The legacy left to an incoming Labour government after 14 years of Tory rule is akin to a hated relative leaving a flooding basement and 12 parakeets in a will. It’s not an inheritance anyone would want. Few briefs exemplify this more than work and pensions. Britain’s safety net has been systematically shredded, and its public is poorer and sicker than before the Conservatives came to power. At this point, it feels as though the welfare state has been replaced with food banks.
Here’s the good news. If the benefits system has been used to cause misery and hardship in recent years, that means it can also be utilised to bring about real good. If I were to wake up as a Labour shadow minister tomorrow, I’d pick these three priorities.
1. End child poverty
Social security cuts and rising prices and rents mean almost one in three children in the UK are now in poverty.
This kind of mass deprivation is obscene, but it’s not inevitable. I’d launch an “end child poverty” agenda, and start by scrapping the two-child benefit limit. This policy has failed miserably in its aim of getting parents into work, but has succeeded in pushing a huge number of families into severe hardship. Abolishing it would cost a relatively paltry £1.3bn a year, but would lift 250,000 children out of poverty and a further 850,000 children out of deep poverty. In other words, it’s a steal – the kind of cost effective way to make a difference most politicians dream of.
I’d also scrap the poverty-inducing benefit cap – 92% of households affected include children – and introduce free school meals in England (the latter is already planned in Scotland and Wales). Such a package could be paid for with a modest wealth tax; equalising capital gains with income tax could alone raise about £14bn. Currently, in our unequal society, millionaires such as Rishi Sunak can pay an effective tax rate of just 23% while deprived children are so hungry they eat rubbers.
2. Scrap the work capability assessment
The work capability assessment (WCA) – famed for its cruel and inaccurate testing of disabled and chronically ill people unable to work – is one of the greatest social policy failures in modern times.
With record numbers of people falling out of the labour market due to ill health, and the Tories planning to scrap the WCA themselves, Labour needs to propose a humane and accurate replacement. I would create a system where evidence provided by a disabled person is trusted. A tick-box quiz done by an assessor who has met someone for an hour can’t beat their own doctor’s opinion.
This isn’t idealism. It is already happening in Scotland. There, adult disability payments are typically awarded on the strength of an official document (such as a prescription list or care plan) or evidence from a professional or support network, rather than by assessment. Disability Rights UK tells me it also advocates a “real world assessment” element that would consider social factors such as access to transport and whether there are suitable jobs locally that account for someone’s disability.
If successful, a similar system could be rolled out for the other key disability benefit, personal independence payments.
Far from too pricey, such changes would likely save money. Currently, hundreds of millions of pounds of public money lines the pockets of private companies conducting the faulty tests. Why not spend that money on helping people?
3. Close the Department for Work and Pensions
From the deaths of benefit claimants to the tens of billions wasted on the snail-pace rollout of universal credit, over the past decade the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has normalised a culture of punishment, waste and secrecy.
Reform is no longer enough. I would open a new department of social security – as Labour proposed in 2019 and as was the norm in the 1990s – with a fresh agenda and ethos. A new department could rebuild trust by working with disabled people’s organisations, stop placing ableist op-eds in the rightwing press and introduce a legal duty to safeguard “vulnerable” claimants.
In jobcentres, I’d scrap the use of benefit sanctions – new research shows the Tory’s “desire to look tough” means the number of benefit claimants who find a job each year has actually more than halved since 2015 – and instead provide holistic support for barriers to employment, such as mental health and childcare. Any costs would be offset in the long term by increased tax receipts and a reduced burden on public services.
I would make tackling – not exacerbating – poverty a departmental goal. To help achieve this aim, I would reduce how much the government can deduct from people’s benefits to repay debt and help carers avoid overpayments.
Rather than a means to penalise and control, the social security system can be a dignified safety net in times of need. I’d vote for that.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
