It’s not just about free school meals. The poverty campaigner has shown that our entire benefits system is inadequate
Do you have your very own natural swimming lake in the garden? Funnily enough, me neither. But along with hot tubs and garden offices, they’ve supposedly become lockdown must-haves for people with money to burn and nothing else to spend it on, what with never leaving home any more. The Beckhams had one dug during the first lockdown, which means it’s probably only a matter of time before they’re two-a-penny in the Cotswolds.
The paradox of lockdown is that the more comfortably off Britons were at the beginning of it, the more likely they are to emerge with an unexpected bonus: savings racked up by months of not commuting, eating out, buying clothes or going on holiday. In parliament this week, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, described the resulting record levels of household savings as a hopeful sign of economic resilience. Yet for those most in need of a windfall, as research from Resolution Foundation spelled out this week, the opposite is true.
