Do people sometimes tell you that you smell bad?

part two of my dwp series, as the great british state continues to try to define what constitutes “being disabled”, reporting from the semi-frontline in happyland from the job centre on lollipop lane

Do people sometimes tell you that you smell bad?

That was a question at a PIP assessment I witnessed recently.

If PIP (personal independence payments) assessments do get shorter, less dehumanising, less… weird, then you won’t hear any arguments from me. But why all the focus on PIP, a disability benefit; a non-means tested one, I wonder?

We’ve been here before. You’ll likely not remember. The introduction of PIP, many many years ago, made nowhere near the savings that Osborne pined for.

Sorry to get all preachy, but I genuinely do not understand, a Labour government, a Labour government, making the choice to target those already suffering after a decade of austerity. When there are clear other options to be made. What’s going on comrades, I thought you were going to get rid of the Food Banks (that started mysteriously appearing in 2010, around the same time that Brits stopped wanting to pay for things?)

Perhaps I’m too wealthy and middle class, or perhaps I enjoyed Thomas More’s Utopia too much, but I am personally quite relaxed about my taxes being spent on welfare benefits. And that includes those who “wish” to work, as well as those who do not. I’m unconvinced by the distinction between “wishing to” work and “not being able to work”, but I’m sure I can count on some Whitehall genius to come up with the perfect menti presentation to explain the difference to me.

points mean prizes!

As suspected, and as I recently wrote (aren’t I a visionary), the government has announced plans to tighten the PIP eligibility criteria. I wonder if they will cease asking people if they “smell bad”, or whether smelling bad will only score one point. As you know with DWP, points mean prizes!

Of course the points system is meaningless, and marks the slog towards full and total excel spreadsheet horror, and the reduction of the beautiful complexity of human beings to a badly-formatted PDF form with questions like “how many steps before you fall over” and “but are you really not able to get out of bed some days, and if that is the case how come you’ve made it to this PIP assessment?” (More on PIP assessments another day, I’m just waiting to see what Kendall’s proposing, can hardly contain my excitement.)

There’s of course the fact that the endlessly shifting criteria of what constitutes “being disabled” (wtf?) is rarely based on science, nor statistics - but is rather (I am convinced) the stuff, of “back of the cab policy”. Ie, it doesn’t matter what the policy is, it only needs to a) keep the Mail on side (because they are so often on side) and b) save money / cost nothing.

As certain Mail commentators today are arguing (Sunday, mind, so I do not feel too bad for posting a link, although you need a subscription), there is also no mandate for these cuts.

So, we’re back here again. Show me the money! It doesn’t matter what the policy is, what the PIP criteria is. All it has to do is save money.¹

But I’m confused, if we only work from the basis of saving money, does that not mean we’ll make some poor choices? Like if mental health conditions no longer mean prizes in your PIP assessment, what will one do - just suddenly realise that your menty h thing was “all in your head” and to make an extra £30 a day (that is genuinely how universal credit works) you’re gonna leap out of bed and start a 9/5, doing physical labour? Plus the bus fare, plus lunch, plus new clothes? (Also for the record, I’m no snob, just the jobs DWP offer, are often physical jobs, seldom a WFH-er).

It has a certain whiff of the Poor Laws about it. But then governments these days seem to lack historians, as well as scientists. Have they forgotten Osborne’s attempts to take an axe to PIP in 2016 which also went down badly (including with IDS)?

Historians are probably overrated anyway. This government has what we need; PR professionals and former charity executives! They’re a fascinating breed, very accustomed to ticking boxes (like the middle classes, they love a “to do” list), and they enjoy declaring something to be unsustainable and unaffordable. You know the type - they’re the type who knows hundreds of disabled people who are unable to work.

So it is only natural that they seem to have a curious focus on disabled people and people out of work. But as a Minister recently remarked, they are the “Labour” party, so I suppose we should forgive them for that. Just get back to work you disableds, get out of bed you depressed shite, and contribute to your country dammit!

how much booze do I need to drink to be eligible for this alcohol service?

I would like to remind people that the British state cannot be trusted when it comes to “eligibility criteria”. The commissioning culture that funds public services, leads to a suited bureaucrat in a room (or since 2020, probably on the sofa), who receives reports from managers who say things like “we’ve signposted 99 people this quarter to therapy services, please fund us for another year so we can do more fantastic work sorting people’s menty h”.

But they won’t also mention the hundreds of people they closed the door on because their “mental health issue” was down to domestic violence, or homelessness. And they were thus “too high risk” to warrant support.

There’s worse/more amusing examples. An alcohol charity refused its “services” to someone I know because they had been sober for a month. The assessor remarked “but you’re not currently abusing substances, so you don’t meet the referral criteria”.

Another needed a letter for their immigration solicitor from a mental health charity. They sent me a letter stating that this person was “sufficiently suicidal” to warrant support. Lucky her!

Some are not funny at all, just bleak. Like the woman I was working with, who was unable to get a bed at a safe house when fleeing her abusive partner, because she “had a job”. She didn’t want to quit her job, so she stayed with friends, and obviously her partner found out where she was.

I know the above examples are not about DWP. But that needs an entire post all to itself. And to be honest I’m still reeling from the dystopia of the recent PIP assessments I witnessed, and I’m hoping writing about it is helpful for my own healing journey. But I need to spend some time on it, because if I am honest, I do not like the PIP criteria, at all. I don’t think the current system works. But I am extremely worried for the welfare of the guys I work with, some of whom have recently been awarded it, and were hoping for some kind of safety net for at least a year (which is not a lot to ask when you have been living in institutions until recently??). But I suppose “hope” in these dysfunctional systems can be a risky business.

That is the thing though, sometimes it feels like the discourse is more about how working class people don’t deserve the privilege of a safety net. I don’t suppose any of this is related to the lack of people in Whitehall who grew up in families on state benefits, or in institutions. Probably not! Ignore me!

i’ll cut the deficit not the nhs

At least in the run up to 2010, there was the odd hint of the harm the Tories were planning. As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has reported, rumours are that this current government’s welfare cuts are going to be on a 2010 scale. Eh?

Because of course Osborne had a mandate (thanks Clegg, still a prick), however unfortunate that mandate was. (Someone remarked to me that dark night in May 2010 that we needed a Labour government, then, more than we ever did - because we would have done the cuts differently, and I think that person has been proved right).

But while I am on the point, what indeed, was the point of me knocking on those doors in 2010? Why did I spend all that time, along with many others, acknowledging the need to cut the deficit on the doorsteps, while keeping my lips pursed, when people said “you Labour lot always mess up the economy”? What was the point of me doing all that?? Would Gordon have cut disability benefits?? Oh please God no… (he wouldn’t, dw).

The introduction of PIP saved relatively little (less than 0.1bn; Gideon was hoping for 1.4), and as I mentioned in a previous post, once you move goalposts as regards criteria for money (which is actually quite a necessary thing for folk), it’s funny how citizens shift with them. I mean, it’s almost as if Whitehall doesn’t think too much of the little people.

There is also a huge gap between Universal Credit (for those seeking work) and health related benefits, like PIP and “Work Capability”. If you’re “simply” unemployed, with no diagnosed conditions, (also if you’re too scared to be assessed by some random bureaucrat in a horrible room); you’ll only get the basic UC rate. If you want more, perhaps you’re suffering with stress; other health conditions related to the stress. (And despite what politicians are saying, there is at least some scientific evidence to suggest that stress leads to physical conditions that manifest in different ways, imagine!)

So, to be deemed “unfit for work” and receive enhanced payments, you need a person who went to medical school for many years to slip you a note deeming you “unfit for work”, but trying to get that appointment could take time, usually involves an 8am scramble, (and the note only lasts a few weeks at a time).

Resolution Foundation found over £400 difference per month in take home benefits between these two groups. Sometimes, just because of a Doctor’s note. And you’re telling me the system itself doesn’t incentivise this kind of thing?

The trouble is, that I don’t really feel you can measure this stuff. I believe most people mask their disabilities, and/or the things that make living in this world difficult. And I think the state should be enabling us not to mask those things, but should support us in living the best kind of life we want. Even working class people!

But enough bleak chat, DWP is there to support people into work and training! Oh hang on a sec -

punishing you for working / studying

One of the guys I work with had to drop out of a course, because it was over 12 hours a week, so their Universal Credit was immediately cut. They were obviously referred to this course by a keyworker at a charity, employed to help people “move forward”. And that keyworker was funded by public funds, you’ll be pleased to know.

Dropping out of this course led them down a dark path (you don’t say). As they often say to me “I was actually better off financially when I was on the streets”.

People are expected to return to work, to “better themselves”. But the very system lecturing them, is not interested it seems in understanding the barriers that exist.

The way the benefits system works, dis-incentivises work. It’s a deficit system, so you receive points for what you can’t do, rather than what you can do. Hardly the stuff of dreams. I mean take a walk into your nearest job centre, which is usually surrounded by Serco and bodycams and tell me you don’t get Brazil (1985) vibes. I was in a job centre the other week, put my phone down for a moment - a Serco guy literally ran over and said to me, and I quote, “You don’t wanna leave your phone there love, it won’t be there long.”

I wonder at what it does to society when staff working in our great state institutions despise their “customers” so much. But alas, as I’ve also said before, one must try not to think too much when you work in the public sector.

For every pound you make, your UC gets cut. So what happens is you end up working for a poverty wage. I knew someone sanctioned because they refused to take a Saturday job, which would, they calculated, have made them only an extra £30 a week, compared to not working at all.

So it’s promising that the Minister has mentioned things like the "right to try" guarantee. But aside from that, it’s all looking bleak. It almost feels as if we’re in an Osbornian austerity historic fourth (sixth? I’ve lost count..) term.

We can’t go on like this Cameron opined back in 2010. Well apparently, we can! Get those Food Banks working again, I’m looking to do more volunteering so I can sleep more soundly at night!

1. I also have another great policy idea that will save money. Having recently supported people with PIP assessments, I would like to query why we have a National Health Service that apparently has no way of directly contacting the Department of Work and Pensions, and vice versa. I mean I still don’t understand why citizens have to keep asking their GP for letters proving they have this and that diagnosis? Can’t DWP and NHS share some sort of online filing cabinet. I can’t tell you the amount of money I have spent at work, printing and posting letters to DWP. They refuse to give out an email address for one thing.

Sorry - I always forget, don’t ask obvious questions!