The Tories lost the election more than Labour clinched victory, but if the Left want to claim ‘a win’s a win’ they have to step up to ensure voters feel better off for ‘the change’.

Poverty, despite being the most pernicious challenge to our communities,  didn’t feature as much in the Labour manifesto as I’d have liked. There’s a considerable nod towards social justice but I’m looking forward to seeing the meat on the bones. This got me thinking. How would I set about tackling poverty?

Some say poverty will always be with us. Where it is measured as relative to average incomes, of course it will. Where it is baked into our culture of charging people more because they are poor, of course it will. But to combat destitution, (and prevent homelessness and ill-health/ reduced mortality), we can work from the ground up. That’s where my 30-plus years’ experience comes in:

1. Make Affordable Rents Affordable
   
   Substantiate the powers of the Social Housing Regulator in England and its counterparts across the UK and build on areas where it/ they seem ineffectual:
   1. Harmonise principles of ‘affordable rents’ (generally up to 80% of market rate) and Local Housing Allowance (up to 30% of market rate), and rule on what is truly affordable to people eligible for social housing;
   2. Require landlords and developers to invest community funding, under the oversight of a reinvigorated National Social Value Taskforce, (eg, Section 106), into budgeting and employment programmes that help enable residents displaced through regeneration, who need to stretch from an average 40% market rate rent (prior to displacement) to up to 80% plus service charges, to live in the same area;
   3. End profiteering among private landlords by capping rents that prevent prospective house-buyers from saving to buy because they’re paying off someone else’s mortgage. To this end, see through the end to no-fault evictions.
      
      
2. Homes, Not Just Housing
   
   Raise the profile of the Regulator(s) and the Housing Ombudsman to give voice to social tenants’ concerns and champion the right to a secure home that is a foundation for good health, jobs and family life:
   1. Reinstate social landlords’ duty of care, (removed as austerity was imposed in 2010), for the financial wellbeing of tenants; 
   2. Include basics such as carpets in the minimum housing standard and, in clusters of housing units, quality WiFi;
   3. Promote to tenants their right to transparent communications and involvement in decision-making by their landlord. (Ref. Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard, Regulator of Social Housing, April 2024);
   4. Move towards Ofsted-style reporting on the performance of large-scale landlords.
      
      
3. 18-Carrot Employment Support
   
   Call on authorities to recognise that people in destitution have limited bandwidth to engage with support, lower ‘the stick’ and offer some ‘carrot’ to jobseekers:
   1. Require local and regional authorities to review economic development plans through an ‘economic disadvantage’ lens; Require providers to engage with what deprived communities want and take a ‘money first’ approach; 
   2. Stop assuming economically inactive people want ‘skills and careers’ support, and engage with their aspirations: To keep food on the table; To do better by their kids; To have a bit left over at the end of the month. (Clue: Work can still be the answer, for those who can);
   3. Challenge a culture that blames disadvantaged people for non-engagement, so assess demand before launching programmes;
   4. Divert underspend from programmes like Multiply, which aimed to coerce disadvantaged people into largely unwanted numeracy training, into financial programmes with practical and soft educational outcomes; Reorganise funding to facilitate innovation, not requiring ‘lessons to be taught’ to achieve outcomes;
   5. Influence culture at Jobcentre Plus by making sanctions a safeguarding red flag; Require action to demonstrate to safeguarding leads that action is taken to mitigate the risks triggered by sanctions, such as referrals where needed to financial aid, housing advice and debt support;
   6. Require Jobcentre Plus to fund ‘money first’ programmes without immediate job outcomes by redirecting DWP underspends generated through payment-on-results procurement processes; (Where services are commissioned but job outcomes are never 100%, leaving monies unclaimed); Monitor job readiness among completers.
      
      
4. Cap The Caps
   
   As many anti-poverty campaigners, (even Suella Braverman, in part), have advocated, abandon caps on benefits where they are counterproductive to filling new jobs, if they’re created, when jobseekers lack the emotional bandwidth to engage:
   1. Drop the two-child cap on benefits, which contributes to child poverty and which, in turn, restricts families’ ability to improve their circumstances and limits child attainment at school;
   2. Raise the overall benefits cap to a rational level and, as (3), place a safeguarding red flag on households affected;
   3. Protect the principles of freeing up larger properties by restricting Under-occupancy penalties to households where three smaller, alternative properties have been offered, along with removal costs, and declined.
      
      
5. Schools Be Schools, (Not Worker-Farms)
   
   While the quality of education is directly linked to employment outcomes, schools should not be treated as worker-farms. They need to foster the wellbeing of children and the growth of skills in future adults, including around money:
   1. Increase the Banking Levy, (or clamp down on related ‘tax’ avoidance), so the Money and Pensions Services (MaPS) can fund universal financial literacy programmes embedded in school curriculums;
   2. Acknowledge we all feel we have gaps in our knowledge and provide teachers with training  to discuss money with confidence;
   3. Bring monitoring the return on this investment under the oversight of a Social Value Taskforce.
      
      
6. Bolt-On Money Guidance
   
   There are multiple stakeholders in the financial wellbeing of poorer households, let’s co-opt them to the fight against destitution and bolt services to theirs under the oversight of a Social Value Taskforce, and with support from MaPS and funded through changes to the Banking Levy, attach it to:
   1. Mental health services like Talking Therapies, not just crisis interventions like debt advice, as advocated by Martin Lewis and the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute;
   2. Local authorities’ housing options activities, making it available to anyone who deems themselves in housing need, as the implication is that they cannot afford private rented accommodation;
   3. Crisis loans and payments made by public sector bodies;
   4. Welfare rights support, as an extension of these activities, could be expanded to increase access, funded through reinvestment from the £23bn of unclaimed benefits that was due to those who died waiting.
      
      
7. The Value of Everything
   
   Recognising affluent people often know ‘the cost of everything and the value of nothing’, bodies reporting on economic growth are starting to reflect the experience of low income households, but more can be done:
   1. Encourage ministers to focus on the impact of inflation on low-income households and create secondary inflation targets for them;
   2. Evaluation by the treasury on how much of the welfare budget comes straight back to the Treasury through VAT and other means, and reinvest it in anti-poverty measures and/or tax-related work incentives;
   3. Balance regulators’ responsibility for preventing market failures with the need to enforce expectations on corporate bodies for adopting consumer protection principles designed to protect vulnerable people, and promote ombudsmans to encourage consumer action against poor practice.
      
      
8. A Poverty Tsar 
   
   Appoint a Poverty Tsar to lead Labour’s promise on ‘breaking the class ceiling’:
   1. Charge the new Tsar with engaging all sectors on the question: What if ‘economic disadvantage’ was a protected characteristic? How would public services and employment and social discourse change? 
   2. Explore ways to invest culturally, rather than financially, for example, understanding, appealing to and meeting the wants and needs of low-income households, in order to achieve what’s good for communities. (For example, not talking about ‘careers and skills’ but ‘becoming better off’, where improving employment prospects is one way to deliver what’s good for both).
      
      
9. Listen and Hear
   
   A unit, working with the Poverty Tsar, would be commissioned to raise the visibility/ amplify the voices of people on low incomes, (as Clean Slate has pledged to do). The unit would operate within the Department of Health and work with deprived communities to co-design programmes to increase financial resilience and reduce health inequalities:
   1. Establish a forum for people from deprived neighbourhoods and pay for people’s participation, valuing their expertise through lived experience;
   2. Demonstrate leadership within schools with programmes promoting social cohesion and civic participation;
   3. Commission financial resilience programmes: Increase participants’ financial wellbeing to free up the cognitive ability to make positive, longer-term, healthier decisions; Utilise these new relationships as channels for health promotion activity.
      
      

Image: Sean Aidan Calderbank / Shutterstock (with Jeff Mitchell photoshopped over Keir Starmer)