I can’t believe this needs to be asked for, but the UK’s main foodbank charity, The Trussell Trust, along with the social justice campaigning organisation the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), is calling on the UK government to enshrine in law the amount of money people need to live on and then for the government to ensure that the basic rate of Universal Credit (UC) at least covers the essentials.
That’s right. People are having to ask the government, which is essentially there to manage all the stuff to make sure that people can live (live as in not die – not live as in have fun), to make sure that people have enough money to live on.
Because the government hasn’t quite worked out yet that people don’t have enough money to live on. And a third of the population has no idea just how tiny benefits really are for some households.
I’ve written about this before. Back of a fag packet stuff explaining how bills stack up against UC and leave people in the red. But the Trussell Trust and JRF have done a deep dive into the numbers and run some proper, quantitative surveys. Nine in ten households on UC have to forego food, heat or toiletries. More research from Lloyds bank has shown that a third of people are struggling to afford to stay online as well with broadband starting to become out of reach – broadband, critical for accessing huge amounts of services, including government benefits services. These people are my friends and neighbours. They are often disabled people. Four million, almost half of all people in poverty, are disabled or living in a household with a disabled person in it.
I’m handing out sanitary pads and Aldi veg of the week like a crap blonde Santa at the moment. Why should people have to rely on the haphazardness of charity, week in week out? The foodbank shopping trolleys at the front of supermarkets are getting emptier each week, as families who may find they have enough are finding that they don’t have enough over to share. Not even enough to chuck a tin of soup in a foodbank trolley.
Things need to change. JRF and the Trussell Trust recommend that a single person needs at least £120 a week to live on, and a couple needs £200. Arguably, people need even more to live with a degree of comfort. At the moment it’s £77.29 (£61.22 if you’re under 25, because everyone knows supermarkets and broadband providers give a youth discount*). Couples under 25 get £96.10 a week, and couples over 25 get £121.30. (*this is a lie. If only.)
Under the proposed Essentials Guarantee, there would be an independent process to regularly determine the right level, based on the cost of essentials – food, utilities, household goods exclusive of rent and council tax. Universal Credit would have to match this level. And deductions from benefits would never be allowed to let household income go below this level (at the moment, half of all UC claimants have deductions made from their benefits. Yeah. Try living on less than £70 a week. It would be ridiculous if it wasn’t so dangerous). The levels would need resetting annually as a minimum.
Disability Rights UK is also insisting that such proposals be applied to legacy benefits. These are older benefits which many disabled people claim because switching to UC means they live on far less money. Government doesn’t enjoy tinkering with these, because the systems behind them are creaky and stuck. It wants everyone on UC because the systems are shiny and fluid. But then the people on UC end up creaky and stuck when they have to live on even less money in times of extreme hardship.
Changes to benefits and benefit systems since 2008 have meant that Disabled people have lost payments of around £1,200 on average each year. Non-disabled people have seen a reduction of around £300. Research from January this year by the Resolution Foundation highlighted that Disabled people are hardest hit by the cost-of-living crisis. We are disproportionately struggling to pay energy costs and food bills. (If you’re struggling – Disability Rights UK has produced a guide to Universal Credit for disabled people).
Society has come to see benefits as a place of comfort and scrounging. But the reality is they are a safety net for people who can’t work, or can’t work full time. People raising the next generation of tax payers. People who care for the previous generation of tax payers. Disabled people who can’t work or who can only work a bit. You know, valid, lovely humans. Like you. Like me. It’s time to start stitching the net back together. The government needs to stop looking at darn benefit claimants and start darning. Big, bold stitches to hold the threads of society together, strong and safe.
Rights on Flights
Not all disabled people live in poverty. Some of us can even afford holidays. But we can’t go abroad very easily. I know loads of disabled people who restrict food and drink intake or use enemas or wear nappies so they don’t have to access the loo on planes because they can’t access the loos on planes, and nobody likes a poop in the middle aisles of economy. And if they can get on the planes, there is no guarantee they can get off the planes, because airports, porters and airlines can and frequently do damage vital mobility equipment in transit, meaning that at their destination, wheelchair-using disabled people can find they are effectively left with no legs. No mobility. This ended up killing Engracia Figueroa .
Loose Women star, Sophie Morgan, Scottish MP Marion Fellows, and Disability Rights UK have launched the Rights on Flights campaign. In the long term, we want disabled people to be able to roll on and off planes with their mobility equipment, but in the short term, we want the Civil Aviation Authority to be able to fine the firms which damage our wheelchairs and equipment, leave us sitting around on planes too long, and don’t give us assistance which truly meets our needs. Disability Rights UK is encouraging people to email or print off and send two letters to their MP to ask them to support this campaign. Signatures will be added to a letter for the attention of the Prime Minister, Minister for Transport and Disability Minister. All the details are here.
Any change for care down the back of the Parker Knoll?
There’s a hole in the care home purse. £2.3bn is missing from it. That’s about a fifth of what is needed to look after a fifth of a million older people in residential care. There’s also well over half a million missing to fund in-home carers. It could be as much as a billion.
Where does this loose change go? Is it with all the missing socks in the washing machine? Is it down the back of knackered care home Parker Knolls? Nobody knows. And it feels like the Treasury doesn’t really care, despite older people being a big chunk of the demographic which might actually support this government. Such older people are, of course, disabled people. Spritely older people with no long term health conditions don’t live in care homes. Disabled ones do. I’ve been writing these columns since the summer. Can you see the pattern in the money maths? Disabled people’s needs times massive funding shortfalls equals absolute lack of equality, dignity, health and wellbeing. D minus for Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. That’s not the grade he gets for consistently short changing a fifth of the population (all 14 million disabled people). That appears to be his attitude: D for disability equals minus funding pots.
Jeremy was knocking around the complex where both DR UK and Scope are based in East London last week. It’s a shame he didn’t knock on our doors while he was visiting. We would love to have a little chat.
