Universal Credit: Inside The Welfare State Tuesday 4 February 9.00pm-10.00pm BBC TWO

Universal Credit: Inside The Welfare State
Tuesday 4 February

9.00pm-10.00pm

BBC TWO
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2020/05/inside-britains-benefit-revolution

Universal Credit: Inside the Welfare State
9pm, BBC Two
Tuesday 4th February 2020

Designed to streamline benefits payments and make them easier to navigate, universal credit has met with fierce opposition since its protracted and troubled rollout. This three-part series opens in Peckham Jobcentre, where more than 1,000 people visit each day, including former NHS worker Rachel, who is living precariously during the five-week wait for her first universal credit payment. It is a humanising look into the real-life consequences of political choices.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/04/tv-tonight-real-life-stories-of-living-on-universal-credit

Unfortunately, despite many programmes like this being shown over the years, nothing is done about it. The majority of the public, I’m afraid, will keep on voting Tory until the print media tell them not to.

I saw the programme. It seemed to take an impartial view of the whole thing. There was no polemic, as far as I could tell. I was hoping that it would be critical of the DWP but it wasn’t.

It was ironic that one of the full-time JCP staff had to have another job after work stacking shelves in a shop to support herself. It seems that even the “jailers” are being punished by the Tories.

Come the revolution.

I was disappointed in this programme because it seemed superficial and placed a lot of emphasis upon JC workers helping claimants. It seemed to be perpetuating the stereotypical scenario of claimants attending the JC to receive 'help'. For a lot of people, that is not reflective of their actual experience.

Many people report experiences of being interrogated and coerced, but the programme showed none of that. A person not involved with DWP would, I believe, have been left with quite a false impression of the situation faced by real claimants attending the JC.

I was especially disappointed that the real term financial differences between a UC claim and a legacy claim were not included anywhere in the programme (A Martin Lewis style chart would have been an excellent thing). A person not involved with DWP would not have found this programme truly educational, in that respect.

I think we have to assign this programme to the 'poverty porn' category. Very disappointing.

I agree. It was more or less a PR job for Amber Rudd, who is no longer in charge of the DWP, and whose replacement will no doubt reinstate the 3-year sanctions policy that Rudd scrapped.