TV's return to 'Benefits Street' derided as poverty tourism

On hearing that Channel 4 begins showing another series of its Skint documentaries on Monday, this time filmed in Grimsby, Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP for the town, told Radio Times: "Poverty isn't an entertainment. It's private, debilitating and alienating."

But his comments are unlikely to bring a change of policy at the broadcaster, which is also planning a second helping in a similar vein of Benefits Street, this time set in Stockton-on-Tees.

Mr Mitchell's objections are shared by many in Teesside. Stockton borough council has just launched a "positively Stockton-on-Tees" social media campaign to counter the series' impact when it is screened in the spring.

The programmes come at a sensitive time, with social security a key dividing line in the forthcoming general election. The Tories have promised to cut £12bn from the welfare budget, including a two-year freeze in in-work benefits.

The government has also capped the amount a single family can receive, a policy which polls well. According to the British Social Attitudes Survey, support for more taxation and spending has fallen to barely a third of the electorate.

On a midweek afternoon in Kingston Road in Stockton, the street of 26 terraced 1970s houses is almost deserted save for two women strolling with Bertie, a heavyweight sharpei-bulldog cross.

"It's a close community; like a big family," says Bertie's owner, while the dog - a favourite with the television production crew, she says - ambles into various front gardens for a wee.

The first series of Benefits Street, filmed on James Turner Street in Birmingham, generated intense controversy. Complaints ranged from apparent abuse of the benefits system to objections that it was "poverty porn".

However Ofcom, the regulator, cleared the programme, leaving the way for Love Productions, its independent producer, to make a second series.

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But says, Stockton North Labour MP Alex Cunningham: "It's about making money for TV executives, not about giving people a voice." He has knocked on Kingston Road's doors and written to residents, advising them not to participate. The filming has also been condemned by the local authority, by an online petition and by Middlesbrough football fans who unfurled a banner saying "Being poor is not entertainment."

In spite of warnings that residents may be exploited, Bertie's owner seems confident nobody is being set up.

"They have to show you what's being videoed, what's getting used; that's in the contract," she says.

Kingston Rd is on the Tilery estate, named after the tile and brickworks that flourished in the 19th century. One heavily symbolic photograph of UK heavy industry's decline in the 1980s showed Margaret Thatcher, then prime minister, walking across the wasteland left by the demolition of the nearby Head Wrightson engineering works.

The estate is mostly former council housing run by Thirteen, a social housing group. The streets are tidy and a new £18m academy has raised achievement. "It's rough but not crazy," says James Wilson, a 22-year-old window cleaner.

Some locals say the TV crew want to include working people, others that their focus is on the unemployed. The area has an estimated jobless rate of 12.6 per cent. Few say they have agreed to participate. Of those who have, some hope for the celebrity status achieved by "White Dee" in the first series.

Claims that overflowing rubbish bins - and a horse - have been brought in just for filming are false, insists Channel 4.

Locals blame yobs from elsewhere for throwing eggs at reporters. Claims that Kingston Rd signs have been sold online for £5,000 each are impossible to verify.

Ralph Lee, deputy chief creative officer at Channel 4, has claimed critics are calling for "a form of censorship".

Of the first series, Mr ­McKerrow said: "It's a very sensitive portrayal of people's lives." Chaman Lal, a Birmingham Labour councillor whose ward includes James Turner St, says it was unrepresentative. "It's had a negative impact on property values," he adds.

Love Productions also made The Great British Bake Off.

"I think they should stick to baking," says Mr Cunningham. On current ­evidence, there is no chance of that.

Additional reporting by Jim Pickard

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