‘Want’ by Helen Barnard; one of a series ‘The Five Giants: A New Beveridge Report’; Agenda Publishing 2022

By Jane Mansour MA, MRES, Director, Institute for Employment Studies – ReAct Programme

‘Want’ is Helen Barnard’s well-researched, thought-provoking contribution to a series of updated Beveridge reports published by Agenda. This consideration of twenty-first century poverty combines the voices of those impacted most by welfare policy changes alongside Barnard’s clear analysis of the data, economics and politics that drive decision-making. Indeed, the critical importance of including the public in the redesign of systems is a central contention underpinning the book, so the inclusion of personal experience throughout feels vital as well as illustrative.

There have been a number of rewrites of Beveridge over the decades. Barnard argues that this version, written in the aftermath of Covid, has echoes in the sense of ‘collective ordeal’ Britain experienced as it emerged from the Second World War. In the same way Beveridge saw the war as offering a chance for real change, so Barnard describes how the pandemic exposed weaknesses in systems, collective strength, and a re-think about the value of occupations previously dismissed as ‘unskilled’. Some of her optimism for change has been challenged by the re-set of the last few years, but the opportunity she identifies still exists.

The book is divided into several sections, with the first half setting up the problem – defining poverty, and the myriad of complex and interlinking problems that different groups of people in poverty face – she’s good at drawing different facets of experience together, from practical difficulties to financial realities, to health and the impact of stigma. In the second half of the book, she considers how we move forward from here. A shift she describes in terms of industrial to digital, invoking a meeting between Gordon Brown and Tim Berners Lee to illustrate the challenge of policy making in the modern era.

Her analysis of the problems feels right. She highlights the difficult balance between support for pensioners and people of working age. Certainly, recent evidence on the high levels of mental ill health in young people are thrown into stark relief by her detailing of the weakness of social security protections for young adults in comparison with older ones.

I would have liked to have seen more on family and community structures, including the loss of public spaces, and dynamic populations, and how they relate to and are impacted by poverty. Carers are given a nod in the chapter on disability, and it would have been interesting to hear the voices of informal carers, over a million of whom are living in poverty in the UK. Barnard identifies access to good jobs as one of the factors driving poverty for this group and this is an area we are currently researching through the ReAct Partnership.

Barnard examines how austerity and cuts to public spending have exacerbated poverty, and the impact of the strivers/shirkers lens applied by George Osborne. I enjoyed her framing of ‘good politics, bad policy’, and the book serves as a heartbreaking reminder of how many people have suffered in the name of making a point. The role of universality (versus means testing) in building new solutions is fascinating, especially in employability, with the potential of a new Jobs and Careers Service open to all. One of the lessons in the loss of Sure Start is surely the importance of embedding access, use and purpose of public services in broader conversations. Without this, the public’s sense of fairness may not align with plans for delivery.

While there is a chapter on tax, Barnard’s conceit is that it is the systems set up around the transfer of money in and out of government that indicate what we want and value as a society, and the recent focus on inheritance tax bears this out.

Engagement with public services is a critical issue for employment providers, particularly as the emphasis on voluntary economically inactive groups grows. Pilots such as Jobs Plus will provide useful evidence on the effectiveness of engaging and delivering employment services at a hyper-local population level, rather than by benefit type or other qualifying criteria. Barnard wants to engage people at an earlier stage, through citizen assemblies of the kind seen in Ireland. She wants to see a different way of working that engages with people throughout, through a Government Co-Design Service. It would be fascinating to see the impact of an approach-focused, cross departmental unit such as this, perhaps operating like the old Behavioural Insights Unit. I’d have liked more consideration of how employers could be brought into this, especially as flexibility and quality of work play such a big part in meeting the problems of poverty identified throughout.

For those interested and invested in anti-poverty work, there may not be much in Want that is surprising (maybe that is a depressing indication of how stubborn and entrenched Beveridge’s giants have proven to be), but it is brought together in a really accessible and readable way. For those new to the sector, it provides a valuable overview and assessment of where we are and could be. For me, the engagement approach advocated by Bernard is most striking, how we build the voices of those most affected into policy making and programme delivery. After all, as the words of Marc, quoted in the book, show, there is likely much commonality in the desire for the type of lives we want to live:

‘That’s all I want. Decent transport, decent house, a nice family and a decent job as well. And that’s it.’

The question is how we make sure we all get there.