This story was originally published on OpenDemocracy.net/en/.
   License: Creative Commons - Attributions/No Derivities[1]
   --------------------------------------------------------------


After COVID-19, we need a new social guarantee
By:   []
Date: None

As the long-neglected ship of our public services collides with the colossal COVID-19 iceberg, the captains are throwing the women and children overboard.

The impact of the pandemic has taken a huge and very predictable toll on the most disadvantaged in society. In place of a social safety net, we’ve got a shrinking flotilla of leaky lifeboats. As the crisis continues to unfold, it becomes ever clearer that we need to construct secure foundations on which everyone can build a meaningful life.

More men have died from COVID-19 in the UK than women, but on nearly every other metric women have done worse: employment, mental health, unpaid care work, domestic abuse. People of colour have died at shockingly higher rates and are far more exposed to the health and economic risks associated with lockdown. For the young in society, the patchy provision of education, lack of internet and computer access, interrupted social development, soaring unemployment and child poverty all paint a bleak picture.

Now more than ever, we need a new way to ensure that everyone has access to life’s essentials – the things that everyone needs to participate actively in society. Affordable housing, healthcare, education, internet access, care when we are unable to support ourselves, and a guaranteed minimum income to buy food and other everyday necessities.

As the fifth richest nation in the world, the UK should be able to ensure that everyone has access to these basics. But it hasn’t. The crisis has shone a spotlight on both the failure of our current system to provide such fundamentals, and on the vastly unequal consequences of this failure.

To give a few examples: poor housing and overcrowding – conditions that have been linked to the spread of the virus – disproportionately affect ethnically minority communities. The lack of affordable rental properties affects women more than men, which leaves them particularly vulnerable when the temporary ban on evictions lifts. The pressures of home-schooling, lack of childcare and a growing unemployment crisis have reversed decades of (slow) progress in gender equality.

The shambolic handling of public education during the crisis has exacerbated the effects of a decade of decreasing funds for the education system. Incalculable damage has been done to children’s development, mental health and future life chances.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/after-covid-19-we-need-new-social-guarantee/