Vulnerability and Destitution

Before the election was called, the rights of those living with chronic illness and disabilities had already resurfaced as a crunch political issue. Here Stef Benstead focuses on whether the General Election might bring a new approach.

When I started writing this piece, a general election hadn’t yet been called. Although I felt like I had spent the last few months watching a government in its final death throes, thrashing around in the hopes of hitting on a policy that proved popular with the electorate, I didn’t think the death was so imminent. But for people like me, living with chronic illness and disability, the announcement marks the dawning of hope.

The last 14 years have seen a sustained attack on sick and disabled people. It is assumed that we don’t know what is good for us (work would cure us of a wide range of ills); that what is primarily wrong with us is our morals and especially our attitude towards work; that an overly-generous government is corrupting our character and wasting taxpayer’s money; and that, overall, poverty and worklessness is the fault of the individual and not much to do with a government that might be deemed to have some sort of responsibility for managing the country and the economy towards full employment.

The outcome of these beliefs about poverty and sick and disabled people has been repeated action to cut Social Security generally, and sick and disabled people’s benefits in particular. Soon after entering power, the Conservatives launched their Welfare Reform Act 2012, with a clear intention of spending less on Social Security. The WRA brought in Universal Credit, which combined some good ideas (one benefit for both in- and out-of- work groups, instead of unaligned benefits and tax credits) with some bad ones (excluding Council Tax Support; a high taper rate; and less money for some people unable to work). It introduced the Bedroom Tax, which penalised people in social housing if they were deemed to have too many bedrooms for their needs, even though the majority couldn’t do anything about it. It started the change from Disability Living Allowance to Personal Independence Payment for disabled people, which aimed to see 600,000 fewer disabled people receiving support for the extra costs they incurred due to their disability. A cap was also introduced to limit the maximum amount of social security that a family could receive, with the result that child poverty has increased.

As a Christian, seeing these measures being brought in has been deeply concerning to me. On the surface level, it should be immediately concerning whenever a government proposes cutting money from people who are poor. The only justifications would be if these people were not poor (because the government gave them too much money; or they claimed on a criminal basis); or if a very high proportion of these people would swiftly obtain an improved income from another source (i.e., get a job). But the evidence is against both of these positions.

The benefit rates paid out by government have never been enough to keep a person out of poverty, meaning that any cuts to such rates make a bad situation even worse. We have now reached the point where the basic benefit for jobseekers is less than the minimum needed to survive, pushing people onto the uncertainties of charity. The £90.80/week that jobseekers get to live off is woeful compared to the £309.15 that the British public says is the minimum needed for social participation, and less than the £95/week needed to avoid destitution. That’s before some of that money is used to top-up rent and council tax, neither of which are fully supported through Social Security system. These are people who are going without sufficient food, heating, or toiletries, whilst still being required by the state to spend 35 hours/week looking for work, at the risk of having their money cut for weeks if they make just one mistake amongst a raft of requirements.

It is not generally plausible for people affected by benefit cuts to just go out and find a job. Partly, this is because many of the jobs that are available are low-wage with poor working conditions and shifts that don’t fit well with childcare or public transport timetables. The cost of childcare and commuting rapidly overcomes the increase in income obtained by being in work. But mostly it’s because there are only 900,000 job vacancies for 1.4mn jobseekers, and many of those jobs will be filled by people moving from one job to another. Then there’s the people who are too sick or disabled to work, but whom the government nevertheless wanted to see moved onto jobseekers benefits. Their hope was to move 425,000 people out of the relative safety of no work-related requirements and some extra money, onto either jobseeking or work preparation benefits – but only expected 15,000 to actually get work. These people face conditionality and destitution for essentially no benefit.

The calling of the General Election has already brought positive results. The legislation that would have seen those 425,000 pushed into deeper poverty and distress will no longer go forward. The plans for changing Personal Independence Payment, to reduce the support given to sick and disabled people for extra costs and make it harder for people to meet their needs, have also been dropped.  Labour is staying fairly quiet on welfare, but their underlying ideology is not as negative towards poor, sick and disabled people as is the Conservatives’.

For Christians, considerations of poverty and justice should always be high on the agenda. The Conservatives’ approach to poverty relies on the underlying problem being the bad character of poor, sick and disabled people; but their diagnosis is wrong, and therefore their proposed treatment is deeply harmful. Labour does not have the same bent towards the poor as is seen in the laws given by God to the Ancient Israelites (I discuss this in my forthcoming book, Just Worship), but they are not as bad on this topic as the Conservatives.

Stef Benstead is a Christian passionate about social justice and God’s love for the poor. She carries out research on disability and sickness policy, and in 2019 published Second Class Citizens, a book which considers the history of the UK’s treatment of disabled people and the creation and subsequent steady dismantling of the welfare state. She has worked with the Spartacus Network, joining with other sick and disabled people to critique the government’s approach to sick and disabled people, and has been commissioned for research by both Ekklesia and the Chronic Illness Inclusion Project. https://www.stefbenstead.co.uk