By Sophie Padgett, Network Policy & Research Officer at Trussell
Major new research from Trussell shows public finances and the UK economy could benefit by up to £75 billion each year if people were protected from hunger and hardship.
This April, Trussell published the final report for our Cost of Hunger and Hardship project. The report explores the experiences and impacts of hunger and hardship at an individual, societal and economic level.
As we laid out in a previous article for Resolve Poverty, a record 9.3 million people across the UK, including 3 million children face hunger and hardship.* Our final report brings together economic modelling with in-depth conversations with people who have experienced hunger and hardship to evidence the huge human cost of hardship, and how our public finances and the economy could benefit by up to £75 billion each year if people were protected from hunger and hardship.
“It’s about having a future that is worth aiming for, which gives people hope and makes them happier. It’s about having no future other than poverty and bad health. It’s about how the pain and drudgery of poverty grind you down…” – Female, 50s, Scotland (who took part in the Cost of Hunger and Hardship research).
This research shows that the right thing to do is also common sense for our economy
Hunger and hardship make it far more difficult to find and sustain work, and to invest and develop your skills. The impact of this leads to our economy losing out on over £38 billion each year due to reduced employment and lower productivity rates. The public purse loses out on over £18 billion in income from taxes (tax revenue) and needs to spend an additional £5 billion on social security payments due to the impact of facing hunger and hardship on employment and wages.
Failure to tackle hunger and hardship leads to the UK government spending an additional £13.7 billion a year on public services
Hunger and hardship are linked to worse health, educational outcomes and housing security, and failure to address this leads to increased spending of £13.7 billion on the NHS, other health services, schools, children’s social care, and tackling homelessness. If the UK government fails to act, it will undermine its progress on living standards, employment, economic growth and the NHS, and we will see an increase in hunger and hardship.
The UK government must move quickly to meet its commitments on ending the need for emergency food, but planned cuts to disabled people’s social security risk plunging even more people into hunger and hardship. There is a better way. Turning this tide would have huge benefits, not just to individuals, but for us all.
At Trussell, we are calling on the UK government to urgently rethink record cuts to support for disabled people, and update Universal Credit so that it protects people from hunger and hardship.
- People living in a disabled family are already much more likely to face hunger and hardship than people in a non-disabled family (17% vs. 11%). Five million people who live in disabled families face hunger and hardship, an increase of 1.2 million since 2012/13. The government’s plans to make huge cuts to support for disabled people are likely to drive even more into severe hardship, damaging their health and prospects even further.
- Universal Credit isn’t set according to the cost of essentials, which means the level of payments are far below the everyday costs such as food and bills. That’s why we’re working with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to call for an Essentials Guarantee within Universal Credit, which means the basic rate at least covers life’s essentials and that support can never be pulled below that level. Trussell’s research found that setting the basic rate of Universal Credit at the level of the Essentials Guarantee would ensure 2.2 million fewer people would be at risk of hunger and hardship in 2027, including 720,000 children. This would lead to a reduction in costs to the economy, public services and public purse of nearly £17 billion. We need the UK government to take bolder steps towards ensuring Universal Credit at least covers the cost of essentials.
- Abolishing the two-child limit would lift 670,000 people out of facing hunger and hardship, including 470,000 children. This would lead to a reduction in costs to the economy, public services and public purse of over £3 billion.
“It’s really simple, we need enough coming in from our benefits in order to be able to live…Everyone should be given the right to flourish in life and not just be desperately trying to survive, because it’s not a life worth living, it really isn’t. It’s just so gruelling and it could change in an instant if we had a compassionate government.” – Male, 50s, England (who took part in the Cost of Hunger and Hardship research).
*A note on our hunger and hardship measure
Our Cost of Hunger and Hardship work explores a measure of need for emergency food called ‘Hunger and Hardship’. People in hunger and hardship are facing severe hardship, living well below the poverty line, and are likely to be using a food bank now or are at high risk of doing so in the future. This measure does not capture the full scale of food bank need, as there are also some people facing hunger whose incomes are higher than the group captured within the measure used within this project. This may be in part because of the impact of debt and of the additional costs of disability, neither of which are fully captured in any of the current measures of poverty, including the one used in this report.
The Trussell research team would like to thank all those who have made this ambitious project possible, WPI Economics, HumanKind Research and all the people who have taken part in this research and shared their experiences.
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This article is featured in our 18 June newsletter.
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