This government does not care about child poverty

A TUC poll published last month revealed that 1 in 7 households are skipping meals to make ends meet and each day we hear harrowing new stories about escalating poverty in Britain.

Foodbanks running out of food. Kids being sent to school with holes in their shoes. And councils having to set up ‘warm spaces’ to keep people from freezing this winter.

Our social security system is failing us, just as it did before this crisis.

The savage cuts made to welfare since 2010 by the coalition and subsequent Conservative governments have shredded our safety net. 

Benefit freezes and caps, and punitive policies like the two-child limit have caused widespread misery.

Families urgently need long-term financial security. But there has been no extra financial support for children.

New analysis published today – by the TUC, IPPR and Child Poverty Action Group – shows the huge difference targeted help could make.

• Increasing child benefit by £20 a week (per child) would reduce child poverty by 500,000 by 2023/24 and lift 700,000 people out of relative poverty across the UK.
• Removing the 2-child limit and the benefit cap would lift 300,000 children out of poverty by 2023/24, and 400,000 people overall.

Taken together these policies would lift 1.2 million out of poverty and provide a substantial boost to the incomes of the poorest families.

And this extra support would also help middle-income families who also face a substantial squeeze on their finances. 

Huge cuts to child benefit

Child benefit is widely acknowledged as an efficient and effective state benefit that reaches mothers and children directly.

But freezes to child benefit - coupled with changes in how benefits have been uprated since 2010 - has resulted in a cumulative loss of around £4,500 to a family with 2 children. 

That is huge.

And to put that in context of the current crisis a family with 2 children will receive over £600 less in child benefit this year than they would have if the post-2010 cuts had not been implemented.   

So how did we get here? Here is a timeline of what has happened since the Conservative took office in 2010.

In 2010/11, Child Benefit was £20.30 per week for a family’s first child and £13.40 for subsequent children. And benefits were uprated in line with the Retail Price Index (RPI) measure of inflation – a better indicator of living costs.

But things started going downhill very quickly once George Osborne took over the Treasury:

• From April 2011 benefits uprating was switched from RPI to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation. This change in uprating from RPI to CPI has reduced the value of benefits overtime as CPI is usually lower than RPI.
• For three years (2011/12, 2012/13 and 2013/14) child benefit was singled out and frozen.
• And for two years (2014/15 and 2015/16) social security benefit increases were capped at 1 per cent, regardless of inflation.
• From 2016 for four years the government announced that social security benefits would be frozen for another four years.

Locking families into poverty

The reduction in financial support for children has pulled more families, and children, deeper into poverty.  

Data from February 2022 shows, 86 per cent of households (100,000) that had their benefits capped included children – and two-thirds (67%) were single-parent households.

And as a result of the 2-child limit (in receiving the child element of Universal Credit or child tax credit,) around 1.3 million children are living in a household that is not receiving this crucial support. 

The government’s assault on social security has reversed years of progress.

Prior to 2010 child poverty rates were falling. But today around 4 million children are growing up below the breadline in the UK – and around three-quarters are from working households.

This is a scandal and a source of national shame.

Child poverty is a political choice. Instead of holding down – and rationing access to - vital benefits, the government should be investing in our children’s future.

A strong safety net – together with decent well-paid jobs – is the mark of a civilised nation. It’s the very least working people in this country deserve.

This week’s fiscal statement is an opportunity for Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt to show they are on the side of hard-pressed families. I’m not holding my breath.