JRF will be testing whether the Chancellor’s Spending
Review will give certainty to these families, and provide a
reliable route back to work for those who have lost their jobs.
Has the Chancellor given people on Universal
Credit certainty about their income after
April?
The £20 uplift to Universal Credit is due to be taken
away in April 2021. The Government should do the right thing and
make the uplift permanent. JRF modelling suggests that if the
uplift is cut, around 16 million people live in families that
would face an overnight loss of £1,040. 700,000 more people,
including 300,000 more children, risk being swept into poverty.
Half a million more people could end up in deep poverty - more
than 50% below the poverty line.
The Government should also extend this lifeline to
1.5m people on legacy benefits who are currently excluded from
this help. People claiming these benefits are mainly sick or
disabled people or carers, for whom heightened health risks,
challenges associated with social distancing and loss of
essential services has made life even more
difficult.
Has the Chancellor done enough to help the
weakest economies to level up?
The new UK Shared Prosperity Fund needs to at least
match the £2.4bn a year provided up to now by the EU Structural
Funds and UK Government match funding. However, we think a
government committed to levelling up and supporting weaker
economies to respond to the pandemic should double this amount.
We’ve called for the UKSPF to be worth £14bn over a three year
spending review period. This should be administered locally via
mayors, devolved administrations and local
authorities.
Has the Chancellor done enough to help the
people who lose their jobs improve their skills to find
work?
The Government needs to come good on its manifesto
commitment of a ‘right to retrain’ with a new deal for adult
education which is properly funded, and to deliver on the
‘tailored and personalised’ employment support promised in the
Plan for Jobs this Summer. The Government’s lifelong learning
commitment announced in September focused on level 3
qualifications, but there is a need to help people access funded
level 2 qualifications as well. Employment support programmes
must include targeted and personalised help for groups including
BAME communities, disabled people, lone parents, long-term
unemployed and adults with fewer formal
qualifications.
Has the Chancellor done enough to create
sustainable, good quality jobs?
The Government should make sure that jobs created
from government investment are secure, offer the flexibility for
those with childcare responsibilities and crucially are directed
towards those hit hardest by job losses, including the lowest
paid, women, people with a work-limiting disability, young
workers and some ethnic minorities. It should invest in social
care to create thousands of sustainable jobs paid the real living
wage of £10.85 in London and £9.50 in other parts of the
UK.
Has the Chancellor done enough to keep
housing costs under control?
To properly fix the housing crisis the government
needs to increase the supply of social housing, with a particular
focus on homes for social rent: 145,000 affordable homes a year
(inc. 90,000 for social rent) for the next five years. This kind
of investment would also act as a significant fiscal stimulus,
kickstarting our post-Covid economic recovery and answers the
government’s call for ‘shovel-ready’ projects.
The government must also take swift action to address
the growing problem of rent arrears. Recent JRF polling found
that 700,000 households are already behind on rent, with 2.5
million households worried about paying rent over the next three
months. We need a watertight ban on evictions, together with
targeted support for rent arrears, to prevent a surge of
evictions in the spring.
