How Austerity Means Scottish Families Are Getting Caught In The Poverty Trap

Susan Price rails at politicians. She claims they “don’t have a clue” how policies impact people’s lives.

“They need to come and live like we do for a good six months,” she says, “on the money we get. And not have the bank account there just to be able to go: ‘Oh yeah, here you go and get it.’ We don’t have that, do you know what I mean?

“It’s fine for them to sit and drop this bill in, that bill, and the next bill in to the House of Commons, or wherever and say: ‘This is how people have to live. We think they can live on X amount a week.’ How can they think that? They’ve not had to do it.”

There has been scathing criticism of the UK government’s austerity policy. In May the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty, Professor Phillip Alston, said “ideological” cuts to public services since 2010 have led to “tragic consequences”.

His report said that close to 40 per cent of children are likely to live in poverty by 2021, adding the DWP had been tasked with “designing a digital and sanitised version of the 19th century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens”.

The UK government responded then by saying Alston’s report was “barely believable”. The DWP told The Ferret more than £95bn each year is spent on working age benefits, and claimed children growing up in working households are five times less likely to be in relative poverty than children growing up in workless households.

By contrast, Alston praised the Scottish government. During a visit to Edinburgh in September, he said Scotland is on “a very different trajectory” from the rest of the UK regarding social security. He said the spirit of the welfare state was “alive and humming” north of the border.

In 2017, the Scottish government’s Child Poverty Bill introduced income-based child poverty targets – making Scotland the only nation in the UK to have these enshrined in law.

As part of a drive to reduce child poverty, the Scottish government announced this year it will introduce a new Scottish Child Payment, a plan to give money to low-income families, starting in early 2021.

But a report in October by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation urged the Scottish government to do more, arguing this plan alone will not be enough to reach its target of reducing child poverty to 10 per cent by 2030.

In reply, the Scottish government told The Ferret it was taking “concrete action” including the introduction of the new Scottish Child Payment. By the end of 2022 it will be worth £10 per week per child under 16 in eligible households.

A Scottish government spokesperson added: “Our range of measures to support families also includes almost doubling funded Early Learning and Childcare for all three- and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds to 1,140 hours by August 2020, delivering employability support through Fair Start Scotland, and promoting payment of the real Living Wage through our work to build a Living Wage nation.

“In 2018-19, we invested over £1.4bn on support targeted at low income households – including £100m to mitigate the worst impacts of UK government welfare cuts, estimated to reduce social security spending in Scotland by £3.7bn by 2021.”

Cunningham says she would prefer to focus on helping people such as Price and Paton and not get into the “political game of blaming”.

“I’m not particularly interested in that but there is at Westminster an agenda and it is kind of pushed up through the ranks in Scotland,” she said. “But the communities who have the least have been hit the hardest. There’s no two ways about it.”

Fife Gingerbread has also been affected by cuts. In January, Cunningham went public about its financial crisis and said the charity needed £600,000 to keep operating at its current level. External funding had ended.

At the time, Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon was urged to intervene after being warned the charity would be unable to serve two thirds of the 200 families it supports. “There was a fairly tricky time,” she says, “and it still is a tricky time. It’s not over.

“This is the world we live in. So it is a bit ironic that, at times, when the need is greater than ever, when poverty levels are way higher than they’ve ever been and show no signs whatsoever of reducing, that the services that support the most vulnerable, are the most vulnerable.”

The Austerity Era

Almost a decade ago the Conservative-led coalition government introduced a policy of austerity – a sustained reduction in public spending, welfare reform and tax rises – in response to the 2008 economic crash. Between 2010 and 2019 cuts of more than£30m have been made to welfare, housing and social services, according to the United Nations. Cuts have been made to budgets from policing to health.

Poverty has risen dramatically over the decade. Almost one in five people in Scotland now live in poverty, and for children the situation is worse, with one in four in poverty. The use offood banks doubles when Universal Credit is rolled out. Homelessness has increased andcrime rates are up, as well ashospital waiting lists.

The UK government says austerity is now over. It expects tolift the freeze on working age benefits in April 2020 in line with inflation and sayspublic spending increased this year by 4.1%.

A spokesperson said: “The UK government spends over £95bn a year on welfare, and we have simplified the benefits system through Universal Credit – making it easier for people to access support, including care leavers. Under personal independence payments, a higher proportion of disabled claimants are receiving the top rate of support.”