Saturday’s Labour in Government: one year on Conference, organised by Claim the Future, drew a packed attendance. Below we reproduce a presentation by Professor Kate Pickett.

We’ve heard a lot of numbers already today, but let’s focus on just a few more.

One in five people in the UK are poor. Nine out of 30 children in every classroom are poor. 31% of our children are living in poverty, 21% of working age adults, 16% of pensioners. That’s 14.3 million people and it’s 4.3 million children.  3.8 million people are destitute, 6 million living in very deep poverty.  And who are the most likely to be living in poverty?  Families, especially large families and lone parent families, people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities and those caring for others.

These are outrageous and shocking numbers in the sixth largest economy in the world. They make us stand out from our peer countries, other rich developed countries which do not have the same levels of deep poverty, of child poverty, of pensioner poverty, of working age poverty, of destitution.  Other countries make political and policy choices to keep people out of poverty, and we need to do the same.  We head from Lord Sikka about how we too can create a treasure chest to spend on supporting and unlocking services for people.

Under the last Labour government, a million children were lifted out of poverty because New Labour decided it wanted to achieve that and it was laser-focused on decisive and targeted action. It wasn’t just one policy that achieved that; New Labour did lots of things that lifted people out of poverty.  It introduced tax credits, expanded social security, invested in early childhood programs and made work pay through the introduction of the minimum wage – but all that progress was completely reversed by austerity, Conservative welfare reforms, insecure employment, and the cost-of-living crisis – creating a perfect storm of suffering.  

That’s enough statistics – stories are important as well and my colleagues at the University of York have a research program called Changing Realities where they work with families on low incomes to help understand what it is those families would like to see researched and what policies they would like to be advocating.  They participate fully in the research, including writing reports and papers, and can also get training to become engaged in advocacy with the media and policy makers.  I want to read a few words from one of them, Aleksandra, who told the project:

Behind child poverty statistics, there are the faces of children who live in mouldy, overcrowded houses and suffer from malnutrition. Parents who are trying desperately hard to make sure their children have what they need, but who are faced with the reality of an inadequate social security system and wages that do not cover their basic living costs. I know this because it is my reality as well. I’m a parent to four children. Two of whom have additional needs, and one was born in 2018. This means my youngest son was affected by the two-child limit. I do my best to protect each of them from the hardship we face. But that isn’t easy. And it takes its toll – on me, and sadly, on them too. But it doesn’t have to be like this. The Child Poverty Strategy is a chance for the Government to begin the work of righting the wrong of years of inaction, a chance to make sure that every child has the opportunity to grow and to thrive. And – perhaps most important of all – to enjoy their childhood.

We must also remember that this isn’t an even picture across the United Kingdom. Parts of our country have even deeper levels of poverty. Child poverty rates exceed 40% in parts of the Northeast and Yorkshire.  And in some parts of urban areas like Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, more than 50% of children are living in poverty. And even in a relatively affluent city like York, we’ve got those deep pockets of poverty too. Every city in the United Kingdom has got those pockets of persistent poverty.  These inequalities, of course, reflect longstanding structural issues: unequal economic opportunities and public investment.

In Scotland, child poverty rates are lower than in England and Wales. The Scottish Government has made political and policy choices to raise children out of poverty, including the Scottish Child Payment, and they have been seeing their child poverty rates coming down while we in England and Wales have been seeing our rates going up.  They have been going up fastest of all the 40 countries in the OECD.   

The impact of poverty is short-term distress and suffering, including hunger and homelessness.  In the short term, poverty undermines health and emotional wellbeing.  Child poverty affects development, education, mental health and school dropout.  Long-term, poverty affects employment prospects, and lifetime earnings, with increased risk of chronic illnesses.  All of this entrenches intergenerational poverty and social exclusion.  Economically, poverty reduces productivity, increases healthcare and social service demands, and perpetuates inequality, locking future generations into cycles of disadvantage that are completely avoidable.

When it comes to solutions, I have never seen greater unity across whole disciplines of academic researchers and campaigners and advocates than I have seen around the need to remove the two-child limit. The government must remove the two-child limit.  It would, at the stroke of a pen, lift 350,000 children out of poverty. We need to lift the benefit cap as well, we need to do things about housing, we need to tackle universal credits, we need to keep focused on disability payments and thinking about the provision of other health and social services. 

But we must, first and foremost, remove the two-child limit.   And then in the medium- to long-term, we need to be thinking about how we create the fairer society, the more equal society, that benefits the health and well-being, not just of the poor, but of all of us, including the well-educated, those in higher social classes and the affluent. We need to bring everybody together to realise that if we address inequality and remove poverty, we all benefit.

We’ve heard a lot of ideas from other speakers today. We’ve heard a lot about wealth taxes and we’ve had a UK wealth tax commission that has a raft of proposals that could more than pay for the kinds of things that Labour should be doing to tackle poverty and inequality.  We need those wealth taxes; I think we need annual wealth taxes and windfall taxes as well.  Remember that if people have accumulated wealth and it is not being taxed or it is not spent here and it’s hidden away, it is of absolutely no benefit to our nation.  And yet we all helped produce that wealth.

We also need to be giving local and devolved governments more secure, predictable and sufficient settlements to do the work that they need to do. They need the resources and the powers to tailor solutions that work for their communities. We need to replace the outdated and regressive council tax with a proportional property tax to support that. We need more initiatives like the £7 million Work Well pilot in Greater Manchester, offering tailored support for people struggling to stay in work due to health issues or disabilities, as well as those who’ve recently left work due to poor health, helping them return to employment. This is the kind of local investment that multiplies returns now and into the future.

I think we should be thinking about a Future Generations Act for the UK, mirroring what Wales has done, requiring policy makers to assess the long-term impact of decisions embedding sustainability and equality into every policy.

Finally, and perhaps we can discuss this today, I think it’s time for a big public conversation, perhaps a National Citizens’ Assembly on Basic Income: a universal, predictable income that could provide everyone with a stable foundation, reducing financial stress and opening up opportunities.  This would improve the health and wellbeing of the whole population.  I’m part of a research group that has been looking at the health benefits of basic income and what that could do for the UK.  We could also reduce short-term and long-term health and other service costs. We could boost productivity so the economy would benefit as well.

And our group, the Common Sense Policy Group, finds overwhelming support for basic income, including in the Red Wall.  A survey conducted by More in Common on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showed very high levels of concern about hardship (84%), with 92% of people questioned saying tackling the cost of living and reducing levels of hardship should be important for the Government.  Sadly, only 32% thought that Labour are committed to tackling these issues.  

That is the turnaround that we need to.  Ending poverty is both a moral imperative – affirming everyone’s right to a healthy, fulfilling life – and an economic necessity. Let’s tackle end poverty and tackle inequality,  creating a fairer, more resilient, and prosperous future for all.

Find out more:

Getting the child poverty strategy we need: a co-produced agenda for change: https://changingrealities.org/ writings/getting-the-child-poverty-strategy-we-need

Changing Realities: https://changingrealities.org/

University of York Cost of Living Group: https://www.york.ac.uk/policy-engine/cost-of-living/

Born in Bradford Centre for Social Change at the University of York: https://www.york.ac.uk/policy-engine/research-areas/bibcentre-social-change-york/

Child of the North: https://www.healthequitynorth.co.uk/child-of-the-north/

Common Sense Policy Group: https://commonsense.northumbria.ac.uk/

Kate E Pickett OBE FRSA FFPH FAcSS is Professor of Epidemiology & Director of the Born in Bradford Centre for Social Change, University of York and Academic Director of Health Equity North. Personal website: wilkinsonpickett.com

Image: Kate Pickett. Author: ProfKEPickett, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.