When benefits rise in line with soaring inflation on Thursday, expect a sea of self-congratulation. The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, and his fellow ministers will pretend they wanted to boost benefits all along, while rightwing cheerleaders in the press will talk of Britain’s “generous” welfare state. The reality, though, is altogether different: millions of people who rely on the social safety net still won’t be able to afford to eat, stay warm, or clean.
The erosion of social security rates over the past 40 years has fundamentally broken the link between what state support provides and what it actually costs to live: basic benefits today are at least £140 a month below the real cost of food, energy and everyday essentials, according to recent research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. This shortfall will notably remain even after April’s 10.1% uprating for benefits in England and Wales, and any non-devolved Scottish benefits, not least because bills – from water and broadband to council tax – are due to rise sharply. And for many, the situation is even worse: more than half of households on universal credit receive less than the basic rate because of the widespread practice of benefit reductions.
The result is the kind of widespread deprivation that is all too familiar in Britain now. Skipping meals. Going without deodorant. Payday loans to keep the electric on. While reality TV and the press cry of benefit claimants “living a life of luxury” on the taxpayer, one in six households on universal credit have to turn to food banks to feed themselves.
This is laid bare in Broke: Fixing Britain’s Poverty Crisis, a new book of social reportage edited by Tom Clark, for which I wrote a chapter. As Becca, a mother in Glasgow who is largely bed-bound with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), told me about being left £200 short a month: “My benefits don’t cover [utilities and debt repayments], let alone allow for me to purchase food. The budget for that goes towards not falling into arrears.”
The truth is, the welfare state today is no longer a safety net for hard times – and there is no intention that it should be so. “Welfare” in its current form is fuelled by an attempt to ration resources and coerce the poorest and disabled people off benefits, not to enable them to live a fulfilling and secure life. It is underpinned by the belief that people who receive state support should endure a certain level of hardship, as if keeping benefit rates too low to buy regular meals will prevent a dad with Parkinson’s from becoming idle. It is the Victorian workhouse mentality repackaged for the 21st century, where “help” must come with a hefty dose of suffering and shame.
The increased use of conditionality – which started with New Labour and has been ramped up by the Conservatives – has further eroded the social contract. Benefits are no longer an entitlement from taxpayers who paid in for a rainy day, but a gift that can be removed by the state at a whim for “bad behaviour”. Even the latest childcare provisions set out in the budget are as much about the broader aim to use “welfare” as a punitive stick as about helping low-income parents. Forget the postwar “cradle to the grave” – nowadays it’s “cradle to the jobcentre”.
The class element in all this is barely disguised. Working-class families are portrayed as feckless spongers, while the actual unearned wealth of the rich and tax dodgers is ignored. Just look at the trend of wealthy politicians and commentators suggesting food poverty is down to frivolous spending and bad budgeting. The deputy chair of the Conservative party believes the poorest people wouldn’t be poor if only they cooked meals for 30p a day. This narrative forces benefit claimants to live in ever more barren conditions in order to “prove” their need, as if having an old iPhone or flatscreen TV should negate an application for sickness benefits. Most dangerously, it refuses to recognise the fact that real poverty exists in Britain, thus alleviating the responsibility of governments to do anything about it.
Charities and thinktanks are calling for a benefits system that is “needs tested” – where the support people get is linked to the actual cost of essentials. It is an idea that seems entirely obvious but is nonetheless a mile away from the kind of policy that modern politics is willing to produce. A cross-party group of MPs last week launched an inquiry into the inadequacy of benefit levels, spurred on by the fact that ministers say they have no intention of conducting such a review themselves. And there is widespread public support for raising the basic level of benefits; nearly three-quarters of the public agree that universal credit rates are too stingy. Even most 2019 Conservative voters back an increase.
Decades ago, a political consensus was established to protect basic pensioner living standards. There is no good reason why unpaid carers, children, the long-term sick, jobseekers or low-paid workers shouldn’t have the same protection. Those who balk at the idea of raising social security rates may wish to consider why they are typically also against the alternatives, be it building more social housing to lower extortionate rents, investment in social care that would shift the burden from unpaid carers, or enforcing a living wage to eradicate the need for benefits to top up poverty pay.
It is not radical to suggest that social security rates should be enough to live on, or that in times of ill health or hardship, the state should be of help, not harm. That those with power are convinced otherwise is a bleak testament to how normalised inequality and poverty in this country have become.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
