From the dramatic rise of food banks to the drastic withdrawal of benefits, our writers assess how the coalition's austerity measures have left millions of households across Britain struggling to survive
Ransford Amoah helps out at a food bank in
Croydon, south London. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
Patrick Butler: Retreat of the welfare state
A new wave of poverty crashed over the
voluntary sector. Food banks, almost entirely dependent on volunteers and
donated food, grew
rapidly to try to take the strain caused by low wages, rising living costs,
and benefit cuts and delays. Demand surged after April, when welfare changes
started to take substantial chunks from the incomes of the poorest, many of them
ill and disabled.
Breakfast clubs, clothes
banks, and even "baby banks" also sprang up as in-kind support began to
replace dwindling welfare cash entitlements.
Poverty charities organised
ever-bigger national food drives with large supermarkets for food banks to give
out. This was a charitable
food effort not seen since the second world war. Police reported a rise in
shoplifting of groceries, often by mothers desperate to prevent their children
from going hungry. Doctors declared that food poverty was now
a "public
health emergency".
The Department for Work and
Pensions refused to admit there was any evidence of a
link between welfare reform and food bank use.
Charities told tales of
injustice, fear and humiliation endured by the most vulnerable, as a result of
increased benefit sanctions, the bedroom tax and the
Atos-run fit-for-work tests. The "heat
or eat" dilemma slipped into the public consciousness. The church
rediscovered its campaigning heart on debt and payday
lending.
Corrosive cuts to charities
and community groups continued. There were veiled political threats to
campaigning charities through the lobbying bill. The big
society may not be dead, argued a recent
audit, but it was healthiest as a form of reactive crisis voluntarism. The
outlook was far less rosy for small charities reliant on state funding to supply
specialist welfare services in deprived areas; they, the audit concluded, were
"left out in the cold", their future increasingly bleak.
Amelia Gentleman: Disabled people bear the brunt of cuts
This has been a year of
exceptional uncertainty for recipients of disability benefits, as new payments
were introduced and eligibility criteria narrowed. Anger about some of the new
policies triggered successful protest campaigns.
Two-thirds of those
affected by the bedroom tax, introduced in April, were disabled – and many
subsequently found themselves obliged to pay extra for rooms where carers sleep
and specialist equipment is stored. A survey
revealed that 90% of disabled people affected by the bedroom tax, who hadn't
received a safety-net payment, were cutting back on food bills.
Two ongoing legal reviews
criticised the government. Three charities that support people with mental
health problems pursued
a judicial review of the work capability assessment (WCA) the fitness for
work test used to determine whether hundreds of thousands of disabled people are
eligible for benefits. Judges in a preliminary hearing agreed that the system
was unfair for some of the most vulnerable people in society. The charities
called for the testing process to be halted, until the test was fairer.
Delays
in paying the personal independence payment (which replaces the disability
living allowance) to people with terminal illnesses meant hundreds of very ill
cancer patients faced months without money, and some died before they received
the benefit. The new disability minister, Mike Penning, promised the system
would improve.
Grassroots campaigners set
up the War on Welfare (Wow)
petition, and gathered 100,000 signatures calling for an end to the WCA and
demanding a cumulative impact assessment on all cuts and changes affecting
disabled people, their families and their carers. Comedian and Wow campaigner
Francesca Martinez said the campaign was "beginning to challenge this idea that
disabled people are scroungers".
Randeep Ramesh: Young people losing out
When the OECD
warned that England was the only country in the developed world where the
generation approaching retirement is more literate and numerate than the
youngest adults, it was a stark reminder of a rift emerging between the old and
young. Politicians begin to recognise that, for the first time since the war,
young Britons embarking on their careers cannot expect to be any better off than
their parents, while those approaching retirement have never had it so good. The
prime minister's response was to tough it out. In his party conference speech,
he made it clear that Britain would only be a "land of opportunity" if young
people understood the only choice was "between earning
or learning".
What is shocking is that the link between growth and jobs for young people has been broken. The jobless rate among under-25s is now 3.74 times the adult rate.
More than 950,000 young
people are now unemployed and almost a third (30% ) have been looking for work
for more than a year. Yet the government's flagship Work Programme, undertaken
mainly by private sector contractors, is
failing to deliver. In the second year, providers were expected to get a
third of young people into sustained employment. This was met in only 18 out of
40 contracts. The problem is that often the coalition's tough-love policy – of
mandatory schemes involving work experience and community activity – doesn't
work. Academics point out that the strictest schemes are less likely to work,
largely because they can deter people from claiming benefit without improving
their chances of finding employment. It may be time to change.
Hannah Fearn: Bedroom tax and benefit cap hits home
An inauspicious year for
housing was ushered in by the much-maligned bedroom tax, a cut in
housing benefit for each bedroom that a social tenant under-occupies. The
divisive policy led to a number of legal
challenges. A £500-a-week cap on all benefits as private sector rents soar
is having a devastating impact. Across London and some other cities, private
tenants claiming housing benefit to pay their rent are unable to find anywhere
to live within the cap level, and landlords are refusing to rent to benefit
claimants, most of whom are working. In parts of the capital, housing benefit no
longer even covers the cost of "affordable rent" charged by social landlords. As
a result, households are being shunted
out of London to cheaper cities as far away as Hull and Stoke-on-Trent,
leaving their communities behind.
The government stands accused of presiding over the
end of social housing and a huge rise in homelessness. More than 2,000
homeless families with children were in emergency bed and breakfast
accommodation on 30 September, the highest figure for a decade.
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