Those in Garrity’s position agree. A week, even six months, spent this way does not accurately convey how crushing it is to be struggling constantly to scrape together enough money to live on. Or what it’s like to be trapped in a dehumanising system of welfare that punishes progress and makes it impossible to escape. The true face of poverty in modern Britain is as far removed from the sponger lifestyle of “shameless” Mick Philpott, who raked in £100,000 a year on state benefits and was jailed for life this week for killing six of his 17 children in a house fire, as it is from Duncan Smith’s comfortable Buckinghamshire home. Those, like Garrity, who know it best agree that the welfare system is in desperate need of an overhaul.