Charles Dickens learned about poverty in the least desirable way, by being poor. It gave the author a lifetime interest in the pain it causes. The return of “character” as a critical determinant of poverty to public debate is something that would be familiar to Dickens. He would no doubt deplore its use, especially as a way of dodging the facts. About 1.8m households in the UK are today classified as destitute, meaning they are unable to afford essentials including food, shelter and heating. Yet as Gordon Brown wrote in this newspaper last week, a “wall of silence” surrounds this crisis and limits public discussion. Full awareness of the suffering it entails is lacking.
The situation in Mr Brown’s home town of Kirkcaldy is the worst he has ever seen. In some of its neighbourhoods, 70% of children are living in poverty, leading him to describe the UK as haunted by a level of deprivation “we thought had been consigned to history”. A large volume of research supports this claim. Increasing numbers of children lack their own beds, rough sleeping in cities including London is up sharply, and malnutrition has increased across the country. Last week, a study showed that the austerity policies of the early 2010s were associated with an increase in age-related frailty, particularly in the oldest people – meaning that their health deteriorated more rapidly.
Traditionally one-nation Conservatives as well as social liberals have objected to a widening gulf between rich and poor. This has been viewed, rightly, as damaging to the whole of society. In challenging the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, to order a review of universal credit in his March budget, Mr Brown’s message could not be clearer: just as there needs to be a basic standard of living, there should be a basic standard of government. Tackling poverty this extreme, he said, “shouldn’t be a question of ideology, but a question of decency”.
Mr Brown is a strong advocate for the role of civil society, and is actively involved in local charities. But while in the short term such initiatives are vital, for example, in supplying beds and sanitary items as well as food to those who can’t afford to buy them, philanthropy can only ever be part of the solution. While the pandemic and international energy costs have made matters worse, policy choices by successive Conservative governments are to blame for the collapsing living standards of the poorest households. The repeated refusal to increase benefits in line with inflation, combined with measures including the two-child cap which reduce the amount that can be claimed by bigger families, have made the task of making ends meet impossible.
The “essentials guarantee” proposed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and others would enshrine in law the right to a minimum level of benefits sufficient to cover essentials, with calculations overseen by an independent body. This is an easy-to-understand means of reinstating what used to be thought of as a social safety net, and polling shows that the public supports it in principle. In recent times, authors including Kerry Hudson and Elizabeth Strout have written eloquently about the debilitating shame that often accompanies chronic poverty. The nature and extent of poverty in the UK in 2024 should shame those who ignore it – not those who are suffering it.
