Progressing the Government pledge on child poverty

This edition of Poverty welcomes a new Chief Executive, Kate Green, to CPAG. Kate arrives at a critical time in the campaign to end child poverty, about a quarter of the way through the 20-year period set by Tony Blair. Kate joins CPAG from One Parent Families (OPF). Here Paul Dornan asks Kate how she sees the child poverty debate now, how further progress may be made and how CPAG can influence this change.

PD: Let’s start by discussing how your experience at One Parent Families influences your view of what needs to be done to reduce child poverty. What sort of work did you do on child poverty at OPF?

KG: Children in one-parent families are the group at greatest risk of growing up in poverty – although single-parent households make up only one in four families with children, nearly half of all poor children in Britain live in one-parent families, and more than half of the children in one-parent families are poor. So campaigning to tackle child poverty was a key part of the work at OPF. Often that meant OPF and CPAG were able to work together or complement each other’s work – for example, both ran campaigns for an increase in the child tax credit last autumn. OPF also did a lot of work on the welfare-to-work agenda, which was seen as an important element of the Government’s strategy to tackle lone parent poverty. The Government’s dedicated New Deal for Lone Parents had been very considerably influenced by work OPF had done through the 1980s and 1990s, with the previous Conservative administration as well as the incoming Labour government, so OPF has obviously continued to closely follow progress with NDLP. And child support reform remained a huge issue – when OPF was set up in 1918, one of its goals was ‘to make the absent parent pay’, so it’s disappointing to find ourselves in the 21st century still without an effective system of child support.

PD: You’ve mentioned the New Deal and of course the strategy on reducing child poverty has been very focused on increasing the role of paid work, such as the target to increase the employment rate of lone parents. How do you view the centrality of work within the strategy?

KG: This Government has been absolutely explicit about the significance it attaches to paid work as a route for families to escape poverty. And many lone parents want to work when it’s possible; many claimants with long-term health problems would also like to find paid work that would be feasible for them. So policies to help individuals who want to get back to work are welcome – and the recent announcements about Building on New Deal offer an opportunity to ensure a high-quality programme of support is available.

But for some individuals work isn’t going to be possible because, for example, they have health problems or caring responsibilities which can’t be combined with paid work. And some people are anxious that they’ll be pressured to take work when it isn’t right for them. It’s vital that CPAG continues to insist that policies are developed to ensure all families with children are lifted out of poverty, whether parents are in paid work or not. It’s also vital that parents aren’t pushed into dead-end jobs with low rates of pay and poor prospects – that won’t do anything to help tackle child poverty.

PD: One current and particularly pressing issue has been the target on, and measurement of, child poverty. In July it was announced that working towards the 2010 target to halve child poverty there would be one target based on relative low incomes (on a before housing cost basis), and one – when data was available – which defined poverty in terms of both relative low income and material deprivation. How do you interpret the new measures, and what do you think this means for the 2010 aim?

KG: It’s a bit of a curate’s egg! It was good that the Government indicated that it was committed to being halfway to eradicating child poverty completely by 2010/11 – we could have seen it aim just to move towards a position of being among the best in Europe, which would imply poverty rates of around 5 to 7 per cent. It was good that it confirmed that poverty will have to reduce by half on both the material deprivation and the relative low income measures – and there were some encouraging indications that it recognised the significance of housing costs. It’s also encouraging that the Government has indicated it will use a ‘moderate’ definition of deprivation. But until we get the first data on this in 2006, we don’t know how many children will in practice be counted as poor under the new measure compared with the previous after housing costs measure.

So we’ll have to watch this carefully to make sure that poor children don’t ‘disappear’ from the poverty figures. And of course, given that we’ll have gone through a couple of general elections by the time we get to the halfway point, it would be good to see all political parties committing to meeting the target to halve child poverty by 2010, and signing up to the same approach to poverty measurement so that future governments can’t move the goalposts to suit themselves.

PD: The child tax credit has been in operation for over a year, involving substantial spending, while child benefit has not been increased in real (above inflation) terms since 1999. What role do you see for child benefit in ending child poverty?

KG: Child benefit is very popular, well understood, with very high take-up and absolutely no stigma attached to receiving it. Compared with tax credits, there have been no problems with its delivery! So it’s hugely significant in delivering financial support to families with children. Yet it’s important that the Government gives a commitment to uprate it annually with earnings to maintain its real value.

PD: The concept of ‘progressive universalism’ seems to underlie the strategy on tax credits – most families with children gain something but most resources are focused on the poorest. Can policy be truly progressive and universal?

KG: It’s trying to get the best of all worlds, isn’t it? There are certainly some problems with the way in which tax credits are calculated and the way they interact with other benefits, and it means the system is quite complex. However, we have to acknowledge that it’s an effective way of tackling relative poverty. And the announced take-up rates appear to have been quite high – reaching something like 90 per cent of families – which may have helped to reduce the stigma of means-testing.

PD: The Spending Review announced provision of more ‘children centres’, beyond the pledge to create them in each of the poorest fifth of wards. How will they help tackle poverty?

KG: This is exciting – that we might at last see a universal childcare network in this country which every parent could take for granted. I’m a real supporter of children’s centres. But we need more of them, and more quickly. After all, many poor children don’t live in poor neighbourhoods. So the goal should be a children’s centre in every community. And I think it’s important to be imaginative about the functions they could fulfil, because I think they could help to tackle poverty on various levels – by benefiting children’s development, enabling parents to take up paid work, and helping to regenerate communities.

PD: A tension which is increasingly apparent is where the balance is best placed between additional spending on benefits such as tax credits, and services such as health, education or child-care. Where do you think the balance should lie?

KG: We need to spend money on both. Bringing up children costs money – parents need to have the means to buy clothes for growing children, meet new costs when children change schools, provide nourishing meals without having to go without themselves, keep their homes warm and dry – so of course it’s important that we maintain investment in tackling income poverty. Good quality services are vital too. I get worried about the rhetoric about ‘choice’ – what we want is quality; too often the poorest quality services are to be found in the poorest neighbourhoods. So investment in public services has to be focused on tackling that injustice. Parents want to know that their local services are as good as anywhere in the country.

PD: Finally, what do you see as the key priorities for the anti-poverty lobby and CPAG over the next three years?

KG: A lot has been achieved in recent years – politicians of all parties are engaging in the debate about child poverty, and there’s lots of public support that it should be abolished. So the priority for CPAG is to make sure we keep up the pressure to turn that goodwill into action. The Prime Minister’s pledge to end child poverty by 2020 was incredibly bold, and enables the poverty lobby to hold Government to account and demand the policies necessary to make the goal a reality. In the next three years, we really have to focus our efforts on ensuring that policies are selected and implemented that get us on track to meet the halfway point – the investment needed to achieve the 2010 target has to be made now, and our job is to make sure that really happens.

Kate Green is CPAG’s Chief Executive and was Director of One Parent Families from 2000 to mid-2004. Paul Dornan is CPAG’s Head of Policy and Research.

Poverty 119, Autumn 2004