The current demand from the PCS is for 20,000 additional staff. Last week, we submitted an additional demand for 5,000 universal credit staff, not in the jobcentres, but in the service centres alone. If we bear it in mind that at the moment there are about 12,000 staff in the UC centres, you can see the scale of the increase that we are talking about in order to make the system workable.
There are, on top of that, any number of suggestions that we can make for improving the system. According to the figures, the DWP has lost in the region of 40,000 staff since 2010—a massive cut in the number of people supporting claimants. For that reason, the amount of unclaimed benefit has gone through the roof. There are all kinds of additional ways in which we could and should support people if we had the staff. Our demand for 5,000 additional staff on top of the 12,000 existing staff illustrates the scale of the increase that we are talking about.
The very clear view of the union and our members is that there should be a jobcentre in every locality in the country. The process that we have been going through for years now of closing down jobcentres and retreating from communities is not, we feel, sustainable. If we are to have genuinely meaningful conversations about supporting people back into work and supporting them while they are in work, we need to rebuild the jobcentre network.
People must be able to see the jobcentre as a face they can turn to when they need advice or support. However, that would require a system that did not involve sanctions. The greatest barrier to trust between the people who access the benefits system and those who deliver it is that the former are forever fearful that the people to whom they speak will recommend that their benefits be taken from them.