Herald Express: Tackling childhood poverty

It was incredibly disappointing to read last week that Labour’s flagship child poverty strategy has been delayed until at least the autumn. 

The decision to delay the strategy comes amid Cabinet wranglings over the cost implications and political benefits of ending the two-child benefit cap, with the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, confirming this week that the Government was actively considering this. 

The benefits of scrapping this cap are huge. Ending it would pull 250,000 children out of poverty and a further 850,000 out of deep poverty. Without its abolition, the Child Poverty Action Group estimates that the number of children affected by this policy would top 3 million by the mid-2030s. 

The Liberal Democrats went into the last election promising to scrap this cap, and this is something we are still calling for. But we are also aware that ending this policy won’t eradicate child poverty on its own in this country. 

Child poverty is significantly higher than poverty rates for both working-age and pension-age adults in the UK. Despite living in one of the richest countries in the world, around 4.5 million children – 1 in 3 – live in poverty, with children in single parent households facing an even higher risk. 

Unfortunately, the crisis is simply too large to fix with a single policy change. What we need is a comprehensive plan to break the cycle of poverty which is endemic in some communities. 

This was re-emphasised to me by Dr Katriona O’Sullivan, who appeared before the Education Select Committee last week. 

Dr O’Sullivan is an inspiration. Born to heroin addict parents in a deprived part of Coventry, Dr O’Sullivan left school at 15 and went on to attain a PhD, become an activist, and wrote a best-selling book about her childhood, Poor. 

She highlighted to us the cyclical nature of poverty: “My mam was poor; her mam was poor; her mam was poor before her. Poverty reproduces itself like privilege does.” 

She also noted the negative consequences of the narrow approach to tackling poverty by successive governments. So often the approach is rooted in finances, but poverty is about so much more than money. There’s a poverty of aspiration, ambition, and ideas that keep people down and mean the cycle is never broken.  

Or as Dr O’Sullivan put it: “Poverty is a trauma within itself. When you live in long-term stress, it affects your capabilities mentally. It changes your biology.” 

I couldn’t agree more. Poverty impacts every facet of someone’s life, and that’s why I’ve been so concerned with the Government’s recent decisions on welfare spending. While no one doubts that we need to bring the welfare bill down and guide more people into work, you don’t achieve that by slashing support. 

If the Government is serious about cutting welfare spending, it should get on with the job of fixing health and social care and the broken Department of Work & Pensions. Until this changes, no meaningful drop in the welfare bill will happen, and the misery that people in poverty, and their children, feel will continue. 

There are also specific steps tied to child poverty that the Government can take. Along with scrapping the two-child benefit cap, the Government should improve access to affordable childcare and extend free school meals to every child living in poverty, something the Liberal Democrats have repeatedly called for. 

The levels of child poverty in the UK are inexcusable. For these individuals, every single life chance will be held back, and for the country, the economic costs of this are huge. The situation is dire, but the truth is, the Government can change the trajectory for these children. Let’s hope they do.