RITB admins put out a call for testimony of what life is like living whilst receiving DWP benefits. It was painfully clear that many survivors are now afraid to speak even under pseudonym. People are silenced, and they are terrified of being noticed by the State apparatus. Therefore a Content Notice on these testimonies as they include distressing detail of bureaucratic violence, harm, and distress.
The Daily Telegraph and The Jeremy Vine Show recently put out messaging that is distressingly reminiscent of Nazi propaganda. Recalling the co-ordinated media activity of the Osborne era where scrounger rhetoric was used to make harsher and lethal policies acceptable under austerity. [Please read this letter collected by Jay Watts].
The treatment and stigmatisation of claimants is similar to the vilification of refugees. We should always act intersectionally and support each others struggles, and never fall for divide and rule messaging or pitting one groups rights against another’s. Whilst citizens do not face being drowned or rendered to Rwanda, some have had their citizenship removed and been deported, fulfilling the fascist National Front of the 1970’s policy demands. Political parties win votes competing to be crueller to both. No political party represents either group in a humane way. New Labour’s Immigration Act 1999 removed recourse to public funds for people ‘subject to immigration controls‘, the slow removal of benefits from disabled people suggests a similar policy aim, but being hampered by human rights law, disability organisations, and public opinion; the famous problem of democracy Thatcher lamented to Pinochet.
We now also have a political and media campaign against Trans people, with the country’s Human Rights organisation, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, being manipulated to now support the removal of human rights, to the alarm of the United Nations. The hostile environment while acknowledged openly by government in respect of refugees is less explicit for other demographics, but nevertheless we can feel the enmity.
The recent footage of a 6am DWP & police raid and increased whipped up hatred towards claimants has deeply distressed many people:
The following testimony is collated from a wide range of individuals who responded to our callout, they offer a snapshot of the impact on health of being a claimant. Of what it is like living under the parallel shadow penal state of the DWP-
- “I cannot talk about it here. I even have the thought they might see through my alias and work out who I am and punish me”.
- “I know that I only deserve to live if I’m employed, that’s the message”.
- “The two most vilified groups of people in the UK for political purposes are refugees and claimants. Those groups are despised. We are subhuman”.
- “If the Bill is passed, job centre staff will be deciding who’s fit for work with the threat of sanctions. I’m stockpiling medication, I won’t survive”.
- “As a too ill for employment disabled person I have survived solely on ever decreasing and hard to get so called social security for most of my adult life, spanning decades of so called welfare reforms, cuts, austerity, and recessions. Family tax credit, Job seekers allowance, Incapacity benefit, income support, disability living allowance, ESA, PIP and soon to be UC. I have a life threatening an ever growing fear of the DWP”.
- “Disability fraud in social security is 0.2%, the media portrays it as 98%”.
- “An assessment centre is referred to as The Kremlin”.
- “The impact of DWP processes and their media has had a direct impact on my mental health to the degree that I would rate it worse than my illness, worse than being sectioned and forcibly medicated, worse than being stiched with no local anaesthetic, worse than surviving a suicide attempt. It has become enmeshed into my depression, paranoia, voices I hear, the feeling of being a target for anyone’s malicious reporting, feeling constantly surveilled, under house arrest.
- “I sometimes hear my thoughts in the voice of Ian Duncan Smith and my voices blame me for being in this position. They say outside “they’re proper people,not scum like you”.
- “If I were offered fast painless euthanasia, I would take it, to be free of living in fear”.
- “I hate post, all envelopes, I feel sick at the sight of them and have vomited at the sight of envelopes I suspect are from the benefit offices. Sunday is the only I can breath – no post – but it means I’m afraid to leave my home to stay with family or friends because I fear receiving a letter or form which needs immediate attention. So I feel a prisoner in my home and afraid of leaving it for longer than 24 hours”.
- “I know that the DWP have an algorithm that targets people for benefit fraud. That they can covertly use, physically surveillance, data from airlines, supermarkets, online purchases, CCTV, audio recordings and phone conversations, monitor bank accounts and social media searching photos and locations and encouraging neighbours to don claimants in…. all to try and prove people are lying. This all has a profound detrimental effect on my mental health and I’ve done nothing wrong”.
- “I looked up how much you get for selling a kidney or a lobe of liver thinking of if after the general election and proposed Bill removing the WCA letting job centre staff decide who’s fit for work or not, i know I wont survive it. I was disappointed to learn that organs don’t sell for that much”.
- “I tried to end my life during a DWP assessment process a few years ago which resulted in me being detained under the MHA. One of the reasons I haven’t walked away from the iatrogenic harm that MH services cause me is because it would be even more difficult to prove I am ill and get enough benefits to survive on if did”.
- “I used to be an activist, I did unpaid work which was valued by universities, NHS Trusts, nursing & medical schools. I also did work with fellow SUs and groups. I ceased all voluntary work in fear of that being interpreted as being fit for full-time work which unfortunately I am not.”
- “I was never able to sustain full-time employment, and even consistent part-time work wouldn’t be viable for because every year for my entire adult life I have typically lost about 3-4 months of the year with my mental health. There are few employers who would tolerate 4 months sick leave every year. With voluntary work, it carries a different weight and stress because I know I can step down if I need to, I can space myself and plan to do it during my best months of the year. The irony is I’m more productive doing voluntary work than I am doing paid work”.
- “Work as a health outcome and a cure has become the neorecovery norm. It’s scary! I don’t take part in any in person direct protest activism after knowing that some disabled activists were shopped to the DWP. I stay anonymous and private on social media and anon at online and in person Mad events because of the fear of DWP spying on me”.
- “The neoliberal Government and media strategy is to portray benefit claimants as fraudsters, cheats and scroungers this makes me feel stigmatised, stereotyped and underserving. The welfare system is deliberately hostile and cruel. The Government is trying to kill off vulnerable disabled people. They cover up the deaths caused by the system”.
- “Just filling the form out raises the depression levels. All negative questions. Some impossible to estimate how many hours in a day do u?? Then the interview process, being asked why you haven’t managed to kill yourself yet! Which made me feel even lower, a total failure!!”
- “I was once accused of fraud when I failed to ask DWP for permission for permitted work of a few hours and for 6 weeks. Years later I got a letter telling me to attend the job centre and I had no clue why. A scary place with security guards at the door. I freaked out so bad when there that I ended up in a crisis house. I’ve never done paid involvement work since. They can even track gift vouchers which are seen by them as earnings. Volunteering can also be seen as being fit for paid work”.
- “They ignore medical notes and evidence. They ignore the doctors, your specialist. They are only interested in failing you”.
- “DWP was responsible for the death of my brother”.
- “Best thing about lockdown 1 was knowing the letters had stopped. Felt as if I could live for the 1st time in years as I wasn’t exhausted by 24/7 in fear. That dread resumed as soon as we heard the letters were starting up again”.
- ” I’m using the PIP to find private therapy because NHS was bad. You see a lot of benefit stigma as well and that’s pretty rubbish. I feel like a failure and a burden all the time and I don’t tell people usually that I’m on any sort of benefit”.
- “I dread being asked “what do you do?”, the judgement extends to healthcare even. I avoid speaking to anyone in the supermarket, I stay indoors and take the rubbish out at night”.
- “I know DWP want me dead, deaths are a cost saving”.
- “I’m autistic and was in receipt of PIP. Because of how my autism presents I feel I have to be reassessed every time the tiniest thing changes, even if it’s just a fluctuation rather than a change. This means I’ve subjected myself to multiple reassessments as there’s no way of just telling them about the small fluctuation without a full reassessment. The whole process has made me sick with anxiety, not knowing how long it will take, worrying about whether I’ll have to see someone face to face that doesn’t understand my condition. In my last reassessment they took information over the phone from an unqualified member of staff that wasn’t listed as a contact on my form that didn’t give the correct full amount of information. Calling the DWP causes me lots of stress and anxiety as I often need the toilet whilst on the phone and get stuck waiting for over an hour. When there is no position in the queue information it can lead to a lot of uncertainty. Even though I’ve been 100% honest in my claim i feel worried when I see cars outside that people are watching me.”
- “The recent DWP advert stressed me out so much I ended up cancelling my claim as I couldn’t go through another reassessment. If the DWP had an online system where you could report minor changes without the need for a full reassessment it would help to reduce the stress the whole process causes”
- “I’ve attempted suicide, been paranoid and psychotic and detained under the MHA. I think that there is more threat to my life from the benefits system than anything else. Yet, I’ve read all my clinical notes and I don’t see the fact that the DWP has caused many mental health crises recorded anywhere”
- “I’m due a PIP review for severe mental health issues. Last time I had a review, I didn’t sleep. I was anxious. Just filling out the form is distressing. This time, I have no supporting evidence for anything because my CMHT have barely seen me and not listened and not helped me. I’ve misplaced my crisis team summary from last time I was under them and I’m too scared to call anyone to ask for any further evidence because I’m fobbed off all the time. The PIP review has me even more anxious this time because I’m lacking the evidence.”
- “A recent video by DWP was shared on Twitter which featured the DWP minister in a stab vest saying “ We will track you down. We will find you. We have a very particular set of skills” and showed suspects in handcuffs, doors being smashed down and wailing sirens. Watching this video sent me into what the mental health crisis team called a “psychotic episode” and led to a police welfare check and other scary things”.
- ” I’m using the PIP to find private therapy because NHS was bad. You see a lot of benefit stigma as well and that’s pretty rubbish. I feel like a failure and a burden all the time and I don’t tell people usually that I’m on any sort of benefit”
- “I’m constantly paranoid my benefits will be stopped. I get very specfic delusions when real bad it becomes part of my paranoia that I’m being watched”.
- “I think it’s the division that has been sowed by the media, the manipulation of data to present a point of view that stigmatises people”
- “They don’t like it if you’re on alternative medication and penalise you if you’re not what they consider a high enough dose. It’s like they want you numbed and overdosed. They don’t allow for fluctuations of the conditions”.
- “Last summer had interview for 4 hrs work which would have been a big challenge but a +ve step for me & I was likely to get the job but I pulled out due to fear of impact on benefits & being reassessed as fit for work just because of doing 4 hrs/week”.
- “I live in constant fear of assessment & struggle to do new things worrying how they will twist it so they don’t have to give me the benefits I need to live”.
- “I just exist, waiting for the gestapo to push me to suicide, no hope nothing”.
- “The process is humiliating and 3.5 hr phone assessment was horrendous, nearly killed me and got to go through it all again in a few months, not even been two years yet”.
- “If you have a pain condition you’re caught in a particularly Kafkaesque trap because doctors don’t want to prescribe opioids any more but if you’re not on them the DWP don’t believe you have chronic pain”.
- “The benefits system, especially disability benefits system, is a special kind of hell on earth designed to make us feel subhuman, which is what most people think we are”.
- “I literally can’t have a romantic partner because I’ll never be allowed to move in with them without losing all my benefits. My condition (ME/CFS with hEDS) is incurable so I will be alone for the rest of my life because of DWP policy”.
- “Friends & family talk all time about ppl they know who are “fiddling” their disability benefits because “ you can see they aren’t really ill”, they always follow up with “not you, we don’t mean you” & I have to decide again whether to have another rant about invisible illnesses”.
- “Am not on benefits anymore but I can still feel that fear. The recent video from the DWP brought it all back. The feeling of being watched, never knowing who or when. Being told by a support worker that I was worrying over nothing. Feeling like a fraud and doubting myself all the time. It was exhausting”.
I’ve been made to feel like a pariah for so long now it has entered my DNA
Despite being on benefits all my life, I still feel hounded by the department. There have been times in my life and I’ve been frightened to leave the house in case somebody anybody reports me for being able to breathe and walk brackets (not that the walking part is a problem anymore )
In 2014, I was I was chosen to carry the Commonwealth torch as part of the games in Glasgow. I was nominated for my services to the community in a voluntary capacity. After much paranoia and anxious I decided not to participate as I was terrified that somebody might to decide to interview me, film me and upload my details and then I will be reported to the DWP for those very same services to the community.
I’ve done various bits of voluntary work since I moved to Scotland in 2010. I’ve never told to the DWP. Due to the fear of them thinking this means I’m fit for a 37hr week. Instead I’ve taken the risk of flying under the radar and constantly worrying something I was going to get found out prosecuted for fraud and jailed .
My peer support worker expenses used to get paid every three months by cheque. It wasn’t a huge amount of money but I had to put it through my bank account and worried constantly the DWP would access my account and find me out. I could probably have told them that I was volunteering still remained in receipt of benefits but I wasn’t prepared to take that risk. I also used to lecture in a paid capacity from time to time but couldn’t risk this and most universities don’t have an alternate way of paying somebody on benefits…
Paranoia of the dreaded brown envelopes is always there but especially heightened when you are waiting for a decision on a new claim or review . Recently I have a pip review which took 10 months from start to final decision. Every day I dreaded the post only Sunday was a respite They also started to play stupid bastardised and sometimes use white envelopes so nothing was safe! . . You can never rest because they keep moving the goal posts so any sense of stability is lost..
I was offered , a paid role as a support worker but it was part time and I was terrified about dealing with the DWP. How pomfret would it take for them to sort out a new claim with the daily envelope waiting again.. What if I became unwell again and had to stop working? Would I be believed? What if they dithered over my clam and didn’t pay my rent? Would I become homeless again? I couldn’t cope with that.Best not to rock the already precarious boat!
I often feel wrong in accessing leisure activities as There is always that feeling I can’t really be that sick if I can go the cinema. Sick people have to be sick all of the time or not at all. that’s how the bastards make you feel. Maybe I’d be spotted having a good time.
The mental health system is set up to make you feel less than, a burden, at it! And if you have a PD label forget being taken seriously. I have a history of chronic addictions which are often seen as self inflicted and the DWP compounds these internalised briefs. Oh and forget being a single mother: I once had all my disability benefits stopped when I returned home after a 5 month hospital stay with my baby daughter. Apparently motherhood means cured.
When people ask me what I do that seems like an admission of failure to say I’m “just” on benefits. My worth is apparently based on my capacity as an earner, a financial contributor. Now I’m wheelchair bound it’s easier because it’s obvious something is wrong but I spent decades worrying that I wasn’t that ill and that everyone knew it! Or that my obvious problems with alcohol and drugs were seen as self inflicted and a drain on the state. I still limit who gets to know that part of me.,
I’ve asked for increases in medication purely for evidence of not being recovered. I have continued to take high doses medication. I’ve totally lost track of whether I need it or not but it looks good for the DWP.
Dealing the with the DWP exhausting and brings up all the feelings of basically not being good enough. Less than, a burden, a non entity. I’m finding doing this for RITB extremely triggering and I know there’s no threat. But what if a binner thinks I’m a fake and have just conned everyone for the past 40years? What if I’ve conned myself? I’ve been made to feel like a pariah for so long now it has entered my DNA.
Recovery in the Bin 