As Britain responds to the coronavirus crisis, we’ve seen what might be called a shift towards compassion. We clapped for carers and crowned low-paid supermarket staff “heroesâ€. The Conservatives became a party of big spending and an army of helpers were recruited to feed elderly and disabled neighbours.
But underneath the surface, we are still dealing with the same old cruelty: an economic system that leaves millions of people unable to afford the most basic standard of living, and a state apparatus content to push them there.
Just look at the new figures on the two-child cap on benefits: over the past three years, 900 women have been forced to disclose their child was conceived as a result of rape in order to receive social security. This is the logical outcome of 10 years of austerity and the Conservatives’ relentless “anti-welfare†agenda: women forced to recount sexual assault or see their kids go hungry. Although it would be easy to forget them in the current climate, over 900,000 children have been hit by this two-child policy.
Research shows that families hit by the benefit cap – many of whom are in work – have had to give up food, medicine, heating and clothes as a result. Domestic violence victims said the policy was a barrier to escaping. Several women considered abortions.
What was wrong before the pandemic is now obscene. Almost 2,500 children have been admitted to hospital with malnutrition in the first six months of the year as vulnerable families struggle with a drop in income and isolation – double the number over the same period in 2019. Nearly half of parents with a disabled child have struggled to feed them during lockdown. Food banks report record queues; some are now packing face masks alongside meal parcels for people who can’t afford one.
There has never been a greater need to build a timely and humane welfare state, yet the government is going back to business as usual. Benefit sanctions – temporarily suspended during the pandemic – are now back up and running, ready to penalise the poorest for the smallest infraction. Disability benefits reassessments are also slowly restarting. That means a cancer patient who has been shielding inside for months will now be forced to go through the anxiety of proving to the state they’re still ill. Other squeezes to support, from the two-child policy to the bedroom tax, never stopped – an ongoing brutality that even a global pandemic couldn’t halt.
As a recession and large-scale unemployment looms, Britain’s so-called safety net will soon be charged with catching many more of us. Jobcentres have already seen a 126% rise in claims since the start of lockdown. Some 2.8 million people needed out-of-work benefits last month as coronavirus unemployment soared – the worst hit to the UK’s labour market in 100 years. Those already struggling are, predictably, the worst affected. The Social Metrics Commission shows two in three people in “deep poverty†who were employed prior to the pandemic have had their hours or earnings reduced, been furloughed, or lost their job, compared to one in three from wealthier families.
Now the clapping has ended and the care parcels have dried up, we should reflect on what a civilised society really looks like, and the structural changes needed to build one. If coronavirus has exposed this country’s social crisis, it has also proven once and for all the futile unfairness of it. The pandemic has taught us some hard lessons: illness and unemployment can strike at any time and circumstances that were said to only befall the “undeserving†poor can soon enough come to our door. At times like this, we will be glad to have a working welfare state.
In our new era of insecurity, one thing remains certain. As the fallout from coronavirus continues, many more people in this country will struggle day-to-day to feed their children or pay their rent. What is still undecided is our political response to this crisis. We face a choice: further waste, punitive punishments, and nasty individualism, or a more collective outlook, where every person is respected and resources are redistributed fairly. To settle with what we’ve got would not only betray national cruelty, but a total lack of ambition. Rape tests and hungry infants? We can do better than this.
• Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
