By Peter Taylor-Gooby, University of Kent
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“You’ve got the branding wrong.”
That was the response of an advertising executive to the leaflets on Your Right To Benefits produced by a local NGO, when we asked her about how to increase take-up. She’s right. We all know that poverty in the UK is too high and is continuing to rise and that deep poverty – destitution – is rising much more rapidly: two and a half times between 2017 and 2022 to cover more than a fifth of those below the poverty line, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Poverty is discussed in terms of having income below a certain level (e.g. 60% median wage or Universal Credit entitlement). Deep poverty is not being able to afford essentials: food, housing, clothes, fuel, and household bills. The rapid increase in deep poverty is profoundly concerning.
We also know that something like £23bn is unclaimed in benefits each year. We have a ramshackle underfunded social security system but even the benefits that are there aren’t getting through.
Why? “You’ve got the branding wrong.” The advertising professional pointed out that the first thing you do when trying to sell people something (cosmetics, cars, kitchens) is to present it as attractive. People must want it.
No-one wants to be associated with Universal Credit, Housing Benefit, Free School Meals or Council Tax Support. They’re for people who can’t pay their own way, who’ve failed, for scroungers, for benefit cheats, those at the bottom. Call it stigma, shame, a sense of failure, a fear of getting the form wrong, a belief that these benefits are not for people like you or whatever. Benefits are deeply unattractive. The branding is wrong.
It’s very hard to change this, but here’s one simple idea. On day one of the expected Labour government, we need a one-line Bill that lays a duty on DWP to maximise take-up of all their benefits – not just make those benefits available to people who’ve jumped over the hurdles of claiming then, but make sure that as many people as possible are claiming. Any evidence of non-take-up would then be a failure to comply with the law on the part of DWP. The Minister would be accountable. A similar law could address Local Authority benefit claiming.
Imagine a benefit system that worked as hard as possible to make itself attractive and that tried to help and support people in claiming benefits that established outreach programmes to help them get their rights. One can imagine aggressive advertising, use of social media, building local links with community leaders, attending the whole range of events: going into schools and colleges, visiting pensioner’ clubs and day nurseries at pick up, an official agency that was committed to maximise take up. I’d love to have people like my advertising executive on the team running the take-up programme (but I doubt if we can afford her fees).
Of course this would cost money. There’s a specialist staff which would not be cheap, there is the cost of running the take-up programme, and there is the benefits themselves: maybe £23bn.
But that £23bn is money that Parliament has decided should go to vulnerable families. It’s money that is a citizen’s right. Can’t we at least make sure the system we have set up works and is determined to do what it is supposed to? That wouldn’t stop us undertaking serious further reform and establishing the kind of expanded benefit that a developed country needs and can afford.
Please do let me know why this is a bad idea. It at least has the merit of simplicity.
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Key words: Welfare Rights; Branding; Stigma; Claimants
Image: creative commons licence, available here.
Author: Peter Taylor-Gooby is Research Professor of Social Policy, University of Kent