Oone in five adults of working age – about 8 million people – live in poverty. Two million of them report going without food at least once a month. And yet there is still the cruel, ominous cry that our social security system is too generous. Treat this long-standing pain once and for all and, according to the… prime minister last weekend (supported by commentary in the right-wing media), honest workers would stop paying for millions of work-shy claimants and be rewarded with well-deserved tax cuts.
The numbers seem attractive. If the surveys are to be trusted, almost 3 million people between the ages of 16 and 24, and more than 6 million people between the ages of 24 and 64, are economically inactive – and the numbers are rising. A total of 9.25 million ‘inactive’ adults draw £88 billion on Universal Credit every year, almost half of whom complain of suffering from health problems.
“Is that so?” asks the right. Isn’t the bigger truth that many are work-shy and gaming is a medical profession that too easily signs sick notes and identifies responses to daily misfortune as mental illness? Look at those TikTokers bragging about Riley’s life on benefits. The so-called victims of this epidemic must be forced to straighten their shoulders and work. Here lies the root cause, say the free marketers, of Britain’s economic and social crisis. What is needed is a genuine conservatism to confront the whole nexus between anti-growth, woke and pro-welfare politics.
It’s a view, but one that runs counter to what we know about human nature. Yes, there is now increasing recognition that mental health problems threaten lives. There will undoubtedly be individual abuses among the nine million economically inactive. But the bigger truth is that people are determined to want to do something positive with their lives. They want to contribute, earn, add value. They don’t want to suffer through waves of debilitating depression or a simple and sudden inability to concentrate. They want to interact with others and not live on the margins of society.
Britain has no more than 9 million shirkers. Instead, there are millions of people who cannot physically or mentally participate in the Wild West labor market, which involves an overburdened health care system and a grossly inadequate education system. More than one in ten jobs in Great Britain are structurally insecure, without a formal employment contract.
According to figures from the Resolution Foundationnearly a third of workers paid at or near the wage floor were paid below the minimum wage; 900,000 workers reported not having paid vacation, despite this being a legal right; and 1.8 million workers said they had not received a paycheck.
Enforcement is very weak. The international standard is that this should be the case one labor standards enforcement officer per 10,000 employees: Britain has done so one in every 35,000 employees. Average, This is reported by the Resolution FoundationThere has been less than one criminal prosecution per year for failure to pay the national minimum wage. The proposal to set up a single umbrella enforcement body has been at a standstill for five years. The Work and Pensions Secretary, Mel Stride, is under pressure over his right to make access to meager benefits even more difficult: none to enforce labor market legislation.
Are the benefits too generous? The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Trussell Trust calculate that a single adult needs £120 a week to cover essential living costs, before rent and council tax; universal credit pays £85 per week. If payments were equal to pensions, as in 1948 when the social security system was introduced, universal credit would more than double. Britain has created an impoverished and traumatized underclass – no wonder the two charities are calling for an “essentials guarantee” of £120 a week. As they say, when benefits are so low, people are pushed further from work, so that even paying for a bus ticket to get to work becomes impossible. The choices that have to be made – between food, clothing, lighting and warmth – lead to poor health. Too many of the 7.6 million cases waiting to be treated by the NHS are from the most disadvantaged groups: halve NHS waiting lists and the benefits bill will start to fall.
Too much work, especially at the bottom, is coercive and alienating. There is less and less autonomy, more and more micromanagement and a diminishing ability to shape what you do day after day. Personal autonomy, the feeling that you have some control, is the key to mental well-being. It’s not said enough, but strengthening unions is crucial, not only for better wages, but also for the causes of fairer workplaces, employee engagement and a sense of control.
The Scandinavian system of ‘flexi-security’, in which employment contracts are flexible but linked to a system of quality training and reasonable working conditions, is widely admired because it combines the best of both worlds, but is managed by trade unions. British workers live in a country with weak and few unions, low benefits and where each internship has three candidates. “Good work,” which provides a sense of self-worth and control, is the privilege of a minority. Flexi-security and the benefits it brings are a utopia.
Labour’s proposed “new deal for working people” is a partial solution – reaffirming workers’ rights that are properly enforced, increasing unions’ capacity to recruit people and launching a system of fair wage agreements. Already diluted from its original ambition, it has come under increased pressure from employers, including a resurgent CBI. Keir Starmer has asked shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves and deputy leader Angela Rayner to be busy with business to explain the policy – but not to water it down further. These are Labor leaders with deep roots in the experience of ordinary workers in today’s workplace: they will have the courage of their convictions. The path to reducing economic inactivity is not to make life even more difficult for ordinary people, especially at the bottom; it is promoting much more ‘good’ work. It is a dividing line between the parties that Labor must patrol with conviction – and pride.