The toxic mix of Universal Credit, austerity and widening inequalities

Concerns about the mental health impact of government reforms under austerity are growing and emerged in Universal Credit research commissioned by Gateshead Council which is soon to be published in BMJ Open[1].

 

Mandy Cheetham, Research Associate at Teesside University, posts on Mental Health Awareness Week.

The invitation to present the findings at Newcastle University’s recent conference on human rights, health and welfare made me reflect on the multiple ways in which Universal Credit drives inequalities and undermines claimants’ rights.

Panel members (Mandy, pictured furthest right)

Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor & Idleness: Beveridge’s 5 giants

As part of a panel discussion, I was struck by the powerful comments of my fellow panel members who framed the rising need for food banks as a failure of social security. They described the “uncomfortable truth” of food poverty, the “violence of austerity” and the need to start from a position of love and care, offering people dignified, not demeaning responses to crises.

The sense of exclusion, shame, embarrassment and stigma surrounding food insecurity and the use of foodbanks was clearly articulated by the Universal Credit claimants in the study we did in Gateshead and Newcastle. One participant with a long term health condition commented:

"I think the most degrading thing about Universal Credit was that I had to go to foodbanks. I couldn’t afford to eat" (Claimant interview)

Universal Credit claimants and staff supporting them recognised the political choices which undermine people’s basic rights to food and social security, which are fundamental to health and wellbeing.

"It seems to be government policy at the moment to punish people for being poor" (Staff interview)

It is hard to see these choices as accidental when Amber Rudd, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, acknowledges that the rise in food banks is at least in part due to the roll out of Universal Credit. It is brutal and unrelenting in its effects.

Last week, I attended a thought provoking seminar by Guy Standing (co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network), who reflected on the benefits of securing a basic income for all and described his view of the modern giants blocking transformative progress, including precarity: creating ‘supplicants’ with no rights, asking for favours from friends, family and bureaucrats, reliant on charity with no sense of agency or freedom. 

Digital exclusion, delays, deductions, intensified work related requirements, arbitrary risk of sanctions and maladministration by the Department for Work and Pensions associated with Universal Credit, all combine to maintain the precarious existence of claimants, undermining their rights to financial and material security, and social inclusion required for health and wellbeing.

This is not new. In a paper entitled ‘First do no harm’, Barr et al (2016)[2], found the programme of reassessing people on disability benefits using the Work Capability Assessment was independently associated with an increase in suicides, self-reported mental health problems and antidepressant prescribing. The authors suggest that the policy may have had serious adverse consequences for mental health in England, which could outweigh any benefits that arise from moving people off disability benefits.

The four year welfare benefits freeze, austerity and implementation of Universal Credit is a toxic combination that has truly terrible consequences for those reliant on the state leaving people without enough money to fund the basics essential to participate in society. 

Piecemeal changes announced by government to phase out “unnecessarily long” three year sanctions under Universal Credit, for example, are welcome but do little to address the wider concerns raised about the continuing hardship which people experience on Universal Credit (Dwyer P. 2019)[3]. 

There are increasing calls for public health to respond in the face of mounting evidence of the harm to people’s physical and mental health which Universal Credit is causing. If government Ministers and policy makers were guided by the principles of “First Do No Harm”, it would be hard to see how the continued roll out of Universal Credit could be justified in the name of ‘welfare reform’. Public health needs to be at the forefront of efforts to address concerns about rising inequalities in different dimensions – income, work, mental and physical health, families and relationships, which were highlighted this week by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (Joyce and Xu 2019).

References:

1. Cheetham M, Wiseman A, Moffatt S, Addison M. (2019) The impact of Universal Credit in North East England: a qualitative study of claimants and support staff BMJ Open (in press).
2. Barr B, Taylor-Robinson D, Stuckler D, Loopstra R, Reeves A, Whitehead M. ‘First, do no harm’: are disability assessments associated with adverse trends in mental health? A longitudinal ecological study Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 70:339–345 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2015-206209.
3. Dwyer P. [editor] (2019) Dealing with welfare conditionality, Bristol, The Policy Press. 
4. Joyce R. and Xu X. (2019) Inequalities in the twenty-first century: Introducing the Deaton Review, Institute for Fiscal Studies and Nuffield Foundation, London, UK https://www.ifs.org.uk/inequality/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/The-IFS-Deaton-Review-launch.pdf

Images:

1. Courtesy of Newcastle University Law School: https://twitter.com/NCLLawSchool/status/1121333821121671169
2. Courtesy of Ruth Norris (@ruthpnorris): https://twitter.com/ruthpnorris/status/1121512102437453830 
3. Courtesy of the Institute For Fiscal Studies: https://www.ifs.org.uk/inequality/chapter/briefing-note/