The Human Cost of Starmer's Welfare U-Turn

As dire as Starmer’s control over his backbenchers is, and as high as the probability of autumn tax rises has now hit, the human tragedy of the PM’s welfare U-turn is worse. There is now no hope for the nearly half a million 16-24-year-olds who receive personal independence payment – PIP – or the one in eight young people who are not in employment or education. A whole generation of children are getting hooked on PIP benefits at a younger age – crushing their chance of employment and living well.

I work with such people and my heart breaks for all those entangled on PIP for a range of vague mental health conditions. (All the usual caveats around the state supporting people whose physical conditions require financial help apply, of course.)

In this instance I am thinking with a heavy heart of a 17 year-old girl with no qualifications, work experience, skills, prospects or ambition, called Jane (not her real name). She receives £72 a week in PIP payments, which though intended to liberate, have acted as a millstone on her ability to flourish into adulthood.

Jane did not return to school after lockdown, preferring to stay in her bedroom on her phone. At the age of 15 the local council provided a team (including me) to work with Jane to teach her life skills and encourage her to return to education. She received two-hour sessions five days a week. In spite of this dedicated one-to-one support from a team of very capable tutors, counsellors, art therapists and social workers, Jane has not learned how to tell the time, read a bus timetable or write a CV; she has not applied for any part time jobs, attended college, got a part-time job, learned how to cook nutritious food, established a healthy sleeping regime, undertaken regular exercise or made use of the local library or leisure centre facilities – in spite of being more than capable of achieving all of the above.

When Angela Rayner spoke in last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions about the £1 billion the Government wants to invest in supporting more people to move off benefits and into work, I thought of Jane and despaired. The mentoring, practical and emotional support Jane received from the state was first class, expensive, and yet none of it worked. Why? Because the PIP payments Jane receives take away all motive for action or change of behaviour. Who knew that people respond to incentives?

I have to say it took me a long time to work out what was going on. When I set about trying to teach her fundamental life skills I was met with a barrage of resistance, largely from her mother but also my bosses at the council. I attempted to teach her how to tell the time. This did not go down well. Her mother reported me for “ignoring her dyscalculia – she never has told the time and never will”. Complaints were lodged that encouraging her to walk to the local bus stop were unhelpful because she’s overweight and gets exhausted easily. I must on absolutely no terms actually take her on a bus. I was also not allowed to teach her how to cook because of the risk assessment where her mum suggested she is “no good with hot water”. The sleep regime plan was rejected. I was to stop working on her CV because I was “setting her up to fail” and this would bring on her anxiety again. What did Jane do in between sessions with her support workers? Scroll on her phone for hours at a stretch. She has a sweet nature and claimed to be interested in childcare, but plans to start babysitting were quashed again by mum and Jane who agreed, “she wouldn’t be able to cope”.

During one session together we were sitting on a park bench and Jane was telling me about her latest Shein purchase – she was cross because the shipping was taking forever. It had been her birthday recently so I assumed she was spending some birthday money. She then said, “Mum says I should save some of my PIP money, but I don’t want to.” “What PIP money?” I replied. And this is where everything clarified and I understood the logical resistance to learning anything useful. Jane has no motive to learn life skills because she is being paid not to.

“I get £72 a week for my anxiety – I can’t use public transport, being plus sized – I can’t clean myself below the waist and my autism [this was news to me] means I can’t interact with people.”

Our benefits system relies heavily on proving you are unable to perform a number of physical and cognitive functions. Points are allocated on the basis of such things as being able to “make yourself understood through speaking, writing or typing” or learning “how to complete a simple task, such as setting an alarm clock”. The list of things Jane ‘cannot’ do is long. As Liz Kendall rightly explained, the Tories embedded a system whereby claimants were encouraged to turn themselves into low agency victims.

It turns out mum also gets a disabled carers allowance, making it doubly imperative that Jane remains incapable. Some might blame Jane and her mum for being scroungers. As it happens I don’t: they seem to me to be making a perfectly logical, if short-term, financial decision. £72 a week is available so why not take it?

When I told Jane she could earn £60 a week pot washing in on a Saturday in the local pub, she said: “Urgh that sounds horrible.” Another week, Jane was in an excellent mood because a PIP back payment of £1,200 came through and she bought herself a new iPhone for £900.

At our last session (the council has not extended the funding) Jane and I compiled a list of free things she could do over the summer holidays and beyond to keep herself busy. We looked at TikTok recipes for healthy food recipes, crafting activities, downloaded a sofa yoga app and plotted out local walks. I handed over copies of her CV I had completed anyway and told her she was a terrific young woman who had lots of options if she chose to take them. She smiled, shook her head and said, “Thanks anyway, I’m alright as I am.”

Mary Gilleece is an education support worker and her name is a pseudonym.