Gordon Brown has called for the creation of a multibillion-pound national poverty programme using interest levied on bank reserve funds as part of an emergency plan to halt Britain’s slide into a “hungry decade” of destitution and hardship.
The former UK prime minister said the programme would signify a break with 14 years of austerity and help provide short term “pain relief” to millions of people in desperate hardship, alongside an overhaul of Britain’s welfare safety net.
Ending the “worsening hunger, destitution and extreme poverty that divides and disfigures our country” should be at the centre of efforts to enable Britain to “rediscover its moral compass” and ward off social despair, he said.
The fund would be a two-year “transitional arrangement” to provide breathing space for struggling families rather than a comprehensive solution to poverty, Brown said. It would only succeed if ministers signed up to longer term anti-poverty measures.
Brown’s comments, made at the Rabbi Jonathan Sacks memorial lecture in London on Wednesday night, come days after the latest official UK figures revealed big rises in hunger and foodbank use.
It is the latest intervention on poverty by Brown, the Labour prime minister between 2007 and 2010. Already this year he has criticised Britain’s “obscene” levels of destitution and called for reform of the benefits system.
In the Sacks lecture he was expected to say poverty and hardship have become one of the most visible signs of social division in recent years and have helped underpin a worsening public climate of pessimism, adding that failure to tackle it would risk Britain “sinking into a paralysing sense of despair”.
“A troubled decade has fast become a hungry decade and no society can, or should be, at ease when children are being brought up in homes without heating, kitchens without cookers, bedrooms without beds, floors without floor covering, toilets without toilet rolls or soap. And all the evidence is that unless we act, things will get even worse,” said Brown.
“Britain needs a plan to end the hunger, destitution and squalor that is disfiguring our country based on partnership and the government should use the autumn financial statement, which now looks likely will be the last economic intervention by the current government before the general election to announce a break with the past 14 years.”
Brown called on government, business and charities to work together on a rapid poverty alleviation programme, using £3bn raised from measures including bank levies, changes to Gift Aid, and incentives to persuade large companies and wealthy individuals to donate more to good causes.
The bank levy would involve a change in the rules to enable the government to redirect to the national poverty programme a slice of the interest payments made to banks from the reserve deposits they are required to hold at the Bank of England for regulatory purposes. This alone would raise more than £1.3bn, Brown suggests.
Writing for the Guardian, Brown said: “It would not be the end of poverty, but it is the signal the whole country needs: the beginning of the end. It would address the costs crippling families now, and create the headroom in which to fix our welfare safety net.
“With communities, charities, companies and government working together to deliver a shared national goal, we can rapidly banish destitution, and support the 2,600 food banks in their ambition to make themselves redundant – and a divided country can find unity, and hope, again.”
