Austerity, Debt and Welfare Revision

How has the welfare state evolved since the 1940s?

First Keynesian welfare state was intended to be a comprehensive social safety net to support citizens in the post-war period of the 1940s, in the 1970s Thatcher transformed this based on toxic welfare dependency and neoliberal ideology to prioritise individual responsibility through the thinking of the welfare state; austerity policies led to the Coalition making deepest cuts ever made to social provision in 2010

How was welfare reshaped by the coalition?

Welfare was reshaped to workfare

How was national debt pushed to the local level, how did this transform the local state?

The Local Governments budget saw the largest cuts in the national government budget in 2010 leading to substantial restructuring, this shrunk the capacity of the local state and saw a shift away from discretionary spending on social and physical infrastructure towards mandatory spending as the local state became smaller and constrained

What factors impacted which local governments felt the cuts the most?

Levels of dependence, need for services, reliance on central grants and ability to raise local revenue

Which local places felt the greatest cuts?

Cities, seaside towns, deindustrialising spaces such as Liverpool, Leeds, Nottingham and London

Why is the city a key space where austerity is felt?

Cities are spaces of collective consumption and engagement with the state but also where many of the most vulnerable are concentrated; in cities dependency on services is high leading to impacts to families, children, disabled people etc.

How does austerity change the ethics and nature of the state?

The state’s ethics of care are weakened to see a crisis of care arise due to the shrinking or consolidated state; budget cuts, underfunded social programmes, reductions in public sector jobs etc. are pushed down to the local state no longer able to provision welfare to see the social safety net abandoned

What are social infrastructures?

Places where belonging and attachment are produced and services are offered including union halls, community centres, restaurants and civic organisations

What are left behind places and what are the impacts of these?

Geographic inequalities formed through deficiencies in social infrastructure due to disruptive social and economic change mapping onto deindustrialised Northern regions and former seaside resorts; this can lead to feelings of loss, neglect and fraying community bonds

How is Great Yarmouth an example of a left behind place?

Great Yarmouth was worst affected by austerity due to low-paying seasonal tourist economies and high number of benefits claimants; the transition to UC exacerbated poverty and destitution to increase the need for a social safety net whilst this was no available; this led to stigma, sanctions, inability to access housing, people left without income for weeks, missing payments and a loss of social infrastructure

How does the community and charity sector work to improve the social safety net in Great Yarmouth?

Alternative spaces outside of state provisioning are upheld by volunteers to fill the gap such as the library as a community building, host of health services, warmth, WiFi etc.; the Workers Centre is also upheld by the charity sector to allow access to computers, CV help, interview practice etc.

How does the state become a debt collector and how does this impact UC recipients?

The government has greater legal powers to use benefits deductions to control repayment of debt in an attempt to stabilise finances; this has extreme impacts on low income households without sufficient income to live on, no longer able to afford to turn on heating or purchase health food; they were also force to rely on third-parties for loans they would struggle to pay back

How have health inequalities risen in the UK?

Budget cuts are concentrated in the most deprived areas where premature mortality is greater; cuts to treatment alongside increases in unemployment, homelessness and stress see rising depression and suicide rates correlating with regional patterns of job loss; Disability Benefits also see tighter criteria

How have mental health services been impacted by austerity at the local level?

Significantly reduced funding and increased pressure on an under funded resource leads to strain on mental health services; early interventions are lost, waiting times are longer and the increased referral thresholds sees some CAMHS services only accepting referrals once a young person has attempted to commit suicide, children are rejected for being too social or too chaotic with psychological impacts on them and their family; adults also see reduced state mental health support funding with those experiencing mental distress also hardest hit by cuts to Disability and Ill Health benefits

What percentage of local authorities have reduced or frozen CAMHS budgets since 2010?

60%

What s the role of the food bank during austerity?

A charitable safety net for those failed by the social security system as a place of emergency food aid responding to the failure of the welfare state and aggravation by COVID; food bank numbers continue to expand in all nations of the UK and Wales with an intensification coming at the time of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 due to benefit delays and changes; this is now normalised as a new safety net

How many food banks were working in the UK in 2020, who estimated this?

1400 estimated by the Trussell Trust

What did the Welfare Reform Act 2012 introduce and what were the aims of this?

Universal Credit which aimed to streamline the benefits system by replacing multiple specific benefits with a singular, universal system and introduce stricter conditionality; sanctions would also be applied when claimants were judged to have not met work related conditions such as failing to accept a reasonable job offer for the third time leading to a 3 year ban on out-of-work benefits

How are new moral categorisations of welfare recipients formed?

The state seeks to form an anti-welfare common sense by creating and reasserting the irresponsible, lazy benefits claimant and forming categories of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ of receiving aid to legitimise welfare reforms through a cultural economy of disgust

How were disciplinary actions used to further moral categorisations?

Categorisations of ‘deservingness’ incentivised the public to change their behaviour to be more hard working, this was also realised through conditionality with access dependent on industrious and responsible characteristics; sanctions worked to punish those workless and not meeting the requirements of the state

Which groups did these perceptions and categorisations have a disproportionate impact on?

Women, children, low-income groups and disabled people

How were there unequal impacts of benefits cuts and sanctions?

There is asymmetric levels of dependence on benefits leading to higher levels on ex-mining towns due to economic disadvantage and lower employment opportunities; cuts to welfare disproportionately impact these communities and inhabitants are more vulnerable to sanctions associated with conditionality not due to a lack of motivation but systematic lack of full-time, well paid employments; this reinforces the North-South divide

What was the Philpott Case 2013 and how was this weaponised in the anti-welfare cultural economy?

Michael Philpott was found guilty of manslaughter of his 6 children after setting fire to his home in Derby, the verdict was part of discourses on welfare abuse as the Daily Mail published an article asserting the motive was economic greed to restore benefits from his ex-girlfriend and secure a bigger council house; this was used as a compelling reason to cut back on benefit provisioning and was linked to reforms to tighten the Household Benefit Cap

How was ‘Benefits Street’ used to spread myths on welfare dependence, what is the reality?

Channel 4’s ‘Benefits Street’ was based on the rationale that whole streets and neighbourhoods living on welfare benefits with myths that there are families where no one has worked over several generations and localities where no-one is employed; these theories of wordlessness are used to justify benefit conditionality and cuts through cultures of worklessness based on immoral behaviour, laziness etc.; the reality showed that in the most extreme cases less than 40% of people were on out of work benefits and high unemployment was linked to deindustrialisation and economic dispossession

How did disability disrupt the poverty porn narrative on ‘Benefits Street’?

Disability is articulated or erased in order to support the story that people on benefits are unworthy ‘scroungers’ as depression is shown for Deidre Kelly manipulated to portray her as someone who could work if she wanted to and uses disability to claim state support; however, for Mark Thomas and Becky Howe learning disabilities are not incorporated and risked them being framed as the worthy poor; this is used in different ways for different cultural worths

How does austerity and benefit reform have a disproportionate impact on women?

It undermines their ability to take on dual roles as workers and carers due to UC not recognising the value of socially reproductive labour; often caring roles take up much time in the home meaning women are unable to take on full time roles or develop skills for advanced roles; they are deemed as lazy and sanctioned; women often are forced to leave the workforce entirely, the single household payment assumes equal sharing of income, single earnings disregard leads to a lower incentive for women to work; women are also more likely to work in the public sector so are impacted by job cuts, they must also fill the gap left by retreat in public sector that they relied on

How do feminist projects seek to challenge this inequality?

Social movements now expose gendered dimensions of austerity politics and expose the unequal burden of benefit cuts and public sector work as well as the use of women’s unpaid labour to stabilise the economy; collective agency arise through movements such as UK Feminista, Women’s Resource Centre and Women’s Budget Group to form new practices of resistance and imagine alternative economic strategies

What is the role of the youth in this resistance?

Political optimism of the youth should harnessed in an attempt to resist the reproduction of social inequalities and form a more equitable future for all