One of the greatest achievements of the Labour governments in office from 1997 to 2010 was to significantly reduce levels of poverty in Britain. Over the course of 13 years, a combination of measures took 2.5 million children and 7 million adults out of absolute poverty. These were stellar, transformative figures. But that was then.
Were existing benefit policies to be maintained during the current parliament, according to a projection published by the Resolution Foundation thinktank last week, the number of those in absolute poverty could stay constant at 18% of the total population. Relative poverty could soar. The dismal triple lock of the two-child benefit cap, the overall benefit cap and freezes to housing benefit is trapping the poorest people in our society in a cycle of despair.
The human cost is laid out in stark new Trussell Trust research published on Tuesday. Around two-thirds of working families on universal credit (UC), it found, are struggling to buy food or pay for energy and other essentials. Half of those on universal credit ran out of food during the last month. Bills are being left unpaid, families are going into debt they cannot afford, and the use of food banks continues to rise inexorably. The well-understood yet unresolved problem of the five-week delay in accessing UC payments continues to hole vulnerable people’s finances below the waterline.
As the Trussell Trust argues, citizens failed so colossally by welfare policies cannot afford to wait for Labour’s long-term economic plan to deliver growth, before their predicament is addressed. Since food bank usage began to soar in the 2010s, such organisations’ reports have chronicled the rise of an underclass whose members have been humiliated, marginalised and impoverished by punitive policymaking. Fulfilling the historic vocation of the Labour party to improve the lives of people in such a situation is not – or should not be – contingent upon percentage point upticks in productivity and GDP.
In that context, the decision this week to extend the household support fund – allowing councils to help those struggling to pay for essentials this winter – is welcome, but clearly insufficient. Much more will be needed on housing costs and energy in the months and years ahead. A child poverty strategy is promised for 2025. But as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, engages in hand-to-hand political combat with the Conservatives over her fiscal inheritance, a sense of urgency is lacking.
Above all, the broken link between need and entitlement – the most pernicious legacy of the Cameron/Osborne years of government – should be restored. The notion that people should have enough to provide themselves and their children with food, warmth and shelter is basic to a civilised society. Benefit caps flout that principle, implying the state’s indifference to desperate need once an arbitrary threshold has been crossed.
In 1946, when Labour’s new prime minister, Clement Attlee, was challenged over whether Britain could afford the welfare state his government was building, he cited an obligation to provide all citizens with at least a “very modest standard of living”. The Trussell Trust’s latest research underlines the fact that, almost 80 years later, that remains a pipe dream for a significant number of people – many of whom are working, but still failing to make ends meet. As Sir Keir Starmer’s government navigates its first year in office, it must start making “tough choices” on behalf of those people, rather than at their expense.