Poverty prevention is our best hope. Here's some tangible ways to keep people warm, dry and fed

It is beginning to look like ‘cost of living crisis’ was a misnomer. Crises culminate and (hopefully) pass. Britain’s new penury is beginning to more look like a chronic condition. 

Consider new numbers released on Wednesday (15 May) by the Trussell Trust, Britain’s biggest food bank network, for 2023/24 – a period during which inflation plunged from 8.7% to an unremarkable 3.2%. As the cost of living came back under control, you’d have hoped that poverty, and recourse to emergency food parcels would also decline. Instead, the number doled out rose yet again, to hit 3,121,404. Like the infamous “three million unemployed” of the 1980s, here is one number that scars a whole society. 

The growing food-parcel count is emphatically not due to any burst of enthusiasm on Trussell’s part. They are campaigning for a future in which food banks can safely be abolished. Instead, it is about jobs, rents and benefits. 

On the jobs front, despite ministerial efforts to rekindle old slurs about the “workshy” classes, more than two-thirds of poor children live in a home where somebody is earning. It’s just that too many jobs pay too little, and with no prospects of promotion, nor even any reliability about what will be paid when. Rents, already so high in so much of the country, continue to surge. 

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As for benefits, a catalogue of squeezes, freezes and outright cuts have cumulatively torn great holes in our safety net, condemning millions to fall through to the rocks. Under the so-called ‘two-child benefit limit’, which both frontbenches at Westminster suggest must stay, a particular brunt is borne by children. Youngsters wicked enough to be born with more than one sibling are now demonstrably more likely to be both “food insecure” and reliant on charities to feed them. 

But – in world where a cash-strapped government faces competing pressures like crumbling hospitals and collapsing councils – what on earth to do about it? To provide some answers I have written a paper, Partnership To End Poverty with former prime minister Gordon Brown (who has had no role in this piece, and bears no responsibility for its content).

The first challenge is simply bringing all readily available resources to bear. Sometimes that is about deploying the muscle of government; for example, to give shift workers new rights. Sometimes, it is about ensuring the many charities, select companies and social enterprises that are already making a difference can make more of a difference. There is an obvious need for a new “node” function, connecting local community groups (who can pinpoint where help is most needed) with the philanthropists and corporates (who have resources, but are uncertain about where to deploy them). 

By redirecting an anomalous Gift Aid rebate, that’s currently handed back to higher-rate taxpayers personally, we could also get more cash flowing direct to charities. And by imposing ‘reserve requirements’ on commercial banks in line with European and Swiss practice – a technical tweak that would save the Treasury around £2bn annually on Bank of England interest payments – we could raise cash for a partnership fund. This could support charities to bulk-buy essential goods in special – cost-price or better – deals, facilitating a major ramping up of their invaluable work to keep people warm, dry, clean and fed. 

All this would immediately soothe the roughest edges of British life. But don’t forget the food banks don’t want to provide cover for a withdrawing welfare state: they want to be rendered superfluous. That needs a comprehensive timetable, with credible milestones, for abolishing the penury in our midst. The plan must involve fixing those holes in the safety net, and also steadily raising today’s pathetic basic benefit rates – just £90 a week for a single unemployed adult. 

Is this ‘fixing’ affordable? Over time, emphatically yes. The Resolution Foundation highlights how ageing demographics and the stringent current approach to indexing benefits are combining to reduce the weight of working-age benefits in the economy, which they project will fall from 4.6% to 3.3% of GDP over the 15 years from 2026. So the resources will steadily be released to improve benefit rates, because through renewed growth, revamped skills training and stronger rights to reliable pay, we can pull additional levers to raise wages, reduce the need for benefit top-ups, and thereby ensure that the bill remains manageable. 

In sum, we have reached a pass on poverty which demands both immediate emergency medicine and more sustainable treatment to grip a dangerous chronic condition over the long the years ahead. Fortunately, it is open to us to do both. If we want to. 

Tom Clark is a contributing editor at Prospect Magazine. He is the editor of Broke: Fixing Britain’s Poverty Crisis (Biteback, £14.99).

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

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