To many, all this sounds like a very attractive proposition.  Efficiency always sounds like a great idea.  We’ve all heard far too many stories of extravagance and waste and even outright fraud in the public sector.  No doubt most of us think we could do a better job of spending our money than our political masters.  And I’ve yet to meet anyone who enjoys paying tax.

To the libertarian, the welfare state is fundamentally immoral and inefficient.  Not only does it remove the incentive to work for some, but it also unfairly forces all workers to contribute to their support.  The libertarian capitalist argument says that everyone is responsible for their own wellbeing and, without the “something for nothing” approach of the welfare state, people will work harder to find and retain the best job they can.  Those who are unable to work will be recipients of the noblesse oblige of the rich, whose philanthropic instincts will be encouraged by the absence of a state-sponsored welfare system.

The approach starts to fall down when you consider some of the practicalities, though.  If a corporation wishes to start an industrial process with significant environmental impact then how wide does its negotiating circle have to go, especially if it expects to produce a high level of carbon emissions that may affect the whole world?  How strong are the relative bargaining positions of the wealthy business-owner and the unskilled worker she wishes to employ on very low wages, or the powerful corporation and the area of very high unemployment to which it relocates?  And what happens if the wealthy (and even the not-so-wealthy) don’t keep up their end of the implicit bargain with those who are unable to work?  After all, a safety net is never needed until someone actually falls down.

That’s not to say that we can’t learn some useful lessons from this kind of philosophy.  Above all, I think it helps us ask some serious questions about “corporate welfare” and corporate responsibility.  We often hear politicians arguing that people must take personal responsibility for their circumstances and do whatever is required to improve their lives.  Libertarians hold strongly to this view, but they also insist that corporations must stand on their own two feet as well.

In Britain recently, not only have we seen major companies receive massive government subsidies, but also the ongoing effects of a system that effectively allows them to abdicate their responsibility, in order to pay their own way. Our “corporate welfare state” distorts the market drastically and, as the libertarian model predicts, this leads to inefficiency, excessive state intervention and worse outcomes for low-paid workers.

For example, I pay taxes that go into a central pot, some of which goes back out to other workers as child or working tax credits – a complicated arrangement that sees workers on low pay, who pay tax, claiming credits from the government to top up their income.  While this has been a fairly effective way of lifting children out of poverty, it doesn’t seem like the simplest solution. Given that the tax credit system is one of the most notoriously unreliable bureaucracies we have, wouldn’t it also be easier – and much more efficient –to cut out the middle-man by increasing the basic tax allowance to the living wage, and, as a result, not have those people paying tax in the first place?  It just doesn’t seem fair to have low earners paying taxes before they’ve made enough to feed their families. The losses to the Exchequer could even be offset by a slight increase in the tax rate for those earning above the new threshold, if that was deemed necessary.

People working in poverty reduction often talk about the importance of increasing government-sponsored childcare so that people, especially women, with children can enter (or re-enter) the workforce more easily.  But why should this – a direct cost of employing someone with a family – come out of the taxes of other workers who are already financially stretched? Why not reduce everyone’s taxes by the amount the country spends on such initiatives, and instead demand that employers come up with decent childcare provision themselves?  Better yet, we could insist that companies just pay their workers at a level that lets those workers choose the childcare provider that bests suits their needs, whether that’s a nursery close to home or paying grandma appropriately for the caring work she takes on.

And why in the world should anyone who has a full-time job need to claim any kind of benefits just to survive? Shouldn’t we be asking why wages are so low in some jobs that people can’t afford a decent life without a state subsidy? Government ministers insist that welfare reform is vital if people are to escape a “culture of dependency” and if they are to “make work pay”. But if a company is only profitable because other people’s taxes are enabling it to keep wages low, who is really “dependent” and who is really responsible for work not paying?

All these questions would be answered if the welfare state was, indeed, only providing ordinary people with a measure of protection from the vagaries of a sometimes cruel economic system. But some benefits given to ordinary people ultimately “subsidise” the low wages of many jobs.  In the end, that’s welfare for companies at the expense of everyone else.  I don’t think many of us believe that’s a healthy way for our economy to operate.

My taxes (and yours) should go towards insuring the nation against an economic downturn that forces many of us out of work, or against the existence of people who are simply unable to work.  My taxes (and yours) shouldn’t go to fund systems that, whether by accident or design, keep other people at or near the poverty line.  I’m happy enough to contribute to the welfare of people who are struggling to make ends meet on their own. I’m not at all comfortable paying for profitable corporations to keep them that way.

Kenny McBride works for Oxfam’s UK Poverty Programme in Scotland.  He wouldn’t know who to vote for in an American election.

Chill winds are sweeping Britain’s economy with a general expectation that poverty will increase in the coming years, and that poverty reduction targets will be missed. Alarm bells rang loudly after hints that the Government is considering changing the way it measures poverty. They wouldn’t just do this because unmet targets are embarrassing. Difficult times mean that politics in Britain has primarily become an exercise in allocating pain, not spreading butter. It may be tempting to just try to protect those with access to power, a voice, or those likely to vote because they still believe the status quo can work for them.

But this would be like applying sticking plasters to a breaking dam. Ignoring the 13.5 million people suffering below the poverty line wouldn’t just be immoral, it would be nonsensical. For two reasons, economic weakness has made tackling poverty more important, not less. Firstly, the solutions to Britain’s economic malaise require the inclusion of people on low incomes. Secondly, poverty in Britain is caused by a dysfunctional economy, and in this financial crisis, this underlying dysfunction is dragging down the living standards for growing numbers of people.

Why is solving poverty more important than ever?

If Britain is going to rebalance its economy to take advantage of new global opportunities in the way that the Government and business organisations like the CBI want, then our people and their skills will become more important determinants of growth. Some economists argue that because middle classes have become more educated, they are likely to provide fewer productivity gains in future. This means that improving poor peoples’ economic inclusion is even more important – a stable, decent standard of living is a precondition for realising potential.

Instead, increasing numbers of people are being subjected to the kinds of pressures and vulnerabilities that have existed at the bottom for years. The share of national income that goes to workers has not only declined inexorably during recent decades, but has kept falling during recession. This problem is affecting the majority of people in Britain as well as those below the poverty line. People are increasingly realising that while they’re working for the economy, the economy isn’t working for them.

This isn’t really new, it’s just worse than ever. UK economy has become supremely ineffective at including people. The proceeds of growth are not allocated where they are due. So as the numbers of those struggling with unemployment, underemployment and in-work poverty all rise, the gap between an “underclass” of the workless and millions more people in work will become more blurred. Now is the time to make common cause, to commit to tackling the underlying drivers of poverty, because it is more obvious than ever that doing so will benefit the majority. This is why a plan to come together to deal with the fallout of the economic crisis is an essential part of a bright, attainable vision of the future.

What needs to happen?

Firstly elites need to change the way they talk and think about poverty, being clear that it’s a problem for everyone. For most people, although extreme deprivation persists, poverty is decreasingly a question of ‘them’ and ‘us’.

Secondly, Britain needs big changes that work for the majority. Policymakers must make sure new forms of growth include society from the bottom up, and commit to reversing the rise of economic inequality that is making the financial crisis more painful for millions. And economic policy must focus on increasing the quality as well as the quantity of work. Work is now a debasing experience for millions of people: it offers low pay, few chances of progression, and little security. This is why, if you are a British child in poverty, the chances are, at least one of your parents is working. A work ethic can’t thrive when work is becoming an increasingly ineffective way to support a family.

Thirdly, policymakers need to inject urgency into making policy across the board pro-poor. There are plenty of low-cost and no-cost ideas out there that need a hearing. For example improving the Welfare Reform Bill should be an urgent priority, a Robin Hood Tax to protect services and safety-nets for the poorest should be another. Strong signals from the top that reducing poverty is a priority will give bureaucrats and junior ministers the courage to innovate.

Finally, leaner years require a more equitable distribution of the crop. A majority of people seem to think two things about the deficit: it is real and needs to be dealt with (56 per cent in a November YouGov poll), and that it’s not being closed fairly enough (57 per cent). In Westminster, closing the deficit can seem like the crucible of the political contest. But people outside the bubble know it’s not a game. For some communities it’s a question of life or death. To policy elites deficit reduction looks like a myriad of ‘difficult decisions’, each one subject to intense lobbying by those who can afford a voice. But the important question is do we get through this together or split apart? Does society share the burden, ensuring a decent standard of living for everyone – or do various interests fight over the scraps in a contest that can only condemn the vast majority to a poorer future? It’s the decision over the kind of society we want our children to grow up in.

Ben Morgan is Oxfam Advocacy and Policy Officer on poverty in the UK.

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The Fair Pay Network is a national coalition dedicated to leading the fight against low-paid work and in-work poverty, of which Oxfam is part of.

The Welfare Reform Bill starts ‘Report Stage’ in the house of Lords today – a five-day debate, where the House decides whether to change the legislation by voting on amendments proposed by individual Peers.  The Welfare Reform Bill contains a radical set of reforms that will affect the lives of millions in the UK. The implications of even the most minor errors in design are practically unimaginable. So today Peers are trying to fine-tune the government’s reforms, to ensure mistakes are nipped in the bud.

Today’s debate, from about 3pm, will cover a number of vital issues. However, one particularly critical decision will be over whether the new Universal Credit will be paid monthly, or fortnightly as Baroness Lister of Burtersett and a group of other Peers from across the aisle has proposed.

Not such a big deal? Well, for millions of people on low incomes, particularly women, it will be.

The government is rolling a range of benefits into a single ‘Universal Credit’ (UC), which they plan to pay once a month. Lots of these old benefits are currently paid weekly or fortnightly, often on a fairly flexible basis. For example, tax credits may be paid every week, or every four weeks, according to what is most convenient for a claimant (although they don’t get the final say). Housing Benefit can be paid at intervals of a week, two weeks, four weeks, or monthly, depending on the frequency with which rental payments are due. Child benefit, which is especially important to causes like increasing gender equality, reducing domestic violence, and ending child poverty, is paid weekly. Even Jobseekers’ Allowance is paid fortnightly. A shift to monthly payments for all these benefits is a big change, so it is worth weighing carefully.

The problem with paying Universal Credit on a monthly basis

The government’s argument for paying UC monthly is pretty straightforward: it reflects the frequency at which wages are paid, and therefore prepares people for that experience, making it less of an upheaval.

That sounds pretty sensible; after all we’re all paid monthly to work, why can’t benefits be paid the same way? But we aren’t all paid on a monthly basis. Three quarters of people employed in Britain are paid monthly, something Department of Work and Pensions recently acknowledged. Predictably, lower paid, lower skilled jobs are less likely to be paid monthly. Actually, only around half of jobs paid under £10,000 a year are paid monthly. Sadly, more vulnerable benefit claimants are more likely to graduate into these jobs first.

The government does recognise the change will come at a cost. In its white paper ‘Universal Credit: welfare that works’ (Cm 7957 November 2010), it conceded that:

We understand that many people on low incomes will be used to managing fortnightly payments of benefits and will ensure that, whatever the period of payment, there will be appropriate budgeting support to ensure recipients are supported effectively.

More vulnerable claimants are certainly less well equipped to budget on a monthly basis. DfES research shows that numeracy skills are painfully low amongst some groups. Five million people have ‘poor’ numeracy skills, while 1.7 million people have ‘very poor’ numeracy skills. Providing support to deal with monthly payments will cost more money. Those with lower skills are more likely to enter unskilled work that pays more frequently, so the upheaval will have been unnecessary.

Particular groups are clearly more vulnerable. Organisations such as Mind, the National Autistic Society and the Disabilities Benefits Consortium have all expressed real concern about a plan to pay UC on a monthly basis is a recipe for debt. Put together with the current plan (also in the Bill) to abolish crisis support through the Social Fund, a strict system of monthly payments is more likely to drive vulnerable claimants towards lenders and loan sharks.

Oxfam would add women to this lengthy list. Our experience and research in the UK shows that women tend to take responsibility for budgeting for essential living expenses and the needs of children, which all tend to be spent on a weekly basis. In couples, and particularly in abusive relationships, women sometimes rely on the weekly payments like child benefit as their sole source of independent income. One worry is that if benefits are paid monthly to a couple rather than individuals within the couple, less money will reach women and children, or be spent on essential expenses. In any case, when the money for essentials is already tight and tough to manage, monthly payments would seem to just make things harder.

A compromise: simplicity without debt

In short, for many claimants, monthly payments will probably work fine. But for those who with little experience of work, vulnerable claimants, claimants with very low numeracy skills, or claimants who face severe financial pressures because of inequality within the household, weekly or fortnightly payments are essential for effective budgeting. The only alternative for many will be yet more crushing private debt. As Baroness Lister argued last week in the Independent, a strict imposition monthly payment threatens ‘pay-day loan peril’.

Ideally, claimants should simply be able to choose how often they receive Universal Credit. This would certainly contribute to the government’s admirable aim of making the system more tailored to the needs of individuals. However, if Ministers are set on fixing a universal frequency for payments, given that many of the most essential benefits are paid weekly, paying UC on a fortnightly basis would seem like a reasonable compromise.

UPDATE

The result is in, we lost this one I’m afraid. It was extremely close: 224 for to 227 against – less than a handful of votes short. It was heartening to see such a strong support for this amendment. Yet the fact it was so close is just mortifying – one wonders whether one could have swung it with just four more emails! On a positive note the 224 who voted ‘aye’ on amendment one deserve huge congratulations and thanks, and the speeches in favour were really strong. Click here to read the short debate, and check of who voted.

Clearly this is really disappointing, there’s no other way to put it. On a positive note though, the government does acknowledge that a system which precludes choice and presumes in favour of monthly payments will require special protections and tailored help for at least some individuals. Though such a system seems unlikley to reach the millions who are likely to struggle with monthly payments, there is clearly now a job to be done to help ensure proposals are as effective as possible. Additionlly, because a big part of our concerns around this issue stem from the attending context of current proposals mentioned in my post to retract crisis support offered through the Social Fund, securing a better solution on that could really help.

Tuesday’s Autumn statement reconfirmed what many have long suspected: there is no imminent prospect of a boom in public spending to match that of the New Labour years. Yet, as spending on public services dwindles, the needs of those who rely on them do not, as the organisations Oxfam works with to tackle poverty in the UK know all too well. The increasingly urgent question, then, is how to provide effective public services more cheaply.

At a report launch last week, Community Links was joined by a range of experts to explore one powerful possibility: that acting earlier to forestall problems rather than cope with their consequences is not only better for those involved, but also cheaper for those paying. Society can no longer afford to wait for trouble – footing the bill, for instance, for the unemployed school leaver who can’t read and write. Instead we could act earlier, by investing in reading recovery programmes several years before. The report is called the Triple Dividend, because an Early Action society benefits three times over – from increased social well-being, lower spending on expensive acute interventions, and higher growth with a better-off workforce: thriving lives, costing less, contributing more.

It’s not a new thought; the report catalogues numerous government reports and other official documents that have reached the same conclusion. Take this, for instance, from a 2009 Audit Commission report:

A young person who starts showing behavioural problems at five, and is dealt with through the criminal justice system will cost the taxpayer around £207,000 by the age of 16. Alternative interventions to support changes in behaviour would cost about £47,000. Over £113 million a year would be saved if just one in ten young offenders was diverted towards effective support.

Or this from the Department of Education’s explanation of the Early Intervention Grant (EIG): “It is common sense that intervening early to stop problems developing has to be the best way of preventing bigger and more expensive problems.”

The question is why common sense so rarely becomes common practice. The report identifies technical barriers – for example in the way the Treasury classifies spending – which have frequently frustrated efforts to implement projects which might cost more upfront but would yield much greater savings in the long run. Initiatives like Social Impact Bonds, which transfer some of the upfront costs onto investors rather than government, have a role to play here but the report calls for more radical shifts within government as well.

‘Transition planning’ within central and local government departments would involve a steady shift of resources from acute services to earlier action, committing for example to spending 5 per cent of their budget on prevention and early action, aiming to increase that proportion by 5 per cent each year for the next three years. It suggests the Office of Budget Responsibility could model the effect within their growth forecasts, and that early action spending should be treated differently within Departmental Expenditure Limits.

This might seem far-fetched at a time of economic crisis, but the Scottish Government is setting a powerful example: Their recent Finance Committee report said: “The current reactive approach to public spending is unsustainable. There must be a shift away from reacting to crises to a greater focus on prevention and early intervention.”  They supported a budget that included a £500m increase in preventative spending, and Education Minister Angela Constance says that “apart from independence, preventative spend is the most radical and exciting agenda that this government is pursuing.”

Early Action is not a fully-costed set of proposals but it is a framework under which to think about the kind of society we want – one in which everyone has access to the support to be successful, not left unaided until the point where we’re forced to pick up the pieces.

Will Horwitz is the Communications Officer at Community Links, a charity working with deprived communities in East London, and also one of our partners.

Average earnings are rising at less than the rate of inflation, and this is being presented as an argument for a smaller rise. Yet the Conservative government broke the earnings-benefits link in 1980 precisely to run down benefit levels compared to the incomes of working people, and it has never been put back. In 1980, unemployment benefits were a fifth of average earnings; today they are a tenth. Together with eroding the connection between National Insurance and benefits (most benefits that were once contributory are now means-tested for all), this has helped make social security the residual system it is now, rather than the social insurance system it was originally designed to be.

Governments can’t have it both ways. Either benefit levels keep up with the rest of society, making them a social safety net, or they keep up with prices, leaving them frozen in time. You can’t exclude the poorest from rising prosperity in the good times, and then expect them to pay the price when times are hard. Raising benefits with average earnings for the long-term would be a positive step, stopping the gap between benefits and earnings growing further. But doing it as a one-off to save money will have the opposite effect.

In the short term, calling the September inflation rate a ‘blip’ – as one Conservative MP did – is misplaced. Inflation is high because food and energy prices are rising fastest – and people on benefits spend more of their incomes on both of these than most. Indeed, no lesser authority than the Institute for Fiscal Studies has proved that inflation has been hitting the poorest hardest. There is a far stronger case for increasing benefits by more than the average inflation figure – not less – just to keep people living in poverty standing still.

In fact, the whole argument is disingenuous at best, penny-pinching at worst. Each month’s  inflation figures are annualised: they compare the world now with the picture a year ago, regardless of when in the year price hikes were highest. Benefit increases are retrospective, so when levels finally go up in April, they will be taking account of price increases that have already happened. So long as there is consistency, whenever in the year you set the benchmark, you’ll ultimately end up with the same results. Critics should be honest: moving the goalposts at this stage would mean a real-terms cut in benefits.

What has been mooted would be taking money from the pockets of the poorest, in order to pay for a crisis that was caused by the excesses of the richest. This government has past form on that. Indeed, it has already saved billions by switching which measure of inflation it uses to raise benefits. People living in poverty are already being hardest hit by job losses, price rises, tax increases, and spending cuts.

That is ‘unfair’.

Raising benefits with the cost of living is just basic decency.

It followed from the ensuing debates over the inextricable causal links between deep rooted poverty and inequality that there was a need to propose solutions that work to address these damaging characteristics of the political economy of the UK and Scotland. The consensus across academics, the Church, trade unions, and community and voluntary sector members of civic Scotland – informed by UK and European commentaries – was that a better future was and has to be possible.

That many of the levels of inequalities and drivers of poverty have been persistent over generations was confirmed over and again, suggesting that what has been evolving over time represents failure, but also design. The strategies and policies of successive UK Governments of recent, present and, we are promised, future times have not only been reproducing these but exacerbating life chances for many while enhancing the riches of the few. The failure to reverse relative and absolute declines in economic and social performances whilst pursuing illegal wars and rearmament through a new generation of Trident missiles – not a strategy adopted by our competitors – was highlighted.

Security and safety seemed to be flexible concepts in this country, missing for those seeking relief from insecure jobs and housing, but paid for by us all to ensure others with high incomes and pensions never suffer hardship or the consequences of their own actions. Bringing the economy to ruin through bankers’ speculative games and massive bonuses has allowed the Westminster Coalition to claim a need to launch massive attacks on collective provision of health, education and welfare in England, with Scotland now facing the choice of where to make deep and damaging cuts to the lives of the vast majority.

It was stressed throughout the seminars that the economic system and the pursuit of growth meant that those who had not gained from the speculative bubble of growth in the 1990s and 2000s were paying the price for the recession now and in years to come; yet those who had created the crisis were hardly affected. This led to repeated discussions and demands for a new approach, a paradigm shift with society prioritising sustainable development and not growth for its own sake. Participants made clear the links to the debates and development of the Oxfam Humankind Index for a better Scotland, a fitting legacy to the seminar series.

The seminars confirmed the need to learn from history is essential, and that small countries in northern Europe hold much better ways forward to a more prosperous, fairer and sustainable Scotland than the usual look across the Atlantic to neoliberal ideas and madness. International comparisons of standards of living, of quality of lives, of levels of health, happiness and satisfaction consistently show how our closest neighbours offer much better prospects than we are subject to here.

This seminar series was not an end in itself but rather both a contribution to setting the agenda for this better future and to establishing the framework and structures for exploring how to get there. We look forward to welcoming colleagues from across the nation in that conversation and journey.

Mike Danson is Professor of Scottish and Regional Economics in the University of the West of Scotland and co-organised the ‘Whose Economy?’ seminar series with Katherine Trebeck, Research and Policy Advisor for UK Poverty in Scotland.

Last Thursday (20th October) the inaugural annual lecture of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Poverty – chaired by Kate Green OBE MP – took place in the Houses of Parliament. The Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, addressed the audience – made up of organisations that work with poverty in the UK and several MPs. Antony Metcalfe, manager of the Fairbridge programme in Wales and one of our partners present at the event, talks about his experience.

I was privileged to be invited to attend the inaugural annual lecture of the APPG on Poverty at the Houses of Parliament last week. As one of the people sitting on the charity panel, I had the opportunity to field a question to the Minister. I asked what the government was doing about a problem a lot of young people we work with face: combining seasonal work with benefits. If a young person finds seasonal work, they have to go through the process of coming off benefits and then back on them again once their work stint is over, which is a big disincentive for them to take up seasonal work at all.

The Minister recognised that this can be a real barrier to progression and might deter some from breaking out of unemployment and achieving that first step on the work ladder. According to the Minister, the introduction of the Universal Credit will solve this issue, but in the meantime he is instructing the JobCentrePlus to ensure young people can step on and off the welfare system more easily and without being penalised.

I was fortunate to also be able to speak to the audience about our work addressing the needs of those deemed hardest to reach across South Wales, many who come to us from worklessness households, from the homelessness system or suffering from addiction issues. Our Cardiff programme, together with the other Prince’s Trust programmes, will support 50,000 young people across the UK this year. This might be by raising aspirations, confidence and motivation or by facilitating young people to start their own business. Today’s job market is highly competitive and, because our main aim is to raise youth employment, we need to ensure that all our young people receive the support they deserve at these difficult times.

One of our programmes, funded by Oxfam, is based on the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach, an approach that builds a holistic picture of people’s lives by considering their assets (skills, health, relationships within the community, access to services and financial situation) rather than starting from a negative view of what people lack (work, money, skills). With this initiative we are tackling the causes of youth poverty and unemployment by enabling our young people to understand their surroundings and how they themselves can grow out of poverty by taking control of their lives.

All the other organisations that showcased their work to tackle poverty across the UK were passionate and driven and had a deep understanding of the entrenched reasons behind individual and family poverty – and I felt like we all shared the same goals. My only concern is that in this difficult economic climate, those most at risk and with the furthest to fall might slip through the net of economic reductions and budget cuts.

Antony Metcalfe is the manager of the Fairbridge programme in Wales – part of the Prince’s Trust. Fairbridge is an Oxfam partner who works with young people in England, Scotland and Wales to help them overcome the barriers in their lives by supporting them to develop the confidence, motivation and skills they need to turn their lives around.

Why is this happening? Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows 5.8 million people in the UK are living in ‘deep poverty’ – where household income is at least one-third below the poverty line – the highest proportion ever recorded. Inflation is at a 3 year high, which means that families already struggling to pay for food, fuel, clothes, travel and other basic costs are finding it even harder to make ends meet.  And in addition to this, 40% of the charities we support are facing budget cuts, with two thirds of these charities slashing their food budgets in an effort to stay afloat.

Despite this evidence some people believe that food poverty isn’t a problem in the UK, and that if people are going hungry it’s because they’re choosing to fritter away their money on lottery tickets, cigarettes, and other ‘luxuries’. Edwina Currie, ex Health Minister, voiced these feelings on a BBC Radio 5Live phone in this week, to the outrage of two listeners who had phoned in to talk about their own experiences of going hungry.

The misguided belief that the “irresponsible poor” are to blame for their own hunger is distracting people from the real issues, namely: record unemployment, food price inflation, and spending cuts that are real causes of hardship and hunger. It’s easy to blame individuals for their situations, much harder to looks at the root causes of these problems and choose to be part of the solution.

This week I received a handwritten letter from a woman asking for food. She writes that ‘with the bills there is not much left for food.’ Her wish list is extremely modest, asking for tins of beans, cereals, eggs and potatoes, ‘as these things fill the belly just as much as an expensive meal’. We’ve put her in touch with sources of local support and I really hope that her situation improves, but this is just one example of the dozens of calls, emails and letters that we get at FareShare every week from people asking for help. I’m not claiming that these calls constitute a scientific sample, but it is clear beyond doubt that UK hunger is real.

With people continuing to ask FareShare and other charities for food, my question to Edwina Currie and others who share her views is ‘How many people have to go to bed hungry before you take this seriously, how hungry do people have to be?’

Lindsay Boswell is the CEO of FareShare, a UK charity that fights hunger and food waste by rescuing surplus food from the food industry and getting it to a network of charities who then use it to feed vulnerable and disadvantaged people. FareShare is one of our partners and we are campaigning together and working to expand their network of food banks across the UK.

Photo: ©Antonio Olmos

We’re used to hearing – depressingly often these days – about people living in poverty as being variously feckless, undeserving, or suffering from dependency: in short, as passive, unthinking victims. What if, instead, we started from the premise that people living in poverty are, like everyone else, rational actors in their own lives – doing the best they can, in the circumstances in which they find themselves?

That is the logic of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to poverty analysis and community development (SLA), used in Oxfam’s international work, and which Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty (CAP) have been pioneering in the UK.

Rather than starting from a negative view of what people in poverty lack (such as work, money, or skills), the SLA starts by considering people’s assets. While they may often lack financial assets, people in poverty have strengths and capabilities, which they draw upon to construct strategies to get by. These may include social capital, physical assets (eg a car, or the tools of a trade), human capital, and the resources that people can draw on because of where they live, such as public services. Recognising these assets, how they are distributed within the household, and thinking about how to unlock their potential, adds depth to our understanding of poverty.

In considering what impacts on people’s decisions to pursue new livelihoods strategies – to take up training, to start a new job, or to move in pursuit of one – it is important to take account of risk and vulnerability. Livelihood decisions can put existing assets at risk. For example, someone on benefits who takes up insecure or temporary employment may be risking their financial stability for a job that could end up leaving them worse off. For families on low incomes, vulnerability to shocks may be a key factor in decisions. So, for example, in the absence of robust social insurance, it may not make sense for someone to move away from extended family to take a job, when they can provide emergency child care, offer a spare room, or make a loan in a time of crisis.

Men (and women) make their own histories, but they do not make them in circumstances of their own choosing. While the SLA recognises that people in poverty are active and rational drivers of their own lives, it does not deny the importance of the context in which they make their decisions and build their livelihoods. How institutions, regulations, the economy – and the political and policy context more broadly – shape the conditions in which people live, at the neighbourhood, local, or national level, is of crucial importance to how successful their livelihoods will be. But what the SLA in its totality tells us is that it is important that those policies and that context are redesigned in a way that goes with the grain of people’s livelihoods – which requires understanding the reality of the lives of people in poverty.

Together, these insights combine to tell us that people experiencing poverty are active in their careful assessment of risk and make rational decisions and choices about their lives, in light of the external and internal constraints they face. Any approach to poverty reduction which rests upon a demonisation or ‘othering’ of people living in poverty, which treats their decisions as somehow irrational, has failed to understand their reality, and will thus fail in its aims.

Oxfam and CAP have used the SLA at community level across the UK since 2005. This work has helped us to identify and act upon individual, household and local issues, and to help improve the lives of people and communities. But it has also demonstrated to us that there are limitations to what can be achieved locally, and pinpointed areas of national policy that need to change. Informed by these findings, we have sought to explore the potential of the SLA at a national level to help poverty-proof policy work.

One area of public policy illuminates what this means in practice. In some aspects, the Coalition government’s approach to welfare reform has embodied SLA principles. At present, the benefits system leaves people who leave unemployment at risk of debt and ultimately being worse off if their job doesn’t work out, or even when awaiting their first paycheque. The Centre for Social Justice’s work, on which the universal credit is largely based, began by studying the landscape of financial incentives faced by benefit claimants, and sought to reconstruct the system to improve that. By smoothing the transition between unemployment and work – and, crucially, by providing support based on income changes in real time – universal credit will reduce much of the risk attendant in moving between unemployment and work, or between different jobs or number of hours in a job.

Other aspects of welfare reform could be improved by using an SLA analysis. This government continues to extend conditionality and sanctions on the one hand and to run down benefit levels on the other. This modern version of the ‘principle of less eligibility’, practised by successive governments, has conspicuously failed to end mass unemployment (often described as ‘welfare dependency’). Far more positive would be to focus on supporting people at an individual level to address these barriers by building on their strengths. The Work Programme, which is the government’s vehicle to achieve this, is compromised by taking an outcome-focused approach in which the only outcome assigned any value is employment. In reality, there may be many interim steps – such as therapeutic activities, or training – on the road to a sustainable livelihood which will enrich people’s lives in themselves, and act as a stepping stone to employment.

Finally, the government must pay far more attention to what happens beneath the household level. At present, Universal Credit is based upon a single, household-level analysis, leading to a single, household-level payment. This is fraught with danger, since resources are not distributed equally within households, and how money goes into a household – for example, whether payments to children are labelled and paid to the main carer – enormously impacts upon the well-being of members of that household.

Taking a Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to welfare reform and many other aspects of public policy can enrich the analysis undertaken and the solutions offered. A recent joint report of Oxfam, IPPR North, CAP and Urban Forum, Community Assets First, explores the potential application of SLA to the policy areas of welfare reform, homes and neighbourhoods, financial inclusion, and community and society. Following on this work, we would urge policymakers, researchers, and community practitioners to use the SLA to help them develop a more holistic approach to anti-poverty work, an approach which works with the grain of people’s livelihoods, and takes them as active participants in their own lives – and in changing them for the better.