Dr Sue Konzelmann, author of Austerity, discusses the long-term impact of a policy that places price before value.
Over the last decade, most of us have been on the receiving end of innumerable attempts to justify continued austerity in the UK, all of which have had one thing in common – they focus purely on money. There has been much talk of public deficits and debt – although at times, even our prime ministers have confused one with the other. The impression you get is that everything has a price; and when it comes to austerity, that’s all that matters. In the words of Oscar Wilde’s Lord Darlington, a cynic is “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
There has been a fair amount of cynicism in discussions about austerity. For example, the value of spending over £136bn in public funds bailing out the banks following the 2008 financial crisis would be questionable enough in itself, without then using it as an excuse to deprive so many tax payers of essential government support services – especially since, as described in my new book, Austerity, the case of Iceland had clearly shown that there was a viable policy alternative to austerity. But whilst it all came down to cash at Westminster, the vast majority of us were losing essential public services that we use, value and, in many cases, depend upon.
If this continues, our society will soon begin to unravel at an even more alarming rate, as we cut the ties that bind it together. Cuts to local authority spending have already had a drastic effect on the level and effectiveness of social services, whilst you hear a lot on the TV – on a daily basis – about the devastating effects of cuts to the police and emergency services.
The corrosive effects of multiple cuts, acting together, became all too clear whilst filming a video about austerity at the Euston food bank – but that’s something you hear a lot less about in the news.
Perhaps counterintuitively, the vast majority of people who have been forced to use the food bank since it was set up in 2010 are actually in work. But the government’s attempts to save money through changes in the benefit system, like Universal Credit, has meant that people claiming it would not get a payment for up to five weeks. How many of us would be comfortable about missing a month’s salary – or more? Not many, I suspect.
It also turns out that in order to avoid homelessness, many Euston food bank users are choosing to pay their rent, rather than buy food. This is probably rather less surprising, given that the average UK household income is around £28,000 – and renting a two bed flat anywhere in that part of London will cost around £2,000 a month. Cuts to social care have also resulted in rising homelessness – and another source of people reliant on food banks.
Austerity, as a single policy, is a very blunt instrument, that has focused on price, rather than value. As a result, it has critically impacted many inter-related policy areas. Undoing its damage will therefore mean not only sharply revising policies in such areas of affordable housing, employment, health, education and social services; it will also require changes in benefit structures and delivery – to ensure that they work together as seamlessly as possible.
In a world where it is, for some unknown reason, apparently impossible to integrate such obviously linked services as the NHS and social care, this vision might seem ambitious. It shouldn’t be. In the words of Oscar Wilde’s Lord Darlington once again, “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
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