It is a sunny spring Monday morning, and the centre of
Stockton-on-Tees is busy.
At first, it appears this County Durham town could be a sign that the great British high street is not dead after all. But the number of people out and about is actually a symptom of a different problem.
This part of Stockton has the highest rate
of worklessness in the country.
According to the 2021 census, 67 per cent of all working-age adults in an area to the north of the high street are
economically inactive – the highest rate anywhere in the country, except where there are prisons and care homes.
The national average, excluding students and retirees, is 16.6 per cent.
The census also found that 43 per cent of people in this part of town had no qualifications, and only 11 people had worked in the previous 12 months. Of a total population of 321, 163 adults aged between 16 and 64 said they had never worked.
For locals here, there is a very simple explanation.
“Everything is easier if you go on benefits,” says stay-at-home mother-of-one Chelsea Robinson, 28, who is out with her one-year-old son Reggie and is not on welfare herself.
“You get everything given to you. You get the same amount as you would working in a shop, if not more, because you get your house paid for and everything, don’t you, on benefits.”
Her sister-in-law, Nicola Smith, 39, agrees. “It’s the biggest problem in Stockton, I’d say,” says the car dealership manager. “Because some people just don’t want to work.”
That is not what the Government would have you believe. On Wednesday, Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, insisted that those on benefits want to work. “It’s a working class thing that people do want to be able to provide for their families and themselves,” she said. “They don’t want handouts, they want support.”
Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, said similarly that “thousands” of disabled claimants are “desperate to work, if only they were provided with the support”.
But across Britain, there are now more than nine million working-age adults who are economically inactive – up by 900,000 since the Covid pandemic began in 2020.
It is one of the key factors behind the surge in welfare that will see spending on health and disability benefits soar from £65 billion
to more than £100 billion a year by 2029.
And despite £4.3 billion of benefits cuts
being unveiled in Wednesday’s Spring Statement, welfare spending remains on track to hit a record £373.4 billion in 2030 as the tax burden reaches a record high of 37.7 per cent.
With a number of handsome Georgian buildings and an imposing Grade I listed parish church, Stockton is not the stereotypical deprived Northern town. It has a proud industrial history and was where, in 1825, George Stephenson launched the world’s first passenger railway –
the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
But deindustrialisation has left Teesside’s once world-leading chemicals, steel and shipbuilding industries a shadow of their former selves. Lads can no longer leave school without qualifications and walk into an apprenticeship that becomes a job for life.
The consequences are clear on Norton Road – running from north to south through this census “output area” – which consists largely of vape shops, takeaways and boarded-up pubs.
Across Stockton North, the broader constituency that includes the output area, one in four (26.3 per cent) working-age residents claim
Universal Credit, compared to 18 per cent nationally. Just half the claimants (52 per cent) are expected to find work, and one in eight residents (12 per cent) are on disability benefits.
Pensioner Kathleen Atkinson, 77, believes industrial decline is to blame. “The industries that their parents had don’t exist any more,” she explains as her husband Cliff, 78, a retired fitter and turner, looks on. “And there’s nothing there to fill the gap.”
Wendy Hughes, a retired council worker, adds that industrial collapse has made unemployment a generational norm
for many families in which children grow up without their parents showing them the dignity of work. “A lot of it depends on their background,” said Mrs Hughes, 60.
“A lot of young people have to fend for themselves from a young age. If you come from a decent home, then it’s alright. But a lot of these kids don’t. I think the Government doesn’t think about that enough.”
Across Stockton-on-Tees, seven per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds are not in education, training or employment – higher than the national average of five per cent.
If locals were given more opportunities, argues Josh Elliott, they would snap them up. The 32-year-old works at the Globe Theatre, which hosted the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in its heyday and has recently been restored to its art deco prime.
He argues that the Globe, as well as an ongoing council-led regeneration of the town centre’s River Tees waterfront, shows that those who are out of work need to be given a chance.
“It’s just about giving them the opportunity,” he explains. “That’s all it is. Showing them that they can do it, and they can do it in their home town as well.”
But others are more sceptical. John Duff, 55, is an out-of-work construction worker who would be on welfare were it not for an inheritance from his late parents last year.
“I get job alerts on my phone for all kinds of jobs,” says the former binman. “There’s loads of work if you want it.”
So why do people stay unemployed? “It’s the old mental health,” replies Mr Duff. “They say they’ve got problems when there’s not really nothing wrong with them.
“Say you have
a problem, get a few doctor’s notes, put them in and then you get PIP [personal independence payments]. For anxiety, and stuff. But everyone gets anxiety. You’re not human, are you, if you don’t.”
The rocketing number of PIP claims for mental health conditions such as
anxiety and ADHD now costs the taxpayer £3.5 billion a year.
The benefit, paid to disabled people, is at the centre of the Government’s welfare reforms which will
reduce the number of those eligible by 800,000, at an average cost to each of £4,500 a year.
Deborah Pitt is terrified by the prospect. The former food service worker, 63, receives PIP and Universal Credit because she is “riddled with arthritis” and also has heart problems.
“It is scary,” she says when I ask about the reforms. “They’re
taking the pensioners’ benefits away, and now they’re going to take the disability benefits away. But illegal immigrants come, and they get everything paid for, and the benefits get taken off us.”
Mrs Pitt’s remarks indicate that the most significant consequences of Britain’s worklessness epidemic may be political.
In every conversation in Stockton, there is an undercurrent of resentment: from those who work towards those who do not, and from those on the receiving end of cuts towards Britain’s migrant population.
In last year’s election,
Reform UK came second to Labour in Stockton North. Next time, Nigel Farage’s party may go one better, capitalising on discontent at the state of the country.
That is the hope of Ian Robinson, 55, as he smokes outside The Castle and Anchor, which is doing a roaring trade despite it only being 10.30am.
“Just smashing the benefits, aren’t they?” the out-of-work plasterer says of his fellow workless. “No one wants Starmer, he’s a s---head. We need a Donald Trump, don’t we? This country wants a kick up the arse.”
