WELFARE payments ought to be high enough to cover food and other essentials, Christians Against Poverty (CAP) has said, after 11 per cent of respondents to a survey reported being unable to afford adequate or nutritious food.
The charity’s call for an “Essentials Guarantee” echoes those made last 12 months by the Trussell Trust and Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which urged the Government to set a legally binding lower minimum for Universal Credit payments. On 5 September, the Trussell Trust reported the outcomes of a YouGov poll of 2077 Universal Credit claimants, to which 22 per cent responded that that they had used a foodbank prior to now 12 months, and almost half (48 per cent) had run out of food prior to now month. Two-thirds (68 per cent) of those in a working household said that that they had gone without basic essentials prior to now six months.
A briefing paper from CAP, Deficit Budgets: The cost to remain alive, published this month, draws on one other YouGov poll, in June, of 2000 UK adults. More than one in five (22 per cent) reported having a “deficit budget”, defined as a shortfall in income (whether wages or social-security payments, excluding credit) to fulfill essential expenses corresponding to rent, council tax, utilities, food, and clothing.
In a foreword, the charity’s chief executive, Stewart McCulloch, writes that “the fee to remain alive is becoming unaffordable for too many.” CAP’s staff, who offer debt advice and money coaching, were “running out of tools to navigate an increasingly unresolvable situation in spite of everything of our help”.
“It’s frustrating for our team after they have the tools to assist someone out of debt however the person’s income is so shockingly low that even when the burden of debt is removed they still can’t afford life’s essentials,” he said. “Therefore, despite all of the labor of getting debt-free, life stays a relentless struggle.”
The report, which pulls on interviews with CAP clients, highlights the consequences of deficit budgets on individuals, families, and wider society. Analysis of the charity’s own data suggests that as many as 47 per cent of its clients have an “unsustainable budget”. On average, they would wish £273 more monthly to have a sustainable budget. Almost six in ten (59 per cent) of recent CAP clients in 2023 had an income below the poverty line (calculated as 60 per cent of the UK’s median household income after housing costs).
“At its root, insufficient income is the motive force of this issue,” the report says. “There are quite a lot of income-related the reason why people may find themselves facing a deficit budget.”
The most typical barrier to increasing income referred to by the CAP clients was mental ill-health (54 per cent), followed by physical ill-health (48 per cent), insecurity (34 per cent), and caring responsibilities (18 per cent).
The report calls on employers to be certain that wages are “sufficient to forestall any employee from facing a deficit budget”, and recommends that the Department for Work and Pensions “consider auto-enrolment in Universal Credit to ensure income maximisation, reduce the non-public burden of social security applications, and ensure everyone has a protected income floor”.
Inflation on essentials has been “much higher than the headline rate and people on low pay and social security have seen their incomes stagnate. Therefore, while this cost-of-living crisis has affected us all, it has affected those struggling in a way more brutal way.” This is borne out by ONS data, which shows that the lowest-income households experience a higher-than-average inflation rate.
Government data suggest that poverty rates have fallen because the late Nineteen Nineties for kids, pensioners, and working-age parents. The Resolution Foundation has forecast, nonetheless, that child poverty will reach its highest level since 1998 in 2027/28.
Last 12 months, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported that roughly 3.8 million people, including about a million children, had experienced destitution in 2022. This was almost two-and-a-half times the general number, and nearly triple the number of kids, in 2017. The charity defines destitution as: “Lack of access to a minimum of two of six items needed to fulfill your most elementary physical needs to remain warm, dry, clean and fed (shelter, food, heating, lighting, clothing and footwear, and basic toiletries) because you can not afford them” and “Extremely low or no income indicating that you simply cannot afford the items described above”.
The most typical source of income for all destitute households was social-security advantages (72 per cent), prompting the charity to say that “the fundamental rate of social security is now so low it fails to clear the extremely low-income money threshold set for destitution.” The threshold was set at £95 per week for a single adult, and £205 for a family of two adults and two children. The standard Universal Credit monthly rate is £393.45 for over-25s.
OECD figures suggest that the UK has among the highest levels of income inequality in Europe. The Government has arrange a ministerial task force to start work on a Child Poverty Strategy, and made a manifesto commitment to “reviewing Universal Credit in order that it makes work pay and tackles poverty”.
