The Child Poverty Act, which commits future governments to meeting Labour’s goal of eradicating child poverty by 2020, received Royal Assent yesterday. But why might we want an Act of this kind?The obvious answer is that ending child poverty is the right thing to do and making it law will ensure the goal is met. But the greatest progress on child poverty was made in the first part of the 2000s, before Labour had even thought about enacting a child poverty law. Tony Blair’s pledge to end child poverty was made in 1999, yet the idea of enshrining it in law wasn’t aired until Gordon Brown’s 2008 conference speech. So why do we need a law now?
Child poverty rates began to creep up after 2004, which reflected a slackening off in investment in anti-poverty measures. So perhaps Labour felt that it needed a law to make itself put its investment back on track. Let’s hope not – it would be a slightly odd way of going about things. And it hasn’t worked, as the meagre child poverty measures in Wednesday’s Budget showed.
A more plausible explanation is that this is a political move, because it forces the Conservatives to stick to Labour’s poverty goals. The Tories have come round to the idea of relative poverty but often argue that poverty is about much more than income. Should they form the next government, they may prefer not to have their hands tied by an Act that so explicitly prioritises income-based measures of poverty.
The other view is that the government wanted to look like it was doing something on child poverty at a time when the figures were, and still are, going in the wrong direction yet it was difficult, and still is, to find the cash to put things back on track. Drafting a bill and steering it through Parliament is a lot cheaper than putting an extra £4 billion into tax credits, which is what the Institute for Fiscal Studies said it would cost to half child poverty by this year.
It’s important not to get too cynical and forget the very impressive work that this government has done in tackling poverty, particularly among children and pensioners. But if you set yourself challenging and important targets, you have to do everything in your power to meet them. Now that we’ve got a Child Poverty Act, we should use it at every opportunity to hold the government, now and in the future, to account – but ending child poverty takes real action not just legislation.
Kayte Lawton, research fellow, ippr
To eliminate child poverty means to ensure that their parents have a reasonable income and it is the problem of their unemployment is which needs attention.
ReplyDeleteThe unemployment is due to the comparatively low demand for goods, which in turn is due to their high prices and overbearing production costs. These costs are the returns for use of the 3 factors of production, namely ground-rent, wages and dividends (for the use of Adam Smith's logically claimed land labour and capital goods). Only the first return is where a significant reduction in cost is possible.
The cost of using land is due to the competition for its availability. This is at a high cost due to the land speculators holding land out of use and causing its price to soar upwards. If this were stopped and land were cheap enough to allow more demand for goods, then the lack of employment would cease. Thus land speculation is the cause of unemployment, poverty and child starvation.
The amount of money lost by unemployment is about ten times what would be lost by the mortgage banks, if all of the speculation in land values were eliminated. Thus it is this evil which is the REAL cause of the poverty. It is land monopoly and speculation in its value which is the strangle-hold of full employment and the resulting natural prosperity.
From a macro-viewpoint for the whole country, the loss by bankrupcy of the investors in land would be more than compensated for by the gain in full employment (a simple calculation shows this) and the resulting greater prosperity. Thus by transferring taxation off incomes and onto land-values there would be an overall gain to the country as a whole. This change could be introduced slowly so as to give the banks a change to move their investments into shares in industrial capital goods and so meet the new re-employment need.
TAX LAND NOT PEOPLE. TAX TAKINGS NOT MAKINGS!