MBL: Coronavirus and claiming benefits
Money Box
BBC
4.2 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2020
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Many people are having to claim benefits for the first time due to coronavirus. Paul Lewis and guests find out how some people have found this experience. Was it clear how to claim? Did you find the rules easy to understand? Have you got your money yet? Is it enough? What other help is out there?
Guests: Victoria Todd from Low Income Tax Reform Group and Will Hadwen, a welfare rights advisor with Working Families.
Email: moneybox@bbc.co.uk
Producer: Alex Lewis and Ben Carter Editor: Emma Rippon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In Northern Ireland, from the late 70s to the early 90s, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers. |
| 0:08.0 | But the man who often found, tortured and sometimes killed these people on behalf of the IRA |
| 0:12.0 | was himself an informer, a secret British army agent with the codename Stakeknife. |
| 0:18.0 | Who gets to play God? And why me? Why my family? When lies are still being told to this day, |
| 0:24.0 | who do you believe? I wouldn't even know where to start and I'm with the IRA. |
| 0:28.5 | Steakknife. Listen first on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:37.7 | Hello, we're looking at benefits today and how they're working in the time of coronavirus. |
| 0:43.7 | Eve is one of many, many people who have contacted us. |
| 0:47.6 | I started my self-employed career in November 2019, and that's as a beautician that specialises an eyelash extension. So I just work from |
| 0:55.7 | my mum's house but I actually live with my boyfriend in his family home. When the lockdown was |
| 1:01.6 | announced obviously I had to stop working and follow the government guidelines. So that was my |
| 1:06.0 | only income so that's completely stopped now. Well like thousands of others, Eve couldn't get help from the government scheme for employees |
| 1:12.7 | or for self-employed people. |
| 1:14.8 | So she turned to the benefit system. |
| 1:16.9 | We'll hear how she got on shortly. |
| 1:18.6 | But in just a few weeks, it's worth remembering that one and a half million people have claimed |
| 1:22.8 | the benefit universal credit. |
| 1:24.7 | That's five times the usual rate. |
| 1:26.9 | And most of those people will never have |
| 1:29.0 | been exposed to means-tested benefits before. The Department for Work and Pensions has moved |
| 1:33.9 | 10,000 staff to deal with claims to ensure the system can cope. So, as I said, Moneybox |
| 1:40.4 | Live today is looking at how the benefit system is serving these new claimants, |
... |
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