Good morning. What does it cost to survive? If you’re looking for an answer in Britain, you might think it’s £85 a week: from April, that’s the new universal credit standard allowance for a single person, the basic unit on which the benefits system is built. If you have absolutely nothing else, you have that – and it’s up 10.1% on the previous figure. Except, in reality, it’s not enough.
I learned something new from Patrick Butler’s story, on the front page of the Guardian this morning, about the basis of that figure: it has no foundation in a robust calculation of the very minimum necessary to live. Instead, it is the product of years of adjustments to a number that appears to have been plucked out of the air. In recent years, the trend has been downward. The basic rate of universal credit is now at its lowest ever level as a proportion of average earnings. The result is familiar by now: on that money, you can heat or eat. You can’t do both.
