The Guardian view on Sunak and the poor: an abdication of responsibility

theguardian.com:

Facing economic headwinds that will wreck millions of household budgets in the months ahead, the country’s poorest families are acutely vulnerable and exposed. Speaking to the House of Commons Treasury committee on Monday, the chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility confirmed that welfare benefits will lag significantly behind inflation for the next 18 months. The Resolution Foundation thinktank estimates that the cost-of-living squeeze will force 1.3 million people into absolute poverty next year, including 500,000 children. The incomes of the poorest quarter of households – the vast majority without savings to fall back on – are set to plummet by 6% in real terms.

Providing next to nothing by way of direct support and mitigation, Rishi Sunak’s spring statement left these families to fend for themselves. To link benefits to the rising cost of living was just not “doable”, Mr Sunak told the Treasury committee. That is a political choice that, as a new study from the Centre for Social Justice makes distressingly clear, will exact a high toll in human misery; if the state refuses to provide an adequate safety net, predators will move into a world where desperate people resort to increasingly desperate measures.

According to the CSJ report, Swimming With Sharks, over a million people in England are in debt to illegal and unregulated money lenders – 700,000 more than the last official estimate in 2010. Scammers, false “friends” who turn acquaintances into revenue streams and small-time mafiosi on housing estates have come into their own amid the economic fallout of austerity and the pandemic. The vast majority of loan shark victims have an income below £20,000, already owe money to legal creditors and are on benefits.