Economic growth & fall in unemployment key to tacking child poverty

The best way to tackle child poverty is to tackle welfare dependency, shadow work and pensions minister Helen Goodman has told a colloquium at the Centre for the Study of the Family, the Child and the Law at Liverpool University yesterday.

A return to growth and a reduction in unemployment were essential to tackle both child poverty and welfare dependency, she insisted, along with greater skills training, further support with childcare and flexibile working, as well benefit reform and tackling financial exclusion, so that as the economy recovers those who need jobs most are able to get them.

Ms Goodman said:

“I agree with the need to make work pay – but I also think there is a real issue with benefit dependency. This feeling grew during the 2010 General Election campaign – not from just what I heard (i.e. people complaining about the actions of others), but also from what I saw.

“For example, I saw small children running about the streets of Co. Durham without shoes in April – not because of a lack of money but because the lives of their parents are so chaotic that they don’t get round to dressing them. This is unacceptable and it needs to be addressed – it is simply not good for children to have parents living unstructured lives.

“And there are, of course, fundamentally, two ways of making work pay: one, by increasing incomes in work; or two, by cutting incomes for those who are out of work. I am obviously very concerned that the new coalition will use option two; this will increase child poverty – just as it doubled last time under the Tories.”

Child poverty is higher in the UK than the EU average, and worklessness in the UK is twice the EU average. In Scandinavia, however – where levels of child wellbeing are the highest – 3 per cent of GDP is spent on childcare, which forms a central role in the welfare state.

She also criticised the Coalition Government’s decision to deny 500,000 of the poorest working families free school meals (costing them £600 each and condemning 50,000 youngsters to continue a life in poverty), reduce support for Job Centres and abolish the Future Jobs Fund and the Child Trust Fund – contrasting those actions with the success of the last Labour Government in reducing child poverty by 600,000.

Some of the issues that should be looked at, added Ms Goodman, include:

• The need to increase childcare provisions;

• Increasing skills and productivity to help people back to work and to stay in work;

• Increasing the minimum wage and linking it to earnings;

• Extending coverage of the living wage;

• Improving work/life balance; and

• Taking action on labour market inequality.

Elsewhere, employment minister Chris Grayling today said helping people out of poverty was a “key challenge” for the new government, and that radical reforms to the welfare to work system were one of the main ways of doing it.

He told the Commons:

“Helping people in the UK escape poverty is one of the key challenges for the new Government and something we are passionate about achieving.

“And whilst this administration faces one of the biggest financial challenges in our peacetime history, we are determined that we will not act in a way that leaves some of the most poorest and most vulnerable in our society behind.”