By Martin Sime, Chief executive, Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO)
AN orderly queue is forming with nurses at the front, police and fire not far behind. Teachers, doctors and local government staff are also there in force. All have suffered badly from austerity. Some ambitious Tory Cabinet ministers are eagerly supporting the case for better public sector pay; Labour and the SNP both hope for an upwards revision after a decade of stagnation.
The trade unions are well dug in to the debate too, with claims that some nurses have to resort to foodbanks. Public sector managers can be heard talking up the spectre of staff shortages because of low pay, although many nurses now work for agencies.
It is difficult not to feel sympathy for any worker who gets a one per cent pay rise when inflation is running close to three per cent.That’s a two per cent cut in living standards. It is claimed that some public servants have lost nearly ten per cent of their income over the last decade.
But the seemingly unpalatable truth is that there are millions of people who should be at the head of the queue when austerity ends but who are voiceless, powerless and largely invisible in the current scramble for recognition and reward.
Those in receipt of Universal Credit or entitled to disability benefits are the principal victims of austerity. Many are just not managing at all, whilst others only require a small inflationary spike to send them over the edge into debt, homelessness and despair. There is no triple lock on such benefits, no one per cent uplift every year, just a steady deterioration in the real value of the support they receive from a base which was already meant to represent the minimum needed to survive.
Stories about hunger and cold, lights out early to save on bills and problems feeding the kids during the school holidays have become commonplace in our sector. There are many heroic people doing what they can to ameliorate the worst of it. Food parcels, soup kitchens and recycling unwanted produce can help from time to time and the public is incredibly generous. But it’s nowhere near enough.
Welfare recipients ought to get a better deal. They need and deserve priority over other worthy causes – including public sector pay – and a voice in the political debate. The arguments in their favour are too easily overlooked or deliberately ignored.
Cuts to the living standards of those who have the least will only increase inequality, entrench disadvantage and divide our already unequal society more sharply. The damage caused will scar future generations, ultimately costing more in public service demands.
The current system also fails to recognise that poverty is expensive – those with the least tend to pay the most for essential services because their consumption is low and payment systems like pre-paid meters tend to be more expensive. Add in the fact that food costs more in smaller quantities or when bought locally because transport is unaffordable, and it is easy to see why current benefit rates are unsustainable. This will get worse until welfare rates are uplifted.
Whilst I have sympathy with public service workers – especially those on minimum wage or the many who have been stuck without a pay raise for years – my plea to them all at this critical moment is to step aside in favour of those who need it most.
Uprating welfare isn’t just about hard cash. It’s about treating people with dignity and respect. The coming end of austerity is a critical time for working out our priorities, and what and who matters most.
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