Regional Inequalities: Child Poverty

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for introducing the debate, and also for an excellent speech that set out very clearly a framework for tackling poverty in her constituency and region—a framework against which we should judge other actions in tackling poverty across the country. We have heard a number of excellent speeches in a well-attended debate—on the Opposition’s side— including contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), for Easington (Grahame Morris), for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) and for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy). All of those speeches drew very powerfully from my hon. Friends’ constituency experiences.

Poverty, wherever we experience it, is a grinding, soul-destroying experience. It is a limiter of opportunities and it erodes physical and mental health. That is true in the north-east, the north-west, London, the midlands and Cornwall; it is true wherever people are growing up in poverty. It is true if you own a home that you cannot afford to maintain. It is true if you are a council tenant or if you pay your rent to a private landlord. It is true if you are a parent or if you are collecting your pension, and it is true if you are a carer. It is true if you are unable to work because of a severe illness or disability, and it is true if you are in insecure or poorly paid work. One of the very strong themes that has come through from many contributors this afternoon is the growth of in-work poverty, which is now at a record level. It is true whether we call poverty “food poverty,” “bedding poverty,” or “energy poverty,” whether we talk about it in terms of the inability of parents to send their children to school in a school uniform, or whether we talk about it in terms of their children going to school hungry. Whatever the nature of that poverty, it is all under that same umbrella.

Poverty isolates people. It excludes people. It makes people feel somehow that it is their fault. One of the experiences of people living in poverty that we all hear time and again is this wrong sense—such an incredibly wrong sense—of shame. Poverty drives people into debt. It drives people into insecurity. It also damages communities, which have less spending power and greater need. Larger numbers of people on the lowest incomes make for poorer neighbourhoods, and a levelling-up agenda that fails to take that into account is definitely on the way to failure.

Although, as everybody has said this afternoon, income is absolutely central to the issue of poverty, it also exists in a wider context, particularly of services. We have heard about the experience of the fall in local authority spending power, which has been critical and was so important to us during the years of the Labour Government. One of the particular achievements to which I strongly pay tribute is Sure Start and the work of early intervention. I was most proud of Sure Start, and saw my constituency experience it. Because of the erosion of local authority spending, we saw that early intervention shrivel.

In the 21st century, in what is one of the world’s richer countries, we should now be on our way to eradicating poverty, but we are not. Before the pandemic, in 2019-20, child poverty after housing costs had reached 31% nationally, over 4 million children—a rise of 700,000 since 2010-11. There was no region in England where child poverty was not a major problem. The lowest regional child poverty rate was 24%, in the south-east. In other words, in what is generally regarded as the richest region of the country, nearly one in four children were in poverty.

It is likely that the next set of statistics on households below average income, which we will see very shortly, will show a reduction in the number in poverty, and the Government will point to that as an achievement. It will, of course, reflect the £20 uplift to universal credit and the uplift to the local housing allowance, which were introduced as a response to the pandemic and in recognition of the fact that new claimants would be shocked by the low level of social security. However, by this time next year, we will see the impact of the unwinding of the uplift, which was so unwisely removed in the autumn. During the course of this year, we will see the impact, too, of rising inflation and an energy price shock that will erode the living standards of millions of people already on the margins. That is before the further shock that we are likely to see as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, which is likely to feed through, tragically, into even more expensive energy costs.

As I have said, there was no region in England where child poverty was not a major problem, but there were enormous variations between regions: from 24% in the south-east to 36% in Yorkshire and the Humber, 37% in the north-east and 38% in London. As has been said, there are severe variations within regions, too—even within constituencies. It is good that the Government are finally turning their attention to regional inequalities—assuming that that is what the levelling-up agenda actually means; many interpretations are available. However, levelling up does not include child poverty as an indicator, and that is a very serious weakness in that agenda.

Any attention to regional inequalities would certainly be better than what we have seen over the last decade, when the Government quite cynically exploited regional inequalities for divisive purposes. Given, for example, the extreme inequity in housing costs and thus in benefit payments, it was not difficult to generate headlines about claimants in London receiving what seemed like huge payments. The average weekly private sector rent in the north-east is £117 a week; in London it is £340 a week. It is no wonder that voters in other regions found some of those payments in London incomprehensible, despite the need for support, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden, who spoke about the impact of housing need in London. That has to be addressed in any sensible approach to regional inequalities in child poverty.

The Government’s approach of arbitrary cuts—including the bedroom tax, the two-child limit and the overall benefit cap—has not only led to rises in child poverty in every region in England, Scotland and Wales, but left us with an anarchic benefits system where claimants are hit by an unpredictable barrage of caps, deductions and benefit freezes. That, too, exacerbates regional inequalities.

The Government approach is to cut at national level and then pretend they can make it up through local discretionary pots. We have seen that approach in respect of housing costs; we are seeing it again as households face the energy costs crisis. Labour proposes assisting everyone with rising costs, with most going to those on lower incomes. Instead, £150 is being made available on the basis of 30-year-old property valuations topped up with a discretionary fund that local councils have to administer. Even there, it is rapidly becoming obvious that half of those eligible do not pay by direct debit, so councils do not have a means to pay them; there needs to be a process by which they can be contacted and their bank details obtained. As with all discretionary pots, the likelihood is that large numbers of people in the most acute need will not be able to get the assistance they require.

Before I conclude, I will quote from a letter that I received this morning, coincidentally. We have heard powerful testimonies from Members quoting their constituents about their experience of poverty.

“As a claimant in Westminster North, I am writing to you about my struggle to keep up with the rising costs of living. I have a severely disabled daughter. She has scars all over her face; she lost her eye in a car accident when she was 11 years old. The NHS couldn’t help her so I’ve taken out loans to pay for aspects of her care. Even before the surge in energy prices many people like me have been struggling to afford the essentials. I cannot afford my bills or my food shopping. We cannot actually live. I am a widow with loans to pay since I lost my husband. We limit the heating and we limit the lighting too. It is all too expensive.”

When the Chancellor announced the household support fund in September, he said that,

“Everyone should be able to afford the essentials, and we are committed to ensuring that is the case.”

It is not the case that my constituent can afford the essentials; it is not the case that the constituents my hon. Friends have spoken about can afford the essentials, and that is now. In a few weeks’ time, their ability to afford food, to heat and light their homes and to send their children to school clothed and shod will diminish still further. We have heard about the regional drivers of poverty, the experiences that vary between areas and the different factors helping determine how many fall into poverty, how deeply and for how long. The fact is that we have a deepening crisis of poverty in this country and, in spring 2022, the Government have to wake up and act.