Universal basic income can help battle inequality | Letters

The Resolution Foundation's prediction that inequalities are going to grow (UK faces return to inequality of Thatcher years, 1 February) makes gloomy reading. Sadly it is underestimated because it takes no account of cuts in what Barbara Castle, when she was secretary of state at the Department of Health and Social Security 40 years ago, called "the social wage". By this she meant "the publicly provided services which mean so much to family healthcare, education, housing and a good environment". She estimated that in 1975 the social wage added 20 a week to the average working household. At the time the average full-time weekly wage of a male manual worker was 52 and a female manual worker 31.

Every week you have reported cuts not only to health, education and social care but also to parks, museums, libraries, children's centres, buses and public lavatories. All these services are essential to a caring society and can only be provided collectively. They are part of our social fabric and the more threadbare this becomes the less autonomy children, people with disabilities and older, frail people enjoy. At the same time it becomes harder for their families to support them. Instead of insisting that families should do more (and they already do a great deal - there are five times as many family and friends caring for older people as there are paid carers), the government should reverse the massive cuts made to local authorities' budgets and increase the "social wage".
Hilary Land
Emerita professor of family policy, University of Bristol