Guaranteeing the essentials: How Britain could end crisis-level poverty
With millions struggling to afford food, utilities and essentials, a protected minimum floor for benefits could provide a lifeline and reduce reliance on food banks.
Marie* has been struggling with her mental health for the last couple of years, and chronic illnesses have left her unable to work.
The single mum to four from Sussex, claims disability benefit and Universal Credit [UC] – but all it takes is a simple food shop to spark panic and stress.
“The cost-of-living crisis has pulled the rug out from under even the most basic sense of security,” she tells The Lead.
Stories like Marie’s are the predictable result of a benefits system that no longer covers the cost of basic needs like food, utilities and clothing. But campaigners argue there is a clear solution: an Essentials Guarantee that would ensure Universal Credit provides a protected minimum level of support, based on the real cost of essentials.
The Essentials Guarantee campaign, led by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation [JRF] and the Trussell Trust, calls for two core components: a legal minimum payment, with deductions not allowed to take it lower; and an independent process to set the level, at least annually, based on the cost of essentials.
JRF says this would cost the government an additional £20 billion a year – a substantial figure, but one that doesn’t take into account downstream savings – such as reduced pressure on social care and the NHS that poverty inevitably entails. They argue the lowest rate of UC should be £120 per week for a single person, and £205 for a couple – excluding rent and council tax.
More than 100 organisations have joined the campaign since it was launched in 2023. In the three years since, the urgency of need has only increased. Supporters argue that the welfare system of a modern developed country should, at a minimum, guarantee people can afford the basics.
For Marie, that would mean not leaving the supermarket with a knot of fear in the pit of her stomach.
“One bag of shopping – maybe enough to make dinner for a single evening – can trigger anxiety, panic, even despair, because I have no idea how I’m going to get through the rest of the week,” she tells us.
Universal Credit was low to start with when the coalition government introduced it in 2013, and it was frozen between 2016 and 2020. It is paid monthly, which can cause problems for people whose income is weekly or variable. There is a five-week delay between the initial claim and the first payment, forcing some claimants to request emergency DWP loans. It is also subject to deductions, whether to repay those loans or because of sanctions.
The standard allowance is currently £92 per week for a single person over 25 and £145 for a couple – less for under 25s. Campaigners say that, taken together, this means Universal Credit no longer reliably covers the cost of essentials.
“Low Universal Credit is one of the biggest drivers of people attending food banks,” says Ayaz Manji, head of policy at the Trussell Trust.
Like many claimants, Marie has been forced to skip meals so her children can eat. She calls her local Trussell Trust-run food bank a “lifeline”.
“We are not able to buy essential items and live at a basic level that all humans deserve,” she says. “I want the government to increase benefits so that I can survive.”
“If there’s one thing that’s going to turn the tide, it’s an Essentials Guarantee,” says Manji.
Universal Credit no longer covers living costs
JRF’s UK Poverty 2026 report finds that overall poverty rates remained broadly unchanged in the period leading up to the 2024 general election, but the “depth of poverty worsened significantly, meaning millions are further below the poverty line”.
More than one in five people in the UK, around 14.2 million, are living in poverty, with growing numbers experiencing very deep poverty, defined as less than 40 per cent of the UK median income after housing costs.
The government U-turn that led to the removal of the two-child benefit cap means that by April, 400,000 fewer children will be living in poverty compared with April last year – but that still means 4.2 million children in poverty by April 2029, according to JRF analysis.
Poverty in the UK “has not so much spread as hardened”, concludes the report authors, predicting that, under Office for Budget Responsibility projections, the headline poverty rate will remain broadly unchanged, falling only negligibly – from 21.3 per cent to 21.1 by 2029.
At The Lead we’re campaigning to end child poverty - and that includes offering solutions on how to do this. Read Iain Porter, senior policy advisor at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, on what needs to happen.
What about a minimum floor?
A staging post towards an Essentials Guarantee would be a protected minimum floor for UC, to limit the harsh impact of deductions to claimants’ income. Around half of households receiving UC endure deductions.
The policy would set a floor level of £78 a week for a household headed by a single adult aged 25 or over, and has echoes of the minimum wage. It would lift 130,000 people out of poverty if introduced this year, including 80,000 children, says JRF. Importantly, it could be introduced by amending regulations rather than primary legislation and cost only £340 million in its first year.
A move like this would help people like Esther – a single parent to three boys, two of whom are non-verbal and have complex needs, while the third is autistic. The South London mum has been claiming Universal Credit for four years, working irregular hours on a freelance basis.
“The cost of essentials can be overwhelming some months,” says Esther. “Even with the support of UC in place, I still find myself overextending because basic necessities can become extremely expensive.”
Her twins are double incontinent. A pack of five nappy pants is around £6, and they each need at least five per day.
“When essential items come at such a high cost, it creates additional pressure and anxiety, and it can also bring a great deal of guilt when meeting those needs becomes a financial struggle.”
Esther only wants an amount of UC that allows her to meet the family’s basic needs without crisis management. She says the system should be easier to navigate and ensure people receive the support they are entitled to, without having to fight for it.
Meagan Levin, policy and public affairs manager at Turn2us, a backer of the the Essentials Guarantee campaign, says that while the Essentials Guarantee would be a large spending commitment from government, a minimum floor would be a stepping stone.
“In the meantime, a protected minimum floor – setting limits at a monetary rate – is meant to avoid very acute financial hardship and deep poverty,” she tells The Lead.
Levin points out that a protected minimum floor would build on the Fair Repayment Rate, introduced by the government last April, which reduced maximum debt deductions from 25 per cent to 15 per cent of Universal Credit but did not cover deductions because of the benefit cap.
She and Manji agree that the Fair Repayment Rate is an example of the positive steps the government has taken of late to tackle poverty. The end of the two-child cap is the most obvious, but she also mentions attempts to improve service at job centres.
When the government’s Child Poverty Strategy was announced our special edition of The Lead Untangles went deep into the plans
Is it affordable – and realistic?
Whether it was through political expediency or a genuine change of heart, the government’s U-turns on the two-child cap and disability benefit cuts, and the launch of its Child Poverty Strategy last December, give campaigners a partial opening of the door to push at.
The Essentials Guarantee campaign received a boost in Parliament earlier this month when Labour MP Neil Duncan-Jordan initiated a debate on welfare and then sponsored an early day motion, which allows backbenchers to highlight important issues even though few are debated.
Duncan-Jordan tells The Lead last year’s debate on disability benefit cuts heightened awareness of “Dickensian” levels of poverty and destitution.
“An Essentials Guarantee would be a universal offer to the citizens of the country that when you have a need this is what you’ll get, and it will provide not a luxurious lifestyle but the bedrock of what you need to live,” he says. “At the moment, for too many people that’s not the case.”
For Duncan-Jordan, who had the whip restored last November after voting against the government’s Welfare Reform Bill earlier in the year, the Essentials Guarantee is part of a wider welfare issue, in which Labour ought to revive its commitment to universal rather than means-tested benefits. The system works when everyone has a stake in it, he says, rather than when it gives people the chance to complain that they get nothing back.
He says the stigmatisation of benefit claimants should be challenged. So too, he says, should claims the welfare bill is out of control and that benefit payment levels are generous. Evidence supports neither of these. But he knows the difficulty of effecting a change in a political culture that demonises welfare claimants.
“Over time, we’ve adopted a similar language to our opponents,” says Duncan-Jordan. “That sets the boundary of debate.”
However, recent polling shows a shift away from stigma and demonisation. A 2024 survey by More in Common found 58 per cent in support of a protected minimum floor. JRF cites research showing 66 per cent of the public think the basic rate of Universal Credit is too low.
An Essentials Guarantee would set a clear line beneath which no one should fall. With public backing growing and practical reforms already on the table, the chance to build a benefits system that offers stability instead of crisis is within reach. Perhaps 2026 could be the year that affording the essentials will finally be be universal.■
*Name has been changed.
About the author: Kevin Gopal is a Manchester-based journalist who has returned to freelancing after editing Big Issue North from 2007 until its closure in 2023.
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Whilst I support the thrust of Guaranteeing the essentials, it seems that whichever political party is in power it operates under the economic system of Capitalism/Imperialism. This system has to change otherwise no absolute change will take place!