Poverty: Metrics

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, for her work and for this debate. As she has said and as my noble friend Lady Tyler agreed, what gets measured gets done—but the noble Baroness also reminded us that it needs to be an agreed measure. If we do not have an agreed measure, it will be difficult to solve the problems of poverty.

I should also say that the independence of the Social Metrics Commission has been crucial in identifying the new measurements. In particular, they include assets rather than just income and they add in unavoidable additional costs such as childcare or a disability. They allow for high housing costs to be reflected and for the adequacy of housing to be measured, which is vital to so many people on low incomes who have to live in unfit conditions, who are perhaps rough sleeping or who are in temporary accommodation.

As we have heard, the Social Metrics Commission has concluded that 14.2 million people are in poverty in the UK, of whom more than half are in persistent poverty: that is, they are in poverty now and have been for two out of three previous years. Those figures are worrying, but it is particularly worrying that so many of those living in poverty are actually in work. I read a recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which concluded that over the past 30 years the UK has effectively swapped mass unemployment for mass low-paid work. I concur with that conclusion—but it demonstrates that we have a very big problem to solve.

Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said in a report published in November last year that the welfare state is disappearing,

“behind a web page and an algorithm”.

I am very concerned about the Government’s policy of digital by default. It is a feature of universal credit, but the truth is that one in five of the UK population does not have the required skills or the necessary resources to engage with a digitally based benefits system. Indeed, the House has repeatedly warned Governments of this.

I conclude by saying that too many UK citizens are living in a cycle of low-paid jobs and poor prospects. No one should have to depend on food banks. The report of the Social Metrics Commission helps us to identify the real extent of poverty and the ways of addressing it, because the damage created by social exclusion and financial inequalities simply cannot be allowed to continue unaddressed.