Child Development

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the right reverend Prelate on securing this debate. At a time of long-term and deepening austerity, it gives us a good opportunity to consider the impact that it is having on child development, and how far public policy may be contributing to this.

Over the summer, I was asked to address a conference on the subject of childhood disability and social disadvantage. This was not something that I knew a great deal about, so I had to knuckle down and look at the evidence. Fortunately, a research team at Warwick University has done some very interesting work on this subject, so it was not as difficult as it might have been.

The association between disability and social disadvantage is unmistakable. Just to summarise, disabled children are more likely that non-disabled children to live in households with lower-than-median incomes, live in families experiencing debt and with greater dependence on benefits, live with families that are less likely to be able to afford things that they consider necessary, live in rented accommodation and in houses with fewer rooms, live with other disabled children, live with a disabled adult, live in lone-parent families and be born to single mothers. How is society tackling this challenge? Well, 3.6 million children—rather more than one in four—are living in poverty. Poverty has consequences for children’s health and education in the form of increased infant mortality, chronic illness and lower levels of literacy. Twenty-four per cent of children in the poorest fifth of households are in families who cannot afford to keep their house warm, compared to just 1% in the richest fifth. As Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children has said, growing up in poverty in the UK means children being cold and going without a winter coat, going to bed hungry and not being able to join in activities with friends.

Child poverty reduced dramatically between 1998-99 and 2010-12, with 1.1 million children being lifted out of poverty. Today, however, it is clear that policy is driven by economic rather than social considerations, and welfare is a prime target for public expenditure cuts. This cannot fail to impact negatively on rates of poverty. In a recent interview on the “Today” programme, John Humphrys appeared to have difficulty understanding that it is the poorest in society who are hardest hit by benefit cuts. It goes without saying that the poorest are disproportionately affected by benefits cuts because, by and large, it is the poorest to whom the benefits go. Thus, under current government policies, child poverty is projected to rise from 2012-13 with an expected 300,000 more children living in poverty by 2015-16. This upward trend is set to continue with 4.2 million children living in poverty by 2020.

Howard Reed, in a study entitled In the Eye of the Storm, commissioned by the Children’s Society, Action for Children and the NSPCC, has tried to estimate the number of vulnerable children and families in Britain and the impact of the current economic context on them. His conclusion is that, by 2015, there will be significantly more vulnerable families than there were in 2010. They will be significantly worse off in terms of disposable income, and public spending cuts will hit them particularly hard compared with the population at large.

Furthermore, the number of children living in families with five or more of the vulnerabilities used by the Government to identify troubled families or families at risk is predicted to increase by around 17%. The number of extremely vulnerable children in families with six or seven vulnerabilities will almost double. Taking into account tax and benefit changes, spending cuts, macroeconomic trends and long-term trends, Howard Reed suggests that the number of families with five or more vulnerabilities will increase by 14.5% to 150,000 by 2015, with the number of children in the latter situation increasing by 17%.

The centrepiece of the Government’s reforms is the so-called universal credit, which combines a number of key means-tested benefits into a single entitlement. The Government estimate that about 2.8 million households will gain from that, but 2 million will lose. However, it is necessary to treat these estimates with some caution as the impact of the cuts may not be fully understood by viewing specific cuts in isolation. I am very glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, is reviewing the overall impact of universal credit on support for disabled people. I look forward to her report, which is to be published next week, with considerable anticipation.

It is clear that no group will be more affected than disabled people. That is because not only will key benefits for disabled people be incorporated into the new benefit but changes will affect the rates at which some key benefits are paid. Others will not be mirrored in the new system at all. While some disabled people will gain, many more will get significantly less help. Cuts, such as those to support the most disabled children and disabled adults living alone, will make the future considerably bleaker for many of the most vulnerable households in Britain.