‘Drug addiction, alcoholism, criminal records, language difficulties, a lack of skills, depression…’ Anyone working alongside Britain’s long-term unemployed can recite a grim litany of social ills.
‘Drug addiction, alcoholism, criminal records, language difficulties, a lack of skills, depression…’ Anyone working alongside Britain’s long-term unemployed can recite a grim litany of social ills. But when I speak to a welfare adviser in Tower Hamlets – one of London’s poorest boroughs – he emphasises a single factor, above all others, to explain the area’s endemic worklessness: ‘the benefits trap’ – the idea that you can be better off on benefits than in work.
Most of the claimants he encounters have fallen headlong into this trap, thanks to years spent receiving dozens of different benefits, and months spent aimlessly in job centres. The result is that long-term recipients of benefits have no motivation to apply for jobs. As Mike, a Tower Hamlets resident who has been out of work for eight years, says: ‘I just never saw the point.’
Lisa, who is nearing the end of her stint on a private sector back-to-work programme, now seems convinced of the varied rewards of employment. But it hasn’t been easy. There was a time when she was ‘frightened of getting a job. Frightened of filling in a CV. Frightened of going to interviews.’ But, above all, frightened of losing her income from benefits: ‘We all get in a rut,’ she says. ‘We all think, oh, I don’t want a job, I want to stay on the dole.’ Step outside and Canary Wharf – and the wealth and opportunity it represents – looms over the sprawling council estates: within walking distance, but a world away.
Last month’s figures reveal that of the 5.8 million on out-of-work benefits, 1.64 million people are claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance – 664,000 of whom are, like Lisa and Mike, the long-term unemployed. This all costs Britain’s taxpayers billions of pounds, but those who receive the money still suffer. Their predicament saps their confidence, their energy, and their ambition. It eats away at the stitches that bind our society.
And, until the financial rewards of employment outweigh the benefits of being jobless, we will all continue to pay the price.
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