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Poverty in modern-day Britain looks different to the form it took in Beveridge’s day but it has not disappeared. For 14 million people across the UK the lack of access to the goods and services necessary to live a decent life and to participate fully in society remains a grim reality. Despite rising standards of living, social and economic structures continue to trap those at the bottom in constant job insecurity, ill-health, overcrowded housing and educational disadvantage. Helen Barnard considers what it might take to finally slay the giant of poverty in Britain. She examines how we might build a fairer, more equal society, and what a modern welfare state should aim to achieve, including an honest appraisal of the trade-offs and choices involved in creating it.
A tour d’horizon of social injustice in Britain today – and a twenty-first-century manifesto for rooting it out. At every turn, she presses not only the question of what substantively will have to be done to slay the giant of 'want', but asks how can we foster the political conversation that is a prerequisite for getting it done. Her demand for meaningful public deliberation, not least with those who are on the wrong end of anachronistic top-down services, is an urgent one – not only for social policy, but for the wider health of our democracy too.
Introduction
1. Defining decency
2. Hard pressed families
3. Disabled people and carers
4. Renting pensioners
5. Young, Black and held back
6. Stigma and shame or dignity and respect?
7. Equality and discrimination
8. What is social security for?
9. Public services for the digital age
10. Reimagining work
11. Managing modern markets
12. Tax, wealth and housing
Conclusion