In 1986 I got a job with the Manpower Services Commission. My job was to find other people a job. By the time I worked there people no longer HAD to visit the Jobcentres, they went because that was where jobs were advertised.
Through the years I moved on to other posts, all of them about giving specialist help to certain people to help them find jobs.
I became a Restart Interviewer in the late 1980s and did 60 interviews a week. For the first time we could stop someone’s benefits for not Actively Seeking Work. Our training stressed the need to be careful when using this power, to remember that we are people’s last hope and to always take care that we were doing the right thing.
During all my time there it was never deemed that we needed training in dealing with people who were suicidal because of what we did.
Fast forward to today – I haven’t worked for DWP for a long time and I thank goodness for that. In all that time I found very few people who didn’t want to work. Today, it’s ALWAYS the fault of the lying scrounging benefit claimant. Bus late? Funeral to go to? Interview that clashes with your signing on time? Sick? Disabled? Caring for someone? You are lying, it’s your fault and so you won’t get paid.
I used to think that this UK government had no understanding of the consequences of their actions. That they were oblivious to to the impact of their targets, their rules.
I used to think that because they had never had to sit with the curtains shut because they didn’t have enough to pay the milkman who was knocking at the door, they didn’t understand how it felt. I used to wonder if any of them had ever stepped outside their lives for long enough to know the powerlessness, the desperation, the pain that comes from experiencing those things. Because I was sure that if they had then they would not be treating people the way they do. They would find a better way, a different way to move people into work.
I used to think that they didn’t know. But they do. They know fine well. And that is why they are arranging suicide training for their staff. They KNOW how desperate their policies are making people. They KNOW the consequences of their policies. They KNOW it, and they don’t care. That is disgusting, it is cruel and it is immoral.
This is an edited version of a blog which can be found at bit.ly/1JHgvuo
Letters to the National, August 27: Beware IDS, the empathic assassin
How where you live affects rate of benefits sanctions
Alex Neil, Social justice secretary: We need Labour to commit to working with us
The National view, August 27: We have to stand up for those being persecuted by the Tory Government
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