Child Poverty
Debate between Jo Cox and Peter Dowd(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Peter Dowd
I agree with my hon. Friend. I spoke earlier about Members in the room being deeply concerned about poverty, but obviously not that many Government Members are concerned.
I will finish the quote from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report:
“In reality almost anyone can experience poverty—over half of the population spent at least one year in relative income poverty between 1991 and 2003.”
Even if we accept that fecklessness is a factor, it is only part of the picture, and not a very big part. It becomes another alibi for doing little about the problem. Blaming poor people for being poor, even when they are working hard, is unconscionable. Shakespeare is always a good source for thought:
“And, being rich, my virtue then shall be,
To say there is no vice, but beggary.”
My late mother was a war widow. She died at the age of 95 and had been a widow for 50 years. Her mother was a war widow and a war mother—she died at the age of 106 and had been a widow for 67 years. Much, if not most, of their time was spent in relative poverty, with poverty for their children, too. Was that right? As the youngest, I feel that I was lucky, but luck should have nothing to do with it. That cannot be right.
The country’s economic structure plays a significant part in poverty. For example, the Government are still not concentrating on the effects of the productivity gap, which accounts for billions of pounds in lost GDP. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) raised that issue earlier. Output per worker remains 2% below the pre-crisis levels of 2008, whereas in the rest of the G7, it is 5% higher. The Economist has said:
“The French could take Friday off and still produce more than Britons do in a week.”
In an article in MoneyWeek last year, Simon Wilson indicated:
“Bank of England calculations suggest if productivity had kept pace with the pre-2008 trend, the UK population might on average be 17% better off than it is today.”
Rather than pointing the finger at the poor, the Government should get that same finger out and address that driver of poverty.
Jo Cox (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
I have statistics similar those of to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain). In my constituency, one third of all children, 33%, live in poverty, which is heartbreaking and shocking for the many hard-working families there. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) welcome the major defeat in the Lords last night of the Government’s attempt to abolish income-related child poverty targets, and does he agree that it is simply not credible to tackle child poverty without acknowledging the worst issue, a lack of money? For the Government to attempt to abolish that target is simply reprehensible.
Peter Dowd
I agree with my hon. Friend, but I think a pattern is beginning to develop with this Government: they redefine everything when it does not suit them. So, for example, affordable housing now means a house costing £400,000 or £500,000. Everything is redefined to suit the Government’s agenda.