On two occasions, once after leaving school and another time following redundancy, I have fallen upon the mercy of the welfare state.
Therefore, when I have previously written about the social security safety net, I have done so both with personal and professional, lived and learned, experience.
This, coupled with many years working alongside people experiencing poverty, is why I believe in the welfare state and why I have not, during more fortunate times, objected to paying the higher rate of tax.
Ewan Gurr: ‘What has become clear is there is a problem concerning how we discuss poverty’
The subject of increasing benefits is understandably at the very forefront of public consciousness.
The reason is the UK Government is considering making the £20 uplift to Universal Credit, implemented in March 2020 to support claimants, a permanent fixture.
Doing so would cost the taxpayer £6.6 billion per year and that focuses minds.
Last Wednesday, an article on the Evening Telegraph Facebook page regarding the uplift stimulated 178 comments and multiple shares.
Not everyone, for fair and considered reasons, believes the same and those who do not have been unfairly besmirched for being hard-hearted.
However, I, evenly spliced between the political left and right, believe in supporting people to both survive and to strive.
Ewan Gurr: ‘Preventing poverty is the priority of all politicians’
This was at the heart of William Beveridge who, in founding the welfare state, challenged opposition claims of feather-bedding, saying: “Adventure comes not from the half-starved but those who were well fed enough to feel ambition.”
The UK Government has been open-handed in the dispensation of more than £317bn to, in the inimitable words of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, put their “arms around the nation” and has been whimsical in spending on other issues of questionable concern.
In November, for instance, at precisely the same time as UK ministers were straining every sinew over whether or not to invest in free school meals, they proudly announced a £16.5bn increase in defence spending.
Where do our priorities lie when we are willing to spend tens of billions protecting ourselves from an international threat that may or may not even exist when we are so unwilling to spend a third of that sum supporting our own citizens through a time of unrivalled financial hardship?
This is why the UK chancellor’s budget statement in March matters.
It matters economically to the 5.7 million Universal Credit claimants but also politically to the prime minister in his withering relationship with the union.
https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/fp/taking-away-20-universal-credit-uplift-would-be-dickensian-say-dundee-emergency-food-providers/
The reason I say this is because, from today, thousands of families become eligible for the Scottish Child Payment, a new benefit designed by the Scottish Government to lift children out of poverty.
The Scottish Government is taking a different route on poverty and, for all its domestic faults, this is and will continue to be an important area as the governed consider whom they wish to govern, politically and constitutionally.
This article originally appeared on the Evening Telegraph website. For more information, read about our new combined website.