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Last week, I went to the cinema with a couple of friends to watch ‘I, Daniel Blake‘, the latest film by British filmmaker Ken Loach, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

The film tells the story of Daniel Blake, a 59 year old British carpenter and joiner who has worked most of his life in Newcastle, and after falling ill finds himself in need of social protection.

While discovering that negotiating through the red tape of Britain’s benefits system is a challenge, he crosses paths with a desperate single mother Katie, whose only chance to escape a one-room homeless hostel in London has been to accept a flat in a city she doesn’t know, some 300 miles away, bringing her two little children with her and away from school and friends.

Daniel and Katie soon find themselves in no-man’s land, caught on the barbed wire of welfare bureaucracy as played out against the rhetoric of ‘striver and skiver’ in modern-day Britain.

This touching film does not only leave you with a profound sense of anger against injustice, but lays bare the cruel reality of a system conceived to punish losers and make it more difficult for people in vulnerable situations to access their social rights.

While not all welfare systems are organised in the cynical way described by Ken Loach, there has been a clear tendency in recent years for activation policies to widen their scope beyond active labour market programmes to include changes in benefit requirements, including restrictive conditions, widespread reduction of length, level and coverage of benefits, complicated procedures, reinforced job search obligations and sanctions, which in turn have resulted in reduced take-up and increased stigmatisation of people living in vulnerable situations.

This is largely due the spreading idea that poor and unemployed people are guilty and the solely responsible for their situation, and that they would live on benefits, at the expensive of the rest of citizens by exploiting the system to their advantage, if given the opportunity. This is an idea that unfortunately is gaining support among the European population, as demonstrated by the spreading of false beliefs such as the one about welfare tourism.

This is not only a myth – official studies such as this 2015 report from Eurofound show that non-take-up (or non-give-out) is the real issue as compared to the misuse of social benefits – but it is also insulting for everyone that has had the chance to listen to what people in need really wish.

On Wednesday 9 November I attended a preparatory session of the European People’s University organised by our member ATD Fourth World, which gathers EU civil servants, practitioners, activists and people living in poverty to take part in a dialogue on how to build a Europe without poverty and social exclusion.

The main topic debated that day was (minimum) income, and what people experiencing poverty made clear, with strength and dignity, was their desire for liberty and independence, and employment with a decent wage. That is what most people want, and while fraud must be detected and prosecuted, a few cases cannot justify the setup of a system that prevents people from getting the support they need in difficult times.

The kind of welfare system we are heading towards and that Ken Loach highlighted in his film is simply unacceptable, and that’s the reason why Social Platform is calling for a clear change of direction: we need to halt a system that punishes and sanctions people and move towards one that supports everyone in need through adequate income support, personalised and integrated services and positive incentives.