A/HRC/41/39/Add.1 32. By treating work as a panacea for poverty while dismantling the social safety net, the Government has created a highly combustible situation that will have dire consequences, especially if and when there is prolonged economic contraction. A. Weakening benefits’ capacity to help people escape poverty 33. Benefits reductions since 2010 have saved money for the Government but undermined the capacity of beneficiaries to escape from the grip of poverty. 34. Commendably, the Government has sought to protect the benefits of older people, especially by introducing in 2010 a “triple lock” to ensure that annual pension levels rise with whichever is highest among the rate of inflation, average earnings, or 2.5 per cent. This helped reduce poverty among pensioners by half, although that progress is now unravelling.41 35. The triple lock contrasts dramatically with the freeze on benefit rates for workingage people since 2016. Poor households typically spend a higher proportion of their income on consumer goods and necessities, and often struggle to put food on the table after bills are paid. Despite this, the Government froze benefit rates in 2016, allowing inflation to systematically reduce the value of benefits. Poor families have had to do more with less as the price of goods has gone up and the value of their income has declined. Households are expected to cope with a reduction of £4.4 billion in 2019–2020 alone. 42 Last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer could have used the revenue windfall to end the benefit freeze a year earlier than planned, but instead chose to change income tax thresholds in a way that will help those who are better off but does nothing to move the needle on poverty. 36. Housing Benefit has been decimated amidst a real crisis in affordable housing. Housing costs are rising disproportionately for people on low incomes, and the recent uptick in pensioner poverty is driven by increasing poverty among renters. 43 While the Government has recognized the challenges, and pledged to invest billions in improving the housing supply,44 targeted support for low-income people has been repeatedly reduced and restricted. Similarly, the Government has refused to walk back the benefit reduction for renters in so-called “underoccupied” social housing, despite consistent feedback that this reduction can pose immense hardship for low-income families and individuals who may not be able to relocate easily. 37. These and other reductions and restrictions, such as the imposition and subsequent intensification of a cap on benefits for working-age households and limiting benefits to two children per family, have made it much harder for people to make ends meet and stymied progress in reducing poverty. B. Decimating legal aid 38. Legal aid has been dramatically reduced in England and Wales since 2012. The LASPO Act (Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act) made most housing, family and benefits cases ineligible for aid; ratcheted up eligibility criteria; and replaced many face-to-face advice services with telephone lines. Consequently, the number of civil legal aid cases declined by a staggering 82 per cent between 2010–2011 and 2017–2018.45 As a result, many poor people are unable to effectively claim and enforce their rights, have lost access to critical support, and some have even reportedly lost custody of their 41 42 43 44 45 Joseph Rowntree Foundation, UK Poverty 2018, p. 39. Adam Corlett, “Despite ‘the end of austerity’, April promises another deep benefit cut”, Resolution Foundation, 17 October 2018; and Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “Could the Government have done more to enable people to escape poverty?” Joseph Rowntree Foundation, UK Poverty 2018, pp. 25 and 39. 2017 Budget speech. Parliament, “The future of legal aid”, p. 4. 9