The austerity lie is finally unravelling. A succession of terror attacks, the Grenfell Tower fire and a botched TV interaction between Theresa May and a nurse, among other events, have put a spotlight on how unfair and shortsighted the cuts being made to some of our most essential services are. Even the “magic money tree” excuse has worn thin – the £1bn DUP deal has demonstrated that cash can indeed be conjured up when needed. People all over the UK are asking how it’s possible that those who save our lives, who look after us when we are sick and teach our children, have – year after year – faced real-terms cuts to their wages.
It’s shameful stuff, and the change in public attitudes should be welcomed. But the public-sector pay cap is just the tip of the iceberg. If we aren’t careful, the unravelling of austerity will end with just those we’ve been told to have sympathy for. A selective end to austerity is no end at all. Let’s talk welfare “reform”. Since 2010, cutting welfare benefits – including for those who are sick and disabled – has been a pillar of the Conservative austerity drive. In 2013 universal credit was introduced, which collapsed several different benefits, including housing benefit, income support, jobseeker’s allowance and working tax credits into one. Apart from being an administrative and IT nightmare that has left many people with delayed payments and rent arrears, the shift conceals benefit cuts that are being made at the same time. For instance, since April people receiving employment support allowance have lost £30 a week – despite evidence that a third of disabled people who were dependent on the allowance had struggled to feed themselves even before this benefit was slashed.
It is low-income families who stand to lose the most. Multiple studies have concluded that cuts to tax credits and universal credit will bear down most heavily on people in poverty. T has shown that the 3 million working households with children who are entitled to tax credits now will be an average of £2,500 a year worse off by 2020 as a result of the tax and benefit changes the government has introduced since 2015. Single-parent families and women of colour will be particularly impacted. As a consequence, the risk of poverty for adults living in working households has risen by over a quarter in the decade since 2004. Child poverty has risen too: 400,000 more children are growing up in poverty today than in 2010. It’s hard to put the human costs of these cuts into words, but perhaps the most startling figure is that food banks are seeing double the average demand in areas where universal credit has been fully rolled out.
Why did these cruel welfare cuts - affecting so many - fail to feature during and after the election? Even the Labour party’s manifesto was light on the issue, although it did promise to reverse disability benefits cuts. The most obvious reason is the regular demonisation of people on out-of-work benefits in some parts of the media: they are often depicted as lazy welfare scroungers, prone to criminal behaviour and substance abuse. As a result, we simply don’t have much sympathy for a large section of poorer people. Our efforts to end austerity have somewhat reflected this dividing line between the deserving (those working in emergency services) and the undeserving (“benefit scroungers”). And what about those who might be seen as more “deserving” because they are in work? Many low-income working families also face being significantly worse off as a result of changes to universal credit.
There is another reason that public opposition to benefits and tax credits cuts has been more limited than we might like: it’s a hugely complicated system. Who are we saving, and from what? Lifting the pay cap for public service workers is a far more easily understood option.
But while lifting the pay cap is a step forward, many public service workers are also reliant on tax credits. It’s estimated that one million public service workers are on low pay, including health and social care workers, school staff and local authority employees. This includes low-paid private sector workers who actually work in outsourced public service jobs – like many care workers. Lifting the pay cap while introducing further cuts to tax credits is giving with one hand while taking with the other.
There is a growing coalition to end government cuts to benefits and tax credits. But we need to win the same sort of public support that there is for scrapping the public sector pay cap. It’s telling that the government’s partial U-turn on tax credit cuts in 2015 came after a mother broke down in tears on BBC TV’s Question Time. In our reality TV world, people need to see the pain to feel sympathy. We need to use the momentum created by the campaign to end the public-sector pay cap, ensuring that the issue of welfare cuts finally gets the attention it deserves.
