This week I’m all about the UN and UC. Yes, I’m going to write another column about Universal Credit, and then add in some stuff about the United Nations. I know it’s not sexy. I know it’s dry. But it matters. It’s life and death stuff. Stick with me.
There’s a bit on the Government website which says: “If you do not have enough to live on while you wait for your first payment you can ask for an advance payment after you've made a claim. You can also ask for a hardship payment if you cannot pay for rent, heating, food or hygiene needs because you got a sanction.”
Which is all very lovely, but overlooks the fact that when you DO get your benefits through – they’re not anywhere near enough to live on. Weekly benefits not including rent components clock in at around the same price as a three course meal and a cocktail. Which is so far within the means of anyone in the Cabinet who can make decisions about benefits that the disjunct in being able to get all Confucian on the problem (“I do, I understand”) is glaring. They don’t live like this. They don’t understand.
Pretty much every Disabled People’s Organisation, every mainstream poverty and disability charity, and a whole host of local and national support organisations at the sharp end of helping the public when it comes to scrabbling round for basics (food, fuel, clothing, transport) has been screaming about this for a few years.
Now, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the NHS Confederation, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing and quite a few more similar organisations have added their voices and written to the PM to tell him that the cost of everyday essentials like food and housing is too high for people to afford; that people can’t afford to travel to medical appointments so are missing them; that people are not collecting medication because they can’t afford it, and all of this is having a sizeable impact on the nation’s health.
It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to notice that, did it? But it would appear that the Government still has the flaps of its deerstalker hat tied firmly over its ears. Because all we get is the same old same old about how benefits will rise with inflation. Government isn’t taking stock of what prices mean in the real world - in our everyday cul-de-sacs and council estates, far from Westminster, and the MP bubble of second homes and subsidised perks (working flats, cheap Parliamentary canteens).
It’s easy. This isn’t even GCSE-level home economical maths. Take the cost of rent, and fuel, and a weekly shop, and add them together. Then take the different parts of Universal Credit and add them together, and see if they match up. Surprise! They don’t. Last year, Trussell Trust food banks provided almost three million food parcels to people, including a million for children.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), which pulled the latest letter together, has found that single people on Universal Credit are £35 a week short of meeting the cost of essential items. Which begs the question, why are rational voices in the House of Commons still banging on about inflationary rises rather than real world rises? The JRF is calling for an ‘essentials guarantee’ - which DR UK fully supports.
Helen Barnard, Director of Policy at The Trussell Trust, said: “More than two-thirds (69%) of people referred to food banks in the Trussell Trust network are Disabled. Poverty, disability and ill-health are closely connected, with people on low incomes much more likely to have long-term health conditions and to experience more severe health difficulties.
"It’s simply unacceptable that so many people are left facing hunger and hardship that damages their health. Food banks are not the answer when people are going without the essentials in one of the richest economies in the world. We need a long-term solution to tackle poverty, improve the nation’s health and ensure everyone can afford the essentials. That’s why we need a social security system which provides protection and the dignity for people to cover their own essentials, such as food and bills.”
This level of poverty is part of the toxic mix causing extreme mental health outcomes for so many people in the country, many of them Disabled. I’m borderline apoplectic about the lack of resources invested in changing the benefits landscape so that people can start to thrive (newsflash – thriving on benefits doesn’t mean beers in Benidorm – it means feeling physically and mentally well enough to contribute to society in all sorts of positive ways, which is what the Government wants from us all). And I’m even more incandescent about the fact that this has been going on so long.
On Monday of this week, our CEO at Disability Rights UK, Kamran Mallick spent the day in Geneva at the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD), and ignoring the paint-drying dullness of that acronym, it’s rather important. Because in 2016, the UN found that the UK Government was catastrophically failing Disabled people by violating our human rights in terms of our rights to living standards, social protection, work and employment, and independent living.
A shadow report for the UN by a group of Disabled People’s Organisations in 2022 found that there had been a deterioration in the treatment of Disabled people on nearly every point raised in the 2016 report. Rather than seeing an improvement, during and after the pandemic, almost every aspect of our rights, income, living standards and support had got worse. And so it goes on. You’d think the Government would rock up to a meeting like that wouldn’t you, to share the progress it had made in the past seven years on addressing the issues found in such a major Inquiry. But it chose not to attend.
I’ll say that again: It. Chose. Not. To. Attend. And I doubt very much that it was to save money because the cost of a return business class flight on BA is around ten times the current basic rate of Universal Credit. I’m trying to work out how a bunch of Disabled people with high needs can make it from England to Geneva to attend this meeting, and yet the Government (incidentally only five people in the House of Commons identify as Disabled), couldn’t make the effort to send someone over there and explain what it’s doing or not doing for the 14 million of us in this country who are Disabled. To rectify the massive failings which have been identified and lobbied on for years. Why, like Ferris Bueller, was it having a day off?
Anyone? Anyone?
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