“The 2-child benefit cap is the greatest single driver of child poverty in Britain.”
We’re in the middle of the deepest cost-of-living crisis in generations, which has become a permanent cost-of-living emergency for millions. Yet the whole political establishment seems intent on never-ending austerity.
As a new Government approaches, we need to mobilise for policies that could address the depth of the crises we face, including the 10 Workers Can’t Wait demands. To help build this campaign initiative, we are publishing a daily blog on the importance on each of these demands. Today, Ben Folley looks at the demand for “a social security system to end poverty.”
Despite being one of the richest countries in the world Britain remains racked by unacceptably high – and growing – levels of poverty. That poverty is entrenched by the social security system that should in fact provide a decent minimum standard of living.
The austerity agenda of the Conservatives was shamefully justified by scapegoating people accessing social security, particularly disabled people, casting many claimants as illegitimate or somehow unworthy.
The extent of widespread poverty is something that has been entrenched by the Tories’ social security policy. This has cut benefit levels in real terms, to introduce punishing mechanisms such as sanctions, humiliating interviews, ‘tests’ and extra criteria as part of drastically restricting access. They have repeatedly imposed new limitations and caps on payments, and there has been a growing range of reasons for deductions and sanctions.
In truth, poverty exists at such a scale that around 14 million people, including four million children, are in relative poverty, and forced to live on low incomes whether through poverty pay or poor social security provision – or a combination of the two – with many regularly unable to cover high housing costs and recent soaring food and energy bills. Social security such as Housing Benefit, and others that supplement wages, are in effect papering over the cracks in our broken housing market and poverty wages paid by employers.
Some of these measures have provoked broader public opposition, such as the ‘bedroom tax’, and more recently the ‘two child’ benefit limit. Recently, it was reported that this policy affected over 400,000 households – 1.5 million children – and is the greatest single driver of child poverty in Britain.
The stated goal of introducing Universal Credit was to incentivise work and decisions around many other social security changes have sought to force people into work through tougher conditions and sanctions conditionality. Payments are reduced for failure to meet certain aspects of the process, so much so that around 50,000 people a month are currently penalised. The difficulty of application processes and the impact of sanctions have seen applicants fall sick or die according to leaked internal reviews.
Its design penalises the second, lower earner in a household – often women – and is only paid to one account per household, an issue consistently raised by women’s rights organisations. The Women’s Budget Group have raised these concerns and has said that social security policy changes “have disproportionately disadvantaged women, especially women from ethnic minority backgrounds, disabled and migrant women and lone parents”.
And elsewhere, the Conservative drive to force even those reliant on health-related benefits back into work has seen proposals to scrap Work Capability Assessment processes that confirm inability to work, changes to regular Personal Independence Payments to one-off payments, and the potential introduction of vouchers to replace cash, stigmatising the payment.
The language on social security and attacks on disabled people has no link with reality. The record levels of total public spend on benefits are because Britain is poorer and sicker – a result of poverty and poor income levels, NHS waiting lists, inadequate mental health support and the aftermath of a global pandemic. Forcing people into poorly paid, exploitative and insecure work is not the answer.
A decent social security system that provides all with an effective minimum income guarantee through life’s ups and downs, that is part of removing barriers to disabled people participating in society rather than part of creating those barriers and is part of an ambitious drive to end poverty in this country, should be a legacy that a Government wants to leave and is what people deserve.
The Workers Can’t Wait campaign initiative is somewhere everyone can start. Sign it. Share it with friends. Take it to your local meeting. We need to raise its demands now and build, saying no to never-ending austerity.
- You can find the Worker’s Can’t Wait demands – and join over 22,000 in adding your support here.
- We’re publishing a series of articles for each of the Workers Can’t Wait demands, you can find them as they are published each day here.
