“the two-child limit, together with the benefit cap, have been the principal drivers of the increase in child poverty”
By Baroness Ruth Lister
Child poverty undermines the very foundations of a good society – Compass’ lode star. Children, especially minoritised children, are at disproportionate risk of poverty which blemishes their childhood and stunts their opportunities. Poverty violates children’s rights and also women’s rights because of the close link between children’s and women’s poverty. For all these reasons, we welcome the establishment of a child poverty task force due to publish an ‘ambitious’ cross-government strategy this Summer.
Our report, The Good Society Starts Small, applauds the work of the task force, especially its strong engagement with civil society organisations and academics and its commitment to listening to parents and children with experience of poverty. It is important that this commitment is written into the strategy itself so that those with lived experience of poverty are involved in its execution and monitoring. Important too, as many organisations have argued, is the inclusion in the strategy of legally binding targets. These need to include not just the kind of targets set by the last Labour government but also a target to reduce deep poverty, which has become a growing stain on our society. Targets enable stakeholders to hold the government to account and make back-sliding harder.
The task force is rightly taking a cross-departmental holistic approach, covering every level of government. Nevertheless, within such a strategy, boosting incomes, in particular through investment in social security, must be central and the report explains why. There is a widespread consensus among both charities and academics that the first step has to be abolition of the two-child limit, together with the benefit cap, which have been the principal drivers of the increase in child poverty under the Tories and have pushed families deeper into poverty. In response to rumours that the government is considering tweaking the two-child limit, the Resolution Foundation warns that ‘none of the options that are rumoured to be on the table is an acceptable long-term solution’. And we are looking to the task force for a long-term strategy not a short-term partial fix.
Beyond that, the report details a number of improvements needed to social security after a decade in which, according to the Child Poverty Action Group, £50bn a year has been taken out of the budget – a far cry from the ‘ballooning’ expenditure politicians and the media like to pray in aid of further cuts. And there should be no further cuts. Reform yes, but reform that aims to put the security back into social security. There are also needs to be improvements in support for asylum-seekers and migrants: this has to be a strategy for all children living in the UK.
Employment is of course also important. But it’s not the be all and end all that it is often made out to be. Moreover, welcome as rises in the minimum wage have been, it is a relatively blunt instrument when it comes to tackling child poverty because many of the beneficiaries are not in households measured as in poverty and many of those who are in poverty lose some of the gain in the reduction in any means-tested benefits they receive. That said, policies to reduce the employment barriers facing women in particular are essential. Child care and public transport are among the relevant policy areas.
Costs reductions are another element and the report highlights housing (including the need to de-freeze the local housing allowance) and education (including the extension of free school meals in particular).
Inevitably even the most successful child poverty strategy will not eradicate poverty and it will take time to take effect (though social security improvements do offer a fast acting lever). We therefore also need policies to mitigate the effects of child poverty. These include stronger preventative public services. These should adopt a human rights culture premised on respect for the human dignity of all service users. Poverty is experienced not just as a miserable, insecure economic condition but also as a shameful, corrosive social relation, which includes treatment by officials and professionals that can be experienced as dehumanising.
The task force can take heart from past and overseas experience that shows that poverty is policy responsive. The last Labour government cut child poverty by 600,000 children or six percentage points. But the task force faces fiscal and political stumbling blocks. The fear is that spending constraints will limit what it can recommend. Yet the cost of not acting effectively is also high, for instance in the knock-on effect on public services. And a child poverty tax on the wealthy could raise the money needed.
Another stumbling block is the failure hitherto to integrate the commitment to an ambitious child poverty strategy into the government missions, the overriding goal of economic growth and to see it as integral to the aim of enhancing economic security. What is now needed is political leadership from the very top. The case needs to be made by both Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves so as to build public support and reduce the chances of a future government undoing the strategy as happened last time round.
In the Political Quarterly recently Ben Jackson asks ‘Does Keir Starmer really want to be remembered as the Labour Prime Minister who presided over an increase in child poverty’. For those of us who saw the child poverty strategy as the most important aspect of the change promised in the Election and for people in poverty themselves, we cannot afford to let that happen.
- Ruth Lister is a Labour member of the House of Lords and author of ‘The Good Society Starts Small’, published by Compass, which you can read at the link below.
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