New research exposes ‘shocking and eye-opening’ levels of bullying of universal credit claimants

New unpublished research has exposed the impact of “shocking and eye-opening” levels of bullying and systematic mistakes on disabled people forced to rely on the universal credit working-age benefits system.

Reports from focus groups hosted by Inclusion Scotland in October add to growing evidence of the significant and harmful flaws of universal credit, how it is operated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and its strong links with at least three suicides.

Dr Rianna Price, policy and research officer with Inclusion Scotland, who led the focus groups, said two of the participants had spoken of how they had planned to take their own lives because they felt “so overwhelmed” by the universal credit process.

She said they “didn’t see a way out, and they had been treated like a burden, treated as if they were just parasites leeching off the state”.

She told Disability News Service (DNS): “The issues that people spoke about were in some cases very shocking and eye-opening to the levels of systematic error and bullying that are apparent in the Department for Work and Pensions.”

One claimant with a health condition, who already had a part-time job but was using universal credit to top-up their wages, spoke of how their mental health had deteriorated because of harassment from a work coach who bullied them into applying for other jobs they were hugely over-qualified for, and told them they faced sanctions if they failed to do so.

They said the work coach had appeared to be “more interested in getting them off benefits than actually helping them”.

An autistic claimant had spoken of the constant, repeated messages sent to claimants through universal credit’s online journal.

Price said that every time this claimant received a notification, they had to log on to their journal immediately, and “the constant time pressure made them feel incredibly anxious”.

She said: “Every time they saw it pop up, and usually nine times out of 10, it was a completely benign message… they would be panicked that they had done something wrong, or that they were going to get their money taken off them.”

But the claimants also told Inclusion Scotland that work coaches who replied to questions through the journal often did not know the correct rules, so a claimant might receive different answers to their question from different work coaches, or even the same work coach.

One of the claimants had been accused of fraud, before DWP admitted it had made an error.

Price told DNS: “The majority of them had incredibly negative associations with universal credit, that all stemmed from not necessarily the system itself, although that didn’t meet their needs, but feeling as if they were being targeted and criticised, bullied, because their needs were complex.”

The focus groups were carried out in October, and were carried out online and in-person, with a total of 16 disabled claimants taking part.

Price said she was “incredibly concerned” by what she had heard during the focus groups.

One of the claimants, who had fibromyalgia, spoke of being forced to attend a face-to-face work capability assessment because the contractor would not carry it out over the phone.

When they arrived, they were told the lift was out of order, and they were forced to climb stairs to an assessment room.

After the assessment, said Price, “they were so fatigued that they fell off a chair and their partner had to carry them out of the assessment building, and they couldn’t get out of bed for a month while they recovered their energy”.

She said most of the focus group participants had reported “negative interactions” with a work coach, while only three had spoken of having any positive relationships with any of their work coaches.

Price said that, if she was able to speak directly to Sir Stephen Timms, Labour’s minister for disability and social security, she would tell him that “the current system is not fit for purpose, and it’s not just the systems, it’s not just the job centres, it’s the attitudes towards people who need benefits”.

She added: “So many of [the focus group participants] were aware that this was a political choice that people in power were making.

“Not just about how much they should receive, but also about how it was framed, and how they were kind of labelled as scroungers.

“Most of them wanted to work, they wanted to find a way, but they felt as if it was employers that were putting up barriers, rather than them not being able to find work.”

In a blog for Inclusion Scotland, Price wrote: “Universal Credit in Scotland is a punitive system that subjects claimants to relentless scrutiny and impossible standards.

“This impacts every aspect of their lives, with decisions made by the DWP affecting mental and physical health.

“The system not only fails to support disabled people who wish to work but also disregards those who cannot.”

The focus groups were the first phase of a five-year, €3 million research project led by King’s College London (KCL) and seven other research organisations, and in collaboration with seven organisations that work with claimants in the UK, Spain, Hungary, Norway and Estonia, including Inclusion Scotland.

The project is funded by the European Research Council, and led by Professor Ben Baumberg Geiger, from the Centre for Society and Mental Health and KCL’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine.

The research is comparing the experiences of claimants in different countries, examining the impacts of these experiences on mental health and work, and looking at how policies influence these experiences.

When the study was announced last year, Professor Baumberg Geiger said: “To date, most research has looked at whether these systems reduce poverty and encourage people to work.

“These are important, but from speaking to claimants, we know that other things matter too – whether benefits provide dignity, security and feel fair; or whether people feel stigmatised, insecure, and unjustly treated.”

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