A couple of years ago my boyfriend was cryptically summoned to the jobcentre to discuss ‘something that had come up regarding his claim’. Periodically there are attempts to reduce the number of people on benefits, and sometimes it seems possible that as far as the people doing it are concerned, it’s all one to them whether it is people who are genuinely entitled, or people milking the system, that they manage to cull.

My boyfriend (I call him “Chubby” because he went from an emaciated eight and a half stone to a pretty appropriate-for-his-height 13-odd stone, and I can be snide like that sometimes) has a medical condition which is very black and white, more than that, it’s embeded in the twists and codes of his DNA. From time to time his file seems to appear on someone’s desk, and they contact him, and it’s simply a case of signing a piece of paper so they can see his medical records. Once they’ve seen them, people tend to blink, and make a little speech that roughly translates as: “Crikey. Sorry to have bothered you. And, uh, well done for managing to get out of bed in the morning.”

But this was a very ominous sounding summons. It also came at a time when he was feeling bored and frustrated (has anyone ever told you how boring it is to be time rich and money poor?) and he resolved to tell them, if they could find him something he could physically manage, he was interested in returning to work. He does this every so often, works as long as he can manage, then takes a couple of years off to recover, because he rarely quits before his body seriously shows the strain.

As it happened, their question was simply how were we able to pay the mortgage owing on my house? Which was a reasonable one, there’s no way we could have been paying a full mortgage. That’s why he was entitled to full housing benefit before we got together. But it’s not a full mortgage. It’s a ten grand loan shared between myself and my mother. They even gave him a form to fill in to see if they could help me pay my share. This is what does my head in — one minute they’re being hostile and suspicious, the next they’re offering us more money. It’s like being with a very generous, but emotionally abusive husband, all low self-esteem and birthday presents.

He told them he wanted to work anyway. Near where we live there is a brand new complex of smartish looking business premises. At the time, they had just one occupant: Shaw Trust. And Chubby was possibly the first person to walk through their doors. They gave him a piece of paper outlining the change in our finances if he were to work twenty hours a week. He would gain just over £110.40 a week in pay, from which £1.14 national insurance and £1.04 income tax would be deducted. He would lose £98.45 in long term incapacity benefit. DLA care and DLA mobility would remain the same, combined coming to £109.50. For the first year he would gain £40 back to work credit (which they told him could be extended for the following year). My carer’s allowance would remain at £48.65. Council tax benefit would drop from £15.47 to 20p. His income support, already cut by about £20 because of my carer’s allowance, would stop altogether. He would gain £128.66 in working tax credit, and allowing for the costs of travelling to work (£10 apparently) we would be £126.56 a week better off under the new circumstances.

For the first year, of course. Without the back to work credit, this drops to £86.56 a week. The first figure put him just above minimum wage, in the amount his going to work improved our finances, the second a noticeable bit under. That’s the negative way of looking at it. The positive is that he would work for twenty hours a week and be paid £229.06, on top of about £180 (later £140) in benefits. Not too shabby.

Of course there is a big difference between a cut in council tax benefit and a cut in housing benefit. So one question is — how would a person who did not own their own house be significantly better off ‘under the new circumstances’?

Another interesting thought is how incapacity benefit — which is linked to national insurance payments — is dropped.

The most interesting to me is the fact that the government did not seem to save very much money. It’s enough to make me suspect them of altruism. Or of putting statistics above real figures, ‘All these people in work and off benefits’ well, you’re half right.

But I’m sure you can guess that things were not, as it turned out, quite as straightforward as promised.

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