I knew the welfare state was broken — I became an MP to fix It

The National

03-07-2025

At one point in my life, I was classed as long term unemployed. My niece said I was the busiest unemployed person she'd ever met but I just could not get a paid job. So I had that "advantage" over other MPs in that I truly understood what it was like.
Therefore, I was deeply committed to supporting people in those situations and actively went out looking for them. It's important to note that I wasn't doing this on my own. In fact it couldn't have happened at all without the incredible team I had around me.
Everyone in that team played a part in this and, satisfyingly, one of my former caseworkers, Robyn, is now a welfare rights professional.
READ MORE: I've been an MP for 42 years. I've seen Westminster take apart the welfare state
Most of the work we did was with individuals experiencing terrible treatment at the hands of the DWP. Now, I have family and friends who work for the DWP and they care passionately but the system itself can be cruel and yes, like in any workplace, so can a minority of the workers.
Why else, for example, would anyone take the decision to sanction the benefits of a young couple for the first 6 weeks of their newborn's life because the dad went in the ambulance with mum, stayed with her for the birth and completely forgot to sign on?
The system is cruel enough to allow that to happen but the majority of DWP workers would use their discretion. This one chose to remove their income and even their milk tokens. So that's the kind of thing we were dealing with.
And we were VERY good at it.
We made full use of the MP hotline to the DWP which partially bypasses the hoops anyone else has to go through.
But I was always conscious that for every one person who asked me for help, there were many more who suffered in silence.
So we had a three pronged approach:
Advertise the fact that we COULD help as widely as possible
Fight for the people who responded
Fight for policy change so that we could also help all those who didn't reach out
On certain issues we ran full on campaigns.
Pension Credit was one of those. This goes to pensioners on the lowest incomes but you've got to apply. And all organisations advocating for older people eg Age Concern Scotland and Age Scotland will tell you the myriad reasons why so many people don't apply. At one point £7.7million was going unclaimed every year in the constituency of Glasgow NE alone.
So we wrote to thousands of older people in the constituency telling them how to apply.
READ MORE: I claimed Universal Credit – this is what it was like
The letter addressed many of the reservations they might have and for those who thought it was a complicated process we told them to book a slot in the office and we'd do it for them.
The phone rang off the hook and for three full days my office was like a factory with four of my team spending the day sitting with people at 15 minute intervals and doing their applications for them.
Meantime, I set up an All Party Parliamentary Group on Pension Credit and held a debate in Westminster to campaign for the government to put more effort into increasing the number of people who claimed their entitlement.
The following year we found that the constituency had one of the highest take up rates rather than one of the lowest. We can't claim all the credit but it does show that you can make a real difference.
And that leads me onto an important lesson that 3 older working class women in Springburn taught me. I'd been speaking in Mhairi Black's debate on Benefit Sanctions. It was emotional and exhausting.
READ MORE: What it's actually like to apply for DWP disability benefits
I remember coming out of it thinking "what's the point?".
I was banging my head against a brick wall because nothing changed. I felt useless if I'm honest.
Two days later I was at a Christmas fayre when these three women called me over.
They had got together to watch it and loved it apparently, particularly every time a Tory MP intervened on me to demonstrate their complete lack of understanding. I was a bit taken aback and explained how I'd felt I'd wasted my time.
But they taught me that whilst effecting change is the crucial thing, almost as important to them was seeing someone who "gets it" standing up, telling their stories and refusing to back down.
I want to thank those three women in Springburn because I never forgot that and I never again felt what I was saying was pointless.