Julia Unwin: An end to poverty in our time is no utopian fantasy

Poverty has changed a lot since the days of Lloyd George. It is no longer the image of Dickensian squalor. But its presence in the UK is very real today, including on our doorstep in Yorkshire.

Analysis the Joseph Rowntree Foundation released this week showed Bradford West to be amongst the poorest Parliamentary constituencies in the country. But poverty manifests itself in other ways: whether it’s the onset of low pay in Wentworth and Dearne where nearly half of all workers are in low pay sectors; fuel poverty in Sheffield or Hull; or the high cost of housing in Harrogate, where the cheapest house price is eight times higher than that of the lowest wages.

Poverty in the UK is real, costly and harmful, affecting millions of people. We can do something about it if we choose to. In the Leeds City Region, JRF has worked with the city council and local enterprise partnership to promote ‘good growth’, with more and better jobs for people in the region

Our comprehensive, long-term strategy shows how the Government, town halls, businesses, communities, charities and individuals can all mobilise for an inclusive prosperity: for a UK free from poverty.

The level of poverty in the UK is shameful. This should be a place where everyone can live a decent, secure life. Instead, 13 million people – half of whom are in a working family – are living without enough to meet their needs.

But people experiencing poverty are treated with pity, scorn or even disgust – emotions that prevent action. Together, these emotions create a sense that poverty in the UK is about a group of people who are entirely different from the rest of us.

It is easy to be blinded by simplistic and superficial responses. You can blame individuals for the bad decisions they make, and fool yourself into believing it could never happen to you. Or you can blame national structures – if only the system of tax and benefits could be fundamentally redesigned, then poverty could be ended.

These two arguments have run their course. Neither works on its own. Neither is an accurate explanation, and neither offers a solution. Instead they cancel each other out.

There have been many previous attempts to end poverty in this country, but these have been piecemeal and have only dealt with part of the problem – for example, focusing only on reducing poverty for children.

Our approach demands a consensus. Stop-start approaches to poverty have fallen short, just as initiatives developed by individual players frequently stall. The nature of poverty in the UK demands a non-partisan, long-term approach, marshalling all the skills and resources of governments, business, employers, voluntary organisations and civil society.

But why now? We live at a time of significant opportunity, change and uncertainty.

The volatile global economy shapes the lives of every one of us in the UK. Our population is ageing, and while this is a cause for celebration and opportunity, it also brings challenges.

Technological advances connect people better than ever before, and the new developments of robotics, further automation and artificial intelligence can both liberate and challenge an already fast-changing labour market. Poverty weakens the UK’s economy in the face of unprecedented global competition.

But this is not a time for despair, nostalgia or panic. It is instead a time to reconnect with the founding values of Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and assess what they mean for the 21st century. I began this article with a pledge from Lloyd George. That pledge was co-authored by Seebohm Rowntree, son of our founder. Seebohm’s pioneering research into poverty at the turn of the 20th century moved Winston Churchill to say that Rowntree’s book “fairly made my hair stand on end”.

A UK free of poverty is not a utopian vision. Our strategy is practical and hard-headed. It proposes a new organising purpose for society as a whole – one that recognises the costs, the risks and the waste of poverty, and determines that in the 21st century UK it is possible to ensure that: no one is ever destitute; at any one time, fewer than 10 per cent of the population are in poverty; and that no one is in poverty for more than two years.

The shift will not happen quickly, but with commitment, co-ordination and vision, it is possible. We can all work together – to mobilise for prosperity, and to conquer poverty.

Julia Unwin is chief executive of the York-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). You can read JRF’s strategy at www.jrf.org.uk/solve-uk-poverty