Poverty: Metrics

Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lady Stroud, both on her work within the Social Metrics Commission and on securing this debate on a subject which is clearly of deep personal interest to noble Lords on all sides of the House.

Like many, I was shocked by the UN’s November report. However, I am critical both of the way Professor Alston explored just one side of the evidence and the extraordinary political nature of his language: for example, his conclusions that,

“poverty is a political choice”,

and that this Government were guilty of outsourcing the British tradition of compassion of poverty and mutual concern. The Government have done many things to restore dignity through work, to raise the poorest out of the tax system and to introduce a living wage. Where the intent was honourable but the implementation flawed, such as with universal credit, these remain work in progress. The Government have not been not too proud to admit when they get things wrong. Of course, the report also contained valid observations, and indeed it encouraged the Government to introduce a single measure of poverty and of food security. Therefore I, too, wholeheartedly welcome the Social Metrics Commission’s attempt to bring a whole new approach to measuring poverty.

Poverty has been defined as,

“not having the resources to participate to some acceptable degree in society, to avoid shame as well as destitution”.

However, measuring the extent of poverty is much harder, and the old benchmark of those living on less than 60% of contemporary median income, ignoring as it did, assets, skills and liabilities, meant that it was never fit for purpose. We can address the issues that lie behind the statistics only if we can measure whatever it is about the household budget, on both sides of the balance sheet, which puts families into poverty. These can be myriad: childcare costs; inability to budget; household debt; costs relating to any form of addiction; and, most worryingly, disability, as we have heard.

The most heartening finding is that, through this new measure, around 2.7 million people are living at less than 10% below the poverty line, meaning that relatively small changes in their circumstances could make them able to rise above it. Sadly, the converse is also true of the 2.5 million who are less than 10% above the poverty line.

This research to find a relevant contemporary measurement of poverty, supported by the work that the Legatum Institute undertakes in identifying pathways from poverty to prosperity, provides crucial support for the development of policy by a Government committed to creating a country in which no one and no community is left behind. At least this new measurement will enable us to hold them to account.