Myth and reality
Penelope Cummins highlights a report that exposes common myths about poverty in Britain today
Four churches – the Methodist Church, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Church of Scotland and the United Reformed Church – recently produced a report that addresses six of the most common myths about poverty in Britain today. The report – The lies we tell ourselves: ending comfortable myths about poverty – cites government reports and others from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and major charities to show that some of these myths have been perpetrated in parliament, and in the press, through the wilful misuse of statistics and innuendo. Sadly, many of us, even the nicest of Quakers, at least half-believe what we hear and read so frequently.
Myth 1: ‘They’ are lazy and don’t want to work:
Thirteen million people, including 3.6 million children, live in poverty. Just over five million of them are in households where the breadwinners are without work, including people who are moving in and out of low-paid, often temporary, jobs, and also those who are sick or disabled but who have not qualified for sickness benefits. But more than six million of the people in poverty are in households where the breadwinners are working – in low-paid jobs, often part time and in unsocial hours.
In the 1980s it may have been easier to claim sickness or disability benefits; now it is so difficult that people with genuine physical and mental conditions are routinely being denied benefits, much to the anger of the British Medical Association.
Myth 2: ‘They’ are addicted to drink and drugs:
NHS statistics show that there is no direct relationship between income and alcohol addiction or drug use. They are both surprisingly evenly distributed across the income spectrum. But alcohol spending and consumption increases as you go up the income scale.
Myth 3: ‘They’ are not really poor – they just don’t manage their money properly.
The public tends to assume that benefit levels are about a third higher than they actually are. A single person receives about forty per cent of the minimum income necessary for a basic standard of living in the UK today. A couple with two children will get about sixty per cent of their needs.
Save the Children found that sixty-one per cent of parents in poverty say they have cut back on food, and twenty-six per cent have skipped meals to ensure there is food for the children.
Myth 4: ‘They’ are on the fiddle:
Actually, seventy-four out of every seventy-five whistle-blower reports of fraudulent claims by family or neighbours are found to be false. A House of Commons report found that the amount of benefit fraud in 2011/12 was £1.9 billion – or 0.9 per cent of the total bill. This was less than the amount underpaid to claimants because of errors.
The benefit system has become increasingly complex and difficult to access. Many people don’t claim the benefits to which they are entitled. If they did, the Department of Work and Pensions estimates that they would pay out an extra nineteen billion pounds in benefits.
The Revenue Service estimates that the fraud rate for tax underpayment is between four and seven times higher.
Myth 5: ‘They’ have an easy life on benefits.
Recently, Iain Duncan Smith cheerfully said that he could easily live on £53 a week, the amount a single person said he lived on after his housing costs were removed from his £70 benefit. Sure, with a full store cupboard and the £53 as pocket money. More difficult if the cupboard is empty and you have to first deduct the week’s proportion of your gas and electricity bill and the cost of travelling fortnightly to report on your work search to the benefit office. Failure to report, even due to sickness, can lead to benefits being stopped for a month, and three failures can lead to twelve months with no financial support – and almost no opportunity for appeal.
Myth 6: ‘They’ caused the deficit.
The percentage of GDP spent on welfare has remained stable for the past twenty years. The recent growth in unemployment has not been matched by benefits increasing with inflation. But the Quantitative Easing programme has increased the wealth of the top twenty per cent of earners by enough to pay for Jobseeker’s Allowance for more than a century. The money spent on the bank bailout could have covered it for even longer.
The lies we tell ourselves: ending comfortable myths about poverty can be found at http://bit.ly/povertymyths
