Essay: We can’t tackle food poverty in isolation
Helen Goodman, Former MP
It is extremely disturbing that people in poverty in Britain are now treating food as a “discretionary” item in their weekly budget and going without. It is also difficult to imagine that within the next 5 years any government is going to spend billions on lifting the 14 million people now living in poverty out of this situation. So as well as campaigning for a change in priorities, I think it’s important to acknowledge what is on offer from an incoming Labour Government and make proposals that they can implement.
I see five elements to such a strategy:-
Inclusive growth
Public services which attend to the needs of the worst off
Changes to tax and benefits
Partnerships with the voluntary and community sector.
Cutting debt and building savings
(1) Inclusive growth
Tackling Britain’s weak productivity track record is certainly important, but inclusive growth goes beyond this.
Inclusive growth means growth across regions, localities and regions. If productivity outside London was at London levels, we would be one of the best performing economies. So promises to devolve power, improve Local Authority budgets and strengthen their powers will spread prosperity.
Inclusive growth also means ensuring that workers are better paid and treated. So promises to strengthen trade unions and employment rights will contribute to better distribution.
Giving more young people the skills to get good jobs in a changing economy will help them to prosper and give greater future employment security. So improvements to FE in particular will support those in the lower part of the income distribution currently and the net zero policies have a number of commitments to major infrastructure investments around Britain in areas of need .
Sometimes people can’t get to work, because of poor public transport and inadequate childcare, so investment and changes to regulation here will raise employment opportunities. I would like to see quantification of all these measures.
(2) Public Services
Improving public services benefits everyone. Of course, those most dependant on them benefit most. Furthermore, the design of public services needs to explicitly take account of the needs of the worst off- for example disabled and digitally excluded people.
The shortage and cost of housing is now a major contributor to poverty in Britain, so commitments to build council houses and strengthen tenants rights should have a significant impact.
Health services are for everyone, but, as we are now seeing, if they are inadequate they can keep people out of the labour market. So measures to cut waiting lists and improve mental health services will have a particular benefit to this group of people. Moreover, poor health is both a symptom and a cause of poverty. Chronic illnesses and disabilities are a component of material deprivation so better provision will reduce the impact of poverty.
Good child and adolescent health services set people up for healthier lives with long term impacts on income and wellbeing. Similarly education is an investment for the future , which impacts on long-term income and social mobility. There are of course specific welfare measures within the education programme where promises will address poverty now, like breakfast clubs. And in London Mayor Sadiq Khan is providing free school meals to all primary children.
(3) The Benefits System
It’s important to understand the profile of poverty. The best definition is relative poverty after housing costs (AHC) esp given the current acute housing crisis.
Worryingly, the proportion of people in relative poverty has not changed much (13m) within that group, the numbers sliding down into deep poverty (below 40% median)has grown from 4.7m to 6.5m; the numbers suffering material deprivation, food insecure and using foodbanks are all up . JRF have also shown destitution rising. Moreover incomes in the bottom decile are falling in real terms.
The groups who are disproportionately likely to be in poverty are
Single
Lone parents and their children
Large families
People with disabilities
Carers
Unemployed (ie no-one in the household in work)
In the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities.
All groups on UC can be helped with changes to Universal Credit rates, the sanctions regime, the 5 week wait, LHA and for single people also the age discrimination.
Sanctions
The benefits system needs some sanctions, because there must be a deterrent to cheating and to retain the confidence of taxpayers. However, rates of fraud are relatively low- certainly lower than in the tax system. There has been an upward blip (doubling) since the pandemic. It is ironic that since the Tories introduced a tougher sanctions regime, fraud has risen! But the figures on UC- the main benefit to which this is relevant are revealing.
On UC fraud has doubled to 11.5%- but this is mainly due to people in work under-reporting pay. The rate for people not turning up for interview/ failing to engage is 0.1% ie about £40m. But this is the main reason for sanctions.
There are two aspects (a) conditionality and (b) sanctions.
On (a) change the work requirements/ work related activity/job search etc for lone parents. I did this to the JSA regime in 2009, as a Minister in the last Labour Government but unfortunately it got lost in the UC reforms. The rationale is that a lone PWC should have a lower number of hours requirement for work and job search, because they are constrained by the need to both take and collect children from school.
Measures could also include raising the age of the child back to 5 from 3; and making it impossible to sanction people for not taking work where there is no childcare/ or jobs with unsocial and varying shift patterns. Some of these rules now give discretion to work coaches, which leads to variable treatment and as Laura has found in some cases bullying of claimants.
On (b) sanctions terms and lengths it is interesting to note that 98% of sanctions are for failure to attend interviews, comply with work search conditions etc. There are 2 aspects the length which can be any thing between 2 days (when the person complies) and 6 months, up to a maximum of 1095 days- for a series of “offences”. It might be better to look at reducing the levels of sanctions – again these discriminate against single people ( £11 or £4.40) per day and couples (8.60-3.40) per day. Given that the evidence is that the benefit levels are inadequate anyway, this is a sure route to food poverty and destitution. DWP can (and does) even sanction pregnant women- so much for a healthy start!
The 5 week wait- is a machine for getting poor people into debt and making them poorer The best report on this is from the Work and Pensions Select Committee 2021. The cost of tackling this is low (£650m) and falling.
LHA In 2010 this covered 50% of rental properties in a BRMA, Osborne cut it to 30%; it is now under 20%.. The case for acting on this is the recent large increase in rents esp in the PRS. There is also a case for using eligibility to LHA to raise the quality/energy efficiency of housing. For example by applying the decent homes standard across the board, currently it applies only to Houses in Multiple Occupation. Landlords would need time, say 3 years, to improve properties and LAs/DWP would need to have resources to inspect.
Lone parents and their children-, would benefit from strengthening the child maintenance system. I see the Tories have just accepted a private members Bill which reinstated penalties for non-payment, which they tore out!
People with disabilities
The Government is abolishing the WCA, which is welcome, but the voluntary sector see two remaining problems. Firstly, the quality of PIP assessments- 80% of appeals have been succeeding and secondly, the loss of any benefit to to the LCWRA group on UC/ESA who don’t currently pass the PIP test but do secure an award.
Carers are perhaps the group most unfairly treated in the system. They get only £77pw ie below the unemployed over 25 UC rate. Many are in their 50s looking after very elderly relatives and therefore forgoing work and consequently setting themselves up for poverty in old age. Given this, given what they save the state and given the slow progress on reforming the care sector, I believe this group are a priority.
To receive carers allowance you must be caring for 35 hours a week- at the minimum wage this would mean pay of £364 pw. It would be fairer to raise the rate to £92 pw in line with over 25 UC .This may not sound a lot, but it is worth £780pa. and apply the triple lock to the allowance; and raise the income from work limit from above the current £139pw- this has zero exchequer cost
(4) Working with the voluntary and community sector
Partnerships Really, we want a well-funded, well-functioning welfare state with more earnings-related benefits as they have in Scandinavia and as Barbara Castle tried. However there are two reasons for proactively working with the voluntary sector- a) realism- currently they are filling so many gaps we can’t manage without them and (b)the voluntary sector has innate strengths which the state finds it difficult to replicate. It is innovative, flexible, in touch with communities, good at listening, good at dealing with the “whole person” and not so restricted by silo working. It is often the ground breaker in both identifying and solving problems.
Because of their whole person approach, the voluntary sector is very good at transitions- those times when people have complex needs and crises for example:-
Care-leavers, ex-prisoners; women fleeing domestic violence;homeless and street people; new mums; refugees,veterans, the bereaved. All of these have a benefits aspect as people need to make new claims, but other colleagues will be working on them too eg the MOJ team already have some commitments on prisoners. Explicit strategies with the voluntary sector would be a good idea.
5) Cutting debt and building savings.
Arguably the focus on income as a measure of poverty ignores the significant role that debt, savings and wealth play. It is alarming that in 2023 12 million people (23%) have no savings and 26.5million (50%) have less than £1,000.
The best initiative the last Labour Government took on savings was the Child Trust Fund. Between 2002 and 2011, when Osborne cut it, all young people were given a nest egg ranging from £250-£600 depending on family income. In total the government invested £2 billion for 6 million children. Today the funds have grown to £10.5 billion. These mature when the young person turns 18- then they can access the money on average worth £1,900 !
Furthermore the Tories have deliberately made accessing this money as difficult as possible, with the consequence that so far 42% (1mill) eligible are unclaimed and these are disproportionately people on low incomes. Worse the legal procedure for those who lack mental capacity (63-126,000) is complex and expensive. This needs sorting out as recommended recently by the PAC.
The one big step government could take to reduce debt is, of course , to end the UC 5 week wait, which is just a machine for getting people into debt. Details on this are set out above.
Conclusion
This is an entirely achievable set of proposals, based on social justice principles which would make a real difference to people living in poverty.
Helen Goodman is Prof in Practice at Durham University's school of Government. She was a Labour MP and steered Child Poverty Act onto statute book.
Image source: Food poverty: Households, food banks and free school meals https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9209/