Child Poverty posts
1 December 2006
An interview I did for children’s programme Newsround is broadcast today. Chris and Dillon are from Edinburgh and Tower Hamlets in London respectively, came up to my home in Glasgow to ask me questions about child poverty.
Sitting around my dining room table, they asked me several tough questions. For example, one question was about the hardest thing to do in tackling poverty. I said I think it is breaking the cycle of deprivation which sees generations of families caught up in the poverty trap. It’s an issue I feel very passionate about.
It was particularly interesting to hear about life from Chris and Dillon’s perspective as kids brought up in poor households. Their lives have been really hard so far. Making life better for these kids and ensuring no other people experience the hardships of poverty is what our reforms are all about. Chris and Dillon might not be convinced we can meet our targets to eradicate child poverty by 2020 but our meeting has only made me more determined to succeed.
You can view my interview with Chris and Dillon in full on the Newsround website click here.
Or catch the programme tonight at 4.45pm on BBC1 and then press the interactive RED button on your remote control for my interview.
Posted in General, Child Poverty. View and make comments (7).
29 November 2006
In the last week or so it’s been good to see poverty issues vying with Ashes fever for the media spotlight. In the past, we’ve been used to finding the “p” word way down the list of headline writers’ priorities.
But as the past week has proved, talk about poverty and you’ll have no difficulty finding an audience. So have we witnessed a sea-change in the media’s approach to this important subject? Will the press still be discussing poverty, a week, a month, a year from now? I certainly hope so.
Meanwhile, let’s keep the ball rolling by broadening the debate. Poverty clearly means different things to different people. To some it recalls those harrowing Michael Buerk reports of the 80s showing children starving in Ethiopia. For others, it conjures up Dickensian images of kids cleaning chimneys and begging for food in the poorhouse. Neither seems particular relevant to today’s Britain.
But does that mean we don’t have a problem? Not in my book. If you want to know my definition of poverty, read our Opportunity for All report which describes a child in poverty as someone who…”lives in a family with resources that are far lower than the average such that they cannot fully participate in society”. On paper this doesn’t seem a sentence designed to grab the public’s attention. Until you consider what actually happens to those children growing-up in such low-income households. They are more likely to bunk school, enter crime and die younger. And while we’ve managed to lift 700,000 children out of this situation we need to go further.
But I’ve had my say. Now it’s your turn. What does poverty mean to you? Does it exist in the UK? And how can we keep this debate going? I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
Posted in General, Child Poverty. View and make comments (5).
14 November 2006
Today Lord Hunt and I were in Hackney to discuss child poverty with a range of interested parties including charities such as Oxfam, Barnados, Shelter and the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG). It was an opportunity for these organisations to hear the findings from Lisa Harker’s report Delivering on Child Poverty: what would it take? first-hand.
After Lisa presented her report, she joined me, Lord Hunt, DWP’s Jonathan Portes, Fran Bennett from Oxford University and Kate Green of CPAG on a panel answering questions from participants. From my point of view it was an important chance to listen to what people had to say. After all, the only way we’re going to eradicate child poverty is by working together.
Tomorrow I’ll be off to Camberwell to do some more listening at an event which forms part of End Child Poverty Month. As I’ve discussed before, a high proportion of people struggling to find work are from ethnic minorities. I’m interested in finding out what sort of issues they face in the employment market. I’ll be talking to representatives from the Refugee Council – who work with asylum seekers and refugees, the British Black Anti-Poverty Network – a network of black and minority ethnic, refugee and migrant communities, and the campaign to End Child poverty – comprising more than 60 organisations.
In your opinion, what’s the one issue we need to tackle to eradicate child poverty? Let me know.
Posted in General, Child Poverty. View and make comments (4).
6 November 2006
Some people have a tendency to groan when they hear the Government’s commissioned another report into another issue. But these reports perform a vital function. Government doesn’t have all the answers and listening to experts who come at an issue from a different perspective benefits us alI.
A prime example of how a report can provide that all-important injection of fresh ideas is our approach to child poverty.
Back in June we appointed Lisa Harker as an independent adviser to DWP. I chose Lisa because her experience working on issues related to poverty, family and social exclusion is second-to-none. Her task was to look at how we could improve our approach to tackling child poverty.
Lisa’s report was published last Wednesday (1 November). It contains many positives such as our success in ensuring there are now 700,000 fewer children living in poor households compared to 1998 and reducing child poverty to a 15-year low. But it also shows we need to do more to develop services that support all types of family in order to eradicate child poverty by 2020. For example, since this blog started I’ve received comments from some parents who want us to do more.
Lisa’s report focuses on:
• Family
• Skills
• Second earners
We now need to look at all of Lisa’s 31 rcommendations. You can read Lisa’s report Delivering on Child Poverty: What would it take? here. I’d like to hear what you think of it.
Posted in General, Child Poverty. View and make comments (0).
30 October 2006
Today I was up in Scotland to give a speech to an Edinburgh conference discussing the Welfare Reform Bill. It was organised by the Holyrood Magazine in association with the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG). Obviously, Ministers give speeches all the time but do they serve any purpose besides helping me escape the Westminster village for a day?
From my perspective, the answer is an emphatic “yes”. The fact is that different areas across the UK face very different problems. And it’s only by getting out to different parts of the country that you begin to get a real appreciation of what those challenges actually are.
Take Scotland, for example. Research published at the beginning of this year showed that Scotland had 20 of the top 100 constituencies with the largest numbers of incapacity benefit claimants. A worrying statistic when you consider that as many as half of the most severe pockets of deprivation in the UK are to be found within those same 100 towns and cities.
Today’s trip gave me the chance to talk to experts like Morag Gillespie, of the Scottish Poverty Information Unit, Chris Oswald, Head of Policy and Communication within the Disability Rights Commission and John Dickie, Head of CPAG in Scotland face-to-face about the problems they face in their own backyard. And it was a vital opportunity to reassure them that our Bill is designed to help.
Edinburgh, for example, along with Glasgow and Dundee has been awarded cities strategy status. That means the private and voluntary sectors in the city will now work with the Government to devise ways of reaching out its hardest-to-help neighbourhoods. It’s just one way we are making sure our reforms meet the needs of local communities as well as the population as a whole.
The Department has also announced today that we introducing a series of 0800 numbers for people claiming working age benefits. The obvious advantage is that people will be able to contact the Department for free, but alongside this, there will be other changes to how people interact with Jobcentre Plus that will help people get the help they want more easily and quickly. You can read about these measures here.
Posted in General, Child Poverty, Incapacity benefits, Cities Strategy. View and make comments (1).
17 October 2006
In the mid to late 1990s, the UK suffered higher child poverty than nearly all industrialised nations. Over a period of 20 years, the proportion of children in relative low-income households had more than doubled and by 1997, one in five families had no one in work and one in every three children born in Britain was poor.
A huge amount of work across the whole of Government has gone into reducing child poverty.Since 1997 levels of poverty in the UK have fallen faster than any other major European country. So we’ve made real progress in tackling child poverty in this country.
Our Opportunity for All report today sets out what’s been achieved so far.
Here’s a few of the key headlines:
- The number of children living in households with unemployed adults has dropped from 18.4 percent in 1997 to 15.3 percent in 2006
- Latest figures show the number of children in relative low income households fell by 700,000 between 1998 and 2005
- In the last nine years, 1.26 million new childcare places have been created. There is now a place for 1 in 4 under 8s. Over 1,000 Sure Start Children’s Centres provide services to over 800,000 children and their families
And it’s encouraging that poverty is currently at the top of the international agenda with today being the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/poverty/poverty_link3.htm.
But we have to do more. There is a chain of disadvantage that runs through generations of the same families. Each successive generation is a link in that chain. We have to go further to break these generational links.That’s why we’re looking again at how we can improve the situation.
I’d like to hear what you have to say about tackling child poverty. What do you think about the Government’s approach to poverty? What more could we do?
Read the Opportunity for All report.
Read the press release.
Posted in General, Child Poverty. View and make comments (14).
16 October 2006
In the week when people are trying to create the biggest blog in history I guess it’s kind of fitting that I’m launching this new blog. After all, reforming the welfare state is one of the biggest challenges not only facing us as a Government or a Department, but as a country.
We are all sadly familiar with stories of people and, in some cases, communities abandoned to a life on benefits. These individuals wanted to work, wanted to contribute but were left high and dry instead – dependent on the state.
It’s frightening to think that, after two years on Incapacity Benefits (IB) you’re more likely to die or retire than ever work again. This has to change. The majority of people who go on Incapacity Benefit want to go back to work. The welfare state should make the most of an individual’s potential – not waste it.
We want to look at what work is reasonable to expect someone to do and ensure those individuals have the help to succeed.
That is what our Welfare Reform Bill is all about.
This week I was again reminded why this Bill is so essential. I met IB claimants in Fife, in Essex and from Reading. Many have been let down by society in the past because they didn’t get enough support to help them achieve their goal of getting back to work. This was especially true of many people I met with mental health conditions.
Of course, to get our reforms off the ground we need to introduce legislation. The Parliamentary committee stage which begins tomorrow is a vital part of that process and will give MPs the chance to quiz us on our plans.
But our reforms are not just about changing the benefits system. We also want to eradicate child poverty. It might have been one of last century’s shameful secrets, but child poverty is still around today. I’ve listened to many children and parents who have all suffered poverty first-hand. Their concerns mustn’t be ignored.
John Hutton, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, declared earlier this year this is the Department’s number one priority. And so it should be.
We will be publishing a new revised strategy on child poverty that, hand in hand with the welfare reform paper, will help to address these important issues.
When it comes to welfare reform proposals and tackling child poverty everyone has an interest. Now I want to hear your thoughts and ideas on these topics.
Posted in General, Child Poverty, Incapacity benefits, Health, work and well-being. View and make comments (23).
