Submission on behalf of the European Minimum Income Network (EMIN), a project of the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN). For further information contact Dr Katherine Duffy, [email protected]; T 0044 (0)1530 245310 or 0044 (0)7753824944 Poverty Alliance (EAPN in Scotland) is submitting separately. GENERAL Q1 EAPN and its EMIN project use 60% of median household income which is part of the EU AROPE. We use other individual elements of the combined AROPE including severe material deprivation. We use an expenditure-based measure to reality-test whether income is meeting needs: see CRSP. Falling median income can disguise the extent of material poverty. Advantages of the 60% of income measure: • tracks trends • shows how people at risk of poverty are sharing in general wealth • allows cross-national comparison of a ‘poverty-line’ • concretizes our ambition for social assistance incomes Q2 • UK government’s official poverty indicator is child poverty. We dislike this narrow approach; there are no rich children in poor families • The previous child poverty indicators included income. The current Government focus is worklessness. Paid work is not a sustainable route out of poverty for many people most at risk. The indicator flatters UK achievement as we have a high labour force participation rate but widespread low pay and insecure employment • Reinstate the previous child poverty indicators plus a broader set (see Q1) Q6 The East Midlands, including Leicester. The city is the first majority-minority city in England. It has an inner-city ward that is 27th most deprived in England, mainly people of south-Asian origin and Muslim faith. There are city centre migrant and refugee communities and poor outer suburbs, often white and English. Wages are low and inactivity high; education and health outcomes are poor. It has had severe central government grant cuts. Full-service UC rolled out in June 2018. The city voted narrowly remain in the Brexit referendum. The shire counties especially Derbyshire and Lincolnshire, are areas of declining engineering, coal, agriculture and fishing industries. They voted heavily Brexit, but the East Midlands will be one of the most highly exposed areas for trade after Brexit. Q7 • Contact with grass roots groups in England: Katherine Duffy UK EMIN coordinator, [email protected]; Nazek Ramadan, Migrant Voice [email protected]; Colin Hampton, Derbyshire Unemployed Workers’ Centres, [email protected]; Gail Ward, Disabled People Against the Cuts [email protected]; Hassan Ali, 1 Leicester Community Services, [email protected] ; ATD Fourth World, T 0044 (0)2077033231 • East Midlands Hearing/ round tables: Sir Peter Soulsby, City Mayor of Leicester, [email protected]; Rory Palmer, MEP, [email protected]; Ruth George, MP, [email protected]; Jon Ashworth, MP; [email protected]; Shaun Pender, Unite Community, [email protected]; Donald Hirsch, Centre for Social Policy, [email protected]; Katherine Duffy, as above AUSTERITY Q8 Not necessary. The macroeconomic model is based on the assumption of cut to grow, ignoring Keynesianism. See IFS Q9 No. UK has the highest ratio of expenditure cuts to tax rises (approx. 85:15); the major burden has been borne by women, children and people with a disability. Young people have suffered from lack of access to stable jobs due to slow unbalanced growth and rising tenure. Q10 • Child poverty was falling, now rising and will rise another one million. The tax/benefit support for children is cut and there is a 4-year benefits freeze. Increases for over 25s in the national minimum wage and in the childcare offer, compensate for one quarter of cuts in tax/ benefit support for low incomes • Rough sleeping and homelessness were falling, now rising, due to cuts in services in a broken housing market See CRISIS and SHELTER • Food banks are becoming an integral part of social support, signposted from Job Centre Plus • Relative income poverty trends have been mixed – partly due to changes in the wage structure, including increase in the national minimum wage and compression of middle- income wages. The main relative income measures exclude the very richest 0.1% and the very lowest incomes. Expenditure-based measures show worse poverty outcomes. Wealth is more unequally distributed. • Severe grant cuts to NGOs and other civil society organisations, especially advocacy groups and grass-roots groups, has meant overwhelming pressure on civil society, closures and reduced services, and, often faith groups as the only remaining provider – e.g. food banks • 2 examples in Leicester show pressure at the grass-roots 1) a grassroots group in a poor minority area ran a 3-days a week school holiday food scheme, with food from Foodshare. The initial food was unsuitable, so they bought their own food. Because of the requirement for criminal records checks for non-parent carers, mothers had to come with the children, a positive in promoting healthy eating, but the small team had to again buy from their own pocket £150 worth of games from charity shops, so the mothers had activities they could do with the children. It worked well, but reached 40 families, with no obvious resource to extend in future. 2) UNITE the Union has considerable resources and campaigns nationally to stop UC. But the Community branches of UNITE for unemployed, students, retired and some gig workers have each just a few hundred pounds at their own disposal. Members want to better inform UC claimants, as they feel migration to UC is happening with inadequate information and support from existing sources, to the detriment of claimants and to those 2 encouraged to ‘migrate’ to UC, even if their circumstances have not changed and it is not required. Members have been leafletting outside Job Centres, ran activists’ meetings and had a training day to help people ‘buddy’ at assessments and tribunals. They are seeking from UNITE resources to provide a signpost service one day a week. The volume of work is difficult to sustain on a voluntary basis. Q11 • Economic and social rights: UC: See UC statement by Gail Ward a disability activist, and SSAC submission by and M Zolobajluk and G Ward, plus UC statement by Kathy K, living long term on disability benefits/ UC, all attached. • Civil and political rights are breached for temporary agency workers and zero-hours workers (more of whom are minority ethnic group, migrant, young) and the self-employed. Exclusion from rights to organise, not having written contract terms, or any guarantee of work and intrusive monitoring are all prevalent. See attached IWGB plus DUWC on precarious workers Q12 Cities and shire counties have faced up to 50% cuts in central government grant (to be eliminated in the early 2020s). Poorer places suffer most due to higher need, new metrics and lower funds from business rates; some lost six times as much as richer councils (JRF 2015). In Leicester, libraries are cut in staff and opening times, building-based youthwork is eliminated, provision for homelessness is cut back, Sure Start centres for disadvantaged children are closed or much reduced, payments to care homes for the elderly and disabled risk being below cost, public buildings and public spaces are closed and sold, privatised or rely on volunteers. The local authority welfare rights service has faced cuts, requests for voluntary redundancy, reissuing of the contract for welfare advice and telephone service only, while UC rolls out. The Local Authority tries to mitigate, e.g. minimising risk of eviction for non-payment of rent, but it needs every source of revenue. Q13 Better social assistance and public services means more would be spent and taxed in the UK. Borrowing at very low interest to spend on green infrastructure and genuinely affordable housing would benefit growth. More progressive tax, closure of loopholes, and better floors under wages would improve the tax base rather than shrinkage and reliance on regressive indirect taxes. Combined with tough financial regulation and changes to land and property tax, there would have been lower inequality, better access to housing and services and maybe different politics. UNIVERSAL CREDIT See attached draft documents from the ongoing EMIN project: ATD ‘reality on the ground’ grassroots discussion report; UC statements by Gail Ward and Kathy K and SSAC submission by M Zolobajluk and G Ward; two case studies from Advising London, EMIN Leicester seminar and Glasgow Round Table UC reports and EMIN UK UC take-up report Q15 The National Audit Office and the Archbishop of Canterbury say it has failed. It has built-in and roll- out flaws. As the Social Policy Task Force, (an advisory group with DWP) we laid out the potential problems in 2010 when Frank Field MP was ‘poverty tsar,’ to no avail. 3 • Every claimant’s circumstances are different, complexity is unavoidable • Making Work Pay’? The cuts to allowances and premiums, the taper rate of 63p in the £1 plus transport and childcare contribution costs, pressure to take any job or be sanctioned • The majority of claimants get lower benefits under UC, often significantly lower • Housing support is not part of UC, resulting in confusion and debt • Gig economy workers with no guaranteed hours have their top-up benefits recalculated weekly, with frequent errors and no capacity to budget • UC has a greater disincentive for second earners than the previous system Q16 There is justified complaint about the administration of UC. But the core problem for poverty is the benefits levels are too low for a decent life and uprating has stopped in the four-year freeze. UC is less than half the 60% relative poverty line for families and one-third for single people (see Prof.