Rishi Sunak suggested that the Conservative government has “reduced child poverty” as he announced his party’s manifesto ahead of the general election.

At a time when millions of children across the country are living in poverty and hundreds of thousands of people are relying on food banks to live, it’s no surprise his comment made at Silverstone on Tuesday (11 June) have provoked outrage.

Caroline Lucas, former leader of the Green Party, posted on X: “How dare Sunak suggest the Tories have reduced child poverty.”

• Taxes, benefit cuts and bad jokes: Key takeaways from the Tory general election manifesto launch
• ‘You can hear your stomach growling’: Kids call on next government to do more to end child poverty

Around one million children in the UK experienced “horrifying levels of destitution” last year, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Lucas added: “He should scrap cruel two-child limit because doing so would lift 300,000 children out of the dire poverty his government has created.”

The Conservative manifesto actually celebrates the two-child limit and benefit cap, which it claims make the system “fairer to the taxpayers who pay for it and ensure benefits are always a safety net, not a lifestyle choice“.

Charities and campaigners have long called for an end to the two-child limit, which is considered “one of the cruellest welfare policies of the last decade”. Labour is also refusing to scrap the policy.

How dare Sunak suggest the Tories have reduced child poverty when @jrf_uk find 1 million children experiencing destitution with major increase since 2017. He should scrap cruel 2-child limit because doing so would lift 300,000 children out of the dire poverty his govt has created

— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) June 11, 2024

So let’s fact check it. Is Sunak right in saying his government has reduced child poverty? Well, it depends what measure you use.

There were 4.3 million children living in poverty in 2022 to 2023, according to official government statistics. This is 100,000 more than in the previous year and nearly one in three children.

By comparison, there were 3.6 million children in poverty in 2010/11. That means 600,000 more children are in poverty now than there were when the Conservatives came to power.

But Sunak is referring to absolute child poverty, which is when a person or household does not have the minimum amount of income needed to meet the minimum living requirements.

And technically, he’s right on this front. Absolute poverty fell by 1.1 million between 2009/10 and 2022/23. But absolute poverty normally falls, and this is no where near the falls we have seen historically. In the previous 13-year period, absolute poverty fell by 7.8 million.

Absolute child poverty actually rose this year, when Rishi Sunak was prime minister, by two percentage points on the previous year from 23% to 25%. This is the worst increase since 1981, and represents an additional 300,000 kids in poverty.

So what do the Tories plan on doing to help kids? It’s announced an expansion to child benefit payments, but that is most likely to benefit high earners.

Parents earning six-figure salaries could be able to keep some or all of their child benefit payments. The Conservatives would increase the income threshold at which a household starts to lose their child benefits from £60,000 to £120,000.

This would gradually be increased to £160,000. The manifesto claims around 700,000 families would benefit and it would save them nearly £1,500 on average.

Tom Waters, associate director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told the BBC: “At that point, one has to ask whether it’s really worth having the additional administrative apparatus, rather than simply returning child benefit to being universal, as it always was before 2013.”

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Sunak also reiterated previously-announced plans to give working parents 30 hours of free childcare a week from when their child is nine months old to when they start school, saving eligible families an average of £6,900 per year.

Yet as the Big Issue has previously reported, children whose parents earn less than £8,650 each are not eligible for the scheme and will miss out on key opportunities for development. 

Few of the poorest families will be eligible for the full 30 hours free childcare offer, analysis from the New Economics Foundation shows. By comparison, the majority of middle and higher income households will benefit.

Dan Paskins, interim director of policy, advocacy and campaigns for Save the Children UK, said: “Being a ‘party of the family’ should mean a fair focus on the very poorest and those struggling in this country. 

“The Conservative party’s manifesto highlighted positive changes on child benefit and childcare but reforms need to be more ambitious. It’s a fact that 4.3 million children are still in poverty. All political parties must make a hopeful offer for children at this general election.”

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? We want to hear from you. Get in touch and tell us more.

Standing at the podium at Silverstone race course, Rishi Sunak has launched the Conservative manifesto.

The choice of venue for Tuesday’s (11 June) press conference – the home of British Grand Prix – is appropriate, the prime minister quipped, given that the economy has “turned a corner”.

Among less sympathetic sections of the British commentariat, the setting solicited jokes about the government’s “wheels coming off” and the Conservatives being “stuck in the slow-lane”.

Much of the policy-package has already been announced. But from national insurance to childcare, here are 11 key take-aways from the policy package in the Tory manifesto.

National insurance tax cut

Sunak has pledged £17bn worth of tax cuts in the Tory manifeso, paid for by £12bn in welfare reductions and a £6bn in tax avoidance clampdown.  

The prime minister has promised to reduce national insurance by 2p. This cut – which takes the levy down to 6% – follows two other 2p cuts in April and January. The Tories would also abolish the main rate of self-employed national insurance entirely by the end of the next parliament.

The Conservatives have separately promised not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT. But taxes will go up for many people anyway, because the party – and their Labour opponents – will keep income tax thresholds frozen until 2028.

• Yes, National Insurance cuts have taken effect – but it doesn’t mean lower earners are better off

Sam Robinson, Senior Researcher at the Social Market Foundation, questioned the funding streams behind the tax cut.

“Unfortunately, this cut to NICs is not part of a considered reform agenda but funded by magical thinking about the scope for efficiencies in welfare reform. And cutting self-employed NICs by more than employee NICs is a strange decision that will worsen the tax bias against employment,” he said.

Welfare: Tightening disability benefit rules

The tax cuts will supposedly be largely covered by reductions in welfare spending.

“In this party, we believe it is morally right that people who can work, do work,” Sunak told Silverstone.

Previously-announced reforms include tightening access to extra universal credit and personal independence payment (PIP), and increasing the use of sanctions to punish claimants deemed not to be looking for work.

The government has described it as a “crackdown on sick note culture”, while campaigners have slammed it as “inhumane.”

Speaking today, campaigner and author Dr Frances Ryan accused Sunak of blaming disabled people for structural issues.

“Sunak framing getting people off disability benefits as a “moral mission” is a Victorian dog whistle. It frames being able to work as a virtue and being too sick to as a moral failing. It suggests the solution is, not structural change, but disabled people trying harder,” she said.

Housing: creating an ‘ownership society’  

Tory housing policy would create an “ownership society”, Sunak has pledged, where “more and more people have the security and pride of home ownership”.

The Tories would set up a scheme to help first-time buyers with government-backed mortgages. These would allow them to buy a new-build home up to the value of £400,000 with just a 5% deposit.

It’s modelled on the Help to Buy scheme that ended last year, and will cost around £1bn per year.

David Sturrock, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said that the scheme could help potential homebuyers get “onto the housing ladder” – but expressed concerns that it wouldn’t help those who most need it.

“Experience from past schemes suggests that some of the subsidy will be captured by developers in the form of higher prices and profits and that some who buy would be able to do so without the scheme,” he said.

The Conservatives would also permanently abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers purchasing a property up to £425,000.

However, where the houses for these first-time buyers will come from is another matter. The Conservatives have pledged to build 1.6 million new homes “in the right places” – i.e., not on the greenbelt. However, they have failed to meet their 2019 commitment to build 300,000 new homes every year, building an average of  189,000 houses per year.

“It takes a lot of wishful thinking to say this plan will add up to an additional 1.6 million homes,” said Gideon Salutin, a Senior Researcher at the Social Market Foundation.

“The Conservatives have pledged no new money to increase social housing, as SMF has previously called for, and meagre changes to planning by reforming brownfield sites. So long as policymakers remain this timid, we’ll continue to see slow construction and rising prices.”

New protections for renters are scarce in the Tory manifesto, though the government has reiterated its long-delayed 2019 pledge to ban Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions.

‘Triple Lock Plus’ for pensioners

The already-announced ‘Triple Lock Plus’ will mean pensioners never have to pay tax on state-pension earnings.

Without this policy, the increasing state pension would exceed the tax-free personal allowance by around 2027. The ‘Triple Lock Plus’ would see the tax-free pension allowance increased at least 2.5% or in line with the highest of earnings or inflation.

Pensions already increase in line with inflation, meaning they rocketed by £900 this year alone.

National service for teenagers

Every 18 year-old will have to partake in mandatory national service under a reelected Tory government. They would have to choose between a 12-month full-time placement in the armed forces, or 25 days unpaid mandatory volunteering in flood defence, the NHS, fire service, charities, or search and rescue.

Children: Raising the child-benefit threshold and 30 hours free childcare

Wealthy parents will continue to receive full child benefit until they earn £120,000 a year, double the current £60,000 threshold. The salary at which a parent receives no child benefit at all will also double to £160,000.

The policy will cost £1.3bn in 2029-30, Conservative HQ claims, also supposedly funded by clamping down on tax avoidance.

By September 2025, children aged between nine months and school age will get 30 hours of free childcare per week, as long as their parents are working and earning between £8,670 a year but less than £100,000.  

However, campaigners have warned there are not enough nursery spaces to meet the increased demand for childcare expected following the expansion of free childcare.

Education: Swapping so-called ‘rip-off degrees’ for apprenticeships

The Conservatives will scrap so-called “rip-off degrees”, where graduates earn less on average than they would if they had not gone to university.

The party says this would raise £900m that they would spend on creating 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

“It is a positive thing to bolster job specific apprenticeships,” Big Issue editor Paul McNamee wrote last month. “But it shouldn’t come at the cost of hammering kids who want a degree. The answer, surely, is to invest better in both, rather than demonising one against the other.”

Law and order: 8,000 more police officers

The Conservatives will commit to recruiting 8,000 additional police officers over the next three years, at an annual cost of £818m as well. They will pay for this in part by increasing visa fees.

Other law and order announcements in the Tory manifesto include raising the minimum sentence for murders in the home from 15 to 25 years.

Immigration: ‘Seeing the Rwanda plan through’ and hiking visa fees

In 2022, the Conservatives pledged to deport people who arrive on small boats to Rwanda, barring their ability to claim asylum in the UK. After years of legal challenges, the long-anticipated first flight will not take-off before polling day.

The Tories would reopen talks with other countries like Armenia and Botswana, with the aim of replicating the scheme elsewhere.

Other plans to reduce migration include a “new annual cap on visas”. The exact number would be set by the Migration Advisory Committee, with the aim of lowering it year on year.

“Our plan is clear… we will halve migration,” Sunak pledged. Part of the way to do it will be hiking visa fees. If re-elected, the government would raise the Immigration Health Surcharge for students from £776 to £1,035 a year, and increase “all visa fees” by 25%.

Environment: ‘No new green levies or charges‘

“We will put security and family finances ahead of unaffordable eco-zealotry,” the PM told the audience at the launch of the Tory manifesto. This is a reference to the PM’s net zero U-turns last year, which pushed back plans to phase out gas.  

They will also ‘back drivers’ by forcing local councils to hold a referendum on 20mph zones abolish London’s ULEZ expansion

Increase NHS spending as wait-lists reach record highs

At the Tory manifesto launch, Sunak promised to increase spending above inflation every year, recruiting 92,000 more nurses and 28,000 more doctors by the end of the next parliament.

After 13 years of Conservative rule, the NHS is in crisis. Around 7.61 million people are on elective waiting lists in England alone, while a staggering 1.5 million patients in England waited 12 hours or more after arriving at A&E over the past year.

Children feel that their voices are being ignored as politicians fail to make a clear commitment to ending child poverty in their general election campaigns.

“We are overlooking so many issues in society and it’s just not good enough,” 11-year-old Dennis told the Big Issue.

There are 4.3 million children across the UK living in poverty. That is one in three.

Dennis believes politicians “don’t understand what we’re going through” and they “don’t understand what it’s like to be a child”.

Hanna, also aged 11, agrees. “It makes me quite angry, actually,” she says. “People don’t need to be in poverty. Every child should eat and drink and be healthy.”

New research from the Childhood Trust, which analysed data from 1,400 schools attended by 580,000 children, highlights the devastating impact of poverty on children’s lives.

Children on pupil premium – those are kids from the most disadvantaged backgrounds – face suspension or exclusion at rates three times higher than their peers.

They also are more likely to struggle with their mental health. When they start secondary school, their mental health wellbeing score is around 10% lower on average than their fellow students.

“It feels so wrong,” Dennis says. “Everyone needs to be respected. Everyone has tough times. Nobody has a perfect life. People shouldn’t be treated differently just because they have a poor background.”

Laurence Guinness, chief executive of the Childhood Trust, adds: “This is a form of discrimination. What we’re seeing is discriminatory.

“Just because you’re from a low-income family, it shouldn’t mean that your education is also disadvantaged, because that then just perpetuates the cycle of poverty.”

At Dennis’s school, a blazer costs £170. “It’s too much,” he says. Families also have to buy laptops, scientific calculators, stationery and more. “It just adds up.”

“Some people are just living paycheck to paycheck. They can’t sustain themselves and afford their basic needs.”

Dennis recalls being in his classroom and the teacher asking whether they had eaten breakfast that morning. Only half of the class put their hands up.

One of Dennis’s peers told him he thought he had failed his SATs test because he was “so hungry he couldn’t concentrate”.

“I was just so flabbergasted,” Dennis says. “They could have failed. That could of been their future and their life at secondary school.”

Around 89% of charities surveyed by the Childhood Trust reported inadequate nutrition among the 310,877 children they support, leading to malnutrition, obesity and chronic illnesses that impair educational engagement.

“I completely agree with what Dennis said,” Hanna remarks. “If you don’t have a good breakfast, then it’s very hard to concentrate and to focus on what you are doing because you can always hear your stomach growling.”

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New analysis from the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) shows that there are 900,000 children living in poverty who are not eligible for free school meals.

That’s because entitlement is so restrictive. For a family on universal credit to qualify, their combined household income must be £7,400 a year or less excluding benefit payments.

The Childhood Trust is calling for expansive policy changes, including greater access to early childhood education, integrated health and education policies, more free school meals, affordable housing initiatives, and comprehensive school-based health services.

Guiness says: “We need a commitment to eradicate poverty in this country. We need to be honest about the impact of disadvantage of not having enough free school meals, not having enough material in schools that children need: books, pencils, laptops, uniforms, clothes really basic stuff.

“The housing crisis across the country needs to be addressed. These are the fundamentals of a prosperous society – that everyone has has a decent place to live, a reasonable level of income, nobody goes hungry.”

Most charities (84%) documented overcrowded living conditions for the children they support, exposing them to high stress levels that negatively impact learning.

GCSE results in 2023 for disadvantaged pupils were at a record low since 2011. Only 25% were grades of five or above compared to 52% for non-disadvantaged pupils.

The Big Issue is also calling for a clear commitment to ending poverty from the next government. Its Blueprint for Change sets out a series of policy recommendations, including ensuring that universal credit is enough so that people can afford the essentials and expanding free school meals to all school children.

Guinness adds: “This isn’t some kind of paradise utopia that we’re trying to dream. It’s well within the grasp of of enlightened politicians to assure a fairer, more equal distribution. And what we’ve seen over the last government has been a worsening of the child poverty landscape, and children are getting a raw deal.”

Find out more, including how to support The Childhood Trust, here.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

The Big Issue has reported extensively on the harrowing experiences faced by people navigating the disability benefits system.

Aidan, an amputee, shared his story of being driven to “psychological trauma to the point of being suicidal” when the government took away his personal independence payment (PIP).

A domestic violence victim said she was forced to relive her abuse when she was assessed for disability benefits. Chelsea, a young disabled woman, spent two years going through a distressing appeals process to try to get her PIP back.

Josh took his own life aged 25 after facing significant stress that his disability benefits were going to be stripped away. His mother blames the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and public services for failing Josh when he was at his most desperate.

Pauline had schizophrenia and other health conditions and was denied disability benefits. She was only awarded PIP when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She died weeks later.

Hundreds of readers have written to share their own traumatic experiences. Disability benefits assessors told us the system is “target driven” and “sets people up to fail”.

Our reporting shows that this is not an easy system to navigate – far from it.

• Almost no recorded cases of disability benefit fraud despite DWP crackdown: ‘PIP fraud is a non-issue’
• PIP changes: What is the government planning with the disability benefits system?

The UK’s disability benefits system has been condemned by charities, MPs, the United Nations, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and many more. And yet little has changed. In fact, it has probably got worse.

In its response to our reporting, the DWP previously said: “We support millions of people every year and our priority is that they receive a timely, supportive and compassionate service.

“PIP entitlement is assessed by healthcare professionals and decisions are made using all the available information. If someone disagrees with a decision, they can ask for this to be reconsidered and appeal to an independent tribunal.”

The Conservative government recently announced a series of proposals which would make the benefits system even tougher for disabled people. Rishi Sunak said there was a “sick note culture” and he worried about benefits becoming a “lifestyle choice”.

Ministers have proposed cuts to disability benefits, tougher sanctions for people out of work and regular PIP payments being replaced with one-off grants.

It is all part of a plan to get disabled people into work. There are more than 2.8 million people out of work due to long-term sickness, according to recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). 

An increasing welfare bill and gaps in the workforce are challenges the next government must address, but research shows that a punitive approach can push people further away from work and deeper into poverty. Sanctions can actually drive people to disability benefits, research shows.

Michael Clarke, head of information programmes at anti-poverty charity Turn2Us, explains: “Policies like benefit sanctions, the two-child limit, and stricter conditionality are destroying trust, damaging health, and deterring people when they need help the most.

“Political leaders must act now. They need to listen to people’s experiences and build a compassionate, fair system for everyone. This means ensuring benefits cover essential living costs and abolishing the two-child limit and sanctions. The demand for a system that truly supports and reassures those struggling to get by is loud and clear across the UK.”

Is Labour much better? The party tipped to win the general election is also concerned about getting people back into work and it is yet to confirm whether it would drop the Conservatives’ plans.

Shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall said earlier this year there would be “no option for a life on benefits” under a Labour government, while setting out plans to encourage unemployed young people into work. Her predecessor Jonathan Ashworth also said there would be continued conditionality.

But Labour has also suggested a more supportive approach – such as new local plans to get more people with health conditions and disabilities into work.

Shadow disability minister Vicky Foxcroft said: “DWP too often fails to get decisions right first time, leading to lengthy delays, reassessments and a stressful appeals process.”

She added that the Tories have “run the health and care system into the ground” and that Labour would “support disabled people to live independently, enable as many as possible to work and fix the NHS to make sure people get the treatment they need”.

The Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change is calling for the next government to reform the increasingly punitive benefits system and replace it with one which helps those most in need.

It wants the Back to Work Plan to be reformed to focus on mentorship, confidence-building models and realistic routes to move people back into sustainable employment, rather than unnecessary and harsh punishments.

There also needs to be increased job security, better pay and flexibility offered by employers.

After all, work isn’t always a route out of poverty. Around two-thirds (68%) of working-age adults in poverty live in a household where at least one adult is in work. This figure was lower than 50% in 1996/97.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Ayla Ozmen, director of policy and campaigns at Z2k, said: “Any new government that is serious about tackling this challenge must move towards a disability benefits system that allows people to try work without risking destitution. But current plans on the table fail to address this risk and will simply push many disabled people deeper into poverty.

“We need all political parties to commit to changing this dangerous direction of travel, scrapping plans to tighten the work capability assessment from next year and to moving towards a system that truly works for disabled people by removing the risk and inadequacy currently built into universal credit.”

Figures published by the DWP show that its planned changes to the work capability assessment, which are due to come into effect next year, will lead to lower benefits or higher work-search conditions for around 457,000 people by 2028/29.

But reporting by the Big Issue shows that this will only lead to 15,400 more people finding paid work.

James Taylor, director of strategy at disability equality charity Scope, said: “Disabled voices must not be ignored in this election. Large numbers of disabled people tell us – year in, year out – that the benefits system isn’t working. It’s a punitive and adversarial system where wrong decisions are made too often, and it leaves many people feeling dejected.”

Around seven in ten people referred to food banks in the Trussell Trust network are disabled. Often, because of the shame and stigma of going to a food bank, these are people who have reached such severe states of hunger and hardship that they have no other choice.

As charities like Scope have long pointed out, life costs more if you are disabled. On average, a household with a disabled person spends around £975 more every month for extra costs like powering equipment and heating bills.

Disabled people have repeatedly told the Big Issue that they want to work, but there just isn’t the support or flexibility there from employers.

Taylor added: “Disabled people are continually left out of pocket by a failing benefits system. The current system forces disabled people who are too unwell to work into unsuitable jobs by threatening to cut their benefits. We need to move to a situation where disabled people who want to work in some capacity are given the opportunity through a system that is voluntary and based on trust. 

“We want to see all parties commit to wholesale welfare reform, and introduce tailored employment support for disabled people free from counter-productive conditionality.”

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? We want to hear from you. Get in touch and tell us more.

A South London mum has said visiting baby banks helped take the “shame” away after she felt “depressed” due to the skyrocketing cost of living crisis continuing to hit the UK.

CeCe, 44, gave birth to baby Eden in 2023, telling Big Issue that while she was pregnant, she had been overwhelmed by the upcoming costs associated with having a child.

“I was really feeling quite depressed, because I was four months [pregnant] at the time, and I was thinking, well, my time is ticking down, and it feels like the cost of living crisis is biting me, because every ten seconds I’m putting money on the gas, money on the electricity. My partner is a full-time worker, but he’s also a university student,” she explained.

She praised London baby bank network Little Village, which helped provide her with essentials including clothes, toys and baby equipment when her daughter was born. 

Now one year old, Eden has continued to receive clothes and other items from the baby bank, which helped support more than 3,000 newborns in 2023 alone. 

• How baby banks are fighting child poverty and empowering mums in the cost of living crisis
• Next government must increase universal credit so people have enough money to survive

The London-based baby bank network launched its “great big baby shower” event on Tuesday (4 June) in the run-up to September’s baby boom, with the charity estimating it will need to reach more than 800 newborns over summer by helping families in need of essentials. 

The charity, which supported 8,529 children in total in 2023, claims when its referral form is open, a family is referred to the baby bank on average every 45 seconds. 

CeCe told Big Issue that she was first told about the Little Village baby bank during a midwife appointment, and was given a referral that day. 

“I literally broke down at the midwife appointment,” she said. “She was so lovely to me… she referred me, and I really didn’t believe it until I got the phone call.”

CeCe added: “When the items arrived, I definitely realised this is coming from a charity that loves children. Because everything they sent was beautiful. I was so impressed. And then that takes the shame away.”

She explained that she’s a person that “doesn’t like to ask for help”, and that she appreciated Little Village offering “essential items” like clothes, bedsheets, books, and bottle sterilisers rather than her having to list everything she might need.  

“That was what made me feel so cared for,” she said. “The anxiety just faded. It faded, because I just don’t want to have to ask.”

She added that the baby bank has continued to offer her items as Eden has grown, leading her to donate several items back to Little Village after she no longer needed them. 

“What was nice was that all the things that she had grown out of, I knew that I could now donate them back, because I’ve looked after them so well… It felt really good to do that, and that’s what keeps them [the charity] going,” CeCe explained. 

You're invited to join Little Village's Great Big Baby Shower! Starting next Tuesday 4th June for two weeks, all cash donations made to us will be DOUBLED!#GreatBigBabyShower pic.twitter.com/JOxropBYiv

— Little Village (@LittleVillageHQ) June 2, 2024

CeCe explained that being given much-needed items for newborns can be the most effective way to help families struggling with the cost of living. She explained that parents can often face barriers when receiving other forms of aid, like universal credit, which means you still have to pay up-front for expensive baby items. 

“There should be a set amount of essentials that the government says, ‘This is what the baby needs to enter into the world,’” she told Big Issue. “And the government should be supporting places like Little Village, absolutely. It should just be a staple. The government absolutely has to help fund it.

“They need to look after children, not from primary school but from birth.”

Debra Kroll, a midwife from University College London Hospitals, explained that baby banks can provide a “real lifeline for expectant mothers struggling with the ever-increasing cost of living, ensuring that they have the necessary resources to welcome their little ones with warmth and dignity.”

Sophie Livingstone, chief executive of Little Village, added: “It makes me extremely angry that we live in the sixth richest country in the world and families are in this position. It doesn’t need to be that way. We need some anger in society and some recognition that we won’t stand for this.”

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? We want to hear from you. Get in touch and tell us more.

Agenda Alliance campaigns for women and girls at the sharpest edge of adversity. These are women who have experienced poverty and abuse, and its connected repercussions. We see every day that women and girls across Britain are facing a crisis of unmet need.

The significant challenges women and girls share with us span every area of government: health, housing, social care, the criminal justice system, education and immigration. Many have no safe place to call home, are living with long-term mental health needs, or use substances to cope.

What we and our member specialist frontline organisations see every day is that the very services which are meant to help, public and voluntary sector services, often stigmatise, refuse or are unable to support these women. Their serious problems are left unaddressed, compound one another, and worsen. Escalation could be prevented, lives could be saved, if public services intervened sooner.

• We need to stop hoping for a cure and prevent women and girls from facing poverty and abuse
• Number of women sleeping rough on England’s street may be nine times higher than government thinks

This is why women and girls need a champion at the highest level of government – only a secretary of state has the power to drive forward change across the range of issues women and girls experience.

We want government to listen to women like Nici, a member of Agenda Alliance’s advisory network, who said: “Policymakers need a kick up the butt. They need to do something, and they need to do it fast otherwise there are going to be so many more disadvantaged women; more suicides, homelessness, child removal.”

Nici has important expertise to contribute to building solutions to support women and girls, because she has lived experience of the difficulties in accessing support. We believe politicians need to be hearing and valuing voices like hers. 

There are more than 100 specialist organisations that make up our membership, and they have told us they want us to be ambitious. They want politicians to understand that the disadvantage women and girls are experiencing is made worse because their specific needs are being ignored: services and systems are built with a generic ‘white male service user’ in mind.

Women and girls aren’t getting the attention they deserve, and their life chances are worsening. A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK. On a visit in February 2024, the UN Special Rapporteur declared violence against women a “national threat”.  

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Between 2018 and 2021, the North East (a region with some of the worst rates of poverty in the UK) saw the numbers of women who die due to suicide, drug and alcohol misuse, and domestic homicide rise by 15%. In 2020, the average age of a woman who died whilst accessing support from one of our members was just 37 years old. This isn’t acceptable, and it has to change – meaning committing a serious level of time and political resource that matches the seriousness of women’s needs.

Women and girls need someone fighting their corner where serious political decisions are made, especially when there’s an opportunity for things to change. Yet our current system means the ministers assigned to support women and girls have always held other significant government roles – big jobs like home secretary, or secretary of state for culture, media and sport. The Women and Equalities Committee itself have suggested that the role should become “a standalone brief in its own right”.

We have thought a lot about what this secretary of state could do in practice, and shared a manifesto and policy recommendations for where energy should be focused to make a difference.

These include conducting a review into how the cost of living crisis impacts women and girls specifically, introducing radical prevention funds for all local authorities to enable them to intervene early, working with the treasury to create a system which demonstrates how intervening early in one government department can save another department taxpayer money.

Our recommendations focus on systems change, embedding good practice, and tackling stigma so that women and girls’ lives change for the better.

Our alliance wants a secretary of state to prioritise women and girls, and work to prevent harm; share their power, by involving women and girls with lived experience; and champion the specialist women and girls sector, which is chronically underfunded and unappreciated despite being literally life-saving.

As our advisor Nici says: “It needs acting on and it needs acting on fast.”

The crisis facing women and girls across Britain can and must be turned around and that’s why we’re calling SOS. It’s time for a secretary of state for women and girls.

Indy Cross is the chief executive of Agenda Alliance.

Universal credit has increased in 2024 but some claimants will only be seeing the extra cash in their accounts from June.

Benefits across the board increased by 6.7% this April. That was because benefits are supposed to increase by September’s rate of inflation and last year that was 6.7%.

But because of the way assessment periods for universal credit work, you might only get extra money from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) this month.

• Universal credit claimants lose more than £1bn a year to ‘automatic DWP deductions’
• Why DWP urgently needs to make universal credit enough so people can afford the essentials

Below, we’ve explained why some people are only just getting the increased rate, why charities are calling for universal credit to be increased further, and where else to get support in June 2024.

Why has my universal credit increased in June 2024?

Benefits increased by 6.7% from 8 April, 2024 for many claimants.

But for some universal credit claimants, the increased benefit rates has only taken effect in June. This is because the new rate is not paid by the DWP until the first assessment period on or after 8 April.

Here’s an example. Your assessment period began on 26 March. It runs for a complete calendar month so ended on 25 April.

Payments are made a week after the first assessment period comes to an end, so you received your payment on 2 May. But because the assessment period started before 8 April, it was at the old rate.

A new assessment period would have begun on 26 April and ended on 25 May. So the new full rate would have been paid on 1 June.

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Why are people calling for universal credit to be increased further?

Universal credit is not enough for people to afford the cost of living, even since they have been increased in 2024.

The standard allowance for universal credit for people aged 25 and over falls short by around £30 every week – or £120 every month, according to estimations from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. For people aged 25 and under, the shortfall is even higher, at around £48 every week.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Trussell Trust and the Big Issue, backed by more than 100 organisations, are calling for an ‘essentials guarantee’ to be implemented into universal credit so people can at least afford the basics they need to live.

Read more here.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Could you be eligible for more DWP benefits or cost of living help?

Benefits aren’t stretching far enough in the cost of living crisis – but they can be a lifeline.

You could be entitled to benefits and tax credits if you are working or unemployed, sick or disabled, a parent, a young person, an older person or a veteran. You can use a benefits calculator to find out what you might be entitled to claim – including from Turn2Us, Policy in Practice and entitledto.

Citizens Advice offers information and services to help people and they can advise you as to what financial support is available from the government to help you. You can also find local advice services here.

People who are struggling financially may be eligible for charitable grants. You can find out what grants might be available to you using Turn2Us’ grant search on the charity’s website.

If you are unable to pay your bills, your local council may have a scheme that can help you. Local councils may be able to give you debt advice, help you get hold of furniture and support you through food and fuel poverty. You can also find out what support your council offers through End Furniture Poverty’s local welfare assistance finder or by contacting your local authority directly.

You can find your local food bank through the Trussell Trust’s website or the IFAN’s member’s map. You can also call the Trussell Trust’s free helplines and talk to a trained adviser. It’s 0808 208 2138 if you live in England or Wales, and 0800 915 4604 if you live in Northern Ireland. You should contact your local council if you live in Scotland.

There’s lots more cost of living help available to people who need it – we round it up here.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? We want to hear from you. Get in touch and tell us more.

Universal credit falls short of the money people need to afford the basics they need to survive.

Millions of people in the UK are going without food, falling behind on bills and living in cold and damp homes as benefits fail to cover the cost of living.

New research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that nearly one million people are only £10 a week away from falling into poverty. That includes 200,000 children.

• Nearly one million people only £10 a week away from poverty, study finds
• Universal credit claimants lose more than £1bn a year to ‘automatic DWP deductions’
• Next government must increase universal credit so people have enough money to survive

Around seven million households across the country had gone without essentials like showers, clothing or toiletries in the last six months, or had gone hungry or skipped meals in the last 30 days.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Trussell Trust and the Big Issue, backed by more than 100 organisations, are calling for an ‘essentials guarantee’ to be implemented into universal credit so people can at least afford the basics they need to live.

It is one of the asks in the Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change, which sets out how the next government can end poverty for good. So how would an essentials guarantee work? How much should universal credit increase? And how can you show your support? We explain all you need to know.

How much does universal credit need to increase so people can afford the essentials?

Universal credit must be at least £120 a week for people to afford the essentials, according to estimations by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

That means that the standard allowance for universal credit for people aged 25 and over falls short by around £30 every week – or £120 every month.

For people aged 25 and under, the shortfall is even higher, at around £48 every week.

Couples aged 25 and over are left £57 out of pocket each week between them, and younger couples are £87 short every week.

How much money do people spend on essentials?

Single adults need £120 a week to afford their basic essentials, not including housing costs.

Let’s break that down. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that around £39 goes on food and alcoholic drinks for the average adult. People spend roughly £27 each week on electricity and gas. Water comes in at just £6 and it’s the same cost for clothes and shoes. There’s £9 on communications – like phone bills, internet and postage. Travel’s about £16, and those extra costs like toiletries, cleaning materials, haircuts and bank charges are around £15. All that together is £120.

Couples save a bit of money when living together – so they’ll spend around £100 each on the above.

Universal credit just isn’t stretching to cover this. And it’s important to stress that these are essentials: things we all need to live and work in society. It doesn’t include luxuries which we should all be entitled too – the little bit of cash to spend on going for a drink with friends, for a holiday or day trip with your kids. Many would argue that these too are essentials, because they are vital to our mental health.

But at the moment, the bleak reality is that universal credit claimants cannot even afford food or heating. It’s why more people than ever are being forced to turn to food banks for the first time, with food banks in the Trussell Trust’s network handing out more than three million food parcels in the year up to March.

More than half (55%) people on universal credit ran out of food and could not afford any more in January this year, the Trussell Trust found.

How would an essentials guarantee work?

The essentials guarantee would make it policy that universal credit must protect people from going without the essentials. There would be a legal minimum embedded into the universal credit system.

There would be an independent process to regularly recommend the essentials guarantee level, based on the cost of essentials (such as food, utilities and vital household items) and adjusted to inflation.

The standard allowance would need to at least meet this amount and any deductions to universal credit, such as debt repayments to the government, would not be allowed to reduce support below that level.

New analysis by the New Economics Foundation has found that half of people on universal credit are having money deducted from their payments each month, losing an average of £63.

How much would an essentials guarantee cost?

The essentials guarantee is estimated to cost an additional £19billion a year in 2024/2025, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. That’s not insignificant, but it would also mean huge savings for public services.

Poverty leads to poorer physical and mental health, increased demand on the NHS and social care services, and higher crime rates.

The health impacts of poverty also mean that people are less likely to be able to contribute in a substantial way to the workforce and economy. Children living in poverty are less likely to thrive in education, meaning their chances of thriving in the workforce in the future are less likely.

Child poverty currently costs the taxpayer a staggering £39billion annually.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has suggested that the essentials guarantee could be introduced gradually, such as being embedded at a lower level to begin with. It also means that people have a bit more money to spend on essentials, benefitting high streets and local economies.

How many people on universal credit would benefit from an essentials guarantee?

Around 8.8 million low-income families would benefit from an essentials guarantee. That includes 3.9 million families with children.

Over half of all working-age families in the UK with a disabled family member would benefit.

Then you’ve got the wider benefits for the population as a whole – NHS staff would be under less pressure, food banks would get some relief, local councils would no longer have to help as many people get out of financial crisis, and we would see safer streets because of reduced crime rates… In the long term, it’s an investment for the taxpayer.

Who supports the essentials guarantee?

A petition from the Trussell Trust reached more than 150,000 signatures from people showing support for the essentials guarantee.

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 72% of the public support the essentials guarantee and only 8% oppose it. Around 82% of people who voted Labour in 2019 support it, 83% of Liberal Democrat voters, and 62% of Conservative voters support the policy.

The work and pensions committee, a cross-party group of MPs, recommended that the government introduce a new benchmark for benefits levels which takes into account living costs, such as that set out in the essentials guarantee.

It also recommended an “uprating guarantee” which would give claimants the assurance that working-age benefits and local housing allowance will be increased each year.

Stephen Timms, the chair of the work and pensions committee, said: “We have heard plenty of evidence that benefits are currently at a level that leaves many unable to afford daily essentials or meet the unavoidable extra costs associated with having a health impairment or disability.

“The government has previously said that it is not possible to come up with an objective way of deciding what benefits should be. Our recommendations are a response to that challenge, and the ball is now back in the government’s court.”

Now, it will be up to the next government to make the change and so far no party has committed to an essentials guarantee.

More than 100 organisations – including the Big Issue, New Economics Foundation, Centrepoint, StepChange and more – have backed the calls for an essentials guarantee.

You can sign the Big Issue’s petition calling for the next government to commit to ending poverty, such as through the implementation of an essentials guarantee, below. You might also want to email your MP to show your support.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Ending rough sleeping is no easy task, but it takes a lot of money, collective effort, political will and smart choices to do it – the general election could have a big say on whether it happens.

The Conservatives pledged to end rough sleeping in their manifesto on their way to a landslide victory in the 2019 general election.

A lot has happened since then – a pandemic, three prime ministers, the cost of living crisis, an untold number of political scandals and even the former home secretary Suella Braverman describing street homelessness as a “lifestyle choice”.

What has not happened in that time is the end of rough sleeping. The governments headed by Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak failed to hit the 2019 manifesto target.

In fact, the official rough sleeping count showed rough sleeping in England rose in 2023 – 3,898 people were counted on the streets last autumn. The number of rough sleepers has doubled since the Tories came to power in 2010.

While it is an overall government target to end homelessness, it takes different departments to tackle the issue.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has the lead brief but it takes the Department of Health and Social Care to treat greater health needs of people experiencing homelessness and the Ministry of Justice to ensure prisoners are not released into homelessness.

The Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions are responsible for ensuring households have a financial safety net to prevent homelessness. The Home Office also has a role to play.

But the prospect of ending rough sleeping still seems far away.

It was housing secretary in 2019, Robert Jenrick, who convinced then-incoming prime minister Boris Johnson to include the target to end rough sleeping in the Tories’ manifesto ahead of the election. Jenrick admitted to The Big Issue last year that the party had “got it wrong” on rough sleeping in the previous decade as austerity drove people to the streets.

Given the position at the time, it was an incredibly ambitious target – and that earned the respect of homelessness experts.

Dr Andrew Connell, policy manager at The Salvation Army, told The Big Issue: “It’s absolutely fantastic that the UK government came out and said this, let’s be perfectly clear about this. It’s a very ambitious statement but absolutely all credit to them for saying that.”

It’s a sentiment shared by Alexia Murphy, chief executive of youth homelessness charity, Depaul UK.

“I won’t diss what the government has done in the last five years, I think there’s been some amazing achievements,” she said.

But, ultimately, the Tories fell well short of their target and there is little sign of falling homelessness, going into the next general election.

The Big Issue has asked homelessness experts, academics, charities and politicians to look back at the missed opportunities and the failures that stopped people living on the streets for good.

The government didn’t capitalise on the Everyone In scheme

One of the true ironies of Covid is that while the pandemic changed the world as we know it, it also offered a golden opportunity to end street homelessness for good, perhaps a better opportunity than any government could have hoped for.

The Everyone In scheme was a directive from the government to ask councils to bring in everyone out on the streets or at risk of sleeping rough to protect them from the spread of Covid-19.

Around 37,000 people were supported through the scheme, which mobilised local authorities, homelessness charities and support services to move people into hotels and other emergency accommodation left empty due to lockdowns.

As far as everyone The Big Issue spoke to is concerned, it was an almost unimaginable triumph.

Speaking to the Big Issue in October 2023, Centrepoint’s head of policy, research and campaigns Alicia Walker said: “Everyone In was fantastic. It was such a great policy. And it showed that it was possible that we can end rough sleeping and it showed that the government was on track to meet its target.

“But it happened in the context of a pressing and very obvious concern that touched on all of society and the government had to respond immediately. They’ve not so much rowed back since then but I’d say they have dropped the ball.”

Depaul’s Murphy added: “Everyone In was a great success. Without a doubt, it was an incredible example of what can be achieved and everyone works together. But it was for a crisis. People are homeless, they’re not hotel-less. And hotels don’t make homes.”

Everyone In was a crisis intervention at a time of emergency. It saw the government remove structural and systemic barriers, such as providing shelter to asylum seekers and migrants, that have since been put back in place.

Osama Bhutta, director of campaigns at Shelter, said: “It’s outrageous that the government is at risk of missing its rough sleeping target because of its own inaction. It could have built on its progress as we came out of the pandemic but instead has left more people to end up on the streets.”

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Renters have not been protected from homelessness

The Renters Reform Bill was supposed to make it through parliament to axe no-fault evictions and offer greater protection to renters.

Instead, thousands of renters have received eviction notices over the last five years without landlords being required to give them a reason.

No-fault evictions, also known as Section 21 evictions, are a leading driver of homelessness and the failure to remove them from the statute book has proven to be at odds with the goal of tackling rough sleeping.

Low-income renters have become increasingly vulnerable in the last four years due to local housing allowance (LHA) rates.

Almost all the experts The Big Issue spoke to cited the failure to increase LHA rates as a major factor in rising homelessness.

LHA rates are intended to ensure housing benefits which help low-income tenants cover rents for the bottom-30% of rented homes on the market.

But rates were frozen between 2020 and 2024 and left renters facing increasing housing costs and insufficient income to keep up.

It also left tenants with few choices if they need to move home and made it difficult for organisations supporting rough sleepers to find them a permanent home in the private rented sector once they have been helped off the streets.

That’s why chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced LHA would rise in April 2024, although it is slated to be frozen once again from 2025 onwards.

Speaking before that rise, Dr Andrew Connell, policy manager at The Salvation Army, said: “It seems that if you’ve if you’ve got one part of government saying we need to end street homelessness, and then you’ve got another part of government – the DWP or the Treasury saying, ‘Actually, we’re going to do something that makes the private rented sector, less accessible and less affordable.’

“Those two objectives are not aligned to each other. It’s completely out of kilter now with actual rents in the private rented sector.”

The Big Issue’s blueprint for change is calling on the next government to scrap no-fault evictions and to unfreeze local housing allowance rates going forward.

Removing the £20 universal credit uplift

The disruption of the pandemic saw hundreds of thousands of people turn to universal credit to get through and the government increased payments by £20 a week.

The £20 uplift lasted until October 2021, reducing the amount people on a low income receive before the cost of living crisis started to bite.

Universal credit has long been accused of failing to keep up with living costs. The average gap between benefit payments and the actual cost of covering the basics is £35 a week for a single person, the IPPR recently reported.

The problem is particularly acute for people under the age of 25 who are entitled to less than four-fifths of the award that someone over 25.

Centrepoint’s Walker said: “We’re in the worst inflation crisis in decades. We’ve got the cost of living crisis, we’ve got all of these problems, but we’re sort of doing the opposite of Everyone In. The reversal of the £20 uplift has a huge impact on young people especially.

“The reverse of that uplift in the context of emerging from a crisis into a financial crisis means that more people were made homeless. The crisis emerging from the pandemic is so much worse economically but the support just is not there for homeless people. And neither is the willpower to do anything about it.”

Has the political will to end rough sleeping been there?

With delivering Brexit and the levelling up agenda the big issues back in 2019 and Covid swiftly taking over in 2020 before the cost of living crisis followed, tackling homelessness has never been top of the Tory agenda throughout the last four years.

Add in the fact the government of today is very different to when Johnson took charge in 2019 and the constant upheaval and chopping and changing among housing and rough sleeping ministers hasn’t helped matters.

Between 2010 and 2024 there were 16 housing ministers with an average of less than a year in charge.

Centrepoint’s Walker said political will was one of the reasons why the government had fallen short of hitting its target.

“The problem is that it’s not the top priority for the department, homelessness, rough sleeping especially, it’s just not the top priority,” said Walker. “There are so many things that come before it. And so when it comes to the fact that ending homelessness has to be a cross-departmental piece, no one department is really owning it and taking it forward as a priority. And that is a problem.

“The political mess means that vulnerable people as a whole are always going to fall through the cracks. But homeless people are definitely going to fall through the cracks.”

It’s impossible to tackle homelessness without homes

The housing crisis is nothing new – successive governments have failed to build enough homes to keep up with the UK’s rising population.

It’s an issue that is at the core of sky-high house prices and rents – both of which hit record-highs over the last five years.

The government set a manifesto target of building 300,000 homes per year by the mid-2020s and it has managed to deliver more homes than recent Westminster regimes with a peak of around 235,000 in 2022-23.

The trouble is that very few of these homes were for social rent – the most affordable housing tenure.

Shelter and the National Housing Federation estimate that 90,000 social rent homes are needed each year. The Big Issue’s blueprint for change is calling on the next government to build more social and affordable housing while it is in power.

And the number of homes needed goes up every year in which not enough are built.

Centre for Cities estimates that Britain needs to build 442,000 homes over 25 years to bridge the gap. Compared to European countries, it is missing 4.3 million homes with the think tank pointing the finger at restrictive planning rules.

Jimmy’s chief executive Mark Allan said: “While renting and buying is expensive and accessing social housing is almost impossible, people are going to end up homeless. Unless there is a plan to build lots of genuinely affordable housing and bring down the cost of buying and renting genuinely, then people will continue to end up homeless.”

As Osama Bhutta, director of campaigns at Shelter, put it: “The only way to end homelessness for good is to build a new generation of truly affordable social homes with rents pegged to local incomes.”

Sticking to the hostile environment

The government has been vocal about its stance to bring down immigration but one long-running ‘hostile environment’ policy has undoubtedly made the goal of ending rough sleeping virtually impossible.

The no recourse to public funds policy prevents thousands of people across the UK who are living with an immigration restriction from claiming state support. In practice, this often forces people into destitution on to the streets and limits the funding that support services can access to help them.

Elizabeth McCulloch, St Mungo’s policy manager, told The Big Issue the end of the £28m protect and vaccinate funding was also a missed opportunity on the money front.

That signalled the end of the government’s increased spending on homelessness during the pandemic, she said, and left local authorities to find the cash to support people affected by NRPF.

“I think for us, that was the end of the pandemic enhanced offer that we saw. The big difference was the directive from government,” said McCulloch.

“I think what we saw with the end of protect and vaccinate is that there was then this void, where it left a degree of ambiguity around what the offer was for people affected by NRPF and then, crucially, also a lack of specific funding.

“So we were already seeing an inconsistency in the approach before the end of protect and vaccinate, but that was further exacerbated. And of course, that also then reduced the offer for UK nationals as well, although it had particular impact on non-UK nationals.”

Toni Warner, Single Homeless Project’s director of services, said the London charity is now seeing more people needing their help who cannot access state support.

“We see increasing numbers of people without recourse to public funds coming particularly to our crisis homelessness accommodation and the level of funding to cover rent has rapidly reduced since the protect and vaccinate money ended.”

Neil Parkinson, co-head of casework at fellow London charity Glass Door, added: “Even though Everyone In did not continue after pandemic restrictions were lifted, there have been some lasting positive steps for this group in terms of improved pathways for immigration advice. Nonetheless, for rough sleeping among this section of the population to really be tackled, it would have required more housing options for those in the process of having their immigration status resolved.”

Slow on rolling out Housing First

Housing First is often spoken of as the solution to end rough sleeping.

While it is not the silver bullet or panacea it is often portrayed as, giving someone who is sleeping rough a home and wraparound support to keep it is a proven model for helping some of the most vulnerable people off the streets for good.

It has been widely adopted in Finland, where it has played a major role in the country becoming one of only two in Europe, alongside Denmark, where rough sleeping has been decreasing in recent years.

While there are hundreds of small-scale Housing First projects across England – and Scotland has committed to making it the default to street homelessness – the Conservative government has been running three pilot schemes in Greater Manchester, Merseyside and the West Midlands.

And, arguably, the model was put through its paces in a sense during the pandemic with the Everyone In scheme offering an imperfect test bed for the idea.

So has the idea been adopted widely enough across England at speed?

Jimmy’s chief executive Mark Allan said: “Housing First is a good thing. And one of the reasons it’s a good thing is because the level of support offered is high.

“The challenge with Housing First is you need constant supply of one-bedroom flats to keep moving people into so it does have limits. We’re not being quick enough, but the problem with Housing First is it’s an expensive model.”

Lesley Howard, the national homelessness lead for charity Change Grow Live, agreed. She said: “We know that Housing First works.  It absolutely works and it’s been proven. But you’ve got to have the properties to put people in.”

Ending rough sleeping is expensive

The Tory government is currently spending £2 billion over three years on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping.

That’s a lot of money and works out at around £650 million a year, just down on the £750 million a year that was committed during the early days of the pandemic.

“They have put money behind it, to some extent,” said Dr Connell.

But to move beyond managing homelessness and towards ending street homelessness for good is an expensive business and the funding has diminished in value over time as it has not increased with rising inflation.

And some local authorities – such as Kent County Council and Devon County Council – have been looking at axing non-statutory homelessness services to cut cash in recent months as they look to make ends in recent months.

While other councils have warned the cost of temporary accommodation has left them on the brink of bankruptcy.

Recent research from Centrepoint found youth homelessness alone costs the country £8.5 billion a year.

“It’s never going to happen,” said Centrepoint’s Walker. “The financial commitment isn’t matching the actual cost in the first place.”

Rick Henderson, chief executive of Homeless Link, the membership for frontline homelessness organisations said changes are needed to make support services more sustainable.

A survey Homeless Link carried out in 2023 found that almost a quarter of homelessness accommodation providers had seen a decrease in funding since 2021.

The number of services has fallen by a third since 2012 from 1,362 to 911 with the number of bed spaces available to people experiencing homelessness is down by a fifth over the same period to 33,093.

Henderson said: “In the long-term, it’s clear that the way in which the homelessness support services are funded needs a major overhaul, giving them the stability to embed the kind of consistent, person-centred support that we know is most effective in helping people leave homelessness behind.”

It takes a longer-term view to end rough sleeping

The successes of tackling street homelessness and Denmark and Finland did not happen overnight. It took decades of building and sourcing housing, changing cultures, putting support in place and a society-wide investment to get to that point.

For the Tory government to achieve the same in the space of four or five years was incredibly ambitious, particularly when emergency action has been the focus rather than wider prevention.

The Everyone In scheme may have opened doors for entrenched rough sleepers at the start of the pandemic but a failure to prevent others taking their place since then has been the ultimate failure. That’s due to a focus “on short-term crisis-focused interventions”, according to Homeless Link’s Henderson.

Some of the experts The Big Issue spoke to said going all the way back to education may be necessary to tackle rough sleeping and prevent people from ending up on the streets. And that’s a job that goes beyond a five-year parliamentary term.

Jimmy’s chief executive Allan said: “If you’re talking about prevention, then you have to go way back. If you can generalise and say that most people that end up rough sleeping have experienced early trauma, you need to go back to that point to prevent that early trauma from happening.”

Change Grow Live’s Howard agreed: “Prevention should be right back in schools and talking about trauma, and addressing that trauma so that people don’t start to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol.”

It’s not just about England

One potential resource the Tories have failed to tap into is making the most of the union.

The Salvation Army’s Dr Connell said that as homelessness is a devolved issue, it offers the opportunity to test out ideas as part of a “policy laboratory”.

There are differences in how homelessness is tackled between England, Scotland and Wales with the latter two devolved countries further along in providing Housing First as a default response to rough sleeping and in favour of rent controls to tackle rising rents, for example.

It is telling that Prince William’s Homewards programme has opted for a UK-wide approach as it aims to tackle homelessness over the next five years – beyond the government’s rough sleeping target.

“I think it is really important that all four UK home nations – England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – should learn from each other when it comes to addressing homelessness and rough sleeping,” said Dr Connell. “Because homelessness is a devolved policy area we effectively have a policy laboratory for homelessness.

“I think all four nations could benefit from looking at this and saying, ‘What’s going on there? What are we learning?’”

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? We want to hear from you. Get in touch and tell us more.

We’re already more than week into this election campaign, and the silence around poverty has been deafening. No party has even mentioned the issue, let alone put forward policies to support the ever-increasing number of people who are struggling to get by.

I can’t understand this. We know that 79% of the UK public agree that poverty in the UK is a big problem, with almost three in four believing it’s the government’s responsibility to change this.

In my day-to-day life, I couldn’t agree more. I see people coming through the doors of the food bank because they are living in a state of deprivation. They haven’t got enough money (because their income is too low) to afford even the essentials, like food, heating and toiletries. Luxuries like having a holiday are a million miles away from their reality.

• To tackle child poverty, we need action as bold as Labour creating the welfare state in 1945
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Unfortunately, the palpable apathy that political candidates and the main parties are showing at the levels of poverty in the UK, suggest that they consider concerns around the cost of living to be temporary.

The cost of living payments, while gratefully received, were not enough to cover the rising costs of food, fuel and rent over the past few years, and our food bank numbers prove it. And without even these payments in the coming year, I fear life will get even harder for the people we support.

In Southend, we’ve seen food bank need increase at a rapid rate, especially in the last few years. In 2019/20 we distributed 6,525 emergency food parcels, and this rose to 20,491 over the last year – that’s a 214% increase in the past four years, with no sign things are ever going to improve.

The tide needs to turn quickly before more people are pulled into poverty, and that’s why the next government needs to prioritise urgently reforming the social security system so it provides better protection from having to go without the essentials.

In the longer term, we need to be working towards an essentials guarantee in universal credit, ensuring that universal credit at least covers the costs of essentials. That is the best shot we have as a nation at ensuring that people on the lowest incomes have a chance of coping with the core costs of life.

Reforming social security so universal credit goes further to cover the cost of essentials would mean people would have the dignity of being able to purchase their own food. They would be able to afford the bus to a medical appointment, and a school uniform that fits their kid.

And they would no longer be burdened with the relentless stress of an unexpected bill plunging them deeper into debt. It would also mean that we would likely see a reduction in the number of people we are supporting because if people can afford food, they won’t need to be referred to a food bank, and they can move towards the financial security that they deserve.

No one wants to visit a food bank but for many people it is their only option. If you are in a job that doesn’t pay enough, or have caring responsibilities that prevent you from working, or you don’t have family or friends who can support you, food banks like mine are the last resort.

We, and food banks across the country, welcomed the uprating of benefits in the last fiscal statement but this was only a temporary reprieve from the pain. The uplift didn’t come in immediately and, in the time that it took to implement, inflation continued to rise. That meant that even with an increase in the rate of universal credit, by the time it came in prices had already skyrocketed.

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The people I meet at the food bank aren’t being given the opportunity to lift themselves out of the situation they’ve found themselves in. Every person in our society has the right to a basic standard of living. We are all part of society: children, pensioners, people with disabilities that prohibit them from working. All are as much a part of society as a working age person with a well-paid job.

Every single penny in the pockets of the people I meet is accounted for long before it even comes into their bank account, and that is why our team at Southend Foodbank are there. We provide emergency food, we provide advice to help people access the financial support they’re eligible for, we provide so much all in one place so that people know they’ve got somewhere they can turn to and trust. However, charitable food aid is not the answer in the long term – the change needed to end the need for food banks has to come from the government.

We need our next government, and the opposition, to take urgent action to turn back this tide. Reform universal credit so it gives better protection from going without the essentials. Improve support for disabled people and speed up access to disability benefits. Strengthen workers’ rights so a job really means someone doesn’t need a food bank. Build more social homes so people don’t end up at a food bank because their rent is unaffordable or they’ve been made homeless. We need MPs to shout loudly from back benches about the changes needed to better support their constituents.

If they don’t prioritise addressing poverty and commit to long-term solutions rather than short-term sticking plasters, my fear is that food banks will begin to be seen as the new normal. And there is nothing normal about people not being able to afford something as essential as food.

The generational trauma I have witnessed of seeing a grandma, a mum and her daughter from the same family, sitting in a food bank together, waiting for food they didn’t get to choose for themselves to be given to them, is horrifying.

Our next government needs to give us hope. We know what needs to change but we need the decision makers to take action. And only when that happens will I be able to close the door of our food bank for good.

Cass Francis is communications and campaigns coordinator at Southend Foodbank.

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