Michael is fair haired and frail, with a face that tells a story. Until seven years ago his life was perhaps as he imagined it. He was married and working for a fancy food shop in his home town in north Yorkshire. Then something happened. He is reluctant to share the full details but his marriage broke down, he lost the job, and was left with a choice: 'It was to be homeless, or move to a bedsit in Middlesbrough,' he says.
Our job is to convince them there is always something they can do.' The state response to worklessness is Universal Credit, a single payment that covers benefits for housing, children and childcare, as well as unemployment benefit, administered by the Jobcentre Plus network. At Middlesbrough’s Corporation Road branch a steady stream of claimants arrive for their strict 10-minute appointments, watched by up to four security guards.