Child Poverty

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for securing this debate and his long-standing commitment to this issue. He made an excellent speech highlighting the scale of the crisis. The fact that, typically, nine children in a class of 30 are growing up in poverty is a stark image indeed. I wholly concur with his assertion that no child in Britain should grow up in poverty and that should be a priority for the Government. I hope that the Minister will respond to his key question and say what the Government’s position is on establishing a child poverty target.

Many other Members also made excellent contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who has a great deal of experience in this area, made a compelling speech. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) alluded to the problems with funding for nursery education, which is certainly an issue in my constituency, and several Members mentioned the importance of early intervention and early-years education. My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) made a good speech about the impact of the changes made by the last Chancellor in the last Budget on people in the bottom third of the income distribution. The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) spoke about her personal experience as a school teacher of poverty’s detrimental impact on children’s ability to learn. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) mentioned the school holiday programmes that provide food for children in poverty who would otherwise go hungry during the summer weeks.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central made clear, we face a child poverty crisis under this Government. Today, 29% of children in the UK live in poverty. That is not just about not going on holiday or not having treats; it is about not having enough to eat or get by, being cold in winter, not having shoes that fit and struggling to survive. The Resolution Foundation estimates that in 2016 alone 200,000 children, predominantly from working households, will have fallen into poverty. That is on top of the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ projection, which has been alluded to, that the falls in child poverty that a Labour Government achieved at the beginning of this century risk being reversed.

There was a comprehensive strategy to tackle child poverty across the last Labour Government, which is something that our party is proud of, with interventions such as Sure Start and increasing existing social security and new, child-targeted assistance and investment in early years intervention, along with programmes to help lone parents into work. That wide range of actions increased incomes and provided tailored services to help families living in poverty. The recent news that the child poverty unit, set up under the previous Labour Government in an effort to eliminate child poverty, has been abolished is very concerning indeed. That shows that child poverty is becoming far less of a priority for this Conservative Government. Surely we can only tackle child poverty effectively through a concerted strategy across Government.

The Child Poverty Act 2010, brought in by the Labour Government, set four key targets to be met by 2021. They ranged from reducing the proportion of children who live in low-income households to reducing the number of children who experience persistent poverty. However, counterproductively, the current Government decided to abolish the numerical targets based on household income in the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 and replace them with a life chances strategy, which has measures such as educational attainment and family breakdown. By removing income targets and focusing on life chances, the Government are failing to tackle the cause of child poverty: lack of money. Growing up in poverty affects children for the rest of their lives. It is in every sense a life sentence.

The life chances strategy was scheduled to be published as far back as June. Now, questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central reveal that the Government will not publish it at all but will instead publish a Green Paper on social justice in the new year. Does the Minister agree that measuring household income is an important means of assessing the prevalence of child poverty across the UK? Will she assure the House that in any new proposal she will retain recognised indicators of income-related poverty?

Thankfully, a defeat in the House of Lords forced the Government to retain a legally binding commitment to measure and publish the number of children living in families on low income. However, that does not mean that they are required to publish a child poverty strategy every three years. Now we learn that it is no longer Government policy to try to eliminate child poverty at all.

The Government have introduced major changes to the social security system that have hit families with children hard. Supporting families to achieve and maintain an income that enables them to meet their needs is a vital element in giving children a good start in life. The major change to the social security system will be the reduction in the amount that someone can earn before their universal credit starts to be withdrawn. Single parents will be hit particularly hard. For example, from next year a single parent with two children working full time on the national living wage will receive £2,586 less a year under universal credit than someone claiming tax credits. The Child Poverty Action Group estimated that a single parent working full time on the national living wage would effectively have to work an extra two months each year to make up for that loss in income. It is utterly impossible for them to do that.

The cuts to work allowances are significant because of their impact in increasing in-work poverty. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the proportion of people in poverty in a working family is 55%, which is a record high. Four fifths of the adults in those families are themselves working—some 3.8 million workers. Those adults who are not working are predominantly looking after their children. Is the Minister concerned that, as a result of her Government’s cuts to universal credit, the huge gains the Labour party made in lifting more than a million children out of poverty will be undone? The Government’s tinkering with the universal credit taper rate at the autumn statement will not address the losses incurred as a result of their previous changes to work allowances.

The Government have promised to make work pay, but that is not happening for the three quarters of children in poverty who are in working families. Will they now reverse cuts to in-work support through universal credit? There is overwhelming evidence that child poverty has a direct causal impact on worsening children’s social, emotional and cognitive outcomes. Anyone who has been a teacher—many in the House have been—will have direct experience of that. The very wiring of the brain is affected when children are brought up in poverty. A hungry child cannot learn.

A British Medical Association report published in September highlighted the impact of austerity on children’s health, from increased mortality rates to the likelihood that children growing up in poverty may face greater health problems in later life. A secure, warm home and healthy, nutritious food are basic physiological needs. When those needs are not met, people’s health suffers both physically and mentally. That is particularly the case for children as they are still developing. Being in work or well educated cannot guarantee those essential needs will be met, but having money can.

If the Government will not be moved by moral arguments, perhaps they will be by the economic arguments. The failure to tackle the root causes of child poverty will result in losing a whole generation of future talent and untapped potential. The implications for these children and their families, but also for the country, are stark, yet the Government have cut the staffing of the Social Mobility Commission to the point that it now has more members than staff.

The Prime Minister has abandoned her pledge, made on the steps of Downing Street, to support families who are struggling to get by. I urge the Government to rethink their position on child poverty and reinstate the targets before it is too late.