Covid inquiry: struggling families failed by pandemic response

Many children and families entered the pandemic facing poverty and structural disadvantage, and were failed – and continue to be failed – by the inadequacy of the economic measures introduced in response to the pandemic, Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) told Module 9 of the Covid-19 inquiry today.  

Families who entered the pandemic in poverty lacked the resources to meet its demands and bore the economic brunt of it as a result - we were not 'all in it together', CPAG said. In the years leading to the pandemic, the social security system was slashed by around £45 billion per year and the Child Poverty Act scrapped, leaving millions of families with children already struggling to get by. 

CPAG is a core participant in Module 9 of the Inquiry which will examine the economic interventions taken by the UK Government and Devolved Administrations in response to the pandemic. The charity wants the Inquiry to examine whether pre-existing poverty and structural disadvantage were properly taken into account when economic interventions – particularly benefits - were designed and administered. If they were not, the charity said today, it is vital to understand why not, and to examine what can be done to avoid a similar failure in future. 

The charity said measures such as the flat-rate, £20 uplift in universal credit which was introduced on a temporary basis, took no account of children in a household - a single adult and a lone parent home-schooling two children received the same amount. As such, it was, while welcome for some, a blunt tool. And because the benefit cap – which limits the total amount of benefits a household can receive - continued to operate in the pandemic, some families never gained from the £20 uplift (either because their benefit was already capped or because their benefit decreased when they were subject to the benefit cap for the first time as a result of losing work). 

Understandably, post-pandemic, the DWP reviewed some universal credit awards in order to detect error and fraud. But CPAG’s experience is that failings in administration meant that some people were faced with demands to repay all of the universal credit support they received after missing online notifications sent via their UC accounts to provide identity documents, many of which came months after they stopped receiving UC after their earnings returned to higher levels.* 

The Inquiry will need to make effective recommendations to ensure financial investment for disadvantaged children and families, not just to recover from the consequences of the pandemic, but also to ensure that vast numbers of families and children already in poverty are not left to bear the economic brunt of any future pandemic.

Note to editors:

More information on Module 9 of the Covid Inquiry is HERE

*CPAG highlighted this issue in 2022 - Demands to repay: the impact and legality of the DWP’s reverification of UC claims

CPAG media contact: Jane Ahrends 07816 909302