ve made with people directly affected by benefit cuts.

It also collects covert recordings I made from 2014 when I accompanied people to jobcentre meetings, ESA and PIP assessments, and council homelessness meetings.

My aim is to show you how benefit and service cuts have ravaged the lives of people who’ve been among the most marginalised by welfare reform and austerity.

The videos and transcripts from the meetings that I recorded between people in need and frontline staff demonstrate how utterly dysfunctional frontline services have become.

The project also shows how people respond personally and politically to a brutal austerity state.

I’ll post more extracts from this project as I work on it this year.

This collection of interviews and transcripts is being made possible thanks to a Barry Amiel & Norman Melburn Trust grant. 

Amiel_Melburn_logo

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The rest of this post is an extract from a story about a Kilburn woman I call Linda.

I met Linda and her partner Eddie (name also changed) in 2014.

Linda and Eddie were in their 50s.

Both had learning and literacy difficulties, and worsening health problems.

Both received jobseekers’ allowance. I recorded their jobcentre meetings for about three years. They attended Kilburn jobcentre when we met.

The post focuses on a particularly difficult experience that Linda had at Kilburn jobcentre at the start of 2016: Kilburn jobcentre erroneously closed Linda’s JSA claim when she was ill and missed two signon meetings.

She was left without income or rent money for months.

The video and transcripts in this post show:

– the problems that people with learning difficulties had meeting the DWP’s strict signon criteria and the excessive punishments people faced if they did not meet DWP demands.

– jobcentre advisers admitting that people in Linda’s situation were vulnerable to sanctions and claim closures, because the DWP had removed the specialist disability staff who might have intervened when people with support needs were threatened with sanctions. Disability Employment Advisers were removed from jobcentres as part of austerity cost-cutting at that time.

– Linda’s distress at her illness and at not being able to to find a jobcentre staff member to help her restart her claim

– the DWP’s general institutional contempt for people who relied on benefits.

————-

Let’s go in at the deep end.

This article starts with a description of that devastating time for Linda: the months in late 2015 and early 2016 when Kilburn jobcentre closed her JSA claim and left her without income or rent money.

Video: Linda at Kilburn jobcentre on February 26 2016.

I called Linda in Feburary 2016, because I hadn’t seen her for a while.

Linda told me she hadn’t received any money for weeks, because the jobcentre had terminated her JSA claim.

Jobcentre advisers said they’d closed Linda’s claim, because Linda had missed two JSA signon meetings.

Linda said she’d missed the meetings because she’d been too ill to attend (she found out later that she had thrombosis). She told me that she was still very unwell and couldn’t walk far.

Closing Linda’s claim was an obscene decision by any measure.

The jobcentre knew Linda well. Advisers knew her story. Linda had signed on at Kilburn for more than seven years. Hers was a familiar face at the jobcentre.

Advisers knew that she had learning difficulties and was in poor health. They knew Linda relied on her JSA. They knew that her age, learning difficulties and deteriorating health meant she wouldn’t find work – that she hadn’t suddenly stopped attending JSA signon meetings because she’d found a job.

They also knew that Linda would only miss a meeting at the jobcentre if she had good reason. Linda often said she hated the jobcentre, but she attended her appointments there religiously – possibly because the jobcentre was a place she knew and could go to.

Advisers knew all of this, but still they closed Linda’s JSA claim. Such were and are the times. Advisers told us that the rules said two strikes (two missed meetings) and you were out (your claim would be closed). Some staff were sticklers for the rules.

Finding someone at the jobcentre to take responsibility for restarting Linda’s JSA claim was a nightmare. Continue reading →

Council officers told off by managers for deciding that homeless people should be helped. Wtf is going on here.

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I’m back, so here we go:

As readers of this site will know, I’ve been publishing interviews in which a council homelessness officer talks about working on the homelessness frontline as the housing crisis deepens (there are links to earlier articles at the end of this post).

This officer has worked in housing offices across London and Greater London councils for nearly 20 years (the officer still works in council homelessness and housing offices in the same areas).

Sometimes, this officer has worked as a council review officer.

Review officers re-examine council decisions that homeless people want to challenge. Review officers can overturn a council’s original decision not to help a homeless person with housing if that officer decides the original decision was wrong.

Problem is – this officer has come under pressure from senior council management NOT to overturn original council decisions when those original decisions found against a homelessness person’s entitlement or priority for housing assistance.

The officer says that this happened not long ago at one London council.

At this council, the officer overturned the council’s original decision not to give an older homeless person and a disabled homeless person priority for housing help.

A so-called medical adviser from the private sector who “advises” councils on such things (more on this external-medical-advice-for-council-homelessness-officers racket soon) had come up with assessments which were taken to mean that the two homeless people shouldn’t be given priority for help on medical grounds.

The officer disagreed.

Events took an outrageous turn after that.

The officer was told off by management for overturning those two decisions – for deciding that the council must give those two homeless people priority.

The officer reports being called into a meeting with management and asked to justify overturning these decisions not to give those homeless people priority.

Senior management was displeased to find that review officers were overturning council homelessness decisions – even though overturning council decisions after reviewing legislation and a homelessness person’s application was a key part of a review officer’s job.

The officer was very unhappy about this. The officer says, “it was like getting a formal warning” for saying the council should help homeless people that it wanted to disregard.

The officer felt that the whole incident was a worrying development – senior management hauling reviews officers over the coals for overturning decisions that reviews officers should overturn.

More than that – the officer was asked to liaise with the council’s housing options team in future if the officer decided to overturn any more council homelessness decisions.

This was an extraordinary instruction.

Review officers are supposed to work separately from the housing officers whose original decisions are being reviewed. They might ask the original officer for more information about a case and decision – but not for permission to overturn it.

The whole idea is that a homeless person’s application goes to a different officer if the homeless person wants to challenge the council’s original decision not to help.

The team that made the original decision should NOT be given the chance to lean on a review officer who is considering overturning the housing team’s decision. Certainly, a review officer should not have to ask the original decisionmaking team if that team is okay with somebody overturning a rotten decision that team made.

Said the officer:

“The manager [who came to see me] had these files in his hand.

He said, “let’s have a chat.” I said, “Okay.”

They [the files] were some non-priority decisions. I had overturned them. Continue reading →

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

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Food for thought, as it were:

I went to Oldham foodbank last week.

One of the people I talked with there was Jeanette, 53.

Jeanette said she’d had a stroke in 2009. She used to receive Disability Living Allowance, but like most DLA recipients, was recently told by the DWP that her DLA payments would end and that she needed to apply for the Personal Independence Payment.

She applied for PIP and went for the medical assessment for PIP. She failed her assessment by just a few points. Her PIP application was declined.

I asked if she had appealed this decision – if she had asked for a mandatory reconsideration of the decision not to award her PIP and/or if she had gone on to file a full appeal.

“No,” Jeanette said. “It’s too stressful.” Specifically, Jeanette was worried that the stress of filling in appeal forms and sourcing more medical information would lead to another stroke. “I’ve got to think of my health,” she said. “I just rely on family and friends to get me around…since my stroke, I’ve found it bloody hard to walk… up and down my right side it’s affected the right side of me and the speech, that goes, doesn’t it?”

This is a common story, as many people will know. I can’t tell you how many sick or disabled people I’ve talked to over the past few years who decided not to apply for disability or support benefits, or to appeal negative decisions that they might successfully have overturned, because they were too unwell to cope with our dysfunctional, ridiculously bureaucratic and stressful benefit application and appeals processes.

In other words – people are too unwell to pursue the support that we are supposed to have in place for people who are unwell. Anyone with experience in this area knows this, of course. People know that government separates people from their benefit entitlements by presenting them with a series of soul-destroying bureaucratic hurdles.

Sure, people can try and find welfare advice and support, but often, that’s just another challenge that people could do without. So they do without.

Let me tell you how useless councils are at answering questions about homelessness, intentional homelessness and threats to separate families. I give you Barking and Dagenham…

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I post this article as an example of torture by council.

I want to show those who don’t generally have the pleasure how evasive and uhelpful councils are when approached for information on topics such as homelessness and intentional homelessness. They drag non-answers and the silent treatment out FOREVER.

It’s a miracle I haven’t kicked in a town hall door yet.

With that in mind, let’s go to Barking and Dagenham:

As readers of this site will know, I’ve written recently about a woman who was evicted from her Barking and Dagenham flat last year. She had rent arrears of several thousand pounds.

She has three children under 12.

The woman says her housing benefit stopped and rent arrears grew, because she had trouble registering a JSA application.

She, the council and I have spent ages arguing about whose “fault” this was. Fact is it hardly matters. Pretty much EVERYONE I talk to these days is in serious rent arrears. That’s the part that matters – the fact that so many people have housing, rent and eviction problems. I’ve got an inbox full of emails from people who can’t afford housing, or who’ve crashed into debt and conflict when rent problems have arisen. I inevitably find that a council’s primary concern is to make sure that it is not blamed for such problems. A council’s main aim is to rush to prove that the fault is entirely the tenant’s. I’m sick of this. Why even bother to sift through a small corner of the wreckage at this point in the national housing disaster? Council fingerpointing doesn’t solve the core issues (I get to these core issues as i see them later in this post).

By the time the woman in the story and I talked in January, the family had serious problems.

The woman and her kids were homeless. They were sofa-surfing between her mother’s flat (which itself was temporary accommodation) and a friend’s place. Eight people were living in the mother’s temporary accommodation when I visited in February. The eight people shared one toilet and one bathroom. Two of the kids slept on airbeds in their grandmother’s room. The third child slept on a rollout mattress on the floor in another room with two adults. The kids commuted to Barking and Dagenham to school. I need hardly mention the effect that these arrangements will ultimately have on the kids’ schooling and life chances, etc.

There was more.

In a letter to Barking MP Margaret Hodge, the council said it would likely decide that this woman had made herself intentionally homeless.

The council also said that if it found the woman intentionally homeless, it wouldn’t house her. It would, however, refer the kids to Children’s Services (you can see that paragraph here). The woman took this to mean that Children’s Services might separate her from her children. Everyone who reads such sentences thinks that. Needless to say, this sort of text makes people even more reluctant to contact a council to discuss housing problems. A threat of referral to Children’s Services works as a form of gatekeeping. It is disgusting. I see it time and time again these days. Councils insist they’ve tried to contact people to help sort problems out. They also send letters which guarantee people will do anything BUT get in touch.

Which brings me to the core reasons for rent arrears which I mentioned above.

I find there are two main reasons why so many people end up with serious rent arrears. Both need addressing on a national scale.

The first is very simple. People don’t have enough money. They can’t afford rent, LHA shortfalls and/or rent arrears. They don’t have £2000 (or £200 for that matter) to throw at problems such as stopped, delayed, or sanctioned benefits, or to bridge gaps while benefit problems are fixed. They’re already in debt to the public sector for council tax arrears, court fines and DWP loans. God knows I’ve written about that. Let’s not forget either that benefit problems can take MONTHS to fix, because DWP and council bureaucracies are so often outrageously dysfunctional. Arrears grow and grow as problems drift. Continue reading →

Getting inside Universal Credit: callout to #UniversalCredit claimants in the Northwest and Northamptonshire

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To Universal Credit claimants in the Northwest and Northamptonshire:

As part of ongoing news stories we’ve done and campaigning on Universal Credit problems, journalists Natalie Bloomer, Charlotte Hughes and I want to attend Universal Credit meetings at jobcentres and to speak to more Universal Credit claimants about their experiences claiming UC.

We want to stay in contact with people who claim the benefit, to record people’s experiences in navigating the system and how/if problems are handled by the DWP.

We also want to accompany UC claimants to jobcentre and claimant commitment meetings if possible, to record those meetings and report back on people’s experiences.

Between us at the moment, we can attend meetings in the Northwest and Northamptonshire, and meet with people in those areas. As things continue, we may be able to travel further afield.

If you live in those areas, claim UC and are interested in talking with us, you can contact us by using the contact details or form on this page.

Does anybody actually work at the HMRC or the DWP anymore, or are we now just down to a couple of (useless) answering machines?

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Posting this because I am very badly pissed off, even for a Monday:

For nearly two weeks, I’ve been trying to get answers from the HMRC and/or the DWP for a story I’m writing about a disabled woman who had to wait THREE MONTHS for her Universal Credit claim to start.

She was receiving statutory sick pay each month, because she had to take indefinite leave from work.

As I understand it, the HMRC was supposed to tell the DWP how much statutory sick pay she received each month, so that the DWP could adjust her Universal Credit claim accordingly and pay her some money (she particularly needed the Universal Credit to meet her rent). i think this might have to do with the famous HMRC-DWP Real Time system. Who can really say. God knows how any of this is meant to work. Probably it isn’t. It’s all a total pile.

Needless to say, neither the HMRC nor the DWP managed to do what they were supposed to in this woman’s case. They were even more useless in this instance than they are on the rest of Universal Credit, which is an amazing achievement.

The HMRC couldn’t get the sick pay totals right and the DWP refused to make any adjustments, so this woman’s benefit claim went nowhere for months. I’ll be publishing a longer story about this soon.

Point today is that someone needs to answer questions about the wreckage that is Universal Credit and the relationship between the DWP and the HMRC. Problem is that nobody will.

I’m getting very sick of this. I’ve had it with being ignored by government departments.

I rang and wrote to the HMRC and the DWP asking both departments how Universal Credit and Real Time adjustments are supposed to work, if statutory sick pay was included – and these adjustments don’t work.

All I’ve had back is several emails from some faceless HRMC bureaucrat/actual robot who keeps writing this exact sentence:

“Thanks Kate, I will see what I can do.”

I know what he can do. He does fuck all. He certainly doesn’t answer my questions.

Maybe somebody out there can. If anybody knows anything about claiming statutory sick pay and claiming Universal Credit, and the “system” that the HMRC is supposed to use to inform the DWP about the amount of statutory sick pay a Universal Credit claimant receives, give me a shout.