It is inspiring what obtaining your rewards cut will do for your function ethic. Just ask the gormless Sarah, who – bless – did not consider a CV would assist her locate operate and missed a meeting with her operate coach back in March. Thankfully she pulled up her socks and updated her resume. “My advantage is back to typical now and I’m genuinely pleased with how my CV seems,” Sarah grins as she appears more than a personal computer screen into the camera, stopping just short of a tap-dancing “gee, thanks, Mr Duncan Smith” in the manner of a young Shirley Temple. Another benefit-sanctions accomplishment story, you may possibly feel. The only issue is that Sarah doesn’t exist.
Connected: DWP admits inventing quotes from fake ‘benefits claimants’ for sanctions leaflet
This week, following a freedom of information request courtesy of Welfare Weekly, the Department for Perform and Pensions (DWP) admitted that Sarah, along with fellow benefit claimant Zac (who presented up a heartwarming tale of notifying the jobcentre of his hospital appointment in advance, thus safeguarding his claim) were only utilised in their promotional supplies “for illustrative purposes”.
Their mugshots, meanwhile, are stock pictures. Naturally, there is no suggestion anyplace on the leaflet – which has mysteriously disappeared from the DWP internet site but has been downloaded by Welfare Weekly – that these claimants are fictional.
It is difficult not to see a twisted comic darkness in this. The optimistic spin is so firmly rooted in the realms of fantasy as to be ludicrous, and follows an incident last yr where the department was accused of planting fake tweets praising the a lot-maligned universal credit score measures, though it denied this.
Twitter end users are mocking the DWP’s newest misstep with the inevitable hashtag #fakedwpstories (“since the jobcentre sanctioned me I only eat caviar” “I conserve so much on trousers now all that funds isn’t burning holes in my pockets”), and rightly so. The fake leaflet personae signify a surreal contrast to the real effect that positive aspects sanctions can have on individuals in austerity Britain.
Tales abound from claimants who have been sanctioned for a assortment of bizarre and trivial reasons, this kind of as failing to apply for a work that had expired, or missing a jobcentre appointment that clashed with a perform programme interview. There have been punishments that are shocking in their heartlessness: it could be a funeral, a stillbirth, a heart assault, a premature labour that leads to you to miss your signing-on appointment: challenging. No excuses.
Other claimants describe a type of bureaucratic, Kafkaesque nightmare, a dystopian labyrinth that appears deliberately designed to catch you out. Just inquire the man whose dole queue was so extended that he was late for his appointment, or the 1 who failed to attend his simply because he was at a occupation interview. Each were sanctioned.
This certain DWP cock-up represents an omnishambles worthy of The Thick of It, but there is also, to borrow the phrases of Mark Serwotka, the standard secretary of the Public and Industrial Services union (PCS), one thing “disgraceful and sinister” about trying to trick individuals into believing in the benevolent chastisement of the state. In contrast to the deprivation and destitution that can outcome from sanctioning, the fictional Zac and Sarah, with their beatific expressions beaming out from leaflets, are eerily chipper. Back in the true planet, sanctioned benefits claimants are currently being forced into homelessness and resorting to food banks. There have been suicides. Final week, a famished female whose rewards had been stopped was prosecuted and fined much more than £300 for stealing a 75p pack of Mars Bars. Actuality is not really panning out the way the Conservatives intended.
The reality that the government is having to concoct “positive” tales about the sanctions system for propaganda functions suggests that there is a paucity of claimants out there keen to dispense glowing feedback on their experiences, to put it mildly. The “new regime” (the government’s phrase) was introduced in October 2012, and has by no means been a good results in terms of PR, operating as it does on what my colleague Patrick Butler refers to as a “sanction now, investigate later” rationale. Beneath the government’s “hard line” method, nearly 1 million jobseeker’s allowance claimants had been sanctioned in 2014, however there are doubts as to the sanctions’ effectiveness in helping individuals find function. The function and pensions select committee said that the government had not presented evidence that the program was not “purely punitive”. Furthermore, more evidence advised that sanctions led to poorer top quality, short-term or unstable employment.
If a funeral, stillbirth or heart assault causes you to miss your signing-on appointment: difficult. No excuses.
Then there are the jobcentre whistleblowers, who in January uncovered the existence of “hit squads” that set claimants up to fail in the pursuit of staff performance targets. There had been reports of staff focusing on the a lot more vulnerable jobseekers, reserving appointments without having informing the claimant, and currently being threatened with disciplinary accessibility if they didn’t refer sufficient individuals for sanction. With damning reviews this kind of as these, the temptation to coat the cruelty in a shiny gloss need to be huge.
What can we learn from the story of Zac and Sarah, the ragged orphans upon whom the benevolent fairy godmother of the DWP bestowed their enchanted kindness? That the government regards individuals on benefits as so “other” that it has no qualms about making use of fictional characters as stand-ins? Surely those who dismissed the evaluation that the Conservatives are engaging in an ideological assault on the vulnerable and disadvantaged will be difficult pushed to argue towards it, when it’s their wheel that is spinning the fairytales.
In addition, request by yourself: what exposes the presence of an ideology much more obviously than the dogged pursuit of it in the face of all contradictory proof? A flawed and cruel agenda, innovative with blinkered indifference, underpinned by an unmoving belief technique that casts its heroes and its villains as simplistically as a child’s bedtime story. If it feels creepy to you, that’s because it is. And the narrative continues regardless of its dishonesty. A sunlit street is superimposed more than the grey deprivation. An expressionless, robotic Zac and Sarah are waiting for you there. “Welcome to the new regime,” they say. “We hope you take pleasure in your stay.”
Benefit sanctions ruin lives. No wonder the DWP turned to fiction | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
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