A few thoughts on Damian Hinds’ claims that jobcentres aren’t needed because more and more people claim benefits online, because I feel like having a rant on this one.

This line from government – “people don’t need face-to-face services because they can easily access benefits on the internet,” makes me absolutely furious. It is deceitful. Very.

The truth is there’s a whole group of people who can’t – and so don’t – use computers at all. They are entirely unable to make or manage online accounts of any description. They find completing online forms impossible. In my direct experience, quite a few people struggle to read and write as well.

I am constantly struck by the number of people I meet in the course of my work who have serious literacy difficulties. We all know the problem exists, but it is still unsettling when you experience the real-life extent of it. I’m better at picking up on this than I was. Some people tell you about their about their literacy struggles directly. Others speak about the problem in a sort of code. People will ask you to read and/or fill in forms for them – they’ll speak while you write. Others will say that they can’t fill in a form, or look a webpage right then, because they forgot to bring their glasses. That happens quite a lot. You start to get the drift when you meet with people on different occasions and realise they say the same sort of thing every time.

One thing is for sure – you have a much-reduced chance of claiming benefits online, or managing a web-based jobsearch if you struggle to read, write, or use a computer and have nobody to ask for assistance.

God knows I’ve seen that plenty of times. Readers of this site will know that I’ve documented people’s computer and written literacy problems in the past few years as they’ve tried to make benefit claims, or carry out the DWP’s exacting jobsearch requirements online.

Filling in job applications can be challenging enough. Here’s a Morrison’s job application form filled in by Eddie*, a man in his 50s with learning and literacy difficulties who worked as a kitchen assistant for years and wanted another job, but was not likely to find one given his age and declining health. I wrote the words Eddie wanted in his application on my notepad. He wrote them on the application form like this:

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Yesterday, I was over in Oldham talking to Mike Kendrick from the South Chadderton foodbank. The South Chadderton foodbank is open on Mondays from 11am to 2pm.

He reckoned that about 50% of the people who came through the foodbank’s doors were there because they had been sanctioned by the jobcentre. A high proportion, I thought.

Needless to say, I have a big problem with government/DWP denials of any relationship between benefit sanctions and social security cuts, and foodbank use. One of the main reasons I find these denials hard to accept is that I keep meeting people outside jobcentres who say that jobcentre advisers tell them to go to foodbanks if a sanction/loan deduction/cut to money means they’re out of money.

So. There may not be a link between sanctions and so-called “welfare reforms” in the government’s mind, but there certainly is a link between all of these things in the minds of jobcentre advisers and people who sign on. There also seems to be a link in the minds of people who provide foodbank services.

More soon. Spending a lot of time talking with people in Oldham at the moment, so more updating next week.

I’ve posted below another video of another jobcentre security guard being an arse because he can be an arse. I have quite a collection of these videos and audios now – a gallery of petty incidents courtesy of the DWP.

I took this video earlier this year at Ashton Under Lyne jobcentre at one of Charlotte’s Thursday demonstrations.

The video shows the usual sour stuff.

In the video, the security guard said that an older disabled woman who was sitting in her wheelchair in a cold wind outside the jobcentre had to stay outside until the time of her jobcentre appointment. She was not allowed to wait for her meeting inside the jobcentre.

The guard said that people were only allowed to enter the jobcentre ten minutes before their appointment times. Before that, they had to wait outside. You’ll see that the guard left absolutely no room for argument. No exceptions would be made.

No exceptions would be made even when they could and should be made. The woman sitting outside in her wheelchair was elderly and she said that she felt cold. The weather wasn’t terrible that day, but there was a chill wind on the corner and the cold cut through if you weren’t moving about.

Not that the facts of the weather mattered. It turned out that the weather wasn’t actually relevant to the rule. The guard said that people had to wait outside even if the weather was terrible. You can hear me ask the security guard about this in the video. I asked if people could come inside when the weather was bad. He said No, people could only enter the jobcentre ten minutes before their appointments. That apparently included people who were older, unwell and/or not able to move around or to head elsewhere to keep warm. Probably, some people turn up to the jobcentre early, because they don’t want to be sanctioned for being late. Probably, some people want to wait inside the jobcentre, because outside is very cold some days. Not everyone can afford to wait in cafes and pay for coffees and so on.

But rules are rules, it seems. Blah blah blah. The guard would not be moved. The justification for the rule was that you’d get a bottleneck if you let everyone in. Continue reading →

This is a video of one of several incidents I’ve seen in recent times – a jobcentre adviser/security guard/person giving a sick or disabled person a very hard time for the hell of it.

This video is from Kilburn jobcentre. I made it earlier this year.

In the video, you’ll see G4S security guards telling Linda*, the sick and disabled woman I was with, that she must walk up the stairs to the first floor to attend a JSA meeting.

More than that – the guards insist that all JSA signon appointments MUST take place on the first floor and that Linda will have to climb the stairs to get to her meeting. No matter that Linda has serious breathing problems and had by that stage been ill for several months. No matter that the jobcentre knew this and had even called an ambulance for Linda a couple of weeks earlier because she was obviously sick (I have a video from that day where a jobcentre adviser says “Yes, I can see that,” when I point out Linda’s awful pallor).

The guards in the video are absolutely uncompromising. Linda must walk up the stairs to her jobcentre meeting. That’s where the meetings are. If you don’t walk up there and sign on, you don’t get your benefit. That’s that.

Charming.

I’m posting this because I want to show you a bit more about the way things really roll in these places – in the real world, away from the DWP’s endless, empty prattle about “helping” sick or disabled people into work. I want to make a point about the contempt that a lot of people meet with as a matter of course in jobcentres. They’re not treated decently, let alone “supported” in any obvious way. Forget being “helped” to find work. These people spend most of their time just battling for reasonable treatment. The world needs to know how deeply the DWP’s institutional contempt for benefit claimants runs. You find that even in apparently small incidents. These small incidents speak volumes if you ask me. That’s what I’m showing you here.

I have, needless to say, been thinking about this incident, and the many similar ones I’ve experienced, ever since our newish DWP uber leader Damian Green released his work, health and disability plans/ode to employment this week and filled our airwaves with the standard We Are There For Sick Or Disabled People blather.

“We must be bold in our ambition to help disabled people and those with health conditions,” Green has yabbered via mainstream outlets, as you’ll be all too aware.

I find myself wondering if Damian and I are experiencing the same bureaucracy, or even the same universe, when he and the DWP guff out these banalities about tailored government support and “help” for sick or disabled benefit claimants. “Help?” Really? My experience is that institutional contempt for sick or disabled benefit claimants is now so entrenched in the relevant bureaucracies that jobcentre security guards feel that they are absolutely entering the spirit of things when they refuse to help someone with obvious health problems deal with a flight of stairs. Continue reading →

This is the sort of story that really gets my back up – it’s a story about the state looking to catch benefit claimants out and making sure to utilise every one of the petty ways open to it to do this. Why aren’t bailed-out bankers hauled out for the sort of probing described below?

A few days ago, I spoke again to this young woman. She is 22 years old and has a four-year-old daughter. She’s been trying to sort out her Universal Credit claim for ages.

She told me about an argument she’d had at a London jobcentre she’d recently signed on with. It’s the sort of story I hear a lot – it’s about a jobcentre adviser and a benefits claimant arguing the toss over a small expenditure that appeared on a bank statement. This story may not sound like a big deal to some, but it is. I think that this nit-picky reading of bank statements by officials is one reason why people don’t apply for state help to which they may well be entitled.

So.

At one of this young woman’s jobcentre meetings, a jobcentre adviser who was reading through the young woman’s bank statements happened upon a small payment to a fast food establishment. This immediately turned into a drama – doubtless heard by many the jobcentre, given the total lack of privacy in these places. The adviser demanded to know how and why the young woman was spending money on burgers and blah blah blah.

The young woman told me that a friend gave her some of the money afterwards to pay for the food, but that they had used her card at the time, because the friend didn’t have the cash with her to pay then and there. It was the sort of on-the-spot arrangement that takes place between friends around the world about a million times an hour, etc. Or should I say – it was the sort of on-the-spot arrangement that some people are permitted to make and others are not. Those who earn their “own” money are allowed to make those sorts of agreements with friends. People who receive benefits are not. They must make sure that they are in a position to justify every penny and know that they will be dealt to if they can’t, or if some official somewhere doesn’t like their explanation, etc. A bank statement does not, of course, offer any sort of back story. It simply lists financial transactions. The jobcentre adviser in this case assumed, of course, that the young woman was lying when she said somebody else paid towards the food. The subtext was and always is, of course, that the young woman was a) wildly irresponsible financially, b) a pisstaking benefits claimant and c) flush with cash.

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I have posted below a letter received by a Kentish Town* man who is in his early 60s and disabled.

The man receives housing benefit for his one-room housing association flat.

The letter is from Camden Council.

As you can see, the letter is very unpleasant. I am sure that I would not want to get one of these. The letter begins with an accusation. It says that the council has received correspondence from the DWP which *suggests* the Kentish Town man has another person living with him. The letter gives no details about that correspondence. Neither does it explain how the DWP’s correspondence led the council to believe that another person was living in the Kentish Town man’s home. No proof or evidence to support this accusation is offered. The letter simply makes a statement. It also makes a threat. The letter says that the Kentish Town man’s housing benefit claim could be in jeopardy if he does not answer the points raised.

You can imagine how people feel when this sort of thing drops through the door:

This is the kind of filthy correspondence that people receive from councils and government departments out of the blue. DWP Customer Compliance letters strike the same sinister tone. So, as I understand it, do the letters received by people who have their child tax credit after being accused of living with people they’ve never heard of.

I see a lot of these letters. They cause an extraordinary amount of stress for people. They absolutely assume guilt from the off and tell people to prove their innocence. Certainly, that’s how the recipients of these letters perceive things:

“Councils, government departments and their associates regularly state that they will come down hard on people who abuse their staff, yet they ought to be aware how their standard procedures and threatening standard text approaches are in themselves abusive,” the man in this story wrote to me. “Just because we have no real bargaining power does not give them licence to bully us about.”

Indeed. Continue reading →