Undoing 30 years of progress on equality?

Bevan Foundation Director Victoria Winckler has argued that planned changes to social security benefits could undo some of the fragile progress made towards equality over the last 30 years.  Speaking at a conference organised by the Welsh Government and Cardiff University, Equality 2020, on 11^th September, Victoria suggested that people with protected characteristics were hit hard by the changes because they are more likely to rely on benefits, for example because of the barriers they face in getting employment.

She also highlighted ways in which changes to benefits reinforced a traditional model of the family, notably the way in which Universal Credit deliberately prioritises the first earner in a household and penalizes the second earner.  There’s more about this point on our blog.

You can read Victoria’s presentation here – a revised version is published in the Foundation’s magazine, Review, which you can get by joining.