Just about managing: a film of family hardship following Cameron's UK

Preview screenings of Sorry We Missed You in Glasgow and Edinburgh will close Take One Action, the UK’s leading global change film festival.

The tense drama, which depicts the effects of the gig economy on a Newcastle family, is one of six UK premiers to feature at the twelfth edition of the festival.

Sorry We Missed You follows I, Daniel Blake, which starred stand-up comic Dave Johns as a man denied employment and support allowance despite his doctor finding him unfit to work.

The multi-award-winning 2016 film went on to be discussed in Parliament and screened in 700 communities around the UK.

Partly inspired by conversations Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty had with members of the public after those community screenings, Sorry We Missed You is a devastating snapshot of the human cost of insecure work on one family.

The tightly wound, unflashy film centres on the Turners, a four-strong family based, like Daniel Blake, in Newcastle.

Ricky (Kris Hitchen) has had several casual jobs since losing his construction work – and the chance of a mortgage – following the run on Northern Rock and the financial crisis of 2008.

A fiery grafter who declares he’d “rather die” than claim state support, he’s now renting with his wife Abby (Debbie Honeywood), a zero-hours carer who helps dozens of elderly and vulnerable people around the city with meals, medication and personal care.

She works punishing split shifts from before 15-year-old Seb (Rhys Stone) and his younger sister Liza Jane (Katie Proctor) get up for school to after 10pm at night.

Like the “latch-key kids” more familiar to the era of Loach’s 1966 TV play Cathy Come Home, Seb and Liza Jane largely look after themselves, sharing pasta meals from the fridge over videos of Seb’s street-art gang.

Theresa May would have called the Turners “just about managing”. But a mortgage could be in sight again when Ricky starts his own business as a freelance delivery driver for a local fulfilment centre.

The sale of Abby’s car to finance the required purchase of the van is only a temporary set-back, Ricky assures, confident his work ethic will soon reap rewards.

But the delivery van is not the only cost Ricky must bear. When Seb’s teachers summon his parents for a meeting at school, Ricky doesn’t attend.

Taking time off without securing a replacement driver incurs a fine of £150. As the depot’s hard-nosed boss Maloney (Ross Brewster) warns, missing delivery targets puts everyone’s job on the line. Customers will go elsewhere, based on the information recorded in each delivery driver’s handheld device.

As Ricky learns later, those devices are very expensive to replace, regardless of circumstances. Meanwhile, Abby, now reliant on multiple bus journeys throughout her 14-hour day, has even less time with her clients and family. On a rare day off, she’s hounded on her phone to come to work.

For anyone who’s ever worried how to pay the bills or is a member of the growing “precariat”, Sorry We Missed You feels like a horror documentary just one bad bit of luck away.

At one point, Abby describes a recurring nightmare to her husband in which the family are sinking deeper and deeper into sand.

Sorry We Missed You was informed by real-life cases such as that of Don Lane, the Dorset-based delivery driver who collapsed and died of diabetes in January 2018 after missing hospital appointments which would have seen him penalised £150 each time.

Loach and Laverty talked with countless care-workers and drivers who wished to remain anonymous to protect their jobs.

“I heard about a delivery driver who hadn’t had a day off in ten years,” says Laverty, who spent time with drivers getting to know their work.

“What does that do to a person’s body, their soul? I spoke with one young carer who told me she had received 37 calls to come in on her your day off. Can you imagine what that makes you feel like?”

Like Daniel Blake’s grappling with the DWP, chances are many can.

Funding for elderly care in England is now a third of what it was before the Cameron-Clegg coalition government of 2010 decided it was the most vulnerable who should pay for the excesses of casino banking.

Though the Turners’ grim tale seems simple, implicit is much of the destruction wrought by a government headed by a man who pledged to fix “broken Britain”.

“It’s got this great big hinterland,” says the Scots screenwriter. “The financial crisis inflicted on the population, how some people are making fortunes while others are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, what happens to children without the support of their parents. What this all does to a family – even a strong family who love each other.”

The problems raised by Sorry We Missed You are complex, from the crisis in care to how technology is used to exploit workers to breaking point, says Laverty.

"They also transcend Brexit," he says.

"These problems effect workers around the world. But a strong progressive reforming government that was prepared to support trade unions to challenge corporate culture and find new creative models of ownership would make an enormous difference to millions of workers."

Most delivery firms now use the same “cheapest, fastest” model and the trend for shifting costs and risks onto the worker is continuing across sectors from teachers forking out for books to taxi drivers having to buy the satnavs needed for their job.

“We’re all steeped in this freemarket logic, whether Brexit happens or not,” says Lavery. “The questions I hope the film raises are what this economic system is doing to families, individuals, children, people’s health, the health of the planet.”

He adds: “William Blake talked about ‘mind-forged manacles’. If you are steeped in a world where you are told this is the best, most efficient way of running the economy, that’s very powerful.

“I think we need to loosen the manacles so people can reimagine how we can do things better.”

September 28, Glasgow Film Theatre, 5pm, £10.50, £7.50 concs. Tel: 0141 332 6535. www.glasgowfilm.org.

September 29, Filmhouse, Edinburgh, 5.45pm, £11, £9 concs. Tel:0131 228 2688. www.filmhousecinema.com takeoneaction.org.uk

Sorry We Missed You is released in cinemas on November 1, cert TBC