Ahead of tonight's Britain's Benefits Scandal: Dispatches, on Channel 4, journalist and columnist at The Telegraph Fraser Nelson writes exclusively for The Herald on the situation in Scotland. 

Like any city, Glasgow is a network of villages - and ones blessed with beautiful, almost fairytale names. Castlemilk, Anniesland, Easterhouse, Drumchapel: when I worked in the postal sorting office in Govan I’d think about the contrast between the romantic notions conjured up by the names on the letters I handled - and the reality on the ground. 

The city’s west end is one of the world’s best places to live: architecture, parks, schools and a quality of life only millionaires could find in London. But in its east end, we find some of the worst poverty in Europe.

I’ve just finished making a documentary for Channel Four on sickness benefit and deprivation, looking to see where in the UK is worst affected. The first list of top 20 made came back as ‘England and Wales only,’ a phrase that drives any Scot mad. I asked for the full, national picture and when it came, the top 20 had been transformed. Most of names were Scottish. Easterhouse, Drumchapel, Glenwood, Darlmarnock.

(Image: Fraser Nelson)
The ‘Glasgow effect’ of ingrained poverty is now a familiar term, but we don’t seem much closer to understanding or solving it. When I was a reporter in the Scottish Parliament in its early years, drugs deaths in Glasgow were a national scandal: 9 for very 100,000 people.

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It seemed a very urban blight, explained by the legacy of post-industrialisation, addiction and worklessness. But none of that explains why every part of Scotland has since surged way past this point. It’s now 29 drugs deaths per 100,000 people in Ayrshire, 23 in the Forth Valley, Dumfries and Galloway. Glasgow still comes first: at 33.


It’s now 22 years since Iain Duncan Smith, as Tory leader, visited Easterhouse and was appalled by the poverty, boarded-up tenements, discarded needles and signs of social decay. This ‘Easterhouse agenda’ led to the Centre for Social Justice (on whose advisory board I sit) and later, in welfare reforms cut worklessness to the lowest levels ever recorded.

But since Covid, things have rapidly worsened. At the last count, six million were on out-of-work benefits of some kind. Almost every country had lockdowns and furlough, but no other country has seen sickness benefits rise as fast as the UK (indeed, most countries have seen a fall). So it’s hard to blame long Covid, or that furlough made people lazy. 

Looking around the world, this seems to be a very British problem. And Scotland’s most deprived neighbourhoods, yet again, seem to be at the sharp end of this problem. Look at a list of communities where sickness benefit is most prevalent and we see Easterhouse second out of 8,500 communities. 

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Almost a third of its the working-age population is on sickness benefit. Then comes Greenock, Ardossan, Methil, Alloa: all about 30 per cent. The UK average is 7 per cent.

The scandal is not perfectly-healthy people scamming the system. The scandal is that people who need real help aren’t getting it - and haven’t been for decades. In my documentary, I speak to whistleblowing ex-DWP assessors who say that the cursory phone interviews they conduct are nowhere near enough. 

The process has an 80 per cent success rate, twice what it was in the early days. Not enough emphasis is placed on the need for medical evidence now; the system is so easily gamed that ‘sickfluencers’ have emerged on TikTok and similar platforms sharing tips on what buzzwords to say during the assessment,

Change has already come to Scotland, where disability benefits are devolved. But the new adult disability payment (ADP) is designed to make the application process easier still - fewer face-to-face interviews and lighter-touch eligibility reviews. And the cost? It was £2 billion last year and the Scottish Fiscal Commission expects it to be £4.5 by the next election.

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That’s a rise faster than anything England is braced for.
The new Scottish system makes it less stressful to claim. But what is being done to give people proper support to turn their lives around? 

Two thirds of new sickness benefit claimants mention anxiety, depression or similar complaints. I spoke to GPs who say that, quite often, people like this are most in need of the distraction of work. The social isolation that can come with worklessness can make mental health problems harder to deal with.

The phrase ‘Glasgow effect’ is rightly controversial, suggesting a sense of helplessness - as if the poverty were as inevitable as the weather. 
It’s even worse seeing ‘Scotland effect’ start to fall into use, as if it’s obvious that parts of Fife and Clackmannanshire should go the same way.

What is clear is the old style of welfare is deepening the poverty it’s supposed to eradicate and trapping people it’s supposed to help. Glasgow, Scotland and Britain all deserve better.


Britain’s Benefits Scandal: Dispatches, presented by Fraser Nelson, airs on Channel 4 at 8pm (Monday)