Where next?: Reforming social security over the next 10 years

The UK is scarred by poverty and our social security system is in crisis. 15 million people in the UK are expected to be living in poverty in 2020 including 2 million pensioners and over 4 million children. So where do we go from here? This report asks how politicians should set about mending social security and tackling poverty over the next 10 years.

It draws on evidence and insights from a Fabian Society research project that included commissioned expert articles, a half-day policy summit and a series of listening events with people in receipt of social security.

The report presents a ‘People’s Charter’ for social security to bring security, respect, simplicity, consistency and support. It also proposes 9 steps to reform social security over the next decade:

1. Act fast with immediate reforms
2. Pursue clear aims and fight poverty first
3. Respond to the future
4. Build a people-led system
5. Create consistent, adequate payments
6. Imagine a new working-age household credit
7. Reinvent universal and contribution-based payments
8. Slash in-work poverty and support employment
9. Pledge new fiscal rules to grow social security spending

The report is supported by Age UK, the Children’s Society, Crisis, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the TUC. It is the final stage of the Fabian Society’s project Poverty and Social Security: Where Next?