A brief guide to obscuring child poverty

As I write this Ireland are losing to Spain in the European championships – but only because we insist on measuring success by how many goals are scored. Football is about entertainment, excitement, lots of money and according to my more lecherous friends the sexiness of the players. Why insist on only counting goals?

When Sepp Blatter stands down as FIFA president Ireland should vote for Ian Duncan-Smith as his replacement. We know that poverty especially child poverty is now rising. Thursday’s announcement of reducing child poverty figures describes the situation as it existed 2-years ago. It is acknowledged probably the last positive set of figures for child poverty maybe for a decade. The solution proposed by Ian Duncan-Smith today is to change what we count. Don’t count incomes and levels of deprivation as we do now but instead count other factors he believes are important to poverty, such as addiction, “worklessness” etc.

Ending poverty by changing the definition of poverty is not an original idea, but what makes this variation particularly worrying is that it is openly driven by the need to justify lowering the costs of benefit payments – and even worse it seeks to measure factors that have been consistently used by the press and politicians to blame the poor for poverty.

Should the proposal go through, every-time that the political poison of rising child poverty figures are released they will be accompanied by the political antidote of an itemised list of the failings of parents in order to divert the blame.

Ian Duncan-Smith, when making the announcement on the Today programme, chose to tell a selective story of poverty and welfare spending during the 2000’s as a justification for the change.  The story goes that by focusing on incomes the Labour government spent huge amounts of money on benefits, which meant that 4.5 million people stayed on “out of work benefits” because it was better for them to stay on benefits than work. At one moment of revealing hyperbole he suggested that that was what caused deficits and was bankrupting the country!

Let’s leave aside the fact that enough money to pay all unemployment benefit for a quarter of a century was created on Thursday by the Bank of England in order to lend to banks suggests some more substantial causes for our economic problems. The 4.5 million workless people he talked of were not the unemployed – they were not people unable or unwilling to work – they were those on sickness and disability benefits. Their barrier to work was not that benefits were too high but that they were assessed by independent agencies to be unfit to work. I have blogged on this repeated inference that [workless = unemployed = lazy] before – and how it has been repeatedly used to stigmatise people who are least able to defend themselves.

Child Poverty and Tax credits

During the years of economic growth the labour market polarised with increasing low paid employment and vast increases for those near the top of the income scale. This created a large number of families in work but also in poverty. These families as well as those unable to work were left far behind. New Labour’s solution was to focus government money on pensioners and on families with children. It worked in reducing pensioner poverty and child poverty. This ameliorated the problem that the economy does not give the poorest any of the money generated from economic growth – but did not address the underlying problem. It also meant that the poor single and childless were in a great deal of trouble. 

The price of ameliorating this problem will continue to rise if economic growth is unfairly shared. It is obvious but worth saying this is not a trend that was caused by the poorest – it has been driven by the market demands of those with money.

Ian Duncan-Smith’s announcement neither recognises nor wishes to deal with the underlying problem, and it also rejects New Labour’s amelioration plan because of its cost. Instead it seeks to identify the “flaws” in the poor implying, contrary to the evidence, that it is these “flaws” that are driving poverty. 

Government and independent analysts recognise that without increases in benefits or radical change in the labour market the Child Poverty Targets will not be met. The new proposals will set new targets - maybe ones that can be met – but which will inevitably add more stigma to the poor while drawing attention away from the underlying problem that even when the economy is working well the proceeds do not reach the poorest.  

Welfare Reform Bill - You Can Act!

Tomorrow the Welfare Reform Bill will be debated and voted on in the House of Commons. The Government are seeking to overturn the amendments passed in the Lords. As I write another amendment protecting disabled children has just been passed in the Lords against the Government's will.

The principle that all who play by the rules should receive enough to meet their basic needs has been at the heart of the welfare system for 65 years; if the benefit cap becomes law that principle will be destroyed. Only families whose basic needs are less than £26,000 will be safe. The rare and extremely vulnerable families who have greater needs will be left behind

The principle is wrong and the best predictions are that the effects will be equally wrong.The government’s proposed benefit cap will hit many of the most vulnerable people in society. It will affect 220,000 children (75% of those affected) and 14,740 families where Employment and Support Allowance (a disability benefit) is the main household income. It threatens to make over 80,000 children homeless and will push 133,000 children into poverty or further into poverty.

 

The Bishops amendment, carried in the House of Lords removes Child Benefit from the calculation. The effect would be to remove most of the families with children from the cap. The amendment was supported by children's charities, churches, faith groups , no-faith groups and many others because injustice of impoverishing children because of an arbitrary limit is obvious and painful.

The Methodist, Baptist, Quaker, and United Reformed Churches jointly wrote to every MP, explaining their objection to the principle of the Benefit Cap and urging them not to overturn the Bishop's amendment in tomorrows debate.

If you wish to contact your MP to express your concerns about the Welfare Reform Bill press the Church Action on Poverty button below. The emailer link will ask for your email address (for replies) and  your street address (to find your MP). It will then offer you a draft email which you can edit or accept as is before sending it to your MP with one more click.

Click to Email Your MP

Useful Links:

• The idea of a benefit cap is initially appealing to some. Many within churches - even former Archbishops - have supported it. 
• Go here for a simple explanation of why the Churches have said that the principle of a Cap is flawed:
• Today's Press statement of the Baptist, Methodist, Quaker and United Reformed Churches is here:
• You can read the letter that was sent to MPs here.

Two reports on who is being affected by the Cuts: One extremely unjust message

Today sees the publication of two important reports about who will be affected by the cuts and by how much. As a nerd who enjoys graphs this is a reason for joy; as someone with a care for social justice there is absolutely no joy to be found at all.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) shows conclusively that the poorest will be hit hardest. The bottom fifth of earners will lose about 6% of their income in lost benefits and government services and around another 6% in real terms wage cuts – a 12% hit. Taking a 12% cut is bad for anyone, but for those already facing hardship - how can this be just? 

Well maybe it could if we were all in this together but we most definitely are not. The top fifth of society (basically all higher rate tax payers) are facing a 4% reduction. The highest 1% (£150,000+ tax band payers) are facing higher taxes, due mainly to changes in pension tax relief, but a combination of high pay rises and tax avoidance strategies will probably mean their real incomes will actually increase. 

The second study released today is from the Children’s Society and looks at the effect of the arbitrary benefit cap of £500 a week on any household. The sad but unsurprising fact is the poorest are disproportionately affected, and the poorest children even more so. Here are just the headline findings.

• Children will be 9 times more likely to be affected than adults.
• 69,000 adults and 206,000 children will have their household incomes reduced (by an average of at least £92 a week).
• 27,000 adults and 82,400 children will be made homeless.
• Children in poverty will move into severe poverty – an internationally recognised definition of poverty where lack of resources leads to serious impacts on children’s health and wellbeing.

There is a lot of interesting detail given in the study which I won’t go into but it is important to realise this work takes as its base the rather optimistic Department of Work and Pension estimates of the number of households affected, and uses very optimistic assumptions to avoid exaggeration. The related housing benefit cap will be introduced for everyone in January, and the total benefit cap will be introduced in April 2012.

These are all choices and do not let the Government rhetoric on deficit reduction fool you into thinking there is no other choice. The rate at which the deficit is cut is a choice, the proportion of cuts and tax rises is a choice, who will be most affected by the cuts and tax changes is a choice. 

Alison Tomlin stated on the eve of the Comprehensive Spending Review to Westminster Central Hall full of TUC and social justice activists, that the Government should be judged on the choices it made around how it treats the poorest and most vulnerable. My own judgement on the direction of government policy in general and the arbitrary benefit caps in particular is clear: - Unjust, unfair and unacceptable.

A week with the Methodist Church

Tim Fry is a student of Clifton College, Bristol who has just completed his GCSE's and has spent one week on work experience with the Joint Public Issues Team. In this guest post Tim gives his impression of this week and the work he did on Housing Benefit.


Wow, a shame that such a thrilling and interesting week has come to a close. A very varied experience in which I learned about how the Methodist Church brings their work together on public issues and advocacy.

From the communications department which posted the goings on to all concerned to the statisticians/ researchers who tirelessly work at their computers and travel the country and find out exactly what’s going on. And also the Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT) who are making important issues heard and also presenting the policy of the churches to both decision makers and church members.

A very informative week was mostly spent on the government’s proposed cap on Housing Benefits which threaten the poor and will cause over half the homes in London to become unaffordable by 2016 and between 500,000 and 750,000 people to be affected.

This was a startling wake up call for me as I realized just how dire the situation was for the impoverished with their situation seemingly becoming worse with every action the government takes to cut expenditure. Questions must be raised however by its unwillingness to cut as much from the MoD even though the tip of the spear in Osama Bin Laden has been blunted and the terrorist threat level lessened.

Though such serious thoughts faced me this week still the brightness of the whole JPIT team shone through and made it an extremely enjoyable week.

Tim Fry