Sustain responds to welfare safety net inquiry
Welfare reforms and cuts to local authority bugets are contributing to rising food insecurity in the UK. Drawing on the experiences of our many local partners working to improve the local welfare safety net, here's how Sustain responded to the Work and Pensions Committee's call for evidence.
Following the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty's visit to the UK in autumn 2018, the Work and Pensions Committee conducted an inquiry into the current state of the UK’s welfare safety net, prompted by the evidence of debt, hunger and homelessness it has heard across several recent inquiries. The inquiry's aim was to consider how effectively our welfare system works to protect against hardship and chronic deprivation.
Sustain runs three major projects on food poverty, including Food Power, the London Food Poverty Campaign and Right to Food, and is one of the lead organisations for the national End Hunger UK campaign as well as Sustainable Food Cities. These projects support a range of community and government mechanisms to tackle household food insecurity, as well as championing national legislation to secure measurement, national and local government action and accountability for action. Drawing on our experiences in this area and evidence from these projects and our partners, we emphasised the following in our submission to the Work and Pensions Committee's inquiry.
- Recent changes to the welfare safety net, such as Universal Credit, in combination with cuts to local authority budgets, has resulted in increasing numbers of people experiencing deprivation.
- Food insecurity is a growing problem in the UK and the Government should commit to introducing a national household measurement of food security.
- Statutory programmes such as Healthy Start and Free School Meals are vital parts of the welfare safety net that need to be properly maintained and funded, and eligibility requirements under Universal Credit must not result in families in need losing these benefits.
- There is significant scope for improving coordination and navigation of the welfare safety net at the local level, with examples of this work already being piloted, which should be better captured and replicated elsewhere with support from national government.
Read Sustain's full submission to the Work and Pensions committee
This submission was coordinated by Maddie Guerlain, who can be contacted for any further information: maddie@sustainweb.org
Published Tuesday 18 December 2018
Food Poverty: Millions of people in the UK struggle to get enough to eat. We’re working to change that through people-powered projects and campaigns that tackle the root causes of food poverty and ensure everyone has dignified access to healthy, affordable food.
