Governments use austerity measures as a way for dealing with their debt. Austerity serves as a stabilizer that can both slow economic growth and help avoid a debt crisis. However, governments don’t usually turn to austerity unless forced to do so, as it can have a major impact on a country’s economy.
The implementation of austerity measures depends on the government. If a government thinks its debt level will increase to the point where it may not meet its repayments. It will probably consider austerity measures like raising taxes, both raising taxes and reducing spending, and reducing taxation and government spending. In most cases, austerity measures are implemented following a financial crisis, just as the financial crisis of 2008 forced many countries to go into austerity.
Between 2010 and 2019 alone, more than £30 billion in spending cuts were made to welfare payments, housing subsidies and social services. Since 2010, we saw:
Child poverty: the number of children in poverty increased by 600,000 between 2012-2019.
Food banks: 40,989 people used Trussell Trust emergency food banks in 2009/10 – this increased to under 3 million (2,986,203) in 2022/23
Homelessness: the ONS estimated that 597 homeless people died in England and Wales in 2017, an increase of 24% since 2012
Policing: Between 2010 and 2019, the number of police officers employed in England and Wales was reduced by approximately 20,000
Healthcare: A 2017 BMJ Open study linked austerity to 120,000 extra deaths in England, primarily as a result of a reduction in the number of nurses.
Libraries: Almost 800 public libraries closed
Government jobs: More than 490,000 government jobs axed
Retirement age: The retirement age increased from 65 to 66 in 2020
Austerity in the UK began in 2010 as a government response to the crippling economic downturn that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Austerity measures were imposed as a way of eliminating the budget deficit.
Many reports claim that the effects of austerity in the UK have led to increased levels of poverty and unemployment. According to the United Nations, the government has announced more than £30 billion in cuts to welfare payments, housing and social services since 2010. The British government cut over 200,000 public sector jobs in 2011, with people of color, particularly women, being disproportionately impacted by job cuts because they are more likely to be employed in low-paying, public sector jobs or unsecured work.
Although the British government has disputed these findings, demand for food banks has almost doubled, and some families receiving benefits are now thousands of pounds worse off. Some research has even suggested that the crime rate has also increased due to cut backs to the police force. Meanwhile, local spending cuts have forced many libraries and museums to scale back their services, with around 800 libraries have shut down completely since austerity measures were introduced in 2010.
Austerity measures in the UK have been linked to increased poverty, hunger, homelessness, and decreased life expectancy. The poorest two-tenths of the population have seen greater cuts to their net income than every other group, except the very richest tenth. The net direct effect of the coalition government’s tax and benefit changes will be to increase both absolute and relative poverty. The poorest tenth of the population were “by far the hardest hit” by austerity cuts, with a 38% decrease in their net income between 2010 and 2015.
Work Capability assessments
The Work Capability Assessment is used by the British Government's Department for Work and Pensions to decide whether and to what extent welfare benefit claimants are capable of doing work or work-related activities. The outcome of the assessment also determines whether claimants are entitled to Employment and Support Allowance and potentially additional elements of Universal Credit. The work capability assessments that were rolled out became one of the most controversial aspects of austerity.
The assessment is often described as consisting of two separate assessments. In practice, if they have a face-to-face assessment, an individual claimant will experience only one assessment on the day (the decision-making is done afterwards). The two stages are:
The "limited capability for work" assessment, which determines whether the claimant is entitled to ESA at all.
The "limited capability for work-related activity" assessment, which tells the DWP whether somebody who has passed the first stage of the test is able to take part in "work-related activity". It also influences the rate of ESA paid to the claimant. A DWP official makes the final decision on entitlement, based on all the available evidence.
After a decade of austerity, the Conservative party’s track record on providing an adequate safety net for those who need it was heavily criticized. A growing body of research indicates that a reduction in health and social care spending in real terms has led to tens of thousands of excess deaths.
And it’s not just cuts. Work capability assessments, the system that is used to assess a person’s eligibility for sickness benefits, have long been criticized as demeaning, arbitrary and cruel. There is a general consensus – even within the Conservative party – that the system needs deep reform.
It is in that context that the Department for Work and Pensions announced plans to “tighten” work capability assessments in a drive to get more people with long-term health conditions or disabilities into work. The reforms would lower the threshold for a person to be considered fit to work. The government insisted that these changes are positive, stressing that the plans give people with disabilities more support to work from home, but charities and campaign groups argued that the proposals could force people to work when they are not well enough.
The system was considered so unfair as disabled people are already more likely to be in poverty despite having higher living costs, and the increasingly punitive nature of the benefits system has meant that even more have been pushed under the poverty line. many disabled people had to use food banks after their disability benefits were incorrectly stopped.
“Disabled poverty in one of the richest nations on earth is not inevitable, it’s a direct result of the government’s choices’’
