Church Action on Poverty has released a report urging the Government to reaffirm the centrality of the safety net principle. The report identifies gaps in the current welfare system and asks the Department for Work and Pensions to take steps to ensure that the holes are addressed. It also calls on the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee to launch an urgent inquiry into tackling these cracks in the safety net.
‘For far too many people, instead of providing security against hunger, the “welfare safety net” is itself a contributory factor in creating insecurity and destitution. The welfare safety net is in urgent need of repair, as this report demonstrates’, commented the Right Revd Tim Thornton, Bishop of Truro, in the foreward to the report. ‘Food handouts must not be a long-term response to the problem of food poverty and hunger in the sixth wealthiest nation on the planet’, he says.
The report highlights that administrative delays and errors, benefit changes, benefit sanctions and crises often leave people without the money they need.
Church Action on Poverty is asking people to email their MPs to call for an urgent Parliamentary Inquiry to ‘repair the holes that have appeared in our welfare safety net’.
For more details and to download the report see the Church Action on Poverty website.
