Actor or not, the DWP video is a shameful attempt to gloss over the cruelty of universal credit

The department appears to have deliberately picked Charlie because his stress-free story is so far removed from the brutal experience faced by so many claimants

In such politically tumultuous times, when the government seems on the brink of collapse every other day, the line separating politics, reality TV and satire is thinner than ever. Scenes from BBC political comedy The Thick of It, which follows the disastrous management of government departments including the fictitious Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship, get closer to the bone with each passing day.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – the department currently locked in battle with the DUP for the title of “most toxic entity in British politics” – proved this once again with a promotional video posted to Twitter on Monday afternoon. The video promotes universal credit – a benefit for people who are out of work or on a low income designed to replace six other benefits with a single monthly payment.

During the video, a man called Charlie talks to the camera about how universal credit helped him through a “difficult period” in the last few years. Charlie says that the benefit, which was first rolled out by the Tories in 2013, helped him find work as a personal trainer.

However, eagle-eyed Twitter users quickly realised that Charlie looks familiar, remembering him from an episode of Channel 4’s First Dates in 2017. Things got more complicated when screengrabs from an Instagram account that appeared to belong to Charlie emerged online. Photographs on the Instagram, which has now been made private, suggest that Charlie has been working as an actor and presenter, at least on a freelance basis, since 2013. Since then, according to his alleged Instagram, he has acted, presented and modelled for clients including CBeebies, Oxfam, Vodafone and Aldi. There’s also photos which suggest he works as a TV extra. In a post from 2018, he’s dressed as a SWAT team officer, with the accompanying hashtag #skyatlantic.

Twitter became further abuzz when photographs of Charlie’s holidays emerged. Instagram photos uploaded in 2014 show him visiting America, posting photographs from San Francisco and Brooklyn. In 2016 he posted photos from Latin America and in 2017 he uploaded holiday posts from Greece and Italy.

Given the surfacing of these posts, the DWP’s video was ridiculed and “ratio’d” on Twitter. As I write this, it has 1800 replies, which are overwhelmingly negative, compared to just 629 likes. Many have branded the video a “fake” and labelled Charlie a “hired actor”. To clarify, the DWP Press Office quickly tweeted: “We see there’s been a lot of interest in our video about Charlie. We agree he seems almost too good to be true, but everything in the video is real.” The statement also denied that Charlie was paid to appear in the video and confirmed that he is a real universal credit claimant.

Ultimately, there is no evidence that Charlie didn’t claim universal credit. According to his Instagram, it seems that he does now work as a personal trainer, which is consistent with his story in the video. It could be that he was not paid for his acting work, or that someone else helped to pay for his holidays. In any case, why shouldn’t he – or any other benefits claimant for that matter – spend their money on holidays? And who among us isn’t guilty of making life look a little rosier, while editing out challenging times, on apps like Instagram? After all, it’s hardly the custom to post photos with the hashtag #benefits or #universalcredit, is it?

But while the conspiracy theories are probably baseless, can we blame people for being sceptical? It’s not like the department has much credibility. It was previously headed by Esther McVey – who admitted live on television universal credit could leave thousands worse off – and then taken over by Amber Rudd who resigned as Home Secretary after misleading parliament over the Windrush scandal. Hardly the most trustworthy pair.

But perhaps most importantly, the DWP’s disastrous roll-out of universal credit has been one of the most bungled policy introductions in modern political history, with public trust in the department at an all time low.

Universal credit’s built-in five week waiting time, plus crippling delays, has left many claimants who don’t have savings struggling to survive. According to a 2018 report from the National Audit Office, one in four payments is an average of four weeks late on top of the original five-week delay. Trussell Trust, the UK’s biggest foodbank charity, say that these delays have caused more people to become reliant on foodbanks.

Each year we have seen heartbreaking stories of families left with no money over Christmas. Some claimants have cancelled Christmas altogether, while one mum was forced to tell her children that Santa isn’t real because she couldn’t afford their gifts. Another mother had to make decorations from used bottles and food containers, even putting free sugar sachets into her child’s stocking as a makeshift gift.

Despite these stories, a 2018 report by the Public Accounts Committee accused the DWP of “persistently dismissing evidence that universal credit is causing hardship for claimants and additional burdens for local organisations and refuses to measure what it does not want to see”. Cuts to universal credit, which see single parent households lose between £800 to £2000 a year, have even been found to disincentivise single parents and second earners from working.

Actor or not, the DWP appears to have deliberately picked Charlie because his stress-free story is extremely far removed from the brutal experience that is still being faced by so many. This video seems to be just the latest calculated and shameless attempt to gloss over the catastrophic failures of the department. Just like in reality TV, everything in the video might technically be real. But what’s not in the video – the relentlessly cruel reality of the universal credit roll-out – is far more damning.