{"id":5065,"date":"2020-03-26T10:49:48","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T10:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/?p=5065"},"modified":"2020-04-29T10:50:44","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T09:50:44","slug":"social-policy-expert-double-child-benefit-and-bring-in-universal-income-benefit-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/2020\/03\/26\/social-policy-expert-double-child-benefit-and-bring-in-universal-income-benefit-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Social policy expert: \u2018Double Child Benefit and bring in Universal Income Benefit now\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018COVID-19 will have immediate and also longer-term impacts. In the short term\u00a0<strong>businesses are closing<\/strong>, people are\u00a0<strong>losing their jobs<\/strong>, there are\u00a0<strong>more evictions<\/strong>\u00a0and there has been an\u00a0<strong>explosion of demand at Food Banks<\/strong>\u00a0as many people face poverty. The Government has addressed some of these issues. Real problems remain. Demand for Universal Credit is soaring. There are numerous reports of people being unable to make claims because the website lacks the capacity to handle them and repeatedly crashes.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018In my view, the Government should:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Double child benefit<\/strong>. It would be possible to do this overnight and it goes to all families on low and middle incomes \u2013 those who face the greatest pressures. It would cost \u00a312bn, but save on the wages subsidy and on other benefits and it\u2019s the kind of money that Government spends on keeping business going.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bring in Universal Income Benefits<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 this could roll together Universal Credit, Sick Benefit and any other payments to employers for wages and support for people losing jobs. It would go to everyone who needed it and solve the problem of finding ways to get money to those who are hardest hit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2018Long-term\u00a0<strong>we will face recession<\/strong>\u00a0and the Government will be massively in debt. We must handle this better than we handled the Great Recession in 2008\/9. We cut the state to achieve short-term savings. The result was that the\u00a0<strong>economy contracted and then stagnated<\/strong>, and wages still haven\u2019t got back to 2007 levels. We must make sure that we\u00a0<strong>support investment<\/strong>\u00a0right across the economy, both state and private sectors. We must also\u00a0<strong>open up to trade especially with the EU<\/strong>\u00a0which accounts for more than half of our exports.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The good news is the\u00a0<strong>outpouring of generosity<\/strong>\u00a0we have all seen. When it matters, people value the NHS and they value each other. The Government\u00a0<strong>must guarantee respect<\/strong>\u00a0for all citizens. The Universal Income Benefit is one very concrete way of doing that in very concrete terms.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/social-policy-sociology-social-research\/people\/1456\/www.kent.ac.uk\/social-policy-sociology-social-research\/people\/1456\/taylor-gooby-peter\">Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby<\/a>\u00a0is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Founding Academician at the Academy of Social Sciences and, previously, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sociology and Social Policy Section.\u00a0Between 2009 and 2010, Professor Taylor-Gooby participated in the Prime Minister\u2019s No 10 \u2018progressive consensus\u2019 Round Table and advised the Prime Minister\u2019s Strategy Unit. Professor Taylor-Gooby was awarded the OBE for services to social science in 2012.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The University\u2019s Press Office provides the media with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/news\/tags\/comment\/\">expert comments<\/a>\u00a0in response to topical news events. Colleagues who would like to learn more about how to contribute their expertise or how the service works should contact the Press Office on 3985 or\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:pressoffice@kent.ac.uk\">pressoffice@kent.ac.uk<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018COVID-19 will have immediate and also longer-term impacts. In the short term\u00a0businesses are closing, people are\u00a0losing their jobs, there are\u00a0more evictions\u00a0and there has been an\u00a0explosion &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/2020\/03\/26\/social-policy-expert-double-child-benefit-and-bring-in-universal-income-benefit-now\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59459,"featured_media":5066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5067,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065\/revisions\/5067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}