On Monday, on the front page of this newspaper, we read that the recent revisions to the Government’s planned cuts to personal independence payment (PIP) will lift 50,000 children out of poverty.
Now, Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, has warned that too many children in our country (still the sixth richest in the world) are living in “almost Dickensian levels of poverty”.
By April 2024, 4.5 million of our youngest citizens were experiencing deprivation that would sicken the founders of the welfare state.
You won’t see them on TikTok, so let me use words to take you through these sad lands.
I went there and saw some shocking stuff. I’ve cried. Come into Jo’s one-bedroom flat in a tower block. She’s raising her three kids there, one just 11 months old. He was conceived when Jo (not her real name) was raped by her husband. Her husband is in prison for other crimes. She left her home town to protect herself and the kids.
We first met when she tried to steal nappies in a supermarket. I told the security staff she was with me and paid for them. Now I take nappies and sanitary towels for her eldest daughter when I visit. Jo is always grateful, but I see anger and humiliation in her blue eyes.
For her, the two-child benefit cap has been the cruellest policy. The kids never have birthday celebrations, treats or breaks. Their clothes and faces are worn. They look listless. They can only shower once a week, and even then, the water trickles, sometimes warm, often cold. The windows don’t open, so there is no ventilation. You see mouldy patches.
The older kids share the double bed. Jo and her youngest sleep on an old mattress. A few broken toys are on the floor. They eat tinned food most days because cooking costs too much. Jo worked in the local supermarket until her third child was born. Her mother took care of the older ones, but is now too far away to help.
Jo does not receive child benefit for the youngest boy, who has eczema. His little arms are sore, making him irate.
She is dreading the summer holidays. In school, teachers were handing them food vouchers, washing their clothes and giving them books. The Commissioner states categorically that such kids need “a safe home that isn’t mouldy or full or rats, with a bed big enough to stretch out in, ‘luxury’ food like bacon, a place to do homework, heating, privacy in the bathroom and being able to wash, having their friends over, and not having to travel hours to school”.
The most deprived kids are fatalistic and have “worryingly low expectations for what they should be entitled to”. Who voted for such a planned degradation of the younger generations? What future awaits a nation which does that?Never forget that Conservative ministers, with lavish lifestyles and publicly funded expenses, restricted child tax credits and benefits to two kids per family.
The Child Poverty Action Group estimates 109 children are pulled into poverty every day by the limit: the Commissioner wants the limit scrapped. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that reversing the policy would lift 500,000 children out of relative poverty. That’s 450,000 more than the number saved by the PIP U-turn.Poverty is always the result of political choices. Starmer is spending billions on US jets, which will carry nuclear bombs, yet wants to cut disability benefits. If the latter policy had gone through, the savings would have been minimal.
The Prime Minister wanted to show his party was now tough on welfare, keeping the two-child cap is part of that. MPs who rebelled against these planned cuts believe in the original party’s mission.
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Sure Start was brought in by Tony Blair in 1999. It, too, was driven by political passion. He believed everyone deserved a good childhood and decent education.
The transformative programme set up hubs in deprived areas, providing breakfast clubs, nurseries in deprived neighbourhoods, parenting training, essential help and advice to disadvantaged families.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies concludes that Sure Start greatly improved educational attainment and motivation and reduced depression and anxiety. Senior Tories loathed the initiative and did all they could to wreck it.
The Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is bringing back Sure Start, renamed Best Start, which will fund family hubs offering parenting support and youth services. This, too, is a political decision, but a damned good one.
Up to 1,000 centres, properly funded – they say – will be rolled out across the country. The right will shriek about the cost. Let them. It’s a proven pathway to save left-behind children.
In the next decade, child poverty could become a nightmare that passed. Because politicians cared about children. That’s the hope.
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