“Safety and security don’t just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear” so wrote Nelson Mandela.
“Poverty is the worst form of violence” Mahatma Ghandi, the Indian political and spiritual leader also noted.
The effects of poverty go far beyond childhood. They can affect a child’s life chances in education, employment and leading stable, healthy and happy lives. Poverty doesn’t just affect individuals, however. Although some like Thatcher claimed there was no such thing as society this flies in the face of reality. Just like nature’s complex web societies and the people who make them up are interdependent and rely on cooperation and well-being to function well. When one part breaks down eventually everyone suffers. In that sense, poverty can be said to be the worst form of violence and in particular affecting children. They surely deserve something better; a government which makes a conscious political choice to improve the life chances of all, not just for today but for the future. It is a deplorable state of affairs that adults obsessed with false balanced budget orthodoxy are blighting not just the current generation, but future ones too. Quite unnecessarily.
Poverty is often treated as being a lifestyle choice or attributed to personal deficiencies. Such ideas have taken root in the public consciousness and are continuously reinforced by the media and politicians. And yet in reality, it was the creation of a political system which allocates resources according to political beliefs about who generates the wealth. The idea that the rich make the money and it trickles down and benefits everyone in the end, is surely one of the biggest ideological scams of all time!
The last 9 years of austerity led politics are the culmination of the pursuit of a 40-year old economic narrative which has wrecked lives, and increased inequality and poverty. When politicians, to suit the political narrative, blame adults for their poverty they are also condemning their children. That should be the real scandal – a shameful disregard for the vulnerable citizens who depend on others for their well-being. The government, in response to criticism from many institutions and charities, talk about work paying and laud their achievements in public. And yet families condemned to low incomes and job insecurity, a ‘frozen’ benefit system in which on-going reforms are also causing huge financial hardship, along with a crumbling public infrastructure are all indicative of government which is not listening whilst ensconced in its ivory tower. Worse still, it really seems to believe in its political rhetoric about how it is improving people’s lives! Indeed, Theresa May’s resignation speech showed a complete disconnect from any sort of reality.
Over the last year or so alarm bells have been ringing louder and louder about the increases in child poverty and its harmful consequences.
Earlier in the year, the Resolution Foundation published a new report ‘The Living Standards Outlook 2019’ which indicated that UK households were facing a bleak future of stagnating living standards. Shockingly it projected that the ongoing welfare benefit cuts would likely cause a sharp rise in relative child poverty which it noted has been increasing continuously since 2011.
Whilst the government defends its record, Buttle UK (a children’s charity) quoting the government’s latest child poverty statistics laid out a shaming record:
Absolute poverty has risen by 200,00 to 3.7million children
Relative child poverty remained broadly stable at 4.1million
70% of these children now come from working families – up from 67% last year
53% of children in poverty are aged under 5.
Buttle UK also quotes in its press release last month, John Dickie from the Child Poverty Action Group who put it in real terms:
“These aren’t just statistics. These are children going hungry, missing out on school trips, unable to enjoy the activities and opportunities their better-off peers take for granted. These are parents going without meals, juggling debt and seeing their own health suffer to protect their children from the poverty they face.”
A report published earlier this month by the End Child Poverty coalition, using research carried out by Loughborough University, highlighted those areas in the UK which are most impoverished and where the greatest rises in child poverty have been seen. Predictably, it is at its highest in big cities but worse it is, as the report notes, also rising fastest in these areas. Loughborough’s Centre for Research in Social Policy revealed that 500,000 more children are having their lives limited by poverty today than at the start of the decade. To give this some context in terms of real people’s lives in real places, the study revealed that 37% of children living in Bolton are doing so in poverty. That’s children living in financially pressed homes without enough to eat and going to school without proper clothing. Dave Bagly, who runs Urban Outreach said that he expected to hand out 60,000 lunches to children living in Bolton this year and added that they help a total of 20,361 people through their schemes – just over 8000 of which are children.
The researchers also noted in their report that:
“The income of less well-off families has been hit by severe real-terms cuts in benefit levels and by higher housing costs, while being constrained by limited opportunities to improve earnings from work. [……]
The present national increase is projected to continue under the present policies with rates set to reach record levels by the early 2020s children’s life chances in the worst-hit areas are set to diminish further.”
It is scandalous to note that the UK faces a return to record levels of child poverty in in the 5th largest economy in the world. The tragedy is that against a backdrop of extreme wealth, more and more children are being trapped in poverty which will most certainly impact on their future.
A predilection for household budget economics and neoliberal orthodoxy sits at the heart of this scandalous state of affairs, where working people have been condemned to poverty through low wages and job insecurity; worse still, whose life chances have been stunted through the curse of involuntary unemployment.
That realisation should be a wake-up call for families across the nation. We have a government which has chosen, through its policy decisions and the pursuit of balanced budgets, to enforce poverty and deny our children a better life.
The solution to entrenched long-term poverty or improving people’s lot is not to be found in more austerity and cuts to public spending. The solution is to ensure that people have fulfilling employment which is well-paid and avoids the indignity of having to struggle to afford the basic necessities of life including shelter, food and clothing, not to mention sustenance for the soul. It is to be found in ensuring that those who are unable to work due to sickness or disability have the wherewithal to live comfortably and without hardship. It is to be found in the understanding that government spending is not constrained by its ability to tax or borrow and that unemployment is a government choice. This may sound outlandish and clash with what we have been told about how government needs our tax in order to spend or has to rely on the markets to borrow, or indeed that unemployment is an unfortunate but acceptable by-product of the capitalist system and mitigated by some degree of welfare benefits. None of these things are true.
Governments have at their fingertips the mechanisms by which public purpose can be delivered should they desire to do so. As Mandela said, “Safety and security don’t just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment.” That is at the heart of the matter. It boils down to democratic will and government choice.
So, what do we need?
We need better, more well-paid jobs combined with a government funded employment guarantee scheme which smooths out the cyclical nature of the economy and ensures no-one is left behind. At the same time, such a Job Guarantee would provide decent and useful public sector work which not only supports local communities but also gives people dignity, training and a liveable wage to allow them and their families to flourish. We need a basic income for those who cannot work through life’s misfortunes whether that’s coping with a serious or chronic disease, or for those affected by a disability who need support to live a fulfilling life. And finally, we need Universal Basic Services. These should be fundamental to the creation of a fairer society where the unequal lines drawn between the haves and have nots become less pronounced and resources more fairly shared.
Whether we are talking about poverty and inequality, the crisis in the NHS or the collapse of social care as described in this week’s Panorama or indeed the environmental challenges we face, at the risk of repeating ourselves GIMMS would like to emphasis that the question is not how we will pay for it but how can we create and distribute society’s available resources as a collective undertaking to benefit us all?
In conclusion, we must also think beyond our own borders. Child poverty is not just a UK phenomenon, it is a global scourge. Across the world four hundred million children live in extreme poverty, every year 6 million die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday and 2 million children die from preventable diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia because families can’t afford treatment.
The UK numbers among many rich nations with resources and relative stability compared to many across the world. We have a duty not only to address poverty and its associated evils in our own country but also support citizens of nations to build themselves fairer and more equitable societies. The future depends on global solidarity.