Dear Paul
I thought I might throw a few facts into the pot.
The Income Support scale for a single person is currently £53.95 per
week. It is difficult to estimate relativities over time because the
indices have changed but I reckon that this is an improvement since 1948
in real terms of about 150%. However in comparison with earnings it is a
decline in value (from 17.6% in 1948 to 11.9% in 2001). If the scales
had kept pace with earnings (which they did until the mid 80s - though
we can argue whether they should) then the current scales would be about
£70 per week.
When an unemployed single person on income based JSA reaches pensionable
age their benefit increases (overnight) from £53.95 to £98.15 - the
current Minimum Income Guarantee. In 1948 the increase would have been
10p!
This government has now made substantial real improvements in the Income
Support levels payable to families with children and pensioners on MIG
but not to single and childless people who are unable to get into
employment.
Is it right for them to continue to drift away from the living standards
of working families and other groups of beneficiaries? That as I
understand it is the question being asked.
Jonathan
Paul Ashton wrote:
>
> John Veit Wilson's response was a more measured one than I might have
> expected (and, no doubt, some would say than I deserved). Although my note
> was deliberately provocative, I wasn't getting at John or Paul Nicolson in
> particular (although I have little time for the spin from the latter). My
> main point of contention is with the way TV and radio approach these issues
> of poverty or low income.
>
> It is too easy for the media to get academics and representatives of
> single-issue pressure groups to say that benefit levels are too low, need
> to be increased and that current levels are responsible for feelings of
> hopelessness, alienation, and so on. But where are the opposing, or
> balancing voices?
>
> In the past we would at least have (occasionally) heard on these types of
> programmes the views of at least one of the likes of David Marsland,
> Patrick Minford, David Willetts, Christie Davies and Madsen Pirie. We also,
> perhaps more relevantly, heard the occasional voice of coping benefit
> recipients. Remember, for example, Bernie Lawrence, a single-parent on
> Income Support, and her recipes showing how a family of 5 could achieve a
> healthy diet on, then, less than £5 a day?
>
> Programme makers seem more ready these days to just take the well-worn
> paths to certain researchers and analysts who can be depended upon to trot
> out the all-familiar line that 'independent' research shows that benefit
> levels are 'inadequate', without even asking themselves (let alone the
> researchers) how some/many manage to live on these levels (and below them)
> and yet remain healthy, reasonably happy and sane. Are they really only the
> benefit cheats? I've almost given up listening, watching or reading
> so-called 'in-depth' analyses of 'what it means to be poor' because they
> all too often turn out to be based on very partial accounts. If academic
> researchers chose their 'representative' samples in the same way as most TV
> producers seem to select theirs, they'd not only find their work impossible
> to publish but would be considered fraudsters.
>
> That was my main complaint. However, I do take issue with John's claim that
> the current levels of benefit are below 'UK people's own standards'. There
> simply aren't any such standards that have been defined by the people.
> There are answers they have given to questions posed by academics; but who
> agreed that those questions were impartial and likely to reveal accurately
> what people generally (and honestly) felt about what goods and services and
> participations were a minimum needed by citizens of this group or that, in
> or out of work? And who decided that the number of items lacked constituted
> 'deprivation' or 'poverty'? Not the people.
>
> One might also ask whether the UK people were asked, for example, whether
> they thought that, say, lone parents should get less benefits than
> two-parent families (on FC they actually get more, cet par), or, feeding even more
> prejudices, whether 'illegal' immigrants should get the same level of
> benefits as the UK citizens?
>
> Then there is the question of converting these 'independently' arrived at
> minimum needs into cash benefits to obtain them. Although to me it is an
> irrelevant exercise, it is far from the straight-forward procedure it is
> glossed over to be. How many researchers take account, for example, of
> boot-fair, jumble sale or charity shop purchases? Whose standards of food
> or type of clothing are used? One could go on..
>
> Even where respondents have been asked specifically how much money people
> should get as a minimum, there have been no satisfactory definitive answers
> -- the sums varied too greatly and/or the questions related only to
> specific groups, often only to people in similar circumstances to themselves
> (so they were not allowed a view on other groups).
>
> I really don't feel that I need to rise to John's challenge about what
> proportion of people on benefits manage 'without a struggle', if only
> because it has been posed in that way. Besides, John knows better than me
> the responses to questions put to benefit recipients by the old PSI. I
> don't doubt that similarly-sized minorities today would say that they did
> not run out of money before the next giro.
>
> Similarly, I don't feel that I need to produce empirical evidence 'which
> refutes the majority view which you seem to criticise' when it is, after
> all, just 'a view' and that the 'majority' is just of academics, many/most
> of whom I don't regard as truly unbiased and few, if any, of whom have
> experienced poverty or worked with deprived people (Bob Holman a notable
> exception, of course).
>
> Nevertheless, being a glutton for punishment, I have made a note in my
> diary to listen to the BBC programme. I may yet be pleasantly surprised!
>
> Paul Ashton
> [log in to unmask]
> 2002-07-15
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