My critique of Save The Children's approach to the meaning of child poverty in the UK

1. THE TIMES: THE REALITY OF CHILD POVERTY IN THE UK
Good, I thought when I heard that Save the Children was to
campaign against child poverty in Britain. But I was troubled
when I looked at the charity’s website and saw its claims that
Britain’s poorest children are missing regular hot meals, and that
their parents go hungry to feed them or cannot afford warm coats
and new shoes.
Child poverty in the UK is very real, but it’s not the simple
poverty that Save the Children describes. Low income is certainly
at the heart of it, but it’s also about poverty of aspiration,
education and parenting. But I know why Save the Children is
talking about missed meals: it captures public attention. Many
times when I ran Barnardo’s — and during the five years in which
child poverty was our No 1 priority — I declined to sign up to
campaigns suggesting that British families do not get enough in
benefits to feed or clothe their children. I did so for two reasons:
because it’s not true, but also because such campaigns suggest that
if we met the very basic requirements of a hot meal and warm
clothing, people would think that poverty had been lifted.
This isn’t to say that there are not emergencies when families do
need urgent help with food or clothing. But they are generally
short-term and caused by an administrative glitch, a marital
separation, because money has been lost and sometimes, frankly,
because it has been squandered on drink or drugs. Such crises are
not symptomatic of the welfare state’s failure to provide families
with enough money for the basics of life.
Let’s look at the income of an imaginary family of two out-of-work
adults and two children, aged 10 and 15. They pay £525 a month in
rent and council tax for their home. After those costs are paid, they
receive a further £290 in benefits a week, which is little enough
when set against, for example, the cost of utility bills. And it leaves
them about £150 a week short of what the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation estimates is needed for a socially acceptable standard
of living. But that standard, quite properly for a family of four
living outside London, includes the cost of a car as well as things
such as a computer and internet access.

2. The picture does not get much better if the father has a full-time
job at the minimum wage. Even then, they would be about £60 a
week below the Rowntree reasonable income level.
Child poverty in the UK is relative, rather than absolute as in the
Third World. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t real and enduring.
Recently, when I was trying to persuade a conference of doctors
that benefits were inadequate for a reasonable standard of living, I
was told by a GP that she could easily maintain her family on £290
a week. And for one week, or even two or three, she probably
could.
But the nature of family poverty is that it is there every week and,
in my experience, it is frequently made worse by debt. This is
caused not by extravagance, but by taking out a loan, for instance,
to replace a refrigerator or buy the children Christmas presents. A
£150 loan from a company such as The Provident, paid back over
four months, would attract an APR interest rate of 1,068.5 per cent.
But it is simply not the case that the welfare state no longer
provides a safety net. And it is silly to claim as some do (such as
Nick Cohen in The Observer who drew an absurd parallel
between Britain and Africa: “Hunger is not relative. Hunger is the
same the world over.”) that this is all about lack of Tory
compassion. I have never voted for Iain Duncan Smith’s party, but
it is patently ridiculous to suggest that the Work and Pensions
Secretary does not care about alleviating poverty.
Spending on benefits may have hit a temporary wall and may fall
a little. But the magnitude of the growth during my lifetime is
staggering. Last year we spent about £196 billion on benefits and
pensions. In real terms, that is ten times what we spent in 1955 and
40 per cent greater in real terms than in 1999.
The real debate is about how we spend that budget. Means testing
benefits such as free travel and winter fuel allowances for the
elderly would allow a little more for families, particularly those
where the parents work. Living in poverty when out of work is
tough. Living in poverty when a parent works full-time is a
tragedy.