The Guardian reports:
More than 1 million children experienced destitution last year – meaning their families could not afford to adequately feed, clothe or clean them, or keep them warm – according to a major study which reveals an explosion of extreme poverty in the UK.
Severe material hardship was “no longer a rare occurrence”, the study found, with rates of destitution more than doubling in the last five years as a result of benefit cuts and cost of living pressures, leaving struggling households increasingly reliant on regular charity handouts.
The study in question is included in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report Destitution in the UK 2023. Its recommendations are:
Universal Credit should have an ‘Essentials Guarantee’ to ensure everyone has a protected minimum amount of support to afford essentials such as food and household bills. An independent process should determine the Essentials Guarantee level, based on the cost of essentials. Universal Credit’s basic rate would need to at least meet this minimum amount, and deductions would not be allowed to reduce support below that level.
Undertake wider reforms to social security, including: lowering the limit on deductions from benefits to repay debts; reforming sanctions so people are not left with zero or extremely low income; and ensure people can access disability benefits they are entitled to.
Ensuring cash-first emergency financial assistance is available in all areas, along with free and impartial advice services to address the crushing debt, benefits and housing issues that keep people destitute.
Enable everyone in our communities to access help in an emergency whether they have ‘no recourse to public funds’ or not – and resource local authorities to meet this additional need. Local authorities, charities, independent funders and housing providers should also work together to prevent destitution and homelessness for people with restricted entitlement.
7 comments:
Hobhouse would be equally shocked about the breakdown of family networks that mean many are left isolated with nowhere to turn for help. Where are all the parents who fail to provide for their abandoned women and children? Why do extended families allow any of their kin to become homeless or destitute?
To fail to live up to your family responsibilities in the Edwardian era was to bring shame upon yourself. Now you can just pass off your responsibility onto the state - that's certainly not something of which Edwardian Liberals would have approved.
There were enormous numbers of children living in institutions in Edwardian England. I can't find an overall total, but there were 70,000 to 80,000 children in Poor Law at any one time, and there were all sorts of religious, charitable and private institutions on top of that.
So I don't share your picture of Hobhouse clutching his pearls when he heard of families who were unable to support their children.
And of course Edwardian 'family responsibilities' would often include choosing not to support 'illegitimate' children and their mothers (less often their fathers...).
My comment should say "living in Poor Law institutions".
G.S. Frost, Illegitimacy in English law and society, 1860–1930 is good on this. About 4%-6% of children were illegitimate in this period. Mothers had sole legal responsibility for illegitimate children, and they were often/usually shunned by their wider families. It was a good thing that state and charitable provision helped to support these women and their children, (although coverage was spotty), and is very good that attitudes have changed since then.
page 14: "... illegitimate children did not have a last name; they got a surname by reputation only, and had no legal relatives until they married. Religious and political leaders justified these laws by claiming they discouraged illegitimacy, but they also left children vulnerable to poverty and desertion."
In 2021 51 per cent of children were illegitimate and we have mass poverty despite (or perhaps because of) a welfare state, and record levels of taxation. That makes the Edwardians 6 per cent look rather favourable!
The Edwardian Liberals wanted National Insurance so people could better look after themselves and their families. It was never intended to be indiscriminate welfare designed to create dependency.
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