The government has claimed it has 'hit the ground running' when it comes to child poverty by setting up a task force that will begin meeting 'in the next few weeks' to consider the issue.
They have said:
The Prime Minister has today [Wednesday 17 July] appointed the Work & Pensions Secretary and the Education Secretary as the joint leads of a new ministerial taskforce to begin work on the Child Poverty Strategy.
A new Child Poverty Unit in the Cabinet Office - bringing together expert officials from across government as well as external experts - will report into the taskforce. The new unit will explore how we can use all the available levers we have across government to create an ambitious strategy.
Recognising the wide-ranging causes of child poverty, Secretaries of State from across government will take part in this work, with the first meeting set to take place in the coming weeks.
In the immediate term, the taskforce is expected to consider how we can use levers related to household income as well as employment, housing, children's health, childcare and education to improve children's experiences and chances at life.
Let me stand back for a moment and consider what poverty is. This is a definition from the Cambridge English Dictionary:
the condition of being extremely poor
Their definition of being poor is:
having little money and/or few possessions
I think this gives us enough on which to base a discussion.
First, most children living in poverty live in a household where adults are at work. Unless the parents of children are to be paid more for their work than others, there is no solution to child poverty there, unless minimum wages are to rise universally.
Second, children are in poverty now. Not in a few weeks, or a year or two when this task force reports, and certainly not in the five years hence when housing, children's health, childcare and education might (and I stress, might, subject to there being no money left) be reformed. This is a current crisis.
Third, the crisis is caused by the families in which these children live having insufficient money. That is the beginning and the end of the explanation of child poverty. They need that money now. To pretend otherwise is patronising, paternalistic, and dogmatic nonsense.
Providing more money means ending the two-child benefit cap as a starting point.
That would cost £1.7 billion. There are a number of ways to raise this in the Taxing Wealth Report 2024.
Having done that, the next step is to improve other benefits.
In that case, this task force faces a choice. It can prevaricate for a year or two and then issue a report which they know will not be acted upon. In other words, they can be the enablers of continued child poverty, which, as far as Labour is concerned, can only fuel the rise of Reform.
Or, they can report by October, saying end the two-child benefit cap and then move on to spend more having achieved that goal, because that is the only way to end child poverty.
Child poverty is caused by a lack of money. Only more money for those in poverty can solve it. There is no point in pretending otherwise.
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Thank you and well said, Richard.
Yesterday evening, I went out for dinner with an SW friend.
During the day, she was helping out at a charity to help women who have had to resort to such work and need help to move on / out. A few weeks ago, I cited some figures about the work and educational backgrounds of such women. Yesterday, I learnt that about a third or so are mothers, including my friend. The austerity of the past 14 plus years has driven many women to such desperate measures. It’s not ending.
But, we can’t afford to do anything about it – Rachel says so.
Scammer & Co clearly want to avoid accountability because they are closet fascist politicians (avoiding accountability to the many as opposed to doing the bidding of their rich sponsors is the hallmark of fascist politicians). What better way to avoid accountability in regard to tackling poverty than kicking the can down the road with yet another commission or task force? You really can’t trust Scammer & Co as far as you can throw them to use an old adage!
Why bother with a task force? Why not just learn from the Rowntree Foundation reports etc?
This would be cheaper and quicker.
Oh silly me, they don’t want a proper solution, so let’s kick it down the road.
You don’t need a task force to identify what people in poverty need.
They need opportunities. They need basic provisions. They need more money.
There use to be a time when a single wage-earner could provide for their family.
That this is not the case today, shows that the system is broken.
Ever since this policy was announced when in opposition it was clear (and said at the time by many) that it would be reversed.
We now have to go through this “dance” – do a review, express surprise/shock at its findings, eventually remove the cap…. but with some fig-leaf as cover from the cries of “U-turn”.
Utterly ridiculous; performative politics at its worst.
Now, there is room for a review… one that might link in with your post about “out of ours” minimum wage etc.. But if the patient is bleeding you staunch the flow….. not set up a committee to discuss underlying health issues.