by Guest

contribution by Chris Goulden

On Tuesday, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published the second annual update of CRSP’s research into “A Minimum Income Standard for the UK”.

Amidst an impending debate led by Frank Field about how we define poverty in this country, the MIS method highlights a very different way of approaching the issues.

Unlike the relative poverty line, MIS is not arbitrary and is decided on democratically by representative groups of the public reaching consensus about what makes up an adequate lifestyle, from food to clothes to bills.



When you tot up the cost of people’s needs, it works out to be annual earnings of £14,400 for a single person or £29,200 for a family of four.

When people see the results of the MIS research, they can immediately relate it to their own lives and material circumstances. You don’t see the typically negative reaction you often get from simply using the word ‘poverty’ in a UK context.

It leads instead to a much more sensible and useful debate about the rising cost of living, problems of low pay and insecure jobs, difficulties accessing services and so on. Usually when we publish research about poverty, there is limited direct public interest.

This week, the extra traffic crashed the JRF website. Many of these new visitors used the Minimum Income Calculator to compare their own earnings with the Standard, which is another way of making the results meaningful to people.

But MIS is only a route into a proper debate about the causes of and solutions to poverty. This year’s update has thrown up some surprising and alarming impacts of what on the surface may appear to be minor tinkering with the tax and benefit system. It seems the territory of minimum incomes is where many of the political battles about spending cuts are likely to be fought out.

The JRF income standards for different families are set for April each year, so the 2010 update most strongly reflects the last Labour Budget when personal tax allowances and the rules for getting tax credits were frozen. Compared with last year, the annual earnings needed to keep up with MIS have risen by over £1,600 (or 6 per cent) for a couple with two children – much faster than wages generally. Projecting back over the last ten years, the cost of a minimum budget has gone up by 38%, compared with official inflation of 23%.

The Coalition Budget announcement of a £1,000 rise in tax allowances from April 2011 will help that MIS family of four by making them £320 a year better off, after inflation, if both are working. But what is being given with one hand risks being taken by the other.

Cuts in tax credits and the freezing of child benefit could lose them up to £350. They will also be hit by the VAT rise, a limit on the Housing Benefit they can claim (if they have a high rent) and the slower uprating of benefits generally.

There is no doubt that it is an incredibly challenging time for those concerned about tackling poverty in this country. The Field review provides an opportunity to have a different debate about what poverty and an adequate standard of living mean.

MIS gives us a way of talking about these issues that can hopefully break through some of the entrenched barriers to positive change. At the very least, it sets a standard that we should aspire to no-one falling below.

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Chris Goulden manages the MIS programme for JRF. Also on Twitter.