These are private matters, we have been told over the past 10 days, as the men running the world have been put under scrutiny to explain how their private finances might interlink with our public services, social goods and, ultimately, our private matters. The Panama Papers have exposed the private dealings of the elites and their love of offshore tax havens. Since then, as calls grow for more transparency in political and corporate life, there has been a conveyor belt of Tory MPs and business leaders indignantly, and often with very red faces, denouncing the idea that the great unwashed may have a right to know who is using them.
As a working-class woman, watching their anguish has been amusing. I have laughed as I have watched them standing outside Westminster being questioned about their private affairs. Well it’s a bloody good job they weren’t born working-class women. Having grown up and lived on a council estate most of my life, I have been part of many conversations about making ends meet and getting by. Getting by comes in different forms, from knowing where you can buy the cheapest chicken to how to handle the many government agencies you may have to deal with. As a poor working-class woman it is important to know what to say in answer to certain questions – answering wrongly can have harsh consequences. There is no such thing as a “private matter” when dealing with the welfare system.
When I was small, my mum asked for financial support from what was then National Assistance after my grandparents died. She was the sole carer for her younger brother and sister as well as me. When the adviser asked her if she had anything she could sell, my mother wrongly answered “yes” and so the help she received was a suggestion that she could sell her clothes and records first. As a consequence she fell into rent arrears and couldn’t pay the electric bill.
My mum is far from an isolated case. Working-class single mums claiming benefits will be asked very personal questions about what for anyone else would be private matters. They have to disclose the name of the child’s father, his address, where he works, so that the Child Support Agency can chase him up. If you cannot answer these questions (without good reason) your benefits are stopped. Benefit officials may look into your garden and check your washing line doesn’t have any men’s clothes on it, or use credit checks to see who may or may not be living at your address.
The moral argument for this treatment is that if you are taking public money you have to be open and accountable, so there can be no privacy if you are a poor woman. But taking public money or depriving the rest of us of public money by creating shell companies in faraway sunny places like the Bahamas or Panama? That’s different – it means you have good “tax management”, aspiration, and you are clearly a high achiever.
