Matthew Butcher is the media and communications officer for FairPensions

The British Social Attitude Survey, released yesterday, has thrown out a host of results that might well leave those on the left feeling dismayed.

Britons, it would appear, are becoming increasingly individualistic and less willing to pay higher taxes to support healthcare spending, education and protecting the environment. Has the time come to explore ways to help the poorest in society without increasing the amount of tax we have pay?

It should come as no surprise that people are becoming more protective of their money when the average income rose by only 0.4 per cent in the last year, well below inflation. Only yesterday we learnt that millions of people in this country and taking on short-term, high interest loans to see them through to pay day.

The problem that we face is not that people don’t recognise our country’s challenges nor that we don’t care about each other, but instead that people don’t feel like they are in a position to give any more to the taxman. An illustration of our empathy towards each other is the 82 per cent of people surveyed who think it is ‘very important’ to reduce child poverty in the UK.

The major reasons given in this year’s survey for child poverty in the UK are parents’ addictions (75 per cent) and parents’ unwillingness to work (63 per cent) while less than half of people think that low pay is a reason that children live in poverty.

The sad fact is that almost six out of ten children in poverty are living with at least one parent who does work. Research carried out by UNICEF earlier this year paints a bleak picture of life on low pay for parents. They are often forced to work such long hours to support their families that they hardly spend any time with their kids.

For these workers having a job doesn’t by any means guarantee an improvement in the quality of their lives.

Though a large chunk of these low paid employees work for the state, and would therefore benefit from more government spending, the majority, according to the Resolution Foundation, work for private companies.

It is these private companies, and in particular our biggest corporations, who should be footing the bill when everyone else is feeling the squeeze. This year we’ve been asking Britain’s biggest companies to pay their workers living wages.

Not only do Living Wages benefit the workers, their children and the companies but they also save the taxpayer from subsidising corporations through government tax credits that are required to boost the poverty wages of their lowest paid staff.

We should not be surprised that British public, who seem permanently beset by depressing economic news, aren’t willing to pay more tax. Instead we should be upping our pressure on the biggest corporations in the land to pay their way.

See Also:

• To end inequality without redistribution of wealth, we should pay a living wage – Duncan Exley, December 8th 2011

• Economic gloom is killing Britons’ sense of common interest – Anne Summers, December 7th 2011

• New video from the Fair Pay Network makes the case for a living wage – Alex Hern, November 28th 2011

• Citizens UK: “The Big Society is flawed if people have to work two jobs” – Peter Carrol, October 21st 2011

• Lifting the lid on low paid Britain – Lee Savage, 4th October 2011

Findings from the British Social Attitudes survey for 2011 published today show strong support for reducing child poverty (82% regard this as ‘very important’) and for central government taking the lead role in this (79%).

On the face of it, this might look like a remarkable endorsement of Labour’s prioritisation of child poverty while in power.

However, the public judgment on Labour’s record is negative: 46% of people believe (erroneously) that child poverty increased over the ten years to 2009, while only 12% believe (correctly) that it fell.

Moreover when we look at the factors the public regards as important in driving child poverty, it is clear they see the issue in overwhelmingly conservative terms, blaming drug and alcohol addiction, laziness and family breakdown far more than low pay, social inequality or lack of affordable housing.

Child poverty is thus seen much more in terms of personal failure than social or economic factors. For supporters of the social democratic elements in Labour’s approach (always much stronger than its rhetoric while in office suggested), these should be devastating findings.

The target of eliminating child poverty by 2020 was not only emblematic of Labour’s continuing commitment to social justice: it underpinned much of what was most successful in its social policy agenda (Sure Start, increased employment for lone parents, tax credits).

But the implication of today’s findings is that by raising the profile of child poverty, Labour has ultimately provided a boost to conservative disagnoses of social problems and to the policies of work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Bear in mind the Conservative (and increasingly Lib Dem) strategy on child poverty is to redefine the issue in terms of smaller scale more severe problems, focusing in on what can be presented as the extremes of social dysfunction and away from more general factors such as redistribution, labour market conditions and childcare provision which were at the centre of Labour’s approach.

Thus small minorities of ‘poor families’- those facing the greatest challenges – are presented as representative of child poverty in general, even though the conclusion from most research into poverty is that the only thing poor families generally have in common is that they haven’t got enough money.

It now seems clear this strategy connects with public attitudes and beliefs. For example, 75% of respondents to the survey think drug and alcohol addiction are one of the reasons children are in poverty, while 20% think they are the main reason. These are by some margin the most commonly cited factors in the survey.

In fact the prevalence of addiction among parents is of a completely different order to that of income poverty: for example, 2.7% of parents in all couple families (not just poor couples) are estimated to have a problem of alcohol dependency, while the poverty rate for children in couples is 24% after housing costs (see “Mental health and child poverty”, Nick Gould [pdf]).

This lack of fit holds for drug dependency and for lone parents as well. Clearly addiction can only make a minor contribution to overall child poverty, but it looks as if political messages that conflate the two will resonate with the public.

Only last week, Mr Duncan Smith cited drug addiction as an argument against increasing the incomes of the poor: today’s survey results indicate this argument will be widely accepted. The only element in the Conservative diagnosis which is roundly rejected by the public is its exaggerated claims about the intergenerational transmission of poverty: only 3% of respondents believe this is the main reason children are poor.

Otherwise, the BSA results are an endorsement not of Labour’s social democratic approach but of the world-view of Iain Duncan Smith and Labour’s social conservatives, such as Frank Field and Graham Allen.

For the coalition, this will strengthen the case for redefining the relative income measure of child poverty which Labour hung around their necks before leaving office through the Child Poverty Act. For some in Labour, it will count as evidence for the political unsustainability of social democratic strategies.

But the main lesson may not be about policy so much as language. ‘Child poverty’ was always an ambiguous term. For progressives and social democrats (and most academics and economists), poverty is essentially an issue of distribution and employment, but the wider and generally negative connotations of the word ‘poverty’ cannot easily be dispelled.

As Kate Bell and Jason Strelitz wrote on Left Foot Forward last month:

“Too often the way child poverty has been discussed has been as if “the poor” were different from others, with different values and needs, cut off from the rest of society.”

That may just be an inescapable implication of any use of the term ‘poverty’, which historically has always involved connotations of loss of status and dependency. Thus to centre progressive policy around the notion of poverty was to sign a Faustian pact with inherited connotations of exclusion and dependency which ultimately only serve to support conservative disagnoses – such as the grossly exaggerated role ascribed to addiction.

‘Poverty’, for the time being at least, belongs to big and small ‘c’ conservatives. One option for social democrats is to let them keep it; as Bell and Strelitz suggest, “forget child poverty”. That may sound like a drastic solution, but it captures the urgency of rethinking the social democratic approach, not just in terms of policy but in terms of concepts and language.

See also:

• A-list Tory ‘asks’ how we can stop the poor from having too many kids – Alex Hern, November 18th 2011

• Forget “child poverty”; just fight for a decent childhood for all – Kate Bell and Jason Strelitz, November 15th 2011

• Currie v Jones: Do people go hungry in Britain? – Alex Hern, November 14th 2011

• The coalition is actively increasing child poverty – Felicity Dennistoun, October 11th 2011

• How poor children will get poorer on Cameron’s watch – Dr Sam Royston, October 11th 2011

By Kate Bell and Jason Strelitz

A Swedish colleague recently remarked on the horror with which his national press greeted the news that child poverty rates were set to soar in the UK. The same Institute for Fiscal Studies report caused no such reaction here.

For sure there was some press coverage. But as with the regular news items about the numbers in child poverty which have pock marked the media since Tony Blair’s 1999 pledge to end child poverty in a generation, the news represented something of a tumbleweed movement; to change metaphor, a bit of splash but very little ripple.

Today we have published “Decent Childhoods: Reframing the fight to end child poverty”.

The report reflects on what was successful in Labour’s approach to tackling child poverty and what wasn’t. The successes don’t need repeating here, though they should be acknowledged.

Though the pledge to end child poverty by 2020 became law in the 2010 child poverty act, the target to halve child poverty by the same year was not met, and the indicators now suggest it is moving in the wrong direction.

We identify two problems with the approach in the past decade.

Firstly child poverty often appeared an orphan policy area, unconnected to wider questions about the kind of economy or society we have had, as if the former could be adequately addressed without, altering the latter.

Secondly the agenda failed to resonate with many people including those living in poverty.   We focus here on this issue.  With child poverty levels rising this is important.  If we couldn’t convince people to care about child poverty in the good times, how can we build a constituency of support for this agenda when so many more people around the country are experiencing their own uncertainties?

We argue that it is possible, but not without changing the way the debate is framed.

While poverty remains a powerful explanatory concept, it is not a strong frame for engaging people in support of change. It’s not the rejectionists we’re focused on, those whose starting position is to say that people in poverty are lazy and to blame, though there are plenty of them.

Rather we want to engage those who are ambivalent, who recognise childhood disadvantage, unemployment, the problems of low pay, high childcare costs, low social mobility, and inequality, but don’t necessarily call it poverty.

This population is large, and what’s more it encompasses many who social science will categorise as in poverty but who would never call themselves that. Part of that may be because they don’t consider themselves poor in international terms but its also that poverty is stigmatised; no badge of honour.

Too often the way child poverty has been discussed has been as if “the poor” were different from others, with different values and needs, cut off from the rest of society.

Countless research shows that poverty is dynamic; a recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation study demonstrates that while chronic poverty (defined in terms of years with household income below 60 per cent median) only affects 10 per cent of the poor population, and three per cent of the population as a whole, poverty at some point affected 30 per cent of the population.

Yet too often poverty has been seen as the condition of ‘the bottom’, and linked with a misleading debate about an ‘underclass’. The problems faced by many of those on low incomes in Britain are shared by many others.

That’s partly because they are the same people, captured in one survey snap shot above the poverty line, at another point in time below with fluctuations of income depending on work, family and health. Its partly because the experiences of poverty in the UK, struggling to make ends meet, with an insecure labour market, debt, housing, education are those shared by so many in Britain.

The child poverty agenda was always more inclusive than it sounded; its now even more so. The challenge is to communicate that.

Rather than constantly trying to translate a concept that doesn’t resonate, we can do that by keeping focussed on what Martha Nussbaum has called “the central and valuable things in life that people can actually do and be’. We argue that the concept of Decent Childhoods might allow us to do that: a decent childhood is one in which all children live in families with financial security, all children have meaningful opportunities; and all children are valued.

Achieving this will mean large scale changes in the labour market, in the educational system, and in the way we talk about and engage with people on low incomes. But perhaps it’s a positive vision that can inspire that kind of change. Some have suggested that ending child poverty is unaffordable in our current economic climate. It might be harder to make this claim about delivering a decent childhood for all.

“Decent childhoods: Reframing the fight to end child poverty” is being launched today at a seminar with Kate Green MP, Jon Cruddas MP, and David Robinson, Senior Adviser at Community Links; The report is available at www.decentchildhoods.org.uk

See also:

• The coalition is actively increasing child poverty – Felicity Dennistoun, October 11th 2011

• How poor children will get poorer on Cameron’s watch – Dr Sam Royston, October 11th 2011

• Child poverty the “challenge of our generation” says McConnell – Ed Jacobs, June 7th 2011

• New Labour’s record on child poverty: Lessons must be learnt – Kate Bell and Jason Strelitz, May 12th 2011

• OECD: Spending cuts threaten progress on child poverty – Will Straw, April 28th 2011

Disgraced former Conservative minister Edwina Currie continues to insist that no one in the UK  is ever starving, even after spending three hours last night in a food bank in Birmingham being told just that.

The event was held in response to comments made by Currie on Radio 5 last month.

At the time, Currie said:

“Are you telling me people in this country are going hungry? Seriously? Seriously? Do you know, I really have great difficulty believing that.”

“I don’t think people in this country go hungry. But are these people at the same time maybe buying the odd lottery ticket? Do they just occasionally have the odd cigarette? Somewhere along the line does food come as the first priority?”

The public-and-panel event arranged this night was largely three hours of Currie, famous for destroying the British egg market, sleeping with John Major, and saying that “good Christians” wouldn’t get aids, arguing with people in poverty about whether they were in poverty. You can listen to the whole debate here.

One highlight, however, was blogger and author Owen Jones, who took Currie to task throughout the night; Jones’s opening comments are embedded below, and are well worth listening to:

The case of Mark and Helen Mullins is indeed a tragedy; they recorded a video earlier this year, explaining the troubles they were having, and it makes for difficult viewing:

Edwina Currie claims she knows about the Mullins. If she does, and insists in perpetuating her lies, she is more than just humorously out of touch; she is actively contributing to a repetition of their tragedy.

See also:

• We need a new approach to tackling fuel poverty – Matthew Lockwood, November 9th 2011

• The coalition is actively increasing child poverty – Felicity Dennistoun, October 11th 2011

• ESA cuts will exacerbate poverty and remove help for disabled – Neil Coyle, March 8th 2011

• All in the family? Putting intergenerational poverty into perspective – Declan Gaffney, April 8th 2011

• Warnings of generation lost to poverty – Ed Jacobs, February 23rd 2011

Back in August, little more than 24 hours after calm had finally descended on our chaotic and debris-filled streets, I wrote that it was perfectly reasonable to believe that opportunism and copycat criminal activity could be blamed for fuelling the rioters, looters and other troublemakers.

I also remarked that whilst this may have helped provide us with an initial explanation, this would never satisfy in terms of seeking out long term and lasting solutions. A complete picture as to who the rioters were, and why they behaved as they did was needed.

The last few weeks have begun to shed some light, with the release of three separate reports, all offering an insight (and very often, an unsurprising one) behind what has become known as “the England riots”. The focus on young people is most compelling.

The first and second reports came out towards the end of October: Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Home Office studies, released concurrently, which gave a statistical analysis of who the rioters were and exactly what crimes were committed.

Crucially, it delves into their socio-economic backgrounds, with a glance at educational attainment and past criminal activity. I will return to both of these reports later.

The third, published last week, was a government-funded one, carried out by a group of independent researchers and commissioned on behalf of the Cabinet Office. It is this one that I’ll deal with first.

The study sought, as its main premise, to understand why some young people got involved in the trouble, whilst at the same time investigating why others chose not to.

Statistics have already revealed that half of those caught up in the riots were under-20, with just over a quarter of those between the ages of 10 and 17.

Taken from an admittedly small sample of just 206 young people from the affected areas, of which only 50 were actively involved in the disturbances, it found that a cocktail of excitement and opportunism, together with a desire to get back at the police, drove the disorder.

The researchers speak of ‘moments of madness,’ and ‘a day like no other, when normal rules did not seem to apply.’ Some of the young people described the thrill and the buzz of what took place as being akin to a rave.

This was a chance to get their hands on “free stuff;” the materially inaccessible and out of reach kind of stuff. Witnessing the events on TV, online, egged on by friends/associates via social media, brought many in from being mere ‘watchers, bystanders,’ to active ‘looters.’

Opportunism, thus, played its part, no doubt with the view that many felt they could get away with it, thanks in no small part to the images circulating of the police in certain areas, in cordons, standing and observing, rather than intervening.

A series of ‘nudge’ and ‘tug’ factors were found to determine young peoples’ level of involvement.

Those quizzed referred to being bored, with ‘nothing else to do,’ as a ‘nudge’ factor, with previous negative experiences of the police a significant one. In fact, hostility towards authority figures in general was regularly cited.

‘Tug’ factors such as peer and family pressure played their part:

“The strength of parents as inhibitors depended to some extend on whether they were around or not…and on the degree of their control.”

A young person’s criminal past acted both as a motivator and a deterrent. Current education, future job prospects and aspirations also came into play. With youth unemployment at 21.3 per cent, the highest since records began, and well over double the overall national rate, many were right to wonder what kind of future lay ahead.

Unsurprising, therefore, that the findings showed that:

“…some young people felt that their prospects were so bleak that they had little to lose by their involvement.”

As opposed to this young person from Peckham who chose to stay away:

“I was inside planning my future. I couldn’t see myself out there. It was stupid.”

A wake up call for our politicians if ever there was one.

The Ministry of Justice report was concerned with providing data and information regarding all the perpetrators brought before the courts, whereas the Home Office one relied on police data of all those arrested, as well as detailed accounts of crimes committed. Both were released a couple of weeks before, and serve to compliment one another.

In short, their scope was more interested in the who, rather than the why. They are, however, no less revealing.

Correct up until 12^th October, the Ministry of Justice found that of the 1,984 people who had appeared in court, 90 per cent were male, with 26 per cent being juveniles (aged 10-17), up from 16 per cent for similar offences in 2010. Only five per cent were over 40.

In terms of criminal pasts, 76 per cent of those who appeared before the courts for the disorder had either a previous caution or conviction; 62 per cent for juveniles. Yet, almost a quarter of all offenders in court had no previous caution or conviction, thus lending credence to the view that a lot of the rioting and looting came from opportunists, rather than experienced, prolific criminals.

It is only by wading through the socio-economic and educational data that one sees a picture of poverty and deprivation, combined with academic failure. Almost two-thirds of 10-17 year olds up in court lived in one of the 20 per cent of the country’s most deprived areas.

The MoJ was unequivocal in its findings that:

“…compared to population averages, those brought before the courts were more likely to be in receipt of free school meals or benefits, were more likely to have had special educational needs and be absent from school, and more likely to have some form of criminal history. This pattern held across all areas looked at.”

Overall, a pretty gloomy picture.

Whilst the Home Office produced a ‘sub-set’ of those arrested, reproducing similar figures to the MoJ, it found something additionally noteworthy. Only 13 per cent were found to be affiliated to a gang, thus punctuating the gang myth propagated by Iain Duncan Smith at September’s Tory party conference, where he told delegates that gangs ‘played a significant part’ in the riots.

Not the first time (and it certainly won’t be the last) a government minister has jumped the gun, reaching for conclusions before all the facts are known.

The conclusion of all three reports should surprise few. The responses from young people as to why they rioted don’t reveal anything particularly new or groundbreaking.

Instead, they build upon much that has already been known about from earlier studies. The high-profile nature of August’s events meant that they carried even greater weight.

Yes, we know that opportunism, thuggery, mindless violence, took place on our streets, but past studies show that these things don’t just operate in a vacuum. The Cabinet Office report gives yet a further example of the simmering tension, anger, and frustrations at the lack of opportunities felt by the young.

For some, the riots were a release, no matter how opportunistic.

Many of those convicted of looting and handling stolen goods have received far stiffer punishments than normal, both in terms of going to prison and length of service being handed down. This was particularly the case for juveniles.

Short-termism and populist headlines still dominate government thinking.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, an independent charity which believes that prison should be reserved for only the most serious offenders, argued that while the reports’ figures were to be expected, they also showed that now was the time to tackle social deprivation.

Indiscriminate prison sentences were only going to be counter-productive:

“The worst possible outcome would be just to sling all these young people in prison and risk their joining gangs out of terror and becoming hardened criminals.”

Unfortunately, nobody in the government was listening.

See also:

• New York Times slam Cameron, Liberal Democrats over riots reaction – Daniel Elton, August 18th 2011

• How to build a cross-party consensus on responding to the riots – August 16th 2011

• When a liberal is mugged by reality – Ben Mitchell, August 11th 2011

• How social networking escalated rioting – and can bring it to justice – Daniel Elton, August 10th 2011

• A crowd psychology analysis of the riots – Clifford Stott, August 9th 2011

Gus Baker is the co-director of Intern Aware

The coalition government has comprehensively failed to get a grip on unpaid internships.

While Nick Clegg attacks a society where the “sharp-elbowed and well-connected” get the best jobs, his party routinely advertises for unpaid interns at its HQ.

While government guidelines say that “the National Minimum Wage is a minimum standard” for internships, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’s own portal for finding work experience has been exposed as being riddled with advertisements for unpaid work.

While HMRC are supposedly enacting a crackdown on unpaid internships, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s spokesman says he is “proud” of his record of asking young people to work for free.

The failure to act to enforce existing minimum wage laws will mean that hundreds of thousands are locked out of the opportunities they deserve.

For the bright, talented young person with parents based outside of London, access to careers in the media, politics, creative arts, PR and the charity sector is almost wholly dependent on having the immense financial resource necessary to support yourself without a wage.

The problem is not just one of social mobility, but one of social stratification.

If the journalists, politicians and creatives of the future are the unpaid interns of today, what will the social makeup of the decision makers and opinion shapers be?

There is a better way.

Both employees and employers benefit when interns are fairly paid and fairly recruited. Recruiting innovative, intelligent and creative new employees is essential for modern businesses. Those young people who might be most suited to specific careers in may not be the same ones who are able to afford to work for free. If bright, talented and able graduates are stuck working in bars rather than at the top tables of their chosen fields, it is a waste for all concerned.

The political establishment needs to get its own house in order. A zero tolerance policy towards unpaid internships should be spelled out by each party leader. The government should play no part in encouraging or promoting companies who cut costs by asking young people to work for free. HMRC should be asked to use advertisements for placements which patently break the law as evidence to crack down on unlawful practices.

In June of this year David Cameron said he was “very relaxed” about unpaid internships. His government acts like it.

If ministers really care about making access to the professions more open and more meritocratic, the answer is simple. We don’t need more announcements. We don’t need more press releases. We don’t need more guidelines. We need the government to enforce the law and end unpaid internships for good.

See also:

• “Seeking Gaddafi” Tory MP demands Libya pay us back for their liberation – Shamik Das, October 21st 2011

• Don’t lets clear away aspiration for youngsters with the riot debris – Emma Norris, August 11th 2011

• British democracy is run on unpaid labour – Intern Aware & Interns Anonymous, March 30th 2011

• Support Left Foot Forward’s Living Wage Appeal – Daniel Elton, December 25th 2010

• Leadership candidates need to debate the ‘poverty of ambition’ as well as inequality – Rayhan Haque, June 26th 2010

By Felicity Dennistoun of the Resolution Foundation

As has been widely reported, new figures published today by the Institute for Fiscal Studies forecast that the number of children in poverty is set to rise.

Specifically, child poverty will rise continually during the first half of this decade and stay at approximately the same level until 2020, when there will be over three million children living in poverty in the UK. The figures about adults are similarly depressing; by 2015 6.6 million working age adults will be living in absolute poverty.

In this context the targets set in the Child Poverty Act, just last year, of reducing absolute child poverty to 5% and relative child poverty to 10% by 2020, seem at best woefully optimistic and at worst wildly unrealistic. The reasons behind these gloomy forecasts reveal why we’re moving in the wrong direction when it comes to the eradication child poverty.

IFS figures show that real median household income is forecast to be 7% lower in 2012-13 than it was in 2009-10, and to remain below its 2009-10 level until at least 2015-16. These figures are of serious concern given that by this point the economy should have made a convincing return to growth. Stagnating wages only tell part of the story though; child poverty is an area where politics makes a big difference.

Graph 1 below shows projections for child poverty both with and without the government’s tax and benefit reforms. As the dotted line shows, without government policy child poverty would be markedly lower. So where are things going wrong? While the planned changes to be brought in under Universal Credit should take us a step forward on poverty rates, the impact of indexing benefits to CPI instead of RPI will take us two steps back.

Graph 1:

And while Universal Credit promises to make work pay, the figures reveal it just won’t do enough.

See also:

• How poor children will get poorer on Cameron’s watch – Dr Sam Royston, October 11th 2011

• Child poverty the “challenge of our generation” says McConnell – Ed Jacobs, June 7th 2011

• New Labour’s record on child poverty: Lessons must be learnt – Kate Bell and Jason Strelitz, May 12th 2011

• OECD: Spending cuts threaten progress on child poverty – Will Straw, April 28th 2011

• Has the government breached its child poverty obligations? – Ed Jacobs, March 25th 2011

Dr Sam Royston is the Poverty and Early Years Policy Adviser for The Children’s Society

A new report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has modelled the implications of current government policies on child poverty rates to 2020.

Rather than meeting the government’s legally binding commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020, the IFS predicts a rise in child poverty rates (when measured at 60 per cent of median income before housing costs) from 2009 levels of 20 per cent of children (or 2.6 million children) to 24 per cent (or 3.3 million) by 2020 - pushing some 700,000 more children into poverty.

Rather than eradicating child poverty, this would reverse all the progress on child poverty figures made since 2000.

The IFS has highlighted that much of these predicted increases in child poverty rates will result from the changes in tax and benefits announced by the coalition government over the last year and a half.

They have particularly warned that changes to the uprating of benefit entitlements, (which will see benefits increased with the consumer prices index, rather than the typically higher rate retail prices index) are likely to play a key role in increasing poverty rates.

The Children’s Society has lobbied hard to warn of the implications of some of the government’s welfare changes on particular disadvantaged groups of children. For instance we have warned of the implications of the introduction of a cap on benefit entitlements, which are likely to affect more than 200,000 children across the UK, and changes to disability living allowance, which could cut support for families affected by disabilities (who are amongst some of the most likely to live in poverty).

The IFS suggest that the figures would be even worse were it not for the introduction of the Universal Credit.  The credit will radically reform the benefits system, replacing a range of key benefits and tax credits. The Children’s Society have warmly welcomed its intention to simplify the welfare system, and to deliver increased work incentives.

However, though delivering increased support for some, many other families are likely to lose out under the Universal Credit. For example, changes to support for families with disabled children will see upwards of 100,000 children lose up to £27 per week.  Similarly, many families with young carers may see cuts in entitlement under the new system.

We hope that the government will reconsider some of these changes, so the Universal Credit works for all children and families.

The child poverty target sets a radical vision for our society, a deliberately difficult target which needs a focussed effort of political will to reach, particularly in the current economic context. The government clearly needs to do much, much more to ensure that they make this vision a reality. It would be easier to ignore the target, but to do so would be to sideline the millions of families who struggle day to day to give their children a decent chance in life.

This is something no decent society can afford.

See also:

• Child poverty the “challenge of our generation” says McConnell – Ed Jacobs, June 7th 2011

• New Labour’s record on child poverty: Lessons must be learnt – Kate Bell and Jason Strelitz, May 12th 2011

• OECD: Spending cuts threaten progress on child poverty – Will Straw, April 28th 2011

• Has the government breached its child poverty obligations? – Ed Jacobs, March 25th 2011

• Tackling the scourge of child poverty in Wales – Huw Lewis AM, February 24th 2011

Tony Dykes is the Director of Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA)

Today marks the anniversary of South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup. It is also the anniversary of Nelson Mandela and his comrades being sentenced to life imprisonment and the 1988 Wembley concert that called for his release.

Where is South Africa today? There have been recent issues of violence including attacks on and the murder of foreigners, so called xenophobic violence. There are calls for policies which reduce poverty and inequality, and for improved service delivery.

South Africa was a great host for the World Cup. It overcame many pessimists as the nation welcomed the world to experience, to view, South Africa.

It demonstrated that Africa, too often portrayed as some kind of basket case, could host, professionally and enthusiastically, one of the greatest international events. Hosting the World Cup was an opportunity to market South Africa and it took it brilliantly.

But hosting the World Cup was never a panacea for all of the challenges South Africa continues to face and the recent attacks – which cannot be condoned, are condemned but also need to be understood – are one manifestation of that. South Africa is still a very divided society, by race and gender but increasingly by class.

Unemployment is between 25 to 40 per cent; a key challenge is how in today’s global economy can South Africa create decent work and jobs?

How can it create decent housing? South Africa has built more than 3 million homes in 17 years yet there remains a major housing crisis. Since 1994 millions have moved to South Africa from other parts of Africa and millions of South Africans have moved from rural to urban areas.

South Africa did not experience a banking crisis; it regulates its banks. But it has been seriously affected by the global economic crisis with an estimated one million jobs lost.

In South Africa, leading the campaign to expose and root out corruption in the private and public sector is the trade union movement. The trade union movement is campaigning for policies which will create jobs, for economic policies which transform South Africa.

South Africa is Africa’s largest economy yet it remains one of the most unequal economies in the world.

South Africa held its local elections a few weeks ago. The turnout was 58.5%; the UK average for local elections is around 35% and in the referendum it was 41%. The ANC got 62%, down nearly 4%; the largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, got 24%.

Some commentators and polls forecast that due to concern about service delivery the ANC may get less than 60%. It did see its support drop in most provinces other than KwaZulu Natal, the home province of Jacob Zuma. For most South Africans the ANC remains the party they trust will deliver for them.

South Africa is a vibrant democracy. It has witnessed over the past 21 years a great political transformation which should be celebrated. It is finding the socio and economic transformation as great, if not a greater challenge. It is has rejected a command economy, the “socialism in one country model”.

It has operated what those at the IMF, World Bank and multinational companies view as a sound macroeconomic framework There are calls led by the trade union movement for economic policies which do more; for a change of strategy and emphasis.

The 2011 budget was seen by some as move in this direction with priority on employment creation and the acceptance that the challenges South Africa faces are those set out by Chris Hani, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party who was murdered in 1993.

“…to build a nation free from hunger, disease and poverty, free from ignorance, homelessness and humiliation, a country in which there is peace, security and jobs.”

Tim Nichols is the Press and Parliamentary Officer of the Child Poverty Action Group

The coalition government has argued for an approach to ending child poverty that is not simply about moving a few families over an arbitrary line. They want a strategy that is about making work pay, rather than income transfers, or “poverty plus a pound” as Nick Clegg often puts it in his dismissive soundbite.

But the new child poverty figures out yesterday present a problem for the government’s analysis and strategy.

Not only do they show a fall of 200,000 in the number of children in poverty - bringing the figure, measured before housing costs, to its lowest level in 25 years - but they also show a reduction of 100,000 in the coalition’s new measure of material deprivation combined with severe relative low income (below 50 per cent median income).

It had been predicted that any fall in poverty for 2009/10 would be largely a consequence of a fall in median income following the recession. The headline poverty mark is 60 per cent median income, so if median income falls, so does the poverty line, leaving some people who were just below it now just above it. But median income actually rose slightly.

Therefore we can only really attribute the fall in child poverty to three key investments the previous government made in families from April 2009:

• A rise in child benefit for the oldest child to £20;

• A £50 annual rise in child tax credit above indexing;

• The introduction of a child benefit disregard in housing benefit and council tax benefit, so that working families on low income got more help with their rent and council tax.

This strategy, combining universal benefits, income transfers, housing support and tax rebates, was of course working in parallel with other elements of a broad strategy on child poverty, such as a decade of growing investment in Sure Start centres. Clearly, it was working.

Not only was relative poverty impacted, but also so was severe poverty and material deprivation. This is not just a paper exercise of children moving over an arbitrary line, the evidence clearly shows a real impact on the lives and wellbeing of children affected by socioeconomic disadvantage.

But all this progress is now under threat. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has predicted that, as a consequence of the coalition’s programme of cuts, especially cuts to family welfare, child poverty will begin to rise again.

See the table below:

Millions

% of children

Baseline year: 1998/99

3.4

26%

Latest figures: 2009/10	2.6	20%
IFS estimate: 2010/11	2.5	-
IFS estimate: 2013/14	2.7	-
Coalition’s 2020 target	-	Below 10%

Sources: HBAI 1998/99-2009/10 (rounded figures before housing costs); Children and Working-Age poverty from 2010 to 2013, IFS 2010

Many of the coalition’s cuts run directly counter to ministers’ stated priorities of making work pay and increasing work incentives. Tax credits and support to help meet childcare costs are suffering the swing of the axe from chancellor George Osborne and his Liberal Democratic deputy, Danny Alexander, while Iain Duncan Smith’s much vaunted Universal Credit is also being hobbled by the Treasury.

The work incentives that his Centre for Social Justice calculate are needed are now being wrecked by a refusal from the Treasury to fund the scheme at the level needed. Meanwhile Eric Pickles at the Department for Communities and Local Government is throwing another spanner in the works by insisting Council Tax Benefit is replaced by a complicated plethora of local schemes, turning the transparent work incentives that were intended into a postcode lottery for many claimants.

David Cameron made a great promise when he was seeking election to 10 Downing Street, saying in 2007:

“We can make British poverty history, and we will make British poverty history.”

But with the deputy prime minster taking the lead, the drive for progress on poverty has been lost due to his dismissal of adequate incomes today in favour of a focus on ‘life chances’ for tomorrow. It is time the coalition left behind the deputy prime minster’s vague rhetoric and got back in touch with the prime minster’s ambition.

The evidence base clearly dictates the kind of policies that successfully impact on children’s lives and wellbeing today. If the progress achieved - despite the awful economic circumstances - in the final year of the previous government were to be replicated throughout a full five-year term of the coalition government, there would be a million fewer children in poverty by the next election.

Only this concrete progress will change life chances for the next generation.