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They can’t hide the scandal of poverty

It’s 20 years since Tony Blair spoke of the need to tackle ‘social exclusion’ but the latest research shows it is as bad as ever, says STEVEN WALKER

Remember the buzz phrase of the 1990s — social exclusion? It was part of the political narrative 20 years ago when politicians were talking about dealing with the causes rather than the symptoms of crime and anti-social behaviour. 

Fine words flowed from the mouth of Tony Blair at his earnest best, looking and sounding the part of a reforming Labour Party leader.

Social exclusion referred to those in society who were marginalised, separate and stuck in a poverty
trap unable to reach any of their aspirations. 

The Blairite approach tended to see the excluded as the problem, rather than linking poverty directly to  the structural inequalities in  our capitalist society. 

The latest report by the Poverty and Social Exclusion (PSE) in the UK project is one of the most authoritative and comprehensive pieces of research in recent years. 

It demonstrates how those fine words 20 years ago failed to do anything about tackling poverty. 

It is one of a series of reports conducted by a variety of academic institutions, government research bodies and charitable groups which work to provide evidence of the hardships endured by millions of British and Northern Irish citizens. 

Put together they form a powerful indictment of government policies and the underlying capitalist economic model that is based on the concept of creating unemployment and enriching a minority of individuals.

The PSE project is the largest research project of its kind ever carried out in Britain and Northern Ireland. The results provide the most detailed and comprehensive picture of poverty and exclusion in these isles in the 21st century. 

According to the study, 33 per cent of households endure below-par living standards — defined as going without three or more “basic necessities of life,” such as being able to adequately feed and clothe themselves and their children, and to heat and insure their homes. In the early 1980s, the comparable figure was 14 per cent.

The research shows that almost 18 million Britons live in inadequate housing conditions and that 12
million are too poor to take part in all the basic social activities, such as entertaining friends or attending all the family occasions they would wish to. 

It suggests that one in three people cannot afford to heat their homes properly, while four million adults and children are not able to eat healthily.

The evidence suggests that the gap between rich and poor is widening, there are more children living in poverty and disabled people are more likely to live in poverty or be unemployed than non-disabled people. 

Children from working-class families are less likely to receive a further or higher education and black families are more likely to live in poor housing.

Recent attention to the under-performance of working-class schoolchildren emphasises the pernicious impact of poverty. 

Gimmicks such as reintroducing free milk in primary schools and suggestions by Ofsted’s chief inspector that parents should be fined for not properly supporting their children’s education are a distraction from the real problem. 

Poor, hungry children cannot learn, especially when they live in households where parents are stressed, demoralised and feeling hopeless.

The result is that mental health problems affect three times as many children in social class V (manual and unskilled) compared with those in social class I (professional) according to the authoritative Social Trends government data. 

Further official evidence on social inequalities from the Office for National Statistics states that one in 10 children in the United Kingdom suffers from a poverty- related mental health problem. 

According to other research from Unicef Britain is fourth from the bottom of a league of relative poverty among the 19 richest nations and has children who are among the unhappiest in Europe. 

The Labour government target was to reduce child poverty by a quarter by 2004, to halve it by 2010 and to abolish it by 2021. 

That aim has been consistently revised and recently abandoned as unattainable on the basis of current government economic policies. 

Meanwhile the gap between rich and poor has widened to such alarming levels that social scientists argue that these are the conditions in which social order begins to break down, creating a dysfunctional society where levels of crime, violence and mental health problems increase. 

 

The Save the Children charity recently took existing Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) projections of a third more children in relative poverty by 2020 and factored in planned welfare cuts, a calculation which it says could add 325,000 children to the IFS figure. 

The current measure for calculating relative child poverty — defined as children living in households with incomes below 50 per cent of the national median — does not reveal anything about the depth of poverty. 

Welfare spending cuts will exacerbate child poverty levels. 

Child poverty is also caused by low pay, and two-thirds of poor children now live in working households.

In addition, fresh evidence emerged in a recent report showing that 3.5 million children are expected to be in absolute poverty in Britain by 2020 — almost five times as many as the target. 

The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission said the absolute child poverty goal was “simply unattainable” and that this was on course to be the first decade since records began in 1961 not to see a fall in absolute child poverty. 

This is important given the cumulative psychological effects of persistent social exclusion which leads to despair, suicide, violence and a lack of motivation. 

So the latest spin from government about poverty being unrelated to poor school performance is more akin to Orwellian newspeak in which truth is inverted, the reality ignored and the powerful punish those who are the victims of injustice. 

Ministers’ recent attempts to muzzle the Trussel Trust which reported last month that nearly one million people used its foodbanks, and government attacks on Oxfam’s austerity campaign, are further evidence that this government wants to airbrush the poor from the news. 

It will not succeed.

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