The scandal about Britain's Benefits Scandal is that it was ever made

The scandal about Britain’s Benefits Scandal is that it was ever made

Last Updated: December 6, 2024By Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary series released a controversial report on Monday (December 2, 2024) and having now watched it I can confirm that the scandal about Britain’s Benefits Scandal is that it was ever made.

I jotted down a few notes as I watched the show, which I would like to reproduce below, supplemented with comments from X that were sent to me after transmission, so that if you haven’t seen the show you can see what was wrong with it and if you have seen it you can have your suspicions confirmed.

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Let’s begin:

Initial premise: Around 1m people off work with mental illnesses and not getting help.

Around 800k job vacancies. Employer says benefits seem to pay more.

Sickness benefits said to be worth around 24k per year (how is this worked out?)

Employers say they’re desperate to recruit but can’t, says Liz Kendall. This Writer has been looking for work to complement the website since early July and has JUST been offered my first interview so I’m not convinced about that.

Many people are working with a health condition and more could with the right help and support, says Liz Kendall. Certainly – but not all, and it is important to recognise that some simply can’t.

Sick notes: doctor says GPs aren’t there to sign patients up for welfare. Possibly not because many don’t have the specialist expertise. But they should be able to send patients on to someone who does.

Doctor says he often suggests changes to the working environment rather than sick notes saying a person cannot work. But do employers pay attention to doctors’ orders?

He’s certainly right that doctors are there to help people stop being sick – or to prevent them from falling ill.

Mel Stride voices a lie: the incapacity benefit is now called Employment and Support Allowance and people on it are NOT left alone. Most are put into a ‘work related activity’ group on which they are expected to be ready to return to work at any time during a 12-month period, after which their benefit will be cut anyway.

Liz Kendall [pictured] repeats the lie. Nobody “fall[s] out of the workplaces, you’re categorised as ‘can work’ or ‘can’t work’ and then left”. Everybody claiming benefits is currently re-assessed on a regular basis and it is very hard to be classed as entitled to them; that is why so many appeals take place. Benefit assessors have target numbers of people to find fit for work as well, which is the reason the vast majority of appeals are granted when tribunals get to hear them.

The claim that getting a sickness benefit means there are no follow-up appointments is false. Even those in the support group (who are not expected to get better) are re-assessed regularly (although this is expected to change soon, for people with deteriorating conditions that it is known will never go away).

The Centre for Social Justice is a right-wing think tank whose policy director Ed Davies also pushes the same lie. He also says the benefit bill is bankrupting the country; this is impossible. The UK will never go bankrupt as long as it has its own currency. But he’s right that being out of work can also be extremely harmful as it removes people from the social activities that can make life worthwhile.

Amy the could-have-been-a-barrister gives the side for people who are in pain all the time and suffer depression because of it. The voiceover then says she would need to earn 35k per year to match her benefits, but there is no indication of how this figure is reached. Does this take into account any benefits she has for her son, that she would still get if she was working?

The government won’t be able to persuade people into work if they think they’re going to be worse-off as a result, says Fraser Nelson. But that is not a factor in whether they continue to receive benefits or not. If they are deemed not to be sick or disabled enough, they will lose the benefit. It’s as simple as that.

Nelson says the welfare trap is that low-paid work doesn’t compensate people for losing benefits. That is true – but it is a fact of life for people who are sent back to the job market from sickness benefits under the current system.

Shane is said to have been influenced to apply for long-term sickness benefits after watching a TikTok video. He didn’t get them, and gets £400 per month which he can supplement with part-time work, while his son was successful and gets around £1,400 per month (again, we don’t know how that’s composed). But the extra money for sick people is to cover the extra living expenses they incur because they are sick, and this isn’t mentioned.

Ed Davies implies that people who aren’t really sick enough for sickness benefits are tempted to apply for it because it pays more – but haven’t we just heard that it isn’t that easy to achieve? Shane didn’t get it!

The rules around mental illness are being tightened to make it harder to claim. But isn’t this penalising people with serious conditions, just because their illness is not readily visible?

Mel Stride – who is not a doctor and has no expertise in health – suggests that people are labelled with illnesses, when they have just been going through the normal ups and downs of life. This is not likely to be true. Doctors would have no problem in telling a shirker that there is nothing wrong with them.

Clinical psychologist Dr Lucy Johnstone says mental health is not worsening but people are struggling emotionally – in real ways. She says (although it isn’t put that way) that the solution is political – people would be happier if secure housing, better childcare etc were available to them. These are things that the Conservative government of the last 14 years took away, saying it was too expensive (while giving tax breaks to the hugely rich).

Nelson says more people are being signed onto sickness benefits than ever before, but does not mention that the criteria have been tightened up hugely since 2010. Doesn’t this suggest that other factors are in play than people simply wanting to take an easy way out of responsibility?

Former DWP assessor Sarah says she worries that the system is open to abuse. She points to online influencers who tell people the words to say in order to get benefit: “Just tell them that you’re suicidal.” But people who do this are easily found out, aren’t they, bearing in mind that according to figures from the charity Scope, the fraud rate for sickness and disability benefit is zero?

Sarah says she thinks some people aren’t telling the truth. Again, the fraud rate is zero.

Nelson goes on to explore the world of “sickfluencers” – people giving advice on how to navigate the DWP process. He finds that these people have tens of thousands of followers, and their videos can have more than a million views. He complains that they get far more attention than the official government advice but does not ask anyone why. The reason is that official government advice deliberately fails to tell claimants what they need to know – that their claim will be judged on whether it uses the keywords the sickfluencers mention. Without that information, the claimants are unlikely to use those particular words and their claim is likely to fail. That is understood to be the intention behind the omissions from government documentation.

[Another commenter said it’s actually £23 billion that is unclaimed.

A former private-company assessor suggests that, on £80 per assessment, people might be incentivised to finish assessments quickly in order to fit more in. This clashes with previously-accepted wisdom that assessors were financially incentivised to refuse more claims.

Back with Shane, he lost his appeal for benefits. Nelson’s voiceover tells us that, with professional help, chances of overturning a decision can be as high as 90 per cent. But the system clearly works, if we believe he doesn’t deserve the benefit because he can go around cleaning windows, as the programme seems to be suggesting.

Michael tries to learn a trade – plastering – but is told that he would lose his benefits if he goes on a course, because it is actually doing a job, and this would show that he is capable of it. This seems to be a genuine benefit trap.

He compares the amount he says he is on with the amount he reckons he would get on ordinary Universal Credit – around £400 – and says this is not enough. But how does he know that is all he would get? Who supplied this figure?

And in fact, it seems the claim that he would automatically lose his benefits isn’t true, although the DWP may reassess his benefits award.

Fear of losing benefits is stated to be a significant barrier to finding work – and this seems likely, if people are being penalised for trying to make themselves capable of it. It is also a significant cause of heightened anxiety and mental illness, making claimants more eligible to receive sickness benefit.

Iain Porter of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says the government is inept at communicating its own basic rules. But this is the problem all down the line – the government does not tell claimants what they need to know, because the government’s aim is to deny them their benefits.

He suggests that the government should guarantee that if a claimant found a job but it didn’t work out, they should be able to go straight back onto the benefits they had before, rather than go through the rigmarole of re-applying. It would put more people in work, and the government is considering something along these lines.

Gavin says he tried to come off benefits because he was ready for work again, but had to wait three weeks for a response that said he had to wait until he was reassessed. That was three years ago but he’s still on sickness benefit. This seems likely because at some point, the DWP will probably approach him with a large bill for overpayment. This Writer had a similar issue with Carers Allowance, as regular Vox Political readers will know; I tried to notify the DWP that I was no longer a carer and nothing happened because the website to which I was encouraged to send the notification is not monitored. I was eventually asked to telephone the Carers Allowance section – and when my next UC payment came in, the CA payments I had received were docked from it. The result was financial difficulty – which I believe was the intention. I handled it, because I’m used to going without.

Nelson says the DWP stopped reassessments during lockdown and never started them again. This is strange, as the former Mrs Mike had the result of her own PIP reassessment a couple of weeks ago.

“Gimme his number and I’ll sort it,” says Liz Kendall. Looks like Gavin is going to get a massive overpayment bill.

For an alternative take on the programme (and because I like the intro as well, see this:

And I also notice this:

Finally: the show seems to have ‘triggered’ a lot of people. If you are among them, please follow the advice below.

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One Comment

  1. Jeffrey Davies December 7, 2024 at 1:50 pm - Reply

    my heart wouldn’t allow me to watch it
    it’s the same old same old keep the peasants pointing at each other then they won’t attack us. but until they wake up to the fact each hour each day they bring told lies
    and listening to them will hurt but open their ears and eyes and learn they been manipulated lied to aktion T4 rolling along with out much of a ado

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