Everyone deserves a stable, secure life - so it’s simply wrong that so many people in Scotland are being weighed down by debt.
We’ve created a society and an economy where too often wages are low, work is insecure, and our social security is too weak to keep people’s heads above water.
That injustice forces people to decide what to prioritise with the little money they have: the basic essentials that we need to stay alive and well - food, heating, shelter - will obviously be at the top of the list. One thing that canbe left by the wayside is paying council tax.
Council tax arrears are the number one debt problem brought to Scotland’s Citizens Advice Bureaux, and they can become a millstone dragging people towards destitution. That’s partly because councils have the right to ask the Department for Work & Pensions to take deductions from the already inadequate amount that people receive in social security benefits like Universal Credit.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has calculated that to cover people’s most basic essentials, a single person needs around £120 a week. But Universal Credit only provides £92 to someone over 25, and just £73 to someone under 25. That is bad enough, but with benefit deductions to cover council tax and other public debt arrears, it can leave people in a desperate situation.
We’ve all seen the appalling damage that low incomes cause in our communities. The Trussell Trust in Scotland is distributing 50% more emergency food parcels than five years ago. Between April 2022 and March 2023, they gave 259,744 parcels to people in need, including 87,968 parcels for children.
This Debt Awareness Week, the Poverty Alliance wants to highlight an alternative approach: the Minimum Income Guarantee.
The Guarantee could allow us to draw a line under poverty in Scotland. It would set an income floor below which nobody would be allowed to fall. It is a simple but potentially transformative idea, giving everyone a secure foundation to thrive, support themselves and others in their household, and develop their potential. The Scottish Government is supporting an Expert Group looking at how we can develop a Minimum Income Guarantee. We are members, and with the help of abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, we have been holding a series of seminars for our members and other organisations in Scottish civic society, looking at different aspects of the Guarantee and how we can work together to make it a reality.
Our conference at the end of last year was focused on the Guarantee, and our members and colleagues were clear: a guarantee is not a guarantee if deductions for debt like council tax arrears are allowed to diminish its value. We’re determined that the Minimum Income Guarantee is not lost or undermined by public sector debt recovery.
A Minimum Income Guarantee is a chance to rebuild our social security system on the basis of justice, compassion, respect, and dignity. It’s a chance to protect people from debt and destitution, and to give them the stability and freedom they need to build better lives for themselves, and a better Scotland for us all.
Peter Kelly is director of the Poverty Alliance
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