Written evidence from Name Withheld (UCX0002)
I am keen to provide evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee in writing or by giving oral evidence. The challenge that I have is that my employer, a London Housing Association, states in the tenancy agreement that the properties cannot be used for illegal activity, and therefore I would be conflicted to be on record as knowing that two of the residents are periodically resorting to “survival sex” to make ends meet.
I am a welfare rights adviser working for London Housing Associatin, however I have used my discretion to keep confidential what I am aware of.
I have conducted interviews with both the clients I am aware of, whom are in this situation, and enclose an anonymous transcript of their statements.
Response: The main challenge seems to be the monthly payment system. In legacy benefits, claimants became used to a “one week feast, one week famine” approach to fortnightly payments. Child Benefit payable weekly was a bridge to cover essential perishable food items like bread and milk, and small top-ups of fuel in pre-payment meters in the week without payment. Monthly in arrears payments have left people stranded.
Unlike regular earned income, especially at London Living Wage and higher, benefit levels are subsistence anyway, and the benefit freeze, whilst fuel prices spiral and food prices increase have broken already stretched incomes. Universal Credit for those on variable hours of earnings is challenging to calculate because pay periods and assessment periods frequently clash, again causing a “month of feast and a month of famine”
Response: I strongly suspect that the issue is more widespread than is realized. Many claimants would not consider themselves to be conducting “survival sex” if they are having sex with a previous partner in return for money to pay a bill, because it isn’t multiple partners or strangers.
Other claimants may feel too fearful to tell anyone they suspect could be in authority, so the issue is hidden.
Both claimants who had disclosed to me some time ago, had started out having waited so many weeks for their first UC payment and feeling hopelessly in debt, that it seemed an initial one off way to make ends meet. Then, when playing catch up with bills seemed endless, it seemed the safest way to secure income for themselves and their children. Only of course it isn’t.
Response: Typically, claimants whom are at particular risk are those without close family living nearby, whom they can turn to for short term assistance. Care leavers, lone parents re-housed out of the area their family reside in, are at particular risk from what I am seeing and hearing.
Response: Pay cycles need to be thought through again. Monthly payments were the claimant works, can be helpful, although on starting work, the payments should move from fortnightly, becoming monthly after the first months salary is earned. This would prevent the sudden shift when a UC claimant takes work up.
There should be less reluctance to pay in different cycles where the claimant has a settled status – lone parents with a child under 5, carers, and the severely disabled for example.
Those with full conditionality could be moved to fortnightly payments in the first month or so of taking up employment.
Appreciating that benefit levels will not be increased until at least 2020, the payment cycles could at least reflect the life of the poorest, who had tended towards weekly or fortnightly payments cycles even when working.
A return of the Social Fund as it was, or at least ring fencing the grant to local authorities so it isn’t such a lottery of whom will and won’t provide, would prevent the risks of unsustainable loans which are a root cause of so much despair.
Response: Since disclosure is quite rare, we need to think holistically about what leads to “survival sex” in the first instance and try to relieve those causes. Payment cycles, sanctions, and pressure to take unsustainable employment could all be considered, along with reconsideration of the social fund which prevented so much hardship.
Testimonial A
Ms has 2 children, and since losing her part time job she has had to claim Universal Credit. The transcript is verbatim and Ms D has agreed to this being shared:
Ms D: No, I had the tax credits every week, and I bought the day to day stuff with that, and when I got paid monthly I paid my rent and ‘lectric n gas. Child Benefit covered the extras, nappies and clothes. It was tight but I could manage.
Adviser: How did it change when you claimed Universal Credit?
Ms D: Well I knew I’d face a drop in income, I get that. What I didn’t realise was I would go weeks without money, and when I got my payment the Tax Credit people grabbed a great chunk of it for an overpayment which I think is unfair as I told them I had stopped working.
So I was left short when I got paid. I had gone a month with no money and I was so stressed out. Christmas was coming and once I paid bills I had less than £50 to last a month. I was going to bed hungry so the kids could be fed, and not putting the heating on, so the gas would last. Then I got hit with a council tax demand. No-one had explained that I had to apply for that separately, and I was terrified. The Job Centre said I could get a budgeting advance, so I used that to pay the Council Tax I owed, and then it was short the next month paying that back along with the overpayment. It just wasn’t ending, less and less each month.
Adviser: How did the idea of selling sex to get through come about?
Ms D: Well I had pawned all my jewlery, took everything I could to cash co. (store which buys and sells electrical items and DVDs) , and one day I was coming back from the school and I just broke down crying. I couldn’t even afford sanitary towels. My mate said to me about a bloke she knows who gives her £40 for taking him in for half an hour. Initially I was disgusted, and thought I would never sink so low. I was so desperate I walked round to hers and asked if she would give me his number. She didn’t want to, but I pleaded with her and eventually she agreed.
It was awful. I was physically sick coming home, and I washed myself raw. Yet being able to take the kids to Greggs (bakery store) and get some proper shopping took the edge off. I swore I would never do it again. Yet there I was the following month, short of money, and calling him up again. Its mind numbing, and what pisses me off is that its not like the money pays for luxuries, its covering the gas and lectric, and Council Tax. Do you see? I’m running to keep still.
Adviser: Have you had to use sex on other occasions?
Miss D: I still sleep with my ex. He’s with another bird (woman) now, and she’s expecting. I hate myself for that, we split because I found he’d gone off with some tart, and here I am doing it to her (ex partners current girlfriend). He gives me a fiver week (five pounds) from his benefit for child maintenance. If I sleep with him on his benefit pay day, he leaves me a tenner (ten pounds). I can justify that as he is the father of both my children. (breaks down) No, no I can’t, it’s disgusting…I’m disgusting. I never thought I’d become so desperate.
Adviser: What would you like to do, if anything were possible for you?
Miss D: I’d like to work part time, just till _________(youngest child) starts school. I’d like to just know I could meet the bills, and put a small amount by to pay for a few days by the sea with the kids. That would mean so much to me. Have some savings so if the cooker went (broke) I wouldn’t panic and have no hope to get a new one.
Everyone round here wants those hours of work. I go for job interviews and there’s loads of other women wanting the job. I bet they just pull a name out the hat, I cant see a difference between us. They never tell you that you haven’t got the job, not a word, I ain’t even worth a letter in the post to say no thanks.
Then if I get a job, I suppose Council Tax will want even more money, and my Universal Credit will get cut, and Child Minder will want money up front which I ain’t got. I’m just trapped until ________(youngest child) starts school. This weren’t how it was supposed to be.
Adviser: What could change in Universal Credit to change your situation? Or the Job Centre?
Miss D: I don’t know. I suppose if they would give me a break with all the deductions, even one month would help. Or take it back slower. If I got my money fortnightly it would help, a month feels like a year at the moment.
I wish the Job Centre would send me to the jobs, rather than me looking for them. I don’t have to look for work as such at the moment, but I want to earn my own money. I just get so demoralized, and I know if I ain’t working by time____(youngest child) hits 5 they’ll (JCP) be on my case, so I would rather be in work now and avoid that.
Testimonial B
Ms J has three children. She has disclosed the she sells sex to survive when the money runs out. This is a verbatim account.
Adviser: Did you ever contemplate selling sex when you were on the old system of JSA?
Ms J: No, I went short of things, but the money seemed to go further. It was only when I had the baby and found out that I wouldn’t get any Child Tax Credit for her that I really panicked, that and moving to bloody Universal Credit.
I think I was one of the guinea pig claims, 7 weeks I waited to get paid, and then it was all wrong.
Adviser: How did it change when you claimed Universal Credit?
Ms J Aside from being paid monthly? Well you couldn’t ring anyone, and the Job Centre kept saying “put it in your journal”. I didn’t know really what that meant at first, and then it dawned on me. Well you try trudging up the library with a baby, and she’d always seem to start screaming just as I sat down to go on the internet. Not that I really understood what it all meant. No-one would explain it to you, it was always “look in your journal”. I don’t think they know themselves at the Job Centre, they just parrot it to everyone.
So, I had no money for almost two months, and when I got paid it was wrong. Well I couldn’t hold out any longer, I had to pay the gas and electric, and I was behind with the Council Tax, and that’s with the benefit covering some of it. I paid them all to get them off my back, and that was it. Skint. Foodbank vouchers for another month, and they don’t like giving them out either. “you must manage your money better” I felt like screaming WHAT MONEY? HOW DO YOU MANAGE WHEN YOU HAVENT GOT ANY!
Adviser: How did the idea of selling sex to get through come about?
Ms J I just couldn’t see a way out. I turned to shoplifting to fee the kids. I was bricking it (frightened) as I’d never done it before, and kept thinking they’d put the kids in care. Anyway, I got caught in the (named local corner shop) and I broke down. The manager said if I gave him (oral sex) he’d let me off. What could I do? It was that or have the Police called. I just did it. I just kept thinking “please don’t call the Police”. Anyway, he said afterwards that if I did the same next week he’d let me have forty quids worth of stock (forty pounds). It seemed like a fortune. I spent all week saying to myself, you can’t, you’re worth more than that, something will turn up, you can’t do that. I called mum and asked her to lend me some money, but she turned me down, and I asked around for pin money jobs, but there was nothing. Who’ll take you on when you’ve got a baby in tow?
So, in the end, I held out for two weeks. I got my Credit money, and again it was short, and again it was gone on bills before I’d even thought of food. So, I left the baby with next door and went down to the shop. I felt ashamed, especially when he said if I’d (have anal sex) he’d give me double. I drew the line at that. I couldn’t wait to get it over with. I grabbed up what I thought I needed in a daze really. I didn’t want to think about it.
It’s been like that for months now. He knows I can’t get through the month, I know I can’t get through the month. I try everything I can to cut back to the bone on spending. I just want one month when I don’t have to do this. Just one month when I can hold my head high.
Adviser: Have you had to use sex on other occasions?
Ms J No, I would if it meant I could get ahead financially. I have thought about going on the game (prostitution) but it’s so dangerous, and get caught and they take the kids off you. I couldn’t be without the kids. I haven’t been offered money for sex, but would I do it? I would have said no once, now I’m not so sure. I’m all but doing it really aren’t I. Because it’s not money as such, I kid myself it’s not the same….but it is really. I’m a, I’m a whore.
Adviser: What would you like to do, if anything were possible for you?
Ms J: Hair stylist. I always wanted to do that. I went to college to train in it, then I fell for (got pregnant with the oldest child) and his dad walked out on me. I thought I’d retrain, but when I looked at the college it felt like they were little kids. I didn’t feel a mum like me would fit in.
I’d love to do it. If I knew how to do figures and that, have my own business. Well, that’s a dream, but hairdressing shouldn’t be. I could do that with just a bit more training, and you get good money at it as well. Yeah, that’s what I’d do.
I can’t do this, but I always wanted to work in an office. You’ve made it if you work in an office. My older sister did, she done really well, got to be a P.A and everything. Lucky cow, she had the brains.
Adviser: What could change in Universal Credit to change your situation? Or the Job Centre?
Ms J: Train me, without a doubt. Train people like me. Not stupid fill in a CV and look on the internet crap like they send you on. Proper skills, train me to be a hairstylist. Help me do it. They don’t want to know though. I asked them and they said that if you go to college you can’t claim benefit. So, you’re trapped really ain’t you.
I’d have someone like you to explain UC in English, and help you go on line and that. No-one explains anything, you are just supposed to know. Well I don’t, or rather I didn’t.
I wish they weren’t so hard on you as well. It’s always heads they win, tails you bloody loose. They mess up, its your fault. If they overpay you – your fault. They run late with your payment – your fault. Run out of money because they don’t provide enough to exist on - your fault.
I live in fear of the kid’s bed breaking, the sofa is already (expletive used to indicate damaged) and I cannot afford to replace it. The council couldn’t wait to get rid of the grant money the social gave them. They said “apply in April, we’ve run out of money” I applied in April and they said “no we’re not doing the scheme now”. So I’m stuffed. I could get a budget payment, but they snatch it back so quick, and probably keep taking money long after its paid, knowing people lose track. Then if you told them you’ve paid back to much they’d say its your own fault. You just cannot get ahead.
March 2019