The benefits provided by the current UK government system do not seem fit to deal with these current crises. It is not a system that overlooks a person’s needs when trying to deal with ever-expanding ‘poverty’. 

“in 2018 about 40% of households entitled to Pension Credit were not receiving it, 20% of those entitled to Housing Benefits were not receiving it, 44% of those entitled to Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) did not receive it (a share that was rising) and a half a million families with a disabled family member entitled to Employment Support Allowance (ESA) were not receiving it.” This is an extract from in the book ‘Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now’, by Guy Standing, a British labor economist who has received a FAcSS (The Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences) award. Along with some of his other writings, there stands ‘The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class’. This paragraph raises a point otherwise: how are this many people being refused what they require?   

This system has a good heart but the people that try to gain access to it tell a different story, especially as previous statistics show. Some rules of acquiring benefits are ‘the 2-child limit’ which incorporates a negligence for bigger families along with children a result of sexual assault or rape, which the child will only be paid for “if the woman can prove that the child is a result of rape.”. Payment is also given to one person in the household which can create an imbalance amongst the residents. As far as personal reports go, the service employs underqualified staff to take care of the customers whose livelihoods are at stake.   

Taking a step back from all of this, we have to ask ourselves why this system has been put here in the first place. How will this benefit the ones in need? The simple answer is benefiting everyone enough to keep people from poverty, as Guy Standing suggests, 'Basic Income'.