MP, Labour’s Shadow
Chancellor, responding to a Resolution
Foundation report published today on the rise of in-work poverty,
said:
“Conservative governments over the last ten years have
ushered in this age of in-work poverty, where people have to work
longer and longer hours to stay out of poverty.
“The past decade of decline has seen vicious social
security cuts, low pay growth, and insecure work that have
repeatedly pushed people back into poverty.
“In-work poverty simply should not exist in the United
Kingdom in 2020, and we‘ll continue to fight to abolish it
despite the Tories’ cruel complacency.”
Ends
Notes to Editors:
- The Resolution Foundation report, Working Hard(ship), is
published today here, describing how we are in “an age of in-work
poverty” (p. 4): https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/2020/02/Working-hardship-report.pdf
- The report notes that in 1996/7 less than half of
working-age adults in relative poverty (48%) lived in a working
household; now that figure is almost seven-in-ten (68%) (p.
13).
Social security cuts have contributed to this rise:
“Without a doubt, adequate benefit levels have a critical role to
play in protecting all households from in-work poverty. But
benefits have become less adequate in recent years, as austerity
ushered in an era of cuts to in- as well as out-of-work support”
(p. 10).
- The report shows that more hours need to be worked today
than prior to cuts beginning in 2010 to avoid poverty: “a single
parent with two children in a National Living Wage job needs to
work 23 hours per week today in order to live free of poverty,
compared to the 16 hours that would have been required in the
absence of the benefit cuts made post- 2010” (p.
10).
