Public support for more generous welfare benefits is at its highest level for more than two decades, amid new evidence that societal views on social security and immigration are becoming significantly more liberal, according to the latest annual barometer of British social attitudes. The findings, which come as pressure rises on the government to retain the £20-a-week Covid-19 top-up of universal credit, indicate that seemingly entrenched popular views on benefits – that they create welfare dependency and encourage “shirking and skiving” – are melting away. More members of the public now agree with the statement: “benefits are too low and cause hardship” than those who believe benefit levels are too high and discourage work, according to the British Social Attitudes Survey, reversing a hardening of views on social security that dates back to the late 1990s. “The dramatic softening in attitudes towards welfare in recent years strongly suggests the public may prove sympathetic towards more generous welfare benefits for people who lose their jobs because of the pandemic – especially if there is a substantial increase in the level of unemployment,” said Gillian Prior, the director of surveys at the National Centre for Social Research, which carried out the study. The research, which involved face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of 3,224 British adults between July and October last year, suggests there was an appetite for a more generous benefit system even before the pandemic. Since March, the number of people on universal credit, the main welfare benefit, has doubled to 6 million, with more expected as furlough support ends and unemployment rises. The survey also reveals a softening of views on immigration, despite the centrality of the issue to the Brexit vote four years ago, and increasingly hostile rhetoric from the government around cracking down on the numbers of migrants and taking tighter control of the UK’s borders. The proportion of British people saying immigration “enriches cultural life” has increased from 26% in 2011 to 46% in 2019, the survey found. Over the same period, the proportion who believe immigration is “bad for the economy” has fallen from 43% to 15%. The survey revealed widely held concerns over inequality. Almost three-quarters of people in Scotland and 65% of people in England agreed income distribution was “unfair”. Though a majority in each country felt it was the state’s role to address this, just 6% in England and 3% in Scotland were satisfied with the government’s attempts to close the income gap. The authors of the Social Attitudes report suggest public attitudes on welfare hardened rapidly from the late 1990s under New Labour as employment levels rose and the government sought to cut spending on long-term jobless benefits, a policy continued by the coalition and the Conservatives after 2010. The narrative of shirkers and skivers reached its apogee in the early years of austerity. The former prime minister David Cameron referred in speeches to “benefit scroungers”, while the former chancellor George Osborne pitted the hard-working shift worker against their lazy neighbours who were “sleeping off a life on benefits”. That now seems to be fading rapidly. The survey shows that since 2015 – the year Osborne drew up £16bn in social security cuts and announced a four-year freeze in benefits – attitudes to those on benefits have mellowed. Five years ago, about 28% of the public agreed with the statement that people on benefits “don’t really deserve any help”; that view is now at an all-time low of 15%, while the proportion disagreeing rose over the same period from 33% to 47%. “It looks as though the pandemic has occurred at a time when there was already more empathy with the circumstances of the low-paid and unemployed of working age – and that voters may therefore be looking to the government to make adequate provision for those whose livelihoods are threatened by the pandemic,” it says. Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, said: “These responses prove that the social security system is not working for British people. Even before this crisis, a decade of Tory government had left us with a safety net with too many holes in it and the evidence of that is clear to see. Labour would replace it with a system which provides a decent standard of living for all.” Alison Garnham, the chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said: “For years successive governments undermined the idea that our social security system is for everyone, instead promoting a narrative of skivers and strivers. This narrative will be shot to pieces now that Covid-19 has left so many people facing unemployment and financial hardship.” The Department for Work and Pensions was approached for a response but said it did not want to comment.