The Scandal of Child Poverty: what Labour will do

 There are a number of charities specifically concerned with child poverty. They are tearing their hair out as poverty among children has risen relentlessly since 2010. The National Children’s Bureau has even described child poverty as the ‘new normal’. The reason for this - Tory rule. The solution - get rid of them. 

The Child Poverty Action Group sets out the figures:

• There were 4.1 million children living in poverty in the UK in 2017-18. That's 30 per cent of children, or nine in a classroom of 30.

• Two thirds of these children in poverty live in a household with at least one adult working.

• There are expected to be 5.2 million children living in poverty in the UK by 2022 (if the Tories remain in office).

• 47% of children living in lone-parent families are in poverty. Lone parents face a higher risk of poverty due to the lack of an additional earner, low rates of maintenance payments, gender inequality in employment and pay, and childcare costs.

In total 14 million people live in poverty in Britain

 The charity End Child Poverty lists the 25 Constituencies in Britain with highest levels of child poverty. The ‘top ten’ show more than half of all their children living in poverty.

Constituency % of children in poverty

after Housing Costs 2017/18

Poplar and Limehouse 58.5%

Bethnal Green and Bow 55.3%

Poplar and Limehouse 53.8%

Birmingham, Hodge Hill 53.5%

Blackburn 52.4%

Islington South and Finsbury 52.2%

Manchester, Gorton 52.1%

Blackley and Broughton 51.3%

Bradford West 50.9%

West Ham 50.5%

Birmingham, Ladywood 49.6%

Peterborough 48.9%

Hackney South and Shoreditch 48.7%

Tottenham 48.6%

Edmonton 48.5%

Manchester Central 48.5%

Vauxhall 48.1%

Newcastle upon Tyne Central 48.0%

Hackney North and Stoke Newington 47.9%

Birmingham, Hall Green 47.2%

Holborn and St Pancras 47.2%

Ilford South 46.9%

Bradford East 46.7%

Walsall South 46.5%

Walsall North 46.3%

What have the Tories done about child poverty? They’ve made it worse.

·         They’ve frozen working age benefits for years or kept increases below the rate of inflation, so the poor, and their kids, get poorer and poorer.

·         They’ve rolled out the iniquitous system of Universal Credit (UC), where you have to wait five weeks before you get a penny in benefits.

·         The Trussell Trust reckons the demand for food banks goes up by 30% as UC is introduced.

·         They’ve imposed a cap on benefits on families with more than two children.

·         They’ve ‘generously’ introduced an exception. If a third child is born as a result of rape, they’ll waive the benefit cap. Labour rightly calls this rape clause “immoral and outrageous “.

·         The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has a brutal system of sanctions against claimants. If sanctioned they may end up expected to live without a penny. The majority of those sanctioned win their appeal against the penalties, so the system is grossly unfair.

What will Labour do about child poverty?

Here’s what their manifesto, It’s Time for Real Change, spells out:

“The cruelty and heartlessness of the Tories has made the DWP a symbol of fear. When people feel the DWP is more about harassment than a helping hand, something has gone seriously wrong. Labour will completely change this culture, replacing the DWP on day one with a Department for Social Security, which will be there to help and support people, not punish and police them.

We will put children at the heart of everything we do, developing a cross- governmental National Strategy for Childhood focusing on health, security, well-being and poverty. We will give effect to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child....

We will end the five-week wait by introducing an interim payment based on half an estimated monthly entitlement. We will immediately suspend the Tories’ vicious sanction regime and ensure that employment support is positive not punitive.

We will stop 300,000 children from being in poverty by scrapping the benefit cap and the two child limit, so ending the immoral and outrageous ‘rape clause’. We will pay childcare costs up front so that parents aren’t forced to turn down work or get into debt to pay for childcare.”

These are modest but essential first steps to eliminate child poverty.  They are part of much wider Labour plans to cut back on the grotesque inequalities which disfigure Tory Britain. Poverty is an inevitable result of extreme inequality. Is it too much to expect that, in a civilised society, no child should be born into poverty? Surely every child should be entitled to an equal chance for their future? That’s what Labour believes, and that’s what Labour will make sure happens.