Welfare Reform: Universal Credit causes Food Poverty

**Breaking News!**

The UK work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd MP, has conceded that government’s flagship welfare reform, universal credit, contributed to the nationwide rise in emergency food aid use.

The admission comes after a top secret investigation launched in June 2018 into whether government’s own policies are to blame for the sharp rise in the use of food banks. The study, relied on a survey of 600 food bank managers and 500 food bank users, as well as in-depth interviews with a number of people who regularly use the service. Some of those who were asked to contribute to the research were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Welfare Reform & Austerity Measures

In 2009 the Centre of Social Justice report, Dynamic Benefits, first made the case for a ‘universal’ benefit to create a ‘simpler, more cost-effective system that provides greater rewards for work’. This was the foundation for the Government’s Universal Credit policy that was introduced to replace and combine six means-tested benefits: income-based Employment and Support Allowance, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, and Income Support; Housing Benefit; and Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit.

Since 2010, UK government has set in motion more than $39 billion of cuts, freezing or reducing welfare payments and housing subsidies for families and disabled people and cutting back youth and children’s services, as well as funding for local authorities.

Poverty & Austerity

However, the new benefits system has been far from the “poverty-fighting reform that was promised”. Reports from the Child Poverty Action Group, an independent watchdog, show that families on benefits are now an average of $2,700 worse off. Resulting in the UK slipping in the ranks on inclusive growth to 21st, according to the World Economic Forum’s Inclusive Development Index 2018. The UK government currently has no poverty threshold in place, which has prompted the creation of an independent Social Metrics Commission to establish a new measurement of poverty for the UK.

Food Banks

In November 2018 Philip Alston, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, decided to study the world's fifth largest economy, the UK, in order to figure out why so many Britons remain in poverty despite rising employment levels, economic growth and pockets of enormous wealth. Along with rising child poverty, rising homelessness and reduction in local government funding, he found the most visible indicator of rising poverty in the UK over the past decade to be the has been the number of foodbanks appearing in church halls and community centres across the country.

The largest of these food banks, Trussell Trust, has witnessed demand for food aid rise an average of a 52% in universal credit areas in 2017, contrasted with 13% in areas where it had not been introduced. Nationally, the number of food parcels distributed by the Trussell Trust, grew to more than 650,000 during the summer of 2018, nearly double the 350,000 distributed during the summer of 2013. In a survey conducted in May 2016 regarding the primary reasons for referrals to Trussel Trust, 68.67% responded benefit changes & delays.

Food Theft

Researchers found that already stretched local voluntary sector bodies are “picking up the pieces” of Universal credit, with claimants turning to them for support and advice. They said that many agencies are not funded to provide these vital services and often are not sufficiently informed and equipped to do so.

Individuals who have used their monthly food bank quota, have a higher probability of committing food theft. For example, Shane Norman and Stacey Lawson, who on October 5 2018 stole £21 worth of frozen food from Iceland, after waiting weeks to receive benefits payment. The duo appeared at Lincoln Magistrates Court on February 14 where they admitted one charge of theft, as an "act of desperation".

Solution

UK government have responded positively to pressure from the Trussell Trust’s campaign to end the five-week wait that new claimants must endure until they get their first universal credit payment, by offering advances to claimants.

Another victory in the fight against food poverty was The Grocer’s Waste Not, Want Not campaign which garnered the attention of Michael Gove, who committed £15m to subsidise the redistribution of food and subsequently appointed Ben Elliot as government's first Food Surplus and Waste Champion.

However will these steps be enough to tackle the enormous problem which is food poverty in the UK or is this just a drop in the ocean? With a long policy void around household food insecurity and the threat of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit, my view is that Food Poverty is likely to get a lot worse. Food Banks and local charities best be prepared!

References

SustainabilityFrancesca Tabor