Crisis at Christmas

This is the season of goodwill where the plight of others pricks our conscience and demands our compassion. After the tax credits turn-around, there should have been some respite for people living in poverty, but we now know that £3bn will still be cut from the income of the poor in the New Year as Universal Credit is rolled out. 

William Beveridge, in 1942, identified want, disease, squalor, ignorance and idleness as the great evils to be tackled by a progressive social reform programme and the introduction of a welfare state. For a generation, this path was followed by successive governments. All of the evils have to be tackled, in particular, want, which is essentially about giving people enough money to live on. Beveridge argued that this was the foundation of everything else. 

This present Conservative government is tearing asunder this post-war consensus and dismantling our welfare system. For the Conservative ultras, America seems to have it right. In the US there is more enthusiasm for charity, churches and Christianity to provide a less than secure safety net rather than a progressive welfare state. There, from the depression years and made permanent in 1964, Food Stamps, more technically known as SNAP – the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Programme – now help feed over 44 million people at an annual cost of nearly $76bn! Philosophically, our Conservative government admires the American way, with its market freedom, small government and minimal welfare – which is now becoming all too evident in Britain.

Inequality of income, wealth and opportunities lie at the heart of the problems we are facing. If we can’t abolish poverty, then making people healthier, better educated, more socially mobile, included and content will simply not happen. 

A shocking example of the moral and political decline of Britain is the growth of foodbanks. This is not a complex issue: a growing number of people in Britain, one of the richest countries in the world, do not have enough money for food.

In 2014/15, according to the Trussell Trust, over one million people used foodbanks in the UK. In Scotland, nearly 120,000 people, including nearly 40,000 children used them. In 2014/15, there are nearly 450 foodbanks in Britain compared with two in 1903/04. In Conservative Britain, this is one of the fastest growing sectors – 36,788 professionals, 10,280 tons of food donations and 42,000 volunteers. Experts warn that figures showing a 19 per cent rise year on year are just the tip of the iceberg. 

Austerity has certainly played its part. The rising cost of food, unemployment, underemployment, redundancy, illness, benefit delays and changes, domestic violence, debt, low and stagnant incomes, family breakdown and paying for the additional costs of heating during winter are just some of the reasons why people go hungry. 

This is the real danger of the creeping dismantling of the welfare state, captured in the Conservative narrative. What started as a response to an immediate need is now becoming institutionalised and is forming part of a different kind of welfare provision. 

Tameside Hospital has set up a permanent on-site foodbank in A&E, with food parcels for needy patients who are going home. Other hospitals have already started offering food and clothing, after a sharp rise in people admitted with malnutrition; nearly 40 per cent of hospital admissions in the UK are patients who are malnourished.

The DWP, in a more sinister way, is also assisting the foodbank revolution by directing and referring people to avoid some of the special hardship payments they have for emergency situations. The Trussell Trust believes up to half of foodbank clients arrive because “their benefits have been delayed or sanctioned by Job Centre staff working to quotas of people they must target each month”. Iain Duncan Smith is working hard to ensure that foodbanks are here to stay. 

NHS Health Scotland’s excellent work on inequalities reveals the classic link between health and poverty: “The gaps between those with the best and worst health and wellbeing still persist and some are widening, with too many Scots dying prematurely.” This is illustrated in Glasgow, where men’s life expectancy goes down by two years for every station on the trainline travelling from Jordanhill (in the west end) to Bridgeton (in the east end). On average, a man born in Bridgeton can expect to live 14.3 years less than his counterpart in Jordanhill, a woman, 11.7 years less. In the most affluent areas of Scotland, men experience 23.8 more years of ‘good health’, women, 22.6 years. Again, are we living in 1915 or 2015?

The relationship between our politics, ethics and public life remains at the heart of this. Look to America if you want to see the kind of future being shaped by the Conservatives in Britain. That is where obscene levels of poverty exist amidst plenty. Is this where we are heading? Poverty should be the most important issue in the battle for Holyrood in 2016. 

Peace and goodwill to all.