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Child poverty - always with us? by Martin McIvor May 2002 For many the definitive moral verdict on the Thatcherite experiment was symbolised by the staggering inequalities that opened up in British society over the 1980s. Wealth did not "trickle down". In 1979 one in ten British children lived in poverty; by the 1990s it was one in three, the worst child poverty rate in Europe. In 1999 Tony Blair announced New Labour's aim to abolish child poverty in a generation. Many were surprised by this bold declaration, by common consent the most socially radical to have passed his lips. But the pledge was repeated, by Gordon Brown in particular, and Labour fought last year's general election claiming to be on course to meeting it, having already "lifted 1.2 million children out of poverty" during its first term. Everyone knew that this figure could only be a model-based projection as it takes 12 months for authoritative figures to be produced. Last month, however, official statistics revealed that in fact the number of children living below the poverty line (ie in households receiving less than 60 per cent of the median income) last year still stood at 3.9 million - a reduction of only 500,000 since 1997. The really bad news here is not the shortfall itself. Reversing the inegalitarian legacy of the 1980s was bound to be difficult - the Institute of Fiscal Studies have produced a valuable analysis of what the problems were (including, it must be said, poor "take-up", compared to universal benefits, of the means-tested tax credits for which Gordon Brown has such a predilection). But progress has undeniably been made. More dismaying, however, has been the government's response to this failure to meet its own target. First, ministers have tried to deny failing to live up to last year's election claim by retrospectively "clarifying" it. There were, they say, 1.2 million fewer children in poverty than would have been the case if benefits and tax credits had only increased with inflation since 1997. This is an arbitrary and counter-intuitive way of interpreting the original form of words. It is also precisely the kind of statistical spin and trickery that - as was seen with the notorious "triple-counting" of health spending increases in the first Comprehensive Spending Review in 1998 - serves only to nurture cynicism and demoralisation about the very possibility of ever achieving genuinely transformative policy goals. And so, secondly, the goalposts seem now to be loosening. Already in the subsequent media commentary you could hear people wondering out loud whether the attempt to defeat "relative" poverty thus defined might not be an impossible task. For since earnings are, in general, on the rise, are we not chasing a moving target? Right on cue the government has issued a consultation document considering new measures of poverty that define it in more "absolute" terms, so we need only make sure that everyone has "necessities" like a "waterproof coat" and "two meals a day". Of course, purely statistical definitions of "the poverty line" are abstract and somewhat arbitrary. Substantive issues of quality of life and access to basic goods and services must form part of our understanding of the issue. But, as Robert Spicker of Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen argues in Catalyst's response to the Budget, inserting a less relative definition at the heart of the government's child poverty policy would amount to a serious weakening of Blair's original pledge, requiring a far less extensive redistributive drive for its nominal fulfilment. These signs of retreat need to be highlighted and contested. There are very good reasons for defining poverty in a way that is tied to the living standards of the rest of society, as a government which worries over "social exclusion" knows full well. And there is no great mystery to vanquishing it. It plainly requires that we hike the social safety-net back up to a level above the relative poverty line, and guarantee that it henceforth rises in line with average earnings. The creation of a society in which no one receives an income lower than 60 per cent of the median is an inspiring and eminently realisable ambition. To give up on it is to give up on those millions of lives currently denied even this minimal right of social and economic participation. Published in Red
Pepper magazine, December 2001. |
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