A newly-elected MSP didn’t care if he lived or died after he found himself out of work during the pandemic and living on £52 a week.
Labour’s Paul Sweeney opened up about the depression he suffered when living alone during lockdown and on benefits.
“It was really dark at times,” the 32 year old said.
He has now promised to be a champion for people on social security and will fight to alleviate poverty.
Sweeney’s first taste of elected politics was as the MP for Glasgow North East in 2017.
He lost his seat two years later and quickly burned through his redundancy payment and modest savings.
A spell on benefits last year was followed by short-term project work for an asylum seeker charity, after which he was on Universal Credit between September to when he was elected as a Glasgow MSP in May.
During that period - while living alone and in lockdown - Sweeney says he found first hand how hard it is for people on benefits.
And it has fuelled his desire to bring about change.
Speaking to the Record, he said he was on the breadline and had to make food shops last for ages:
“I was on £208 a month. It was pretty crap.”
Lockdown was the first time Sweeney had been jobless. In 32 years, he had been a paper boy, waiter and a supermarket worker before getting graduate jobs at a shipyard and Scottish Enterprise.
He said the realities of the pandemic meant there was not the same pressure to “keep up appearances” by going out regularly, but nonetheless he found it tough.
“I had got into a real funk of depression,” he said. “I was in a pretty bad state at one point. I was a bit ambivalent about whether I wanted to be alive or not. It wasn’t necessarily suicidal or an attempt at suicide, but it was really dark at times.
“I live with myself, so there’s an added pressure of isolation during lockdown. Stuck in the flat yourself with no job. It was grim.
“I had always been doing something, so this ‘smack into a wall all of a sudden’ was rubbish.”
Sweeney only realised earlier this year he was also entitled to new-style job seekers allowance. He says he has “total” empathy” for people trying to make sense of the “administrative nightmare” of the system.
He said: “We should be more frank about what people need. I think there will be a lot more discussion this year about universal basic income, and the benefits of that for everyone, and actually creating a minimum floor.”
Sweeney says he will take his own experiences into Holyrood and reflect on his lockdown life during first speech next week.
If the Tories reverse the £20 a week uplift in Universal Credit, Sweeney believes Nicola Sturgeon should overturn it.
“The Scottish Government could easily just keep it going because they have got the discretion to enhance social security payments.
“I’m like ‘let’s just get the money into people’s pockets’.”
He asks: “What is the cost of keeping people in penury?”
