Universal Credit: Inside the Welfare State**** (BBC2)

ARRIVING with the usual claims of “unprecedented access”, the BBC’s look at the introduction of Universal Credit seemed to cover the familiar terrain of desperate claimants up against a shambolic system. Wasn’t this spotlighted in Ken Loach’s 2016 film, I, Daniel Blake?

Tom Swingler’s documentary, the first of three, showed that Loach, if anything, only scratched the surface. This was I, Daniel Blake: The Reality, and what bleak viewing it made.

Universal Credit, the combining of six benefits into one, was meant to simplify the system and get people into work. Due to be introduced by 2017, the latest estimated completion date is 2024. At Peckham Jobcentre in London, where a 1000 people a day come through the doors, we met Rachel, a single mother of two. She had worked in the NHS for 27 years before quitting to care for her mother. Now trying to get back on benefits, she had entered the Universal Credit labyrinth, chief horror of which was waiting five weeks till the first payment. It used to be longer.

Phil, 61, had been unemployed for ten years. His benefits had been cut or stopped, “sanctioned” in the jargon, three times because he had been deemed not to be looking hard enough for work. Even his very patient adviser called him a “pain in the butt”.

Eventually, Phil took a job, cleaning trains. Though he felt better physically, he was only marginally better off and could not see much of a future for himself. It looked like an odd sort of victory.

The film went back and forth from Peckham to the DWP offices in Whitehall, where Amber Rudd (remember her?) was the latest Secretary of State to come through the revolving doors. It was her idea to let the cameras in, hoping to improve the department's image.

With meeting rooms named Carrie Fisher, Prince, and George Michael (“dead stars” a civil servant explained), the DWP oozed W1A/The Thick of It. We saw Rudd shooting the breeze with a Newsnight reporter before the camera was switched on. “Ooh it was good,” she said of Bodyguard, the hit drama about a Home Secretary and her handsome Scots minder.

Elsewhere in the department a noticeboard was full of tatty bits of paper setting out aims such as “Pay claimants the right amount of money and on time”.

Back at the Jobcentre, Declan had spent the last three nights sleeping in a park. His next payment was not due for weeks.

“Not been a good day,” summed up a voice behind the camera.

“To think I’d find myself at 47 years of age on the streets,” Declan replied. He began to cry.

“Sorry,” said the voice.

It was excruciating to watch; worse to live through.

Again, the staff, or “job coaches” did what they could. The ones who featured were warm and sympathetic. Whether that was always the case was hard to say, since opposite types would hardly agree to be filmed.

Each adviser had 160 claimants each to look after, sorting out everything from childcare to housing. Finding work was just one part of the job. As was dealing with irate clients.

“I have to remind myself that the anger might be directed at me but it is not about me. It’s about a system,” said Karen. We saw her end an eight hour shift in the Jobcentre and go on to a second job stacking shelves. Like other staff, she is on UC herself.

The narrator was the actor John Simm, who found the right sympathetic tone. Dickens would have been more apt.