Former government adviser Dame Louise Casey has urged Boris Johnson to deliver a “Beveridge moment” and overhaul welfare, as she launched an urgent appeal for public donations of food and money to get the poorest through winter.
Harking back to Sir William Beveridge’s 1942 report that led to the founding of the welfare state, Casey said an equivalent to the Sage expert panel of scientists advising on the response to Covid-19 was needed to tackle sharp rises in poverty and to “work out how the legacy of this pandemic isn’t the quadrupling of food banks”.
Casey, who until this summer advised the government on homelessness, launched a public appeal for food and cash donations for local food banks amid rising need that is expected to result in charitable organisations facing their busiest Christmas yet.
Casey’s appeal came as a survey by the centre-right thinktank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) showed more than a million of the UK’s poorest people are regularly struggling to pay for food and are in “severe financial trouble”, and most do not believe politicians care about helping them.
CLICK HERE to continue