MORNING SERIAL
HE went on to say: There is a wide consensus among stakeholders that the benefit changes are one of the structural causes behind the increase in poverty, rough sleeping, and homelessness in Wales. Parliamentarians and civil society voiced serious concerns that universal credit may exacerbate the problem, particularly in light of the Welsh government’s inability to introduce flexibilities in its administration, unlike its Scottish counterpart.
So, if there are solutions to Wales’ poverty problem, are these problems fixable within the current set-up of the United Kingdom?
To answer this question, you need look no further than how the UK Government measures poverty.
In March 2022, Chancellor Rishi Sunak made a big claim about poverty in the UK. The BBC’s Sophie Raworth challenged him over the fact that the government was contributing to the cost-of-living crisis with its national insurance rise, and the Chancellor told her fewer people are in poverty today than 10 years ago.
He said: “The actions of this government and previous Conservative governments over the last 10 years have meant there are over 1 million people fewer living poverty today.”
Wait, what? Surely this goes against the prevailing narrative that poverty has increased?
To understand how Sunak is able to make these claims, we need to understand the definition of poverty he is using.
In a UK context, though there are many other ways to do it, there are two definitions that tend to be used: absolute poverty and relative poverty. This is what they mean in practice:
■ Absolute poverty – this is where a household’s income is less than 60% of the median (average) as it stood in 2011.
It is a fixed figure, and this causes a few issues.
For example, if you were just below the poverty line in 2012 but got a small pay rise the following year, officially you are “out of poverty” by this definition. But if your energy bills have tripled over the same period, you are actually worse off.