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.
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The desire to change has to come from within. If people such as “Jane” are continually given excuses to remain in their current indolent state they will spend their entire lives as burdens of the State. Swathes of such people have zero ambition and never will as long as there is no incentive to change.
Not burdens of the State, but burdens of the taxpayers.
Burdens of themselves.
Frittering away Money is bad enough, but frittering away Time is even worse, for themselves, their family, their community, and the nation.
Her mother appears to be the main block to any meaningful improvement.
Sympathy?, is the author having a laugh, this young child, because that is how she is acting and her mother are exactly proof of the abuse of the system for greed , she/they are not genuine claimants, and should be taken off of it immediately. What is sad is that there are genuine people in need ,yet they get nothing.
They should be given sufficient food to survive, but no money.
And all items unprocessed, requiring preparation and free of refined carbohydrates and alcohol. No cigarettes. No mobility aids on the NHS for the clinically obese and no blue badges. All tech to be bought from money earned after stoppages. Such people are already lost so there is nothing left to lose by offering a bit of tough love. Time to stop enabling this stupidity.
Quite depressing. Reads like a negative investment – the worse you are, the more you get, as it were. But if things improve, revenue declines.
“… worse you are, the more you get …”
Isn’t that Socialism?
Johnson’s government and scientific advisors who imposed lockdown and fear are the cornerstone of this problem.
Instead of taking responsibility, they awarded themselves honours.
A whole generation cursed.
Sure, the ‘child’ and mother are responsible too, as is the welfare state that provides everything to the workshy.
I know several people like this.
Covid make far worse, it accelerated all bad trends, but it’s the Tories who waved this nonsense through.
Yes, while being yelled out by the opposition parties to lock down harder, longer, deeper all the time.
It’s who picked the advisors?
Who prohibited the informed discussion required to get the correct analysis for this complicated situation?
Who made every attempt to cover up any deviation of the official agenda?
I’m sure the senior civil service and the BBC are in there, somewhere. It’s what Cummings, Truss and many others are revealing: that the ill informed Establishment make an early decision that cascades down the information infrastructure, any disagreement is discouraged, to the point that all recruits agree before they join.
Why, with so many charities (supposedly) for disabled people, always begging, always advertising, always lobbying government, managers on six-figure salaries, etc – why do we need a State charity where donations are compulsory by coercion of the State?
Time to abolish the welfare State and the Stalin-era State collective, the NHS.
A friend who helps a charity that provides a food bank, clothes, prams etc. for people on benefit was saying that she was worried that this was actually perpetuating the problem rather than solving anything.
Yep, and you and I pay for Jane’s existence through my taxes.
Jane will live her life in exactly the same way: scrolling on her phone for hours.
She will also cost the NHS a lot of money as a result of her obesity.
Let’s face it: Jane is beyond help. She is the product of the ages. What do we do about these people, I don’t know.
Easy. You stop her payments.
Indeed necessity is the mother of invention.
Assuming this is a genuine example, it absolutely cries out MÜNCHAUSEN BY PROXY. Jane’s problem is that her mother has an abusive relationship with her and no amount of fiddling with benefits payments for other people is going to fix that.
Correct. She is the mother’s source of income.
The same applies to a certain ethnic minority which practices multiple generational cousin marriage. Why should they worry about a disabled child or two …… they are a very lucrative source of income, for life.
“Those who make easy solutions difficult make hard solutions inevitable.”
Jon Mors, 2025
Applies to a lot of things:
What’s wrong with people really?
The best way to get people into work is to not give them any benefits in the first place. And yes, I do mean nothing.
Very well written story with a white girl called Jane (not real name) portrayed as the freeloader. I wonder if the author has a similar story for a fat girl in a hijab called Fatima (not real name), or a fighting-fit young man called Abdul (not real name) who has just come off a dingy. If not, people may suspect a certain bias (or, is it prejudice?)
Excellent point! Years ago, an article published a list of the top 20 countries with the highest percentage of obese people. Palestinian Gaza was 6th on the list.
I suppose we can take the general principle and apply it to illegal migration, for example – when you pay people to do something (or not do anything in Jane’s case), they do it.
It warms my heart that having worked on average 12 hours a day sometimes more, sometimes 7 days a week to run a business, and to have been highly taxed, to have NEVER had anything from the state, that I will now be taxed even more such that this useless eater and her Mother can have all the benefits of one to one care, the benfits of a state education which was clearly wasted, the benfits of health care, for a body they have no regard for, and no doubt a home that is provided for them, and to never have to so much as lift a finger except to shove food in their mouth, or to press buttons on a new phone.
I wonder which one of us has proven the biggest idiot, the one who worked from 16 in Part time jobs until a late retirement, or the one who has never contributed a penny, or even an hour of voluntary work, but has had everything handed to them.
I wonder which one is thought more of by Starmer and his back benchers.
I think a lot of taxpayers are starting to feel this way.
It is the system that is wrong, totally agree with you.
A lot of people will have seen Marie Tidball’s tearful contribution to the debate. It was a great shame because she’s a brilliant example of what “can do” can achieve. She did people like her no favours at all.
Well done to the author and DS for this crucially important article, telling the plain truth! As for the photo at the top of the page, it again illustrates the old adage:
“A Picture Paints A Thousand Words”.
It’s a test of integrity and moral strength when people know that, just by feigning illness, they and their parents will be showered with welfare benefits from the State, and never have to work at all.
The question is: What does the State get out of it?
Possible answers: Enfeeblement of the population, leading to total incapacity to defend themselves against attack by hostile aliens, and early death from self-indulgence. Part of the Globalist Depopulation Agenda?
The question is: What does the State get out of it?
Perhaps Mrs Merton might have phrased it better: “Well, sir Kier,what does the Labour Government get out of showering its voters with free money extracted – with menaces – from the hard-working taxpayer?”
“What does the State get out of it?”
compliance, control?
Once they are dependent they know no other way to exist, = total control.
It’s not caring government help it’s enslavement to the state!
Open wide to the crumbs we throw you and be thankful!
The Tories did the same. The Lib/Lab/Con/Green Uniparty have done nothing to stop this.
No doubt Jane would say, and possibly be believed, that her weight isn’t her fault, it’s due to her hormones. No love, it’s due to your appetite. She might even claim she’s retaining water. No love, your retaining cake and pies.
Read two books:
The Games People Play. (She is playing Yes … but). In response to every suggestion for changing her situation “Yes, but I can’t do that because …..”
The Amazing Power of Positive Reinforcement. ie Firm parameters; tough love; consistent application of incentives/disincentives.
The Government, and the Welfare Industry which survives off their incompetence, do the opposite: they reward the dysfunctional behaviour.
If she got to age 15 and couldn’t tell the time; read a bus timetable or express herself in writing sufficiently well to draft a CV then both her mother and 10 years of State Education had already failed. Her mother had probably set her on the path of utter uselessness long before age 5.
£900 for a phone?????
It’s just jaw-dropping, isn’t it? What normal person has that kind of money to waste on a phone, for Pete’s sake?
What does her dad have to say about it?
I have a solution. Ideally you would just stop all payments and let these people fend for themselves, but in reality this is not possible, many of these people have no idea how to manage outside their state assisted dependent lives.
I think all direct payments to recipients should stop.
Rent payments should be payed direct to landlords/councils along with Council tax and all utility bills, maybe including broadband connection, but NOT mobile or SKY or similar payments.
Issue food tokens that can only be redeemed for food and home goods, NOT alcohol or cigarettes.
Provide all usual Healthcare services, and education for children.
Provide bus passes.
For those with babies provide tokens for nappies and other necessities, maybe including prams (reconditioned!) etc.
Basically make provision for all life’s necessities.
Individual cases with specific (real) issues would be judged on an individual basis.
Recipients would NOT get mobile phones, laptops, consoles, tablets, huge TV’s, Cars (maybe bicycles) or holidays etc.
If they want those items (above) and others, such as alcohol and fags they will need to earn money to buy those by performing some kind of service – aka work!
The more they work, the more they earn (novel idea) allowing them to buy those items they desire, want not need.
Over time, the idea would be to wean these people off state dependency, start to take responsibility for their own lives, learn to budget.
The work could be provide by their local council or neighborhood, and may be menial, sweeping streets, clearing litter, emptying litter bins, but MIGHT just encourage them to find something better. Could include part or full time education, apprenticeships, helping in charity shops or care homes, anything that is giving something back.
Not perfect, and clearly would need more detail, but I think take away their mobile phones, games consoles, cars, holidays, alcohol and cigarettes and “most” would then feel compelled to do something!
A leg up, NOT a handout!
With her current lifestyle she’ll be dead by her late 20s. And if she’s worked out the intricacies of an iPhone, she can do a lot of other stuff too. I know a young man with similar issues but his mum actively encourages him to work, which he does at a local supermarket. It sounds like the mother is the girl’s worst enemy. Stop all payments and she’ll soon get her act together. Tough love is needed in this case!