A Merseyside councillor has told of how she retired from the DWP after 25 years because she "refused to be complicit in how the Tories treat vulnerable people"

Mhairi Doyle, Labour councillor for Norwood ward in Southport , was the social inclusion manager for Merseyside in the Department of Work and Pensions until 2012.

She received an MBE for her work with disadvantaged people, especially her work with Street Sex Workers in Liverpool, and has worked at local, regional and national levels developing policy to help change lives.

Mhairi said: "I was working with heroin users, sufferers of domestic violence, people who were in and out of prison, homeless people... with some funding we managed to create networks to support people and help them out of horrendous situations.



"It took time and energy but we had a really good thing going. And then the coalition government came in and everything was cut, gone in an instant.

"Everyone was shocked when I said I was retiring; they used to joke that I'd have to be carried out, I loved my job so much. But I could not be complicit in the way the Tories think it's acceptable to treat vulnerable people."

Speaking about job centres, she says there have been abrupt changes since 2012. She said: "We used to be there to help and advise, but it's gone from being a service about people to a service about numbers.

"The benefit regime is so harsh. They say people don't have targets on benefit sanctions but it's all semantics - there is an expectation on staff to cut benefits.

(Image: Kirsty O'Connor/PA Wire)

"I'm not having a go at anybody who works at job centres. It's a difficult job and it's not well-paid, it's the system. Workers are expected to get people out the door quickly and get them to do it online, but not everyone is computer literate or has internet access."

Mhairi says she was jokingly told being a councillor would be all 'dog poo and bin collections' - but says this isn't the case at all.

She added: "The bulk of my caseload is people struggling to get the benefits they need to live on, and a lot of these people work."

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Mhairi moved to Southport in 1988, having been born and brought up in Edinburgh.

What is Universal Credit? Universal Credit is a new benefits system that will eventually replace six seperate benefits. They are: income support

income-based jobseeker's allowance

income-related employment and support allowance

housing benefit

child tax credit

working tax credit Claimants will get one single payment to cover any and all of these benefits they are entitled to. Out of that single payment they will then have to cover their own costs directly, e.g. rent, rather than it being a deducted payment. The brainchild of the Conservative Government, it is theoretically meant to make claiming benefits easier. But the policy has been bereft with problems since it started being rolled out across the country and has been blamed for pushing many vulnerable people into hardship and poverty.

She continued: "When I moved here I was told, as many of us were, that a vote for Labour was a wasted vote. So, to keep the Tories out I voted Lib Dem until 2010, when I voted Lib Dem and still got the Tories.

"Even worse, they took part in and enabled all the devastating cuts still affecting us today.

”I don’t think it is fair that our NHS is being sold off piece by piece or that my grandson when he gets out of university, will leave with over £50,000 of debt.

"And I don’t think it is fair that the Tories and Lib Dems have starved our local council of money, forcing them into such difficult decisions over services and amenities and then stand back and blithely criticise when they are the very reason it is happening."

A DWP spokesman said: “Finding work is the best route towards prosperity and Universal Credit is a force for good, providing tailored support for over 1.6 million people as they find jobs faster and stay working longer.

"Extra digital help and budgeting support are also available.”