Welfare reforms are notoriously hitting the most vulnerable members of society hardest. Gavin Havery speaks to a disabled man who was subjected to benefits sanctions after failing to apply for jobs last Christmas.

IN his award-winning film, I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach tells the heart-breaking story of a joiner unable to work, though ill health, who finds himself unable to access support from the state.

Set in Newcastle, it won the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival and is being championed by the left as a way to highlight the plight of people all over the country who are being made to suffer in the most brutal and degrading way as the harsh reality of Conservative Party policy hits home.

Food banks, now a way of life and with collections commonplace in supermarkets, were practically unheard of before 2010, when the austerity measures were introduced.

Senior Tories, including former leader Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green and Business Secretary Greg Clark have criticised the film as being ‘unfair’ and ‘unrealistic’.

Colin Allen, a 55-year-old, from Peterlee, in County Durham, who had his benefits stopped for six weeks earlier this year, leaving him with no food or heating January and February, said: “What happened in that film was exactly what happened to me.

“Those who think that it is all made up do not care. We should just take no notice of them.”

Colin was born with spina bifida, learning disabilities and a severe speech impediment.

Until recently, he was on disability benefit since leaving Elemore Hall, a special school near High Pittington, in 1976.

Over the past 40 years he has been on several Government initiatives with organisations for disabled people, but he knows he realistically has no chance of doing long term, well paid work.

Last winter, following a Government assessment he was deemed fit for work and his disability living allowance was replaced with universal credit and he says his benefits were slashed from £525 a month to around £280.

He was told to sign an agreement requiring him to look for work for 35 hours a week and provide online evidence, despite struggling to read and write and being computer illiterate with no access to the internet.

Here the similarity with Daniel Blake is strongest.

In the film, struggling to come to terms with a bafflingly, frustrating system of bureaucracy, the lead character find himself without a lifeline.

Last Christmas, when libraries and job clubs closed down for the holidays, despite the best of intentions, Colin was unable to carry out searches for employment.

He was subjected to sanctions, the removal of benefits, and so he found the safety net of the welfare state, which had supported him since his youth, had been taken away.

Colin says: “I was very upset about it. I cried when I left the Job Centre.”

During his darkest hours, without heating, Colin would wear his pyjamas and dressing gown and swaddle himself in blankets to stay warm.

Out of desperation, with nothing to eat, he went to East Durham Trust, and was given a food parcel to keep him going.

The trust is a registered charity, which runs a range of poverty-fighting projects across the former Easington district council area.

Helen Waller became his case worker and helped him get his benefits reinstated on appeal as well as creating a CV and developing his computer skills so he can look for work as a cleaner or gardener to maintain his income.

Helen is now in charge of the recently launched SPIED (Stop Poverty in East Durham) scheme, which has received over £250,000 of lottery funding.

It involves a range of activities, such as community job clubs, and supports people who are experiencing hardship with expert welfare and debt advice.

East Durham Trust chief executive, Malcolm Fallow, said: “We are hearing about parents going without food to feed their children.

“The Government strategy appears to go for the jugular of the most vulnerable people in society. The weakest are bearing the brunt and it is our job to protect them.

“Society is to be judged in the way it deals with its vulnerable people.

“The people who are making the policies are so far removed in their ivory towers, like the Tory ministers saying I, Daniel Blake is fiction and has no relevance to reality.

“They need to come and spend some time in East Durham Trust to get a feel for the way it really is.”