The Observer - 11.08.2019

• The Observer
  50 11.08.19 Comment & Analysis

One woman’s shocking

story sums up the

inhumanity of the

modern benefi ts regime

Last week, a woman’s

sanction letter from the Department

for Work and Pensions went viral on

Twitter. Danielle John, from Cardiff,

simply wrote : “Was told to put this

up on Twitter... this was because

I had a miscarriage and missed

appointment.”

These stories are fairly common

now. We are used to seeing reports

about people being sanctioned

because of attending a funeral/

cancer treatment/their child being

in hospital. But this one struck me

in particular because the language

was so coldly effi cient. Brief to the

point of cruelty. I didn’t know it was

possible, even in a business letter, to

say: “We’re about to ruin your whole

life” without a shred of empathy.

The letter, written in February

2017, starts in large font: “You’ll

lose some of your payment... This

reduction will last 229 days.” Two

hundred and 29 days for a single

missed appointment. That’s almost

The system lifted me from poverty.

Today, Danielle John is not so lucky

posted, she was suffering “recurrent

miscarriages from August 2015 until

October 2016” and that “she probably

would not have been able to work at

that time”.

Danielle says she had attempted

suicide by slashing her wrists a few

months before her sanction meeting

and they still sanctioned her. After

she was left with no money from

February to August in 2017, she

says the stress and debt sent her

back to drug use after being clean

for 15 years and she is still repaying

the debt she incurred during those

months.

Danielle John represents only

one of these ... I was going to say

cases but of course she is a person.

A human being who went through

an undeniably human experience

where she had no choice but to

depend on a system hardwired to

disregard humanity.

I was born into a single-parent

family in receipt of benefi ts for

my entire childhood. For much of

that time, we lived in temporary

homeless accommodation and

hostels. I left school at 15 with

Tourist

traps

Th e council in Rome has

threatened to impose a

€250 fi ne on tourists who

sit on the city’s famous

Spanish Steps. Venice,

meanwhile, has banned

large cruise ships from its

historic centre. What other

tourist attractions have

been declared off limits?

Bruges

In a bid to reduce visitor

numbers, the Belgian city

no longer promotes day

trips and has cut back the

number of cruise ships

able to dock at Zeebrugge.

Lascaux caves

Famed for their Palaeolithic

paintings, the caves in

southwestern France were

closed to the public in 1963

after heat caused the

paintings to deteriorate.

Stonehenge

Once visited by tourists

with chisels, the

5,000-year-old World

Heritage site has been

roped off since 1977.

Maya Bay

Made famous by the

2000 fi lm Th e Beach, the

beauty spot on Th ailand’s

Ko Phi Phi Leh island has

been closed indefi nitely

following mass tourism.

Kerry

Hudson

The language

of the sanction

letter was coldly

effi cient. Brief

to the point

of cruelty

Kerry Hudson outside the council

fl ats in Airdrie, Scotland, where

she lived as a child.

Photograph by Mark Vessey

32 weeks of punishment. Or, if you

prefer, February until August, with

no money at all. When you consider

that the harsher punishments for

domestic violence introduced in

2018 suggest a sentence towards

the upper limit of “a fi ne to up to

26 weeks’ custody” for common

assault, you have to wonder what

sadistic metric the DWP has used to

calculate sanctions.

The letter goes on to say that for

her missed appointment – I just

want to pause to remind you here

that Danielle John was having a

miscarriage at the time of missing

this appointment – she would be

sanctioned £10.40 for each of those

days. So, a total of £2,381.60.

For two years, I have been writing

solely about exclusion based on

my experiences of homelessness

and poverty and the consequences

of austerity in the deprived towns

I grew up in. I’ll admit to feeling

a little jaded. Like many, I’m tired

and, with the rest of the nation, I’m

sitting with my popcorn watching

the Brexit Shit Show in fascinated,

terrifi ed, distracted horror. As a

consequence, part self-protection,

part general fatigue, I’ve stopped

feeling as much as I should

about the many stories of human

hardship, pain and deprivation that

austerity has infl icted on so many of

the most vulnerable.

But when Danielle posted her

letter on Twitter, I took the time to

read a little further. Yes, as usual,

the letter was shocking, callous and

entirely devoid of compassion. But

then I discovered that Danielle had

not been able to address the missed

appointment – thus incurring 229

days of punishment – because,

according to a doctor’s letter she also

no qualifi cations and with severe

depression and anxiety as a result

of growing up in poverty. I’m

writing in this newspaper now

because, no matter where we lived

or how poor my education , I had

access to libraries. I was able to

get dependable benefi ts at 16 that

allowed me to access housing

benefi t and offered me the stability

to go to college, which was also free.

Back then, I was just about able to

afford university and once I was

there I could access mental health

treatment on the NHS and live in

council housing.

Decades into the

future, when we look back and

wonder how things have ended

up as they are, I hope we don’t

have to say it’s because we were

distracted or jaded. That we were

listening to certain narratives about

poor communities and forgetting

to really think about the human

repercussions of the frequent

austerity horror stories.

In 2019, food bank usage,

which ha s been directly linked by

academics to sanctions , continues to

rise and we still have the UN poverty

envoy publicly labelling universal

credit “universal discredit”.

Indeed, even Amber Rudd,

secretary of state for the DWP,

has backed down from three-year

sanctions , which were deployed

if claimants made three or more

serious breaches, realising that

forcing people to live below the

poverty line for three years is

unlikely to help raise them up or act

as any form of incentive. Though,

of course, if in the fi rst place she’d

asked anyone with any expertise in,

or experience of, poverty, any of us

could have told her that and saved a

lot of time, expense and hardship.

That we currently have a benefi ts

system that so arbitrarily brutalises

and fails our most vulnerable

should be a national scandal. But it

is the dismantling of all the other

essential , social mobility-enabling

services that makes this such a scary

story. Not just for today or next year

but for consequences that will be

seen in decades to come.

Kerry Hudson is the author of
Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting
Away and Returning to Britain’s
Poorest Towns
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