The Actual Benefits Scandal Story Telly Ignores

That would have been told by Channel 4, once upon a time. Instead we were 'gifted' the shameful (shaming) 'Dispatches: Britain's Benefits Scandal'

I tried not to pre-judge. Even when I saw the words ‘benefits’ and ‘scandal’ in the title. Even when the presenter was named as Fraser Nelson, long-time editor of The Spectator - a right-wing magazine that has, shall we say, form (for example, this on “idlers and benefit cheats”, and this from Nelson personally on “Britain’s benefits scandal”. Wait, hang on…).

Even when I watched the advert - or as a call it, a provocation - a man hopping on his skateboard then talking about how much money he receives in benefits the next. Even when the tone sure did sound like patronisation dressed up in concern’s dirty knickers. Still. I held my water. My tongue. Their knicker elastic.

Hey, I thought, it’s Dispatches! Channel 4! The very programme, channel, that three years ago worked with Disability News Service - and a disabled journalist, Richard Butkins - to expose the ‘cruel and inhumane system’ linked to the deaths of those in receipt of benefits. Had so much really changed in the last three years? Fuck, yes! The pretence is over. The right-wing is on the rise. Social and economic justice is for losers and *checks my in-law’s newspaper* communists. And as a media, a country, we’re back to shaming and demonising the vulnerable with gusto.

@c4news7% of the UK’s working age population is claiming long term sickness benefits - costing the taxpayer £48 billion - and the numbers are quickly rising. For Channel 4 Dispatches, Fraser Nelson investigates why this is one of the greatest challenges the new Labour government faces. Watch Britain’s Benefits Scandal: Dispatches 8pm on 2 December on Channel 4 and www.channel4.com #Benefits #WelfareSystem #DWP #C4Dispatches

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Still, I dutifully sat down to watch. “Across the UK,” begins Nelson, sorrowfully. “A crisis is building that affects us all.” Golly! A crisis? In the benefits system? Oh, he must be talking about the 109 kids being pushed - strategically, sadistically - into poverty every day by the two-child limit! Or maybe one of its many brutal side-effects? You know, interfering with a woman’s right to choose (freely), the yep-this-is-definitely-fine ‘rape exception’, the rape exception to the rape exception (women raped by the partner they live with - a statistical probability - getting nowt. That’ll learn them!). None of those? Hmm…

Oooh, oooh, the unpaid carers benefits scandal! You know, those DWP overpayments that have left hundreds of thousands in horrific debt and others in terror, facing a stretch. Nope? OK, go on then, Frase (can I call you Frase?) - we’re all ears.

“More than 3m people are now on long-term sickness benefits, up by about a MILLION in just five years,” he says in an accent hailing from (gosh, hope I’m saying this right!), RicherthangodLand. “And these figures are set to get far worse.” Cut to the woman who puts the GET TO WORK into Work & Pensions, Liz Kendall: “We are not going to get Britain growing again until we get Britain working again.” Cut to the man who skateboards while wearing a Berghaus hat (nice touch, team), Michael: “I’m getting like thirteen to fourteen hundred pounds a month, and there’s people out there working and they’re not even earning that.”

That sound you can hear is the right-wing press choking on their Beaujolais. And they’ll need the Heimlich after a chap from the Iain-Duncan-Smith-co-founded Centre for Social Justice says, “It is frankly bankrupting the country”. I’m sorry, THIS is what’s bankrupting the country??

Anyway, “900,000 people” are set to pile in on long-term sickness “by the next election,” exclaims our presenter. Eugh, not more sick people! But hey, Frase, what about the nigh-on 700,000 kids set to be hit by the two-child limit - aka the single biggest driver of child poverty - by the end of next parliament, too? (Woo! Poverty and reduced life expectancies for everyone! YOU get a life on low-income! YOU get a life on a low-income!). Frase can’t hear me do my best Oprah though, as he’s telling us, “I’ve been investigating this for years. I think this is the greatest challenge the new government faces”. (It isn’t). “As a journalist…” he frowns now in slow motion, his eyebrows like two caterpillars moonwalking. “What I can’t work out is how such a huge scandal is going almost completely unnoticed,”. SAY WHAT NOW, BABE? Do you mean “almost completely unnoticed” like this? Or like this? Like this? Like this? Like this? Or like this? Or this? How about like this!

Hush now! He’s not done. “When unemployment hit three million under Margaret Thatcher, there was outrage but when the number on sickness benefits hits three million almost nobody seems to ask why…” Sorry to interrupt (again) but it’s kinda-like they’re not remotely the same thing! Well, at least he’s asked that all-important question in documentary-making: WHY. So sorry, you were saying - “…how on earth we got to this stage, or what life is actually like for those caught in the system.” To be fair, it’s a bloody tightrope, straddling (and balancing) shame and patronisation, but I’d give this a solid 101 out of 10.

And with that, Frase leaves London to meet some actual real-life human people who live in NOT LONDON. He and his puffer jacket arrive in Boston - where the numbers on long-term sickness benefits have doubled in five years - and pitches up at a church “giving out free lunches twice a week”. It’s here (just like God intended) that we’re treated to a quick-fire round of case studies. A 37-year-old security worker who was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid and referred for help, that he’s still not received, a year ago (“A year??” mouths a man seemingly unfamiliar with the NHS or its waiting lists). A software architect with bipolar disorder, anxiety and severe depression. A SEND worker with PTSD.

These human beings illustrate this point: 69% of those who apply for sickness benefits mention mental health and, says our intrepid reporter, “Instead of being given the help they need to get back into work, they end up sucked into a benefits system from which they’re unlikely to ever emerge.” Cool, so now for the stats and data to show that, the unearthing of the failures and hey, what about those NHS waiting lists he jus…What’s that? No? Oh, OK (and Oh, PS: ADHD is not a mental health condition). We haven’t got time for that ‘help’ chat now though, guys. Because to understand the cost of this ‘crisis’ to the economy, we have to go listen to employers slag people off!

Still in Boston, a company is “crying out” for workers. Well, a worker - a trainee metal worker starting on 26k/year. “We pay above the national wage, so I’m not really sure what’s putting them off - maybe because they get more on benefits,” they say. Whoa! Do they? Oh, there’s more, apparently someone came in for a trial day and “a waste of time he was.” (You’re not sure what’s putting them off…?). But there’s that punchy claim. The one that’s really the heart of this programme: why would anyone bother working when they can go on the sick (not always for real) and make more money? (The Guardian’s Frances Ryan is very good on this and, well, all of it here).

So, that big claim. Is it, what’s the word again…true? “Long-term sickness benefit in itself doesn’t pay more,” admits Frase. “But it usually comes with additional benefits.” Like? That’s for them to know and us not to find out apparently, but their unspecified “calculations” puts an unspecified “package” for a single person at £24k/year. So, not more. Even when all those benefits they don’t speak of are heaped on top. Wait, though! Liz Kendall’s back to put the SERIOUSLY GET TO WORK into Work & Pensions: “Many people are working with a health condition. I think many more could,” she says, without sharing any data on the “many more”, the methodology used to identify them, adding “…with the right help and support,” because, come on now, she is on the *checks my in-law’s newspaper, checks again* left! Anyway, we haven’t got time to dilly-dally on details - we’ve got a broken system to interrogate.

And who better to play bad cop than Conservative MP Mel Stride, who’ll go on to call this entire shebang a much-needed “grown-up conversation” (and yes, “grown-up conversation” is Latin for “new ways to tighten the thumb-screws”), but right now he wants to drop a truth bomb on sick/fit notes. They are, he informs us, handed out by doctors in 94% of all cases. “[potential claimants] are given a note saying, ‘You are not capable of any work whatsoever!’ And they drift further along the benefits system until they’re in this incapacity benefit cohort where they’re basically left alone.” Are they? What, forever? Not now with the questions, Terri! Mel Stride wants to talk about a (hypothetical) 18-year-old with a mental health condition, landing on long-term benefits and never getting off. This, he says with the emotion of Pre-Real-Boy Pinocchio, is “a real, full-life tragedy.” Personally, I think (not-hypothetical) babies in our most deprived areas DYING without living owt close to a full life is an Actual Tragedy but potato/potato!

Me and Frase might be on common ground, though. He and his wheely-suitcase are in Not London to talk to more real-life human beings - and specifically, My Not London! “I’ve come to Manchester,” he says. “A booming city trying to fill 20,000 job vacancies”. Meet Anthony, who lives in Sal- wait, he’s actually come to SALFORD. “A booming city” or a (cracking) area high in deprivation? Hey, it’s all NORTH (of t’Garrick Club), right? Anthony has been out of work “for years”, gets (not-even) £100 a week “unemployment” but now, sick-note in hand, he’s hoping for a successful sickness benefits application (doubling his entitlement).

What is clear (more by accident than design - this is the Make Awful People Angry case study), is Anthony’s heartbreak. “I’ve had like six, seven cans this morning, before I even function,” he says of his alcohol dependency, anxiety and depression. He tells us that he’s lost him mum and his siblings in the last few years. “Some days I don’t get out of bed, some days I can’t be arsed with the world. I’d rather go and get a can, crack it and get back in bed.” Helping him, Dave at the Citizen’s Advice (“there’s only you I trust”), who reckons reckons he has “a reasonable chance of succeeding” in the highest group. “He’ll get the money, but will he get the help he needs?” asks Frase. OK, here we go, now we’ll get into the help available, the failings. Right? because, you’re really worried about these people, right? Hello? Guys?

Photo by Luismi Sánchez on Unsplash

Well, we haven’t got time for all of that either, because CSJ guy is here! “For some, they will be completely incapable of working,” he says. “For others, actually work may be the best thing for them”. I assume someone told him he was talking about/to children, not actual adult human beings. Easy mistake! But Frase is becoming more and more shocked, specifically at the “sheer number” of young people on long-term sickness. It’s “astounding,” he says. “A staggering waste of young life.” Mate, I feel you. I simply cannot fathom why or how these children of austerity - raised in a country that saw its early years support and targeted intervention decimated, has seen levels of child poverty (that big old driver of physical and mental illness) spike - could possibly be sicker? Thank god we didn’t have a pandemic to boot!

Frase skips across to Keighley so he can hang around a run-down playground with 30-year-old Amy and her child. A single mum who wanted to be a barrister but broke her pelvis, underwent surgery and now uses a walking stick. “I am in pain all day, every day,” she says, before sharing that she suffers from C-PTSD, anxiety and depression. “You look healthy, you’re very articulate,” says Frase in disbelief to the woman who just said she’s in pain all day, every day. “You can imagine somebody looking at you and saying, ‘Here’s someone who seems perfectly well to me. She doesn’t look like she’s long-term sick’.” Guys, GUYS, hang on! What if you could look fine and still be…ill or disabled. Speak coherently too! Wouldn’t that be WILD? Amy (fair fucks to her) simply says, “I use a walking stick for a reason”. But soon she’s crying while speak to the difficulties of finding a job she can actually do and do consistently (and what’s at stake for her, as a single parent). Apparently she’d need to earn 35k/year to match her benefits, and while workings are not shown, this becomes the line the media runs with, cobs at all claimants.

Do They Really Look Ill Though continues with Shane, a Brummie window-cleaner on “basic benefits" who “tops up” with part-time work, has knee and back problems, plus mental-health issues. And I’m sure filmmakers aren’t suggest owt at all by shooting him cleaning windows while complaining that he didn’t land full sickness.

And we’re firmly back on the mental health beat as Frase interviews Dr Lucy Johnstone, who says mental health isn’t getting worse (“I don’t see these problems as best understood as being some kind of medical illness”), that we are not sicker, but unhappier. Who is bang on when pointing to wider societal factors in improving mental health (access to decent housing and child care). This is the closest we get to recognition of austerity’s consequences, the same ones promised by today’s deprivation (on tomorrow’s generation - you know, those future numbers you’re so worried about?).

But this is all far too much sense, because now it’s time to suggest It’s Maybe All A Con (come on, guys - don’t be sensitive. Not all of you! Just some of you! Just some of you that could be all of you!), and in one of the more depressing moments, that case is made by a nurse and one-time DWP assessor. Who talks about a system open to abuse, describes “sickfluencers” she’s seen online who lay out how to get full benefits. I mean, given prior links investigated between DWP processes/systems and mental and emotional distress, any help is good, right? “It’s down to the integrity of that person,” she says, “And sadly, my opinion is that not everyone that is claiming, is quite telling the truth.”

If you’re suicidal - or claim to be - you apparently go straight into the top group. Now, I assume facts on suicidal people exaggerating/faking suicidality are…light. But hey, you know what people need, Dispatches? As they stand on the cliff edge of their own existence? People wondering if they’re just taking the piss!

Frase has another burning issue on his hands though - what happens when those on long-term benefits try to “escape the system”. We’re back with Michael who we now discover (late in the day), is homeless, previously heard voices, self-medicating to quieten them. But there’s news - he hasn’t shown up for his first day at college (for plastering) after apparently being told he’d “lose” his benefits.

“Did you think about taking the hit, about seeing if you could just go without the benefits, hoping that within six months, a year, you might be in a better place?” Frase asks a man who would then have £300 a month to live on and Frase, baby, could you live on £300 a month? Where would you live? How would you eat? Get the bus? Buy shampoo? The Beaujolais your people choke on? Taking the hit, seeing if you could go without benefits. THEY AREN’T INDEPENDENTLY WEALTHY OR SAT ON AN INHERITANCE OR FROM A WOMB BUILT OF GOLD. My god, man.

And now: the pièce de résistance. Someone who shows “how deep the rot has set in”. Gavin. A taxi driver for over 30 years who had open heart surgery and needed sickness benefits. Look, here he is washing his cab, here he is driving it. See, this guy is WORTH SOMETHING. He’s a grafter! He’s the deserving sick! Especially as he called the DWP three years ago to tell them to stop giving him money and they simply wouldn’t. Liz Kendall when she hears this, rolls her eyes and says like a woman who hasn’t got a child poverty strategy to urgently create, “Give me his number and I’ll sort it!”.

On which point, the conclusion: the numbers of long-term sick will reach over 4 million by the time of the next election, apparently. When, BTW, it still won’t touch the number of kids - some of the most vulnerable in our society, most in need of care and protection - in poverty (4.3million today and growing day on day), without food, without beds, their lives literally shortening. But, says Frase. “This can’t wait.”

So, truly: what was it all for? To soften the ground, get the public furious and on side before what many fear will be a brutal health and disability benefits Green Paper in the Spring? Quite possibly. To unleash journalists/other newspapers in a state of frenzy? Perhaps (The Daily Star: “Britain has become a nation of benefit cheats thanks to the rise of online “sickfluencers” The Sun: “Does the government have the stomach to fix Britain’s addiction to sickness benefits?“). A new but old cause, a crusade for the media class - you know, those almost-entirely from a professional/upper-middle-class, almost-entirely based in London, almost-entirely without chronic illness or disability, who wouldn’t know the word intersection if they fell over it, and count ‘scratchy sheets at boarding school’ as ‘lived experience’.

The ‘scandal’? That much of the political and media class - who really do, er, come together in this doc - are relatively relaxed about our poorest kids (and their parents) sinking into life-changing, life-limiting, life-ending poverty. That Britain’s benefits system is increasingly-designed to push people into it, NOT save them from it. That universal credit makes the disabled poorer. That child poverty is higher in households where a member has a disability. That benefits are needed because work is too-often low-paid, insecure and not the claimed-answer (69% of children in poverty live in a working household).

Needless to say, I’m not the only one who had a strong reaction. Channel 4 responded to criticisms with a statement: "Dispatches is a highly respected brand with journalistic integrity that has a reputation for tackling difficult subject matter. The film was based on deep and meticulous research, but the story was told through those affected. We wanted to give voice to claimants, place them at the centre of the film, as they are too often erased from the debate. This programme has created an important conversation and highlights the important issues that the Benefit System is facing. "

Man, the phrase “gaslighting” is overused and pretty much redundant and why do people even use it and CHRIST, THE GASLIGHTING. The very conceit that they’re genuinely centring the voices of ‘claimants’ in an effort to arrest their erasure. If I drank Beaujolais I’d be spitting it up the walls right now. (You might fancy contrasting Channel 4’s statement with the media rounds in which the ‘you earn more on benefits than working’ and ‘you just get signed off forever’ lines are bandied around, mental health is questioned, where Frase and Julia Hartley-Brewer discuss how people who don’t like the documentary (like me presumably) patronise the working-class, don’t understand them. How Frase is finally giving them a voice! Chufty badge for Frase! (What would I, a working-class woman in Oldham, know about the working-class and their communities??).

Well, this is what I do know. This is why people so often don’t trust journalists. This is what makes it harder for people to document with true empathy. This is why lived experience matters all around the camera. This is not how you frame, and lens, the stories of others. Represent communities. Build authentic narratives. Tell real stories. Tell the truth of what’s going on in our country today. And without that: truly, what the fuck is it all for?