Save them from poverty trap

A FEW years ago a collection of poems written by children living in poor housing was published.

This poem was written by a Durham boy. It is called “I can’t live there”.

Damp with rats carrying germs
I wish I wasn’t there
Leaking roofs, unstable floors, I hate
To be there
Teenagers telling me things I shouldn’t know
I wish I was somewhere else, somewhere
Where I can live
Please help me, Mr Government
I beg you, I plea.

If anyone was in any doubt about the urgency of work to end child poverty, reading this collection of poems would convince them.

I am proud of the work Labour did in government to cut the number of children in poverty by 700,000 and I am worried that we are going back to the Thatcher era when child poverty doubled.

Today, the North-East has the highest levels of child poverty of any UK region.

Figures from the End Child Poverty campaign show that the North-East has a child poverty rate of 22 per cent. This compares with a child poverty rate of 12 per cent in the far more affluent South-East. The statistics for my constituency are particularly startling, with 25 per cent of children living in poverty. This is in stark contrast to the figures for the more prosperous Richmond-on-Thames which has a child poverty rate of only nine per cent. The figures clearly reveal a North- South divide on this issue.

As if these statistics weren’t bad enough, the Coalition’s changes to the child benefit system are likely to make a bad situation worse.

The Government’s decision to freeze child benefit, despite the rate of inflation and the rising costs of living, will have huge implications for nearly 11,000 families in my constituency.

The Child Poverty Action Group estimates that a family with one child will be £130 a year worse off and that a family of three children will be £285 worse off by 2014 because of the Government’s decision.

The report also highlights the main things people spend their child benefit on, with 51 per cent using the money to buy shoes and clothes, 26 per cent on food and 16 per cent education.

It cannot be right to deprive parents of vital money they need to feed and clothe their children.

Contrary to the Government’s claim that its reforms will release children and families from the poverty trap, it will actually plunge thousands more children into poverty. The tax credit and benefit cuts will come at a high social cost.

One reason for cutting tax credits and benefits, which the Government has given, is to increase the incentive to work. In other words, to increase the gap between incomes in and out of work. Obviously there are two ways to do this – raising in-work income or cutting out-of-work income.

Labour introduced the minimum wage against Tory opposition and now we support the campaign for a living wage, but the route the Coalition Government has chosen is cutting benefits. Quite honestly, when people come to my surgery and say, could you live on £55 per week, I have to agree that I could not.

But anyway this path is foolish and won’t get more people into jobs, as now, in our region, nine people are chasing every job vacancy.

What we really need is a plan for jobs and growth. And we need to help families overcome the barriers they have, such as lack of affordable child care. Instead we see cuts to Sure Start.

Another problem is low incomes for people in work and this is especially true when people are doing part-time jobs instead of full-time ones. This is why the cut to the tax credits if a couple are not doing 24 hours is so mis-timed.

People would love to work more if the hours were on offer. And I have had letters and emails from those people asking how they are supposed to cope with the £3,000 cut.

The Government’s own figures show the full extent of what the changes will mean. Thousands of children and families in the area will be detrimentally affected by cuts to tax credits.

The Coalition’s swingeing cuts to tax credits will affect 285 households in my constituency, affecting 620 children.

The changes to the working tax credit system will mean that parents working full time may lose up to £3,870 a year. These figures are truly shocking and are indicative of the Government’s callous treatment of hardworking families.

In this sense, the Government’s cuts are both thoughtless and heartless.

THE consequences of these reckless policies will compare very unfavourably to the last Labour government, which presided over the largest sustained reduction in child poverty since comparable records began in 1961.

The Coalition’s policies are socially irresponsible and will almost certainly worsen the already higher-than-average rate of child poverty in the region.

The last Labour Government has a proud legacy on child poverty, which must not be undone by the Government’s reckless policies.

If the Government is serious about eradicating child poverty it must offer additional support to low income families and targeted measures to tackle the issue of in-work poverty.