A letter has laid bare the scale of poverty in Britain – but will Rishi Sunak be moved?
Polly Toynbee
The Guardian
Life’s essentials cost £120 a week, far above what benefits provide. The cash is there, but tax cuts may be higher on the prime minister’s agenda
There never was an official description of dereliction and destitution. The social security “safety net” is whatever sum the government of the day pays, with no definition of what it’s supposed to cover. Even though Labour’s tax credits greatly raised the level, no minister ever got trapped into defining the details of what a baseline might look like.
After massive benefit cuts and freezes, despite rising rents and living costs, how could this government explain how someone is supposed to live on the current £85 a week for an adult, or £67 for under-25s? Lee Anderson’s claim that 30p is ample for a day’s food only megaphoned how out of touch a Tory deputy chair can be, as he rubbished “do-gooders” running food banks he said no one needs. Most ministers these days make sure they know the price of a pint of milk and loaf of bread, but as for that miserable £85 a week, how to spend it is a matter for individual choice, they say.
Today, the full array of medical royal colleges, as well as healthcare and children’s organisations, join the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Trussell Trust in writing to the prime minister calling for an “essentials guarantee”
Their letter says: “Every day, we see people unable to afford enough food because their incomes are simply too low. We hear heart breaking stories from people who are forced to miss hospital appointments because they can’t afford the bus fare, from people who are missing or reducing their medication because they can’t afford the prescription, or from people with diabetes who risk serious complications from going without food.”
They tell him nine out of 10 people on universal credit go without at least one essential. The NHS can’t cure the ailments of poverty, as all the research by Prof Michael Marmot has shown over many years. The NHS Confederation says “80% of what effects health is what happens outside the NHS”. Andy Bell, head of the Centre for Mental Health, says: “Poverty is toxic to our mental health.” Forget the guff about executive stress: it is hardship and debt that causes mental health deterioration.
Here are the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “essentials”, calculating £120 a week as the barest minimum for one adult: £37 for food, £35 for energy, £6 for clothes and shoes, £8 communications (phone/internet), £16 travel, £13 everything else – toiletries, bank charges, cleaning materials. That’s still hardship: a life of no pleasure, no respite from counting each penny, but not utter destitution, which the foundation defines as the lot of those on incomes below £95 a week.
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What would an essentials guarantee of £120 cost? The foundation says the price is £22bn a year more on universal credit. That’s quite a hefty sum, but even in these straitened times there are always choices. A new Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)report lays out the damaging effects of the tax system. The report shows how income from capital being taxed less than income from hard work “distorts the labour market”. Equalising these would bring in £8bn in revenue
Wealth taxes could yield much: a report for IFS Deaton review of inequality finds: “At a threshold of £2m, it would cover just the top 1% of adults, but at the same rate (1% for a limit of five years) would still raise more than £80bn after non-compliance and administration costs”.
The report also shows VAT zero rates and exemptions cost £100bn in forgone revenue. “They place a large compliance burden on firms and are a very poorly targeted way to redistribute income to lower-income households.” Gingerbread men pay VAT if they have chocolate buttons, but not with dots of sugar.