We All Pay Your Benefits - review

Fri, 12/07/2013 - 15:37 -- nick

Did George Osborne and The Mail ever believe their ‘strivers v skivers’ debate would find a home on the BBC?

It did last night as We Pay Your Benefits, featuring The Apprentice’s favourite couple Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford, paired four taxpayers with four workless people in an experiment to find if the workers would feel their taxes were being spent well by benefit claimants.

Would the ‘strivers’ see the hardships faced by the ‘skivers’ as they put their lives under the microscope, or would their Mail training blind them to the realities in the debate the programme said was “fuelled by the popular press”?

To make sure we knew what to expect we saw Nick and Margaret – so stern on The Apprentice but showing a kinder side here when not faced with a bunch of business egomaniacs - sat in the back of a taxi passing judgement on the participants to let us know in TV shorthand who the ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ were.

“This whole debate is fuelled by emotion not by fact” said Nick, and, despite the best efforts of the workers to pretend fairness, they soon showed that Osborne has hit a nerve with those who are working hard but seeing the value of their wages go down every year for a decade and are hurting as a result.

Stevie works up to 60 hours a week – apparently this makes her a typical ‘striver’ who can all get as much work as they want – as a care worker.

She grew up hardly seeing her Mum and Dad because they both worked long hours; perhaps it was this lack of parental care that made her so unsympathetic even before she met Liam, the ‘skiver’ she was paired with, who despite apparently being unable to get to a nine o’clock meeting, was a full-time youth volunteer and graduate.

She expected him to be “lazy ... expecting something for nothing” before she met him, and to own a flat screen TV, computer, and other “things we had to work for”.

Imagine her surprise when she walked into the house he shared with his granddad to find – yes, a flat screen TV, computer – “what’s that on your bed?” she squealed, and imagine our disappointment when we saw only a laptop – and an iPhone that seemed to annoy her more than anything else.

Except of course, like most unemployed people, he had been working before and bought most of his worldly good then. He earned Stevie’s grudging respect by telling her of his night shifts at Heathrow Airport, but she was unimpressed with his university degree and apparent belief that it should give him a fulfilling career.

Driven Debbie was a single mother employing 40 people in a cleaning company who took pride in taking almost no time off when she had children (the children’s views on this were not heard).

Her ‘skiver’ partner, single mother of two Kelly, had not worked for two years, and in the absence of luxury goods in her home Debbie took umbrage at the number of pets she saw. It appeared that a caged lizard and some cats were on Debbie’s list of things an unemployed person should not be allowed, along with a whole chicken Kelly put in her trolley in the local Asda that Debbie thought should be replaced with fillets.

Simon, a heating engineer, had been unemployed himself so showed a bit more understanding of the poverty and low self-confidence that can result.

Chris and Tracy were his partners, and they were the most obviously sympathetic unemployed people, shown partly by the fact that they were one of two ‘skiver’ families not shown in the pub. Chris applied for more than 15 jobs every day, but needed £18,000 in income per year to compensate for the loss of the benefits his family received, benefits that drove them to food banks as they couldn’t make ends meet.

Margaret, back in the taxi, was amazed that most of the jobs Chris could get would not pay more than benefits, and commended the government on working the welfare system over to ensure this was true. Ever the experienced business woman, it did not occur to her that companies increasing wages would do the same job in a way that would be better for the majority.

The finally pairing was Cheryl and Tim with Luther, who hasn’t been in work for 20 years having raised his family as a single father.

Tim resented the idea that claimants could get the same amount as he and his wife do from working, despite the fact that they received £2,700 per month and the benefit cap means no family can receive more than £2167.

This was one of the main failings of We All Pay Your Benefits apart from that appalling ‘us and them’ title. A couple of experts were introduced along the way to try to put some facts into the mix – this alone made it better than other programmes on the subject like the shocking Saints and Scroungers and Trouble on the Estate – but the basis of some of the comparisons were as faulty as that used by the government in its benefit cap.

Judging by their incomes, most of the ‘strivers’ would be eligible for tax credits, another type of benefit and one that will soon be part of Universal Credit along with Jobseeker’s Allowance. All received child benefit, also paid for by the tax payer but unrecognised by the show.

Seeing some workers struggling with the reality of life on the dole, and trying to square that with some of the things they’d read, produced confused scenes like Debbie going out to the pub with Kelly, saying how nice it was that she had bought her a drink despite not having much money “so she says”, saying how mums need a break then complaining that she had got it on the taxpayers buck. So was she right or wrong?

At the end Nick and Margaret revealed how much each workless family got in benefits, with some workers believing the amounts were too low, some too high, and Stevie, unable to break her indoctrination to the end, describing Liam’s £3,640 a year as “nothing” then saying he shouldn’t receive more.

Allowing claimants to tell their own stories showed how desperate many of their lives were, how hand-to-mouth a life of benefits has become, and how horribly ignorant this ‘cut benefits, cut top-rate taxes’ government is of the results of their austerity drive on those least able to cope.

But despite the good work done in showing the often-grim reality of life on the dole, the first part of We Pay Your Benefits had a shaky premise from the start. It was introduced as a debate, but a debate has two sides, and at no point were the taxpayers held to account for their own attitudes, with Nick and Margaret commenting freely on the lifestyles and personalities of the workless while leaving the workers’ attitudes unquestioned.

The next episode will see the workers trying to live on benefit-level incomes for a week; presumably Debbie and Stevie will spend the time eating roast chicken in John Lewis while choosing their next big TV?

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