This is about the experience of trying to maintain any sort of halfway decent life while relying on the woefully inadequate benefits system in this country.
It’s about life on the dole, if you like – although it’s no longer called that. And it is no longer administered by the Department of Social Security. Now we have the Department for Work and Pensions. This implies there is now no such thing as social security.
In fact, a more accurate description would be the department of social insecurity. Its function seems to be to give you just enough money for you to feel permanently insecure when you’re out of work.
The dole, unemployment benefit or the current, silly and demeaning Jobseeker’s Allowance now stands at its lowest level compared to average earnings since it was introduced in 1912 – at a rate of 22 per cent of average male earnings in manufacturing. Since that time, the level has fluctuated. By 1979, it was still about 22 per cent of average earnings (manual and non-manual, male and female). By 2008, it had fallen to an all-time low of 10.5 per cent of average earnings.
The maximum amount that an adult over 25 can receive is £60.50 a week. This is supposed to cover all living expenses other than rent and council tax, which are assessed separately. I no longer have any savings and try to get by on this benefit. Academics have made detailed analyses of the consequences of this inadequate level of income for people who are expected to live a decent life and participate in our society. I want to describe what it is like to be on the receiving end of this miserly outdated and unfair system.
My situation is one of continual stress and worry about how I am going to meet commitments on basic expenses such as electricity, gas and water. The costs of all these have been increasing markedly since privatisation. Recently, I was visited by representatives of EDF Energy with an ultimatum on my arrears. The electric bill is now going to be deducted directly from my JSA at a rate of £9 a week, which will reduce my two-weekly income to just over £100. The gas has been put on a pre-payment meter. I now have to think before boiling an egg.
I am effectively excluded from most social activities – a visit to the pub or taking the train to visit someone, for example. I am no sociologist and no statistician, but when a pint of beer costs approximately 5 per cent of your weekly income and a one-day travel card can amount as much as 8 per cent of your weekly income or 10.5 per cent at peak hours, it is clear that your participation in everyday life is going to be very limited. Boris Johnson, who I suspect is a stranger to poverty, recently gave a concession: once a very long form has been completed, you can get half-price on the buses if you are claiming JSA.
That is precisely the sort of thing that adds to a sense of inferiority. You think you are a lesser citizen because you have no job and have to claim benefit. And that is how you are treated.
The continual concern about how I am going to get through the next week mitigates against being able to sit down calmly and generate income-earning ideas or fill in applications for those jobs that are still available. You are more likely to look for distraction when you are under serious duress.
There is something called the Social Fund. This is a means-tested, one-off loan up to a maximum of £348. Why not £350? What tortuous calculations were involved in arriving at that figure? This is then immediately deducted from your basic allowance. The basic rate of benefit rate is so inadequate that you have to go into debt.
I recently applied for an emergency loan from the Social Fund when my electricity and gas were at risk of being disconnected. I was telephoned some three or four weeks later and told that, unless I was in danger of dying, they could not make a further loan. They were not joking.
This Labour Government has presided over the complete failure to raise benefits to what should be an acceptable level in a civilised society. Increased problems of crime, inequality and social fracture are the direct consequences. Now that the economy has stalled, increasing numbers of people are going to realise this and conclude that the myth of scroungers living comfortably on benefits is a tabloid deflection from the harsh reality. When life consists of drinking cans of industrial-strength lager while sitting at home virtually inert, barely eating and unable to pay bills – which is how some people do live – it is not the result of a generous benefit system. It takes a great amount of strength and ingenuity not to let yourself fall into that sort of situation when you are forced to subsist on the inadequate and indefensible minimum amount you currently get when you are unemployed.
It is remarkable how little this is discussed. Millions of people in this country are without work. They have no voice and there is no one to speak for them. There is no union for the unemployed. No group is larger and yet almost completely marginalised and excluded.
As to that other longstanding myth, full employment, as far as I am aware the only countries ever to have claimed to have achieved it are Nazi Germany during the Second World War and the Communist Soviet Union. These are not good role models. It is time to accept that there can never be continuous full employment under capitalism. To claim otherwise is to lie. Now the deep flaws in that system have been exposed, although not challenged by Labour, which has been supine before the City of London and the financial services “ industry”. If it is an industry, what does it make – other than a small number exceedingly rich? As the devastating effects of the economic crisis trickle down quite rapidly to the wider population, many more are going to realise what “leave it to the markets” entails. Survival of the fittest means survival of the greediest. The safety net for me and for people like me has been virtually removed. I am conscious of that fact every single day.
And they wonder why people turn to crime.
This is the first in an occasional series describing life on benefits
