Jayne Dowle: A vision of the hand-to-mouth life on benefits

IT won’t be long before Mark Harper, the new Minister of State for Disabled People, makes an official visit to a benefits office. Never mind that. He should just drop in like I did. It would open his eyes to Britain today.

An old family friend, a lady in her 60s who suffers from mental disabilities, has got herself into a right old tangle with her council tax. She came to see me distressed, with a court summons in her handbag. It was clear that there had been some mix-up with her payments.

Such is the opaque nature of formulated letters, what wasn’t so clear was what had happened. Could I help her? How could I not?

We rang up the local council benefits helpline, but this just confused us further so we made an appointment to see an advisor.

I’ve been to some places in my life, but I can honestly say that I’ve never been in a place like this. If Hogarth had been alive, 
he could have painted the scene of despair and dereliction far better than I can describe it in words.

There is nothing wrong with the place itself, which is in the middle of Barnsley town centre. It was clean, organised and staffed by the kind of briskly efficient people who have perfected smiling without it entirely reaching their eyes.

I can’t fault the appointment system either. We were seen within a day, on time and advised by a polite and helpful man.

What a sight that met my eyes in the waiting room though. Here in front of us was a stark reminder of the scale of the task that faces any Minister in charge of state benefits in this country.

Along one wall was a group of three young women, manicured and groomed as if for a night out, with a gaggle of children and babies between them.

One of them was after an emergency payment as she was about to have child number three. She needed a new buggy, she was saying, and nappies and clothes.

Across from them sat a man of African descent with a little boy beside him. He was staring silently into space, as if he had landed on another planet, not the middle of Barnsley on a Monday morning.

Then an elderly woman came in, leaning heavily on the arm of a man I took to be her son.

He was vastly overweight, wheezing as he walked from the lift. I couldn’t begin to imagine the scale of their particular problems.

Each of them was here because they wanted something. Who was I to judge whether they deserved it or not? That is ultimately the responsibility of people like Mark Harper. And what a task they face.

I have no doubt that the patient and resourceful people who work there do their best to help those who sit and wait.

How though, to help the millions like them across the country?

How much money must it cost, just to staff and maintain such offices, dedicated entirely as they are to dispersing public money to those deemed to be in need?

This is a frightening and colossally expensive task in itself. However, what is even more frightening is the situation beyond the walls of these 
offices, advice centres and Job Centres. Each of the individuals I saw was there because they thought the state could help them.

As I said, I am in no position to judge. And there are genuine cases of need. However, I am in a position to ask questions. How did we get to this?

How can we run a country in which the state is expected to supply and provide help at every turn?

How can millions of people be living – or should that be existing – day-to-day, hand-to-mouth, staggering from crisis grant to emergency loan? Subsisting on an ever-shifting combination of this benefit and that benefit, this grant or the other? And in dire need, resorting to the extortionate money-lenders who offer “payday loans”?

It begs much bigger questions than how to pay the bills. How, for example, can young women have babies and expect to be paid a “wage” for bringing more mouths to feed into the world?

I know of one woman in her late 20s who has four children under 12 by four different fathers. She openly boasts on Facebook about what she is going to buy when she gets “paid”.

Judging by the nature of her posts, she clearly has no idea that many people would find her attitude morally repugnant. And then, we have people with genuine problems, like the young man I know with early onset Motor Neurone Disease who was told he was fit for work (for now) and must forfeit his Disability Living Allowance.

Those who work in that office I visited have to make judgements on people like this face-to-face, five days a week.

It’s time that more government Ministers spent a day in their shoes. Only then can they begin to understand the scale of the challenge facing the country.