In Chapter Four of this book, we described the findings from a set of in-depth interviews that we conducted with a ‘core’ sample of working-age adults in the UK. The same basic interviews were also conducted with a small sample of benefits administrators working for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in local offices in a district in England. It should be said that negotiating access to the sample through the DWP had been difficult, not least because the fieldwork was conducted at a time of major reorganisation (late 2001-early 2002, as the Benefits Agency and Employment Service organisations were being brought together under the auspices of the newly constituted DWP). In the end, nine benefits administrators were interviewed, of whom two were men and seven were women. One was under 40 years of age and eight were aged 40+; seven were working in senior supervisory or managerial roles, and two fulfilled mid-range decision making or advisory roles; eight were white and one was from a minority ethnic group; two were graduates, two had subdegree post-16 qualifications, and five had been educated to GCSE/‘O’ level standard (but all had received civil service training and at least three had had 20 or more years’ experience). Members of the sample were responsible for the administration of a range of benefits, including income support, a range of disability related benefits and retirement pension.

This was a diverse and interesting sample and, in spite of the very small sample size, the quality of the data elicited justifies a detailed discussion of the findings (subject of course to a warning that these should be interpreted with caution). In this chapter, we first draw out some of the apparent similarities and differences between the discourse of benefits administrators and that of the core sample. Second, we shall look at certain distinctive features of the benefits administrators’ discourse, including the way the administrators appeared to look upon claimants as dependent subjects and claimants’ rights in terms of administrative responsibilities, and the evident ambiguity of their discourse as ‘messengers’ of the ‘third way’ policy regime.

Comparing benefits administrators with the ‘core’ sample

The interviews elicited a broadly similar range of responses to those of the core sample, albeit with certain differences that will have reflected an awareness stemming from the nature of the benefits administrators’ occupation.