Francis McGlone with Paul Dornan

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Executive summary (Download the Executive summary (97 KB PDF file)

Contents

Introduction
The Government’s record
What should the spending review deliver?
Provide most for those children at greatest risk of poverty
Work towards better jobs, not just more jobs
Ensure the safety net protects families against poverty
Maximise the contribution of child benefit within family support
Introduce free at the point of delivery good-quality childcare
Make the reduction of child poverty central to the new child support policies
Make education truly free at the point of delivery
Provide benefit entitlement to all UK residents equally, irrespective of immigration status
Reduce the disproportionate burden of taxation on poorer families
Improve the quality of delivery and gear it to the needs of the poorest families
Notes

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Executive summary

In July 2005, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury announced that the Government intended to launch a comprehensive spending review reporting in 2007. The 2007 spending review will cover government departmental expenditure allocations for 2008/09, 2009/10 and 2010/11. The spending review, therefore, covers the spending period to 2010 and is key to the Government’s target of halving child poverty by 2010 and eliminating it by 2020. To ensure that the Government meets its child poverty aims, CPAG recommends that the 2007 comprehensive spending review should do the following.

• Provide most for those children at greatest risk of poverty.
• Work towards better jobs, not just more jobs.
• Ensure the safety net protects families against poverty.
• Maximise the contribution of child benefit within family support.
• Introduce free at the point of delivery good-quality childcare.
• Make the reduction of child poverty central to the new child support
  policies.
• Make education truly free at the point of delivery.
• Provide benefit entitlement to all UK residents equally, irrespective of
  immigration status.
• Reduce the disproportionate burden of taxation on poorer families.
• Improve the quality of delivery and gear it to the needs of the poorest
  families.

Introduction

In July 2005, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury announced that the Government intended to launch a comprehensive spending review reporting in 2007. The 2007 spending review will cover government departmental expenditure allocations for 2008/09, 2009/10 and 2010/11. It, therefore, covers the spending period to 2010 and is key to the target of halving child poverty, and for delivering Tony Blair's pledge to rid society of child poverty by 2020.

As part of the spending review process, the Treasury is conducting a 'Children and Young People' review, focused on improving service support to families with disabled children, young people and families at 'risk of becoming locked into a cycle of low achievement, high harm and high cost'.1 Although concentrating on the groups facing a high chance of being failed by education and other services, by focusing on services, it does not really engage with incomes. Moreover, many children are left outside its remit, in particular some groups that CPAG identified in At Greatest Risk, such as asylum-seeking children and children in large families. Other activity is, therefore, needed if the targets on reducing child poverty are to be met.

However, the signs are that this is likely to be a tight spending round for both HM Customs and Revenue (HMRC) and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Both HMRC and the DWP are implementing significant staff cuts following the Gershon review, and in the March Budget the Chancellor announced a 5 per cent real-term reduction in each department's budget through to 2010/11; no doubt partly preempting the spending review's reforms.

This paper is CPAG's submission to the spending review; it notes and paraphrases other analysis we have produced on specific areas of policy. It sets out the policies and measures CPAG believes are necessary to meet the Government's targets. But first we assess the Government's record on child poverty. 4 Introduction Comprehensive spending review 2007

The Government’s record

The Government has made substantial progress in the seven years since Tony Blair's pledge to eradicate child poverty, and deserves praise for this. When the Government came to power in 1997 child poverty in the UK stood at record levels. In 1996/97, 4.2 million children2 were living in poor households, compared with 1.3 million in 1968,3 representing a rise in child poverty from one in ten to one in three of all children. The UK had the third worst rate of child poverty across the industrialised world in the mid-1990s. Only Russia and the United States had a worse child poverty record than the UK.4

The latest child poverty figures are for 2004/05.5 These show that since 1998/99 child poverty has fallen by 700,000, from 4.1 to 3.4 million, a drop of approximately 17 per cent, on the after housing costs measure. It has also fallen by 700,000 on the before housing costs measure, from 3.1 million to 2.4 million, a drop of approximately 21 per cent.

Still, the Government failed to achieve its target of reducing child poverty by a quarter between 1998/99 and 2004/05. To meet its target on the after housing costs measure child poverty would have needed to have fallen by a further 300,000 to 3.1 million, and on the before housing costs measure by a further 100,000 to 2.3 million.6 The failure to meet the first child poverty target now means that it will be more difficult for the Government to meet its second target of halving child poverty between 1998/99 and 2010/11.

The second target will be judged on a different measure from the first. The first target used a poverty line of 60 per cent of median income, both before and after housing costs. The second target will just focus on incomes before housing costs, as well as adjusting for family size in a different way (by using the Modified OECD equivalence scale instead of the McClements scales). It will also include a material deprivation index.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) calculates that, as a result of missing this year's target by 100,000 (measured before housing costs) and of the way that child poverty will be measured for the 2010/11 target, to reduce child poverty to half the level of 1998/99, child poverty now has to fall by about one million between 2004/05 and 2010/11 in order to meet the Government's target. This represents a fall over oneand- a-half-times greater than the 600,000 fall achieved between 1998/99 and 2004/05 (using the Modified OECD equivalence scale).7 As the IFS points out:

Unless the Government is to fall short of this target, or there are radical shifts in parental working patterns, new spending will be needed, from extra borrowing, increased taxation or a reordering of spending priorities.8

What should the spending review deliver?

In 2005, CPAG published two documents, Ten Steps to a Society Free of Child Poverty and At Greatest Risk: the children most likely to be poor. Our Manifesto sets out practical policy changes needed to bring about reductions in child poverty, and although there have been some improvements - the Conservative party has signed up to the ambition of eradicating child poverty by 2020,9 John Hutton has announced that future policy will be 'poverty proofed',10 and changes to the recovery of tax credit overpayments have been made - the majority of steps remain to be taken. At Greatest Risk,11 profiles the experience of groups of children who face a particularly high risk of poverty, with a poorer quality of life in childhood and poorer outcomes in adult life: children in large families, children with disabilities or a disabled parent, black and minority ethnic children, traveller and gypsy children, those who have been in care and those who have sought asylum in the UK. The challenge for the spending review is to mainstream concerns about these children.

There have been two other notable contributions to the debate. The Fabian Society published the final report of its Life Chances Commission12 in March, which made a series of practical policy recommendations to make greater use of life chances as a conceptual tool to drive policy to reduce poverty. This was followed in June by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's What Will it Take to End Child Poverty? Firing on all cylinders.13 This report, together with the numerous working papers and associated publications produced around it, presents a significant analysis of the problem - to families and society - and discusses and models ways of reaching the 2010 and 2020 targets.

To reduce child poverty, the Government has had recourse to two key mechanisms - increasing incomes through financial support and increasing gains from work, primarily by increasing the employment rate. Alongside this - to reduce future poverty - policy has sought to improve educational outcomes (through the education system, Sure Start and good-quality childcare). More effort is clearly needed here, given the slow progress on narrowing the gap in educational attainment, and this will be vital to reaching the 2020 target and to sustaining a much lower level of child poverty in the long term. But it is the more urgent former set of issues - on which education can build - to which we now turn.

Provide most for those children at greatest risk of poverty

CPAG's recent publication, At Greatest Risk, identified those various groups of children who were at greatest risk of child poverty and looked at how to tackle the particular issues that most affect them. The challenge for the spending review is to drive overall policy to deliver most for the most vulnerable children and families. Each of the different policy recommendations in this document suggests ways of achieving this aim.

Large families

Studies have consistently found that children in large families are at far greater risk of poverty than children from small families. According to the latest data from the Family Resources Survey, 50 per cent of children in families with four or more children in 2004/05 were poor,14 compared with 23 per cent in one-child families. As our publication Child Benefit: fit for the future points out, there is an overlap between large families and other groups at risk of poverty (such as younger children, minority ethnic groups, those living on benefit and social tenants). Nevertheless, being in a large family is still a specific driver of living in poverty. The increased risk of poverty for large families is not inevitable. For example, in Norway there is no linear connection between the number of children in a family and living on a low income, with a link only for families with five children or more.

Figures show that child poverty in large families has been falling since 1998/99.15 This is likely to be as a result of both rising employment and tax credit increases. We welcome this, but much more still needs to be done, for example, by addressing the first-child bias in child benefit, the tax credit family element and childcare subsidy.

Children with disabilities

According to the Government, there are 770,000 disabled children in the UK.16 While not all disabled children will experience poverty, they are more likely than their non-disabled peers to live in poverty as a result of lower incomes (because parents need to look after disabled children and so cannot work) and the impact of disability-related additional costs. A re-analysis of the OPCS Disability Surveys calculated that in 1985 almost 55 per cent of families with a disabled child were living in poverty or at its margins.17 Other research has also shown that, despite changes in disability benefits, disabled children and young people are still more vulnerable to poverty,18 with those living in lone-parent families and black and minority ethnic families at particular risk.19

We welcome the focus given to this group in the spending review and, to answer this in detail, CPAG's latest report, Out of Reach,20 explores ways of improving the effectiveness of current policy and its administration - by, for instance, maximising the take-up of disability living allowance - to improve the circumstances of disabled children.

Children with disabled parents

Children with disabled parents face a significantly higher risk of living in poverty than those of non-disabled parents. It is estimated that over 650,000 children of disabled parents were living in poverty in 2004/05 before housing costs and 840,000 after housing costs.21 The main reason for this is the key role that work plays in keeping families out of poverty. Disabled parents are much less likely to be in paid work, and also suffer the impact of additional disability-related costs which sap family budgets. Although the benefit system provides higher support for disabled parents than for non-disabled parents, spells of poverty are likely to be much longer for children of disabled parents. And, when the parents of disabled children move into work, the risk of in-work poverty is higher than for non-disabled parents. One reason for this is that disabled parents are more likely to have to take relatively low-paid, parttime and insecure work compared with non-disabled parents.

CPAG supports government policy to increase the opportunity and support (through Pathways to Work) for those workless disabled adults who are able and willing to work. However, we have considerable concerns about the approach being taken to reform incapacity benefit and, in particular, the use of sanctions around employment programmes and non-state contracted providers making and enforcing decisions. The key to increasing the employment rate of disabled adults is to offer effective support and engage with employers to ensure adequate jobs are available. Attempting to force disabled adults into work risks undermining good will, leaving people in unsustainable employment and increasing stress, while doing nothing to reduce poverty.

Black and minority ethnic children

Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistics show that children living in households headed by someone from a minority ethic group are more likely to be living in a poor household. This is particularly the case for those households headed by someone of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, where around half the children (47 per cent) are living in poverty on the before housing costs measure, and around three-fifths (57 per cent) on the after housing costs measure.

At Greatest Risk 22 points out that the greater likelihood of povertyamong minority ethnic groups is the consequence of a number of factors, including: higher than average unemployment levels; minority ethnic communities largely concentrated in inner cities where recession and industrial restructuring have weakened or destroyed older industrial sectors; racism in the selection of people for jobs or redundancy; the greater likelihood of being in low-paid work; inadequate health and housing provision; and, more recently, restrictions on financial help for refugees and asylum seekers.

Traveller and gypsy children

There is a severe lack of robust quantitative data on gypsy and traveller families, including that on poverty, reflecting their general exclusion and 'invisibility'. For example, the DWP has no separate data on gypsy and traveller work patterns or unemployment rates. And, until recently, successive governments have failed to include gypsies and travellers in national anti-poverty social exclusion/inclusion agendas. Also, they have tended to be sidelined in local anti-poverty strategies.23 However, since 2003/04 there have been some positive moves including Social Exclusion Unit engagement with 'frequent movers', the work of the Institute for Public Policy Research24 on site provision and the targeting of anti-gypsy and traveller racism as urgent priorities in equalities debates by the Commission for Racial Equality.25

It is clear that many gypsy and traveller children are 'poor' in multiple and different ways. Many are financially poor and there are many dimensions to the 'poverty' faced by such groups. One disturbing statistic on health is that only 10 per cent of gypsies and travellers in England and Wales are over the age of 40 and less than one per cent are over the age of 65.26 In education, one recent Department for Education and Skills study found that at least half of gypsy and traveller children in England and Wales drop out of school between Key Stages 1 and 4. The same study also showed very high rates of exclusions.27 Despite the paucity of robust data on the income of gypsy and traveller families, both anecdotal information and other studies show that some families have few financial resources. Moreover, there has been a decline in previous economic outlets for gypsy and travellers, particularly in the crowded urban environments.28 And, restrictions on travelling and on working activities on official sites have undermined aspects of the traveller economy.29 Many find that simply being a gypsy or traveller, and lacking basic literacy skills, prevents them from accessing mainstream wage labour jobs or training. Because of this, access to social security benefits is important for some families. However, research has shown levels of discrimination and disadvantage in accessing the benefit system for those who are frequently nomadic.30 One writer31 has referred to specific surveillance directed towards gypsies and travellers on the assumption that they commit benefit fraud, with the result that families can be denied benefit where there is little, if any, evidence of actual fraud.

Children leaving care

Young people leaving care are one of the most disadvantaged groups of young people in society. Many have experienced abuse, neglect or difficulties at home, and being in care has often failed to compensate them, so by the time they leave - often at a far younger age than other young people leave home - their life chances are very poor. Research has shown that many are likely to face multiple disadvantages, including poverty.32 This is a consequence of their pre-care, in-care, leaving care and after-care 'life course' experiences including: their poor family backgrounds and damaging intra-family experiences, including abuse and neglect; the failure of care to provide stability and compensate young people in care; low levels of educational attainment and post-16 participation; leaving care at a younger age than other young people leave home; being a young householder; moving often and experiencing homelessness; and being a young parent.

Since the introduction of the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 there is evidence of progress in three areas: young people leaving care later; improved qualifications; and improved participation in further education.33 But there is still a substantial gap between care leavers and other young people in respect of these and other areas. CPAG, therefore, welcomes the Government's commitment to address this problem - including in the spending review and many of the proposals for change set out in the Green Paper Care Matters: transforming the lives of children and young people in care.

Asylum seekers

CPAG believes that the Government's asylum policy directly conflicts with policies on child welfare, social inclusion and anti-discrimination principles. The difference in treatment of asylum-seeker families is highlighted in a recent report from researchers at the London School of Economics.34 It found that while poverty had been alleviated for some vulnerable groups over the last seven years, asylum policies have led to a reduction in rights for this group in employment, health services, income and housing. According to the report, policies introduced by the Government have helped to make asylum seekers the most socially excluded group in Britain.

Work towards better jobs, not just more jobs

CPAG is supportive of the Government's moves to help more people into work - if this is what people want and if this results in improvements in their and their families' quality of life. However, policy which over-focuses on paid work may conflict with enabling parents to have sufficient time to parent and, as Lisa Harker puts it in her commissioned report for the DWP, 'The 2010 and 2020 targets cannot be met by increases in employment alone.'35

Underlying an aspiration to increasing the employment rate is that decent jobs are available. The existence of jobs in the economy does not prove that jobs are open equally to all. Barriers to work, including costs associated with work, the quality of jobs, spatial concentrations of employment and non-employment, skill demands and discrimination mean that not all have equal access to jobs, and certainly not all have equal access to good-quality jobs.

In CPAG's submission to the Work and Pension's Select Committee's Inquiry into the Government's 80 per cent employment rate aspiration, we recommended that the Inquiry used its report to examine the extent to which policy is currently succeeding in overcoming barriers to work, and what else is required to meet the needs of those specific groups, lone parents and disabled adults, recently targeted by policy. The evidence also clearly shows that employers have a greater role to play in opening up opportunities to decent, flexible work and overcoming the discrimination that currently reduces access to employment for many groups.

CPAG welcomes the thinking in Lisa Harker's report36 that greater effort should be put into looking beyond the work-first approach and towards measures that tackle in-work poverty, improve job sustainability, and prevent cycling in and out of employment. Policy has moved in this direction, supporting people in work through mechanisms like the lone parent in-work credit being piloted under the New Deal for lone parents plus,37 but needs to go further in improving the quality of employment (including pay, sustainability and progression). Learning the lessons from the Employment Retention and Advancement pilots and the Ambition pilots between the DWP and the National Employment Panel38 could assist the framing of policy more focused on progression within work. An increased employment rate brought about by increased cycling in and out of work amongst lower income families will not reduce poverty and may increase hardship.

In particular, more needs to be done to ensure that employment pays more for low-paid workers. The UK already has a high employment rate, hand-in-hand with a high child poverty rate - half of poverty currently occurs in households with some work.39 A higher employment rate does not necessarily mean a low poverty rate. The DWP has shown significant interest in encouraging second earners in couples into work, which could have a significant impact on reducing poverty in those couple households where one parent is working and the other is not (of the 57 per cent of children defined as poor who live in couple households, only a tiny minority - 2 per cent - have both parents working full time).40 Such a strategy has the potential to reduce poverty levels, but can do nothing for children in lone-parent households and, again, it restricts the time that parents will have to parent. Moreover, it presents Jobcentre Plus with the challenge of delivering a service to a group with which it has had little previous contact - the key to engaging with this group is to offer a high-quality service to support people's own ambitions of entering decent family-friendly work.

There is also a need to improve skill levels in order to open up greater employment access for the (currently) lowest skilled. The first element to this is for educational policies to deliver better and more equal educational attainment. Policies to improve staying-on rates at school, such as the education maintenance allowance are welcome, but the poorest children remain least likely to do well at school, to stay on post- 16 and to pursue further study post-18. By way of example: in England in 2005 58.9 per cent of children without free school meal entitlement obtained five or more GCSEs at grades A-C, a small enough percentage but double that of those entitled to free school meals.41

More is being expected of Jobcentre Plus from many fronts - a new form of service delivery and welfare reform. Moving towards an 80 per cent employment rate means engaging with groups, such as second adults within couple, of which it has little knowledge. At the same time, our experience shows that Jobcentre Plus is failing to deliver its current service adequately (see p26). Even if an employment rate of 80 per cent is attained, this infers that one in five working adults will remain outside the labour market and, since many of these adults (perhaps as disabled adults or lone parents) are likely to live in households without any other adult being in work, the target implies that many adults and children will remain in households where no adult is in work. Alongside consideration of the employment rate, therefore, we ought to have a more detailed examination of the safety net - currently three-quarters of children in households in which no adults work are poor.42

Ensure the safety net protects families against poverty

Despite substantial recent increases to benefits for children, the package of financial support for families remains inadequate to protect against poverty and social exclusion. This is most starkly demonstrated by the total value of benefits and tax credit entitlements - very often less than the poverty line. The table below shows the poverty line for both couples and lone parents, each with two children aged 5 and 11, their maximum assistance entitlement (including child benefit) and the difference between the two. As can be seen, a couple family with two children are £101 a week, and a lone-parent family £42 a week, below the official poverty line.

Although we have an official poverty line (60 per cent of contemporary median income),43 the method whereby it is derived is arbitrary and not related to what constitutes an adequate income. No official assessment has been undertaken of the levels of benefit income that would constitute 'adequacy'. CPAG believes that more research and a clearer analysis are needed to establish what families need to live on, and this should be used as the basis for setting and for reviewing benefit rates. Effective uprating policies are also needed to ensure that financial support holds its value, relative to societal living standards. Lisa Harker also pointed out in her recent report for the DWP the link between the decline in the relative value of adult benefits and child poverty, and recommended that the DWP should review its benefit uprating policy (Recommendation 26).44

Increase the value of adult payments within income support in line with those for children

The failure to uprate benefits in line with societal living standards - but instead with (lower) price inflation - has resulted in adult payments in income support losing their relative value against both average earnings and the child elements. This is important for child poverty in a number of critical ways.

• It is impossible to ring-fence spending on particular family members - any consideration of child poverty has to consider the adult rates.
• The adult rates in income support are higher than the child rates in child tax credit, so the proportionate gain to the family by apparently large child gains is much lower than it appears; increases in the child element are absorbed by slower growing family incomes.
• The health of adults with caring or financial responsibility for children is critical, but it is also important for prospective mothers both before and during pregnancy. This group, often young and so subject to particularly low benefit rates, is extremely vulnerable to income poverty, which has a detrimental effect on both mother and child. CPAG believes that the Government needs to look urgently at the issue of young prospective mothers on income support. One possible policy option is to pay a 'pregnancy premium', though we recognise that this would not help reach prospective mothers until they have both recognised the pregnancy and made a claim. Alternatively, increase the overall rate of income support for younger people. Either of these would have a positive impact.

The value of the adult payments in income support has diminished since 1988, and continued unchecked by the election of New Labour in 1997. If income support had remained the same proportion of average earnings in 2005 as it was when first introduced in 1988, couples would receive £33.51 more a week than they do now and single people aged over 25 would receive £22.69 more.45 Income support has continued to wane in relation to the living standards of society because it is uprated by the Rossi Index (that is the Retail Prices Index (RPI) without housing costs), which tends to grow more slowly than the RPI.

The problem of adult benefits losing value is not restricted to childless adults, since the basis of the benefit to provide for adults living in families with children is the same. Although adults in these families receive additional child elements which have, in recent times, risen in value more rapidly, the effect on the total sum of combining both adult benefits (which have been falling in value as a proportion of wages) and the smaller child elements (which have been growing as a proportion of average earnings) dampens the overall family income increase considerably.

Child poverty cannot be tackled without a broader focus on family poverty: to address family poverty and the poverty of childless adults who may, in due course, become parents, income support needs to be raised and its uprating then needs to be on a par with benefits for children.

Uprate child benefit and child tax credit in line with the fastest growing of either prices or earnings

It is welcome that the per child element of the child tax credit is currently being increased in line with earnings inflation, but, as with income support, other elements of tax credits and child benefit are falling in value against wages. If child benefit had held the same value as a percentage of (rising) average earnings as in 1979 (around 5.2 per cent), in April 2006 children would have been getting around £22.85 per week, £5.40 more than first children received, and double what second and subsequent children got.46

Worse still, despite the understandable wish to concentrate resources on the poorest families through the child element of child tax credit, failure to uprate the family element of child tax credit in April 2005 and April 200647 continues to undermine its long-term future - both in terms of its coverage and generosity - and has provided a dangerous hostage to fortune. A future government, less disposed than the current to directing resources toward poorer families, would face no legislative barrier if it were to freeze entitlements to the child element of child tax credit and, indeed, could call on related precedent to justify a real terms cut.

CPAG believes that the current position is unsatisfactory and calls upon the Government to re-examine its position on the future uprating of benefits and tax credits. If social inclusion is to be maximised - as it should be - we will need not only to have a better understanding of what it costs families to obtain a decent standard of living, but also to ensure that change over time in the value of financial support is set in relation to the faster growing of prices or earnings inflation.

Maximise the contribution of child benefit within family support

Within the package of financial support to families with children, the balance between money provided through the twin foundations of child benefit and means-tested child tax credit needs to be right. CPAG recognises that focusing maximum resources through the means-tested tax credit is driven by the desire to maximise the impact of limited resources. Still, it is important to point out that universal child benefit retains a critical role in protecting all children from poverty.

As part of the Make Child Benefit Count campaign,48 CPAG has been calling for the subsequent rate of child benefit for second children to be aised to the first. This would increase the role of child benefit, rebalancing the twin foundations of financial support for children, and has been modelled to lift between 250,000 and 300,000 children out of poverty.49

To rely too heavily on means-tested policy may be a tactical error for a number of reasons laid out in Child Benefit: fit for the future, which points out the following.

Simplicity

Child benefit is easy to claim and only has to be claimed once for each child, the qualifying rules are simple, and its amount and structure do not change as children get older. Its 'costs of compliance' are, therefore, low for claimants. It does not distinguish between lone parents and couples, married or unmarried parents, or those in or out of paid employment. In 2004/05, only 1.05 pence in the pound was spent on administration costs, compared with some 3 pence in the pound spent on managing and paying child tax credit.50 At a time when the Government is actively investigating the possibilities of simplifying the benefits system, child benefit could be seen as a model.

Take-up

Child benefit has almost universal take-up, with the Government estimating this recently at 98 per cent. The Government has made strenuous efforts to boost the take-up of means-tested child tax credit by removing some of the stigma of claiming, but has still not managed to raise the take-up to the same level as universal child benefit.51

A ladder out of poverty

Child benefit helps provide a ladder out of poverty because it is not reduced when other income goes up. It does not contribute to the unemployment trap - the situation in which people may be little or no better off in work than out - because it is paid at the same level whether a family has a parent in employment or not. This is not the case with child tax credit. Tax credits still contribute to the poverty trap - the situation in which people may be little or no better off earning additional income - because they are reduced (along with means-tested benefits, such as housing benefit and council tax benefit) when other family income increases when a family has a parent already in employment.

Family fluidity

Child benefit is paid to the main carer in couples regardless of the resources of the partner. Consequently, it 'follows the child' through changes in the family unit without being reassessed. This makes it a thoroughly modern benefit - and is different from child tax credit, for which a new claim must be made with any change in partnership status.

Administrative problems

Child benefit is not subject to the same sort of administrative problems that have plagued tax credits. Families need a constant income despite changes in circumstances, such as at the point of relationship breakdown. Child benefit is more likely to provide seamless support than complex, means-tested tax credits which need to be regularly reassessed - thereby generating additional paperwork and possibly delays at times when families are under considerable stress.

Sustainability

Child benefit is well recognised and popular. It has a political ability to 'stick', and though it lost significant value over the 1980s and 1990s it remains a well regarded, well functioning benefit around which an effective political campaign for improvements in the living standards of children can be built. Because it goes to all families and is not incometested it represents a social contribution to the additional costs of children, and their benefit to society. Furthermore, income-tested credits presuppose that deep divisions will continue in our society. A universal benefit - like child benefit - that assumes a world free of child poverty is the most suitable and sustainable way to eradicate child poverty.

Cost

The central argument against child benefit is its cost. However, while it is certainly expensive, it is not necessarily true that taxpayers would not pay for the increase. It is very possible that the pressures on the Government to resist additional taxation are actually greatest when benefits and tax credits are provided only to a small - and poor - group with limited political influence. Spending is politically easier to justify when a larger proportion of taxpayers benefit directly from it. CPAG believes that, because of its universality, there is a clear and compelling argument to maximise the role of child benefit within the balance of financial support to children and families.

Introduce free at the point of delivery good-quality childcare

Two key advantages are attributable to good childcare: the ability of parents to work and developmental gains for the child. Both are critical to improving life chances for the poorest children. There is growing recognition of the centrality of childcare to government objectives, culminating in the Treasury publishing, in December 2004, a ten-year childcare strategy. The strategy not only underlies the importance of childcare to government objectives, but details welcome changes to address some of the manifest problems with current provision.

Current provision is primarily market-based with a government demandside subsidy provided through working tax credit, and with supply-side intervention through nursery places for three- and four-year-olds, Sure Start children's centres and out-of-hours school-based provision. The December 2004 Pre-Budget Report extended each of these (dates of implementation vary by reform): increasing the proportion of childcare costs claimable (from 70 to 80 per cent) and the childcare maximums; increasing the extent of free nursery entitlement for three- and four-yearolds; introducing children's centres in each community by 2010. CPAG welcomes these reforms and the Government's acknowledgement that this is an area where policy has not gone far enough. Good as it is, more is needed to tackle the inadequacy of childcare, and we still lack the commitment to universal, free at the point of delivery childcare required to support fully the eradication of child poverty.

The problem with current policy is that it falls down before two hurdles: excessive expense and inadequate supply. Both factors bear most heavily on the poorest. The typical cost (2006 prices) of a full-time nursery place for a child under two in England is £142 a week.52 In some parts of the country, particularly London and the South East, the cost of a nursery place is even higher - normally £197 a week in Inner London. The typical cost of a full-time place with a childminder for a child under two is £132 a week, and nannies cost anything from £250 to £500 a week, depending on whether they live in or out. Although the Government provides help with the cost of childcare for low-income families through working tax credit, the current average award is just £49.80 a week,53 and there is no extra help for parents with three or more children.

As for supply, there is only one registered childcare place for every four children under the age of eight.54 Moreover, there is an inverse relationship between childcare availability and area deprivation. Deprived wards have about half the national average number of childcare places.55 High turnover is another problem in the provision of paid-for childcare. According to a recent Public Accounts Committee inquiry into early years provision, of 626,000 new full-time places, 48.1per cent have already closed down.56 High turnover is likely to be greatest in poorer areas where profits may be relatively low and demand suppressed by parents' inability to afford provision. Quality is likely to be impaired by high turnover of staff and projects, and again this is likely to disadvantage the poorer areas disproportionately.

CPAG recognises that providing a sustainable universal childcare service is a complex undertaking. In addition to issues of principle, there are workplace issues around the number of child carers, and the training and remuneration they receive. These workplace issues, in part being addressed as part of ongoing policy reform, are critical to creating a service that is not only of good quality - sufficient to maximise child development - but is also sustainable. Still, we believe that greater urgency needs to be placed on rolling out children's centres as a vehicle for childcare (and other services).

In the short term, sustainable ways must be sought of making more childcare available in deprived areas, as well as ensuring a greater variety of provision to match need. The long-term ambition should be universal childcare, free at the point of delivery, and the immediate priority is to establish an action plan with steps to get there, starting now.

Make the reduction of child poverty central to the new child support policies

Child poverty cannot be tackled without effective child support policies. Following the reporting of Sir David Henshaw's review into child support, CPAG raised a number of concerns. Although appreciative of the central role given to child poverty reduction around reform options, we argued that for child support effectively to assist the reduction of child poverty, the following principles should be reflected within reform.

• Deliver adequate and stable maintenance, even if it is difficult to enforce collection.
• Consider the needs and ability to pay of second families - reform should not reduce poverty for one group of children by increasing it among another group of children.
• Minimise conflict between parents - conflict is acknowledged to be highly damaging for children's well-being.

CPAG further argued that the child maintenance premium should be extended to those in receipt of benefits (not just the new scheme cases) and that all maintenance should be disregarded when assessing entitlement to income support, as it is for child tax credit.

We also emphasised the importance of effective advice provision in delivering child support. While CPAG welcomes the importance given to the third sector within the Henshaw review, we believe that there is a lack of capacity to provide this advice and there is a need to build independent capacity.

Our initial evidence to the review further emphasised the often unrecognised poverty in second families. Serious thought needs to be given to the use of an advance payment, or 'guaranteed maintenance', system for child support as an important mechanism to protect the financial security of vulnerable children. We are concerned that this has been rejected, particularly in a document that argues that child poverty should be placed at the centre of the proposals.

Finally, CPAG's initial letter to Sir David Henshaw concluded by noting that, in our experience, services to poor people usually become poor services. We believe that an agency with a small number of families on its books, who may be poor and have complex needs, risks becoming a poor-quality service in the long run. We urge the Government to place high-quality service provision at the forefront of policy makers' thinking in designing the delivery and management of any new agency.

The use of private arrangements

Though CPAG agrees that it is important to facilitate the choice to make or maintain private maintenance arrangements, we are concerned that this may embed an imbalanced power relationship between ex-partners. One partner may settle for less than children have a right to expect in order to maintain a harmonious relationship with the other partner. In terms of making sure that private arrangements 'stick', both in terms of the level at which maintenance would be paid and also in the frequency and regularity of the payment, we see a need for some official recording of the arrangement. This has both a symbolic and practical importance. In symbolic terms, it demonstrates that an arrangement has been reached and sets out the terms; in practice, it is likely to encourage greater compliance by non-resident parents and offers a speedier route to enforcement if non-payment occurs. Though a register does potentially draw the state into an involvement with a 'private' arrangement, where this has broken down, CPAG believes this to be in the child's best interest.

The maintenance disregard

Perhaps the clearest anti-poverty component within the Henshaw report is the proposal to increase the size of the disregard. To increase the disregard, or to disregard all child support maintenance for the purposes of benefit assessment (this is already the case for tax credits), would have a direct impact on poverty. It would increase some loneparent families' income above the poverty line and reduce the depth of poverty of others, and support both paid work and tax credits in tackling child poverty. We understand that the Government has not reached a settled view as to the size of the disregard, and that concerns exist over possible work disincentive effects (if out-of-work income were higher than in-work income). Henshaw rejected the argument that a higher disregard acts as a disincentive, in part on the basis of the empirical evidence of the Wisconsin child support programme, which found that both full and partial disregards had no impact on employment. Given that an unstable income currently acts as a barrier to work, we believe that a higher disregard would actually increase the likelihood of parents with care going into or sustaining paid work. Far from acting as a disincentive, a higher disregard could, therefore, combine the double benefit of reducing poverty and supporting employment.

Enforcement

Much of the recent discussion around the reform of child support policy has emphasised the need to ensure effective enforcement. CPAG agrees with this and would like to see the Agency, and whatever body replaces it, use existing powers more effectively to pursue those refusing to pay financial support on behalf of their children. Alongside strengthening current enforcement, we urge the Government to couch messages and publicity in terms of helping ensure non-residents can provide adequately for their children, not in terms of tackling feckless parents shirking their responsibilities. To stigmatise fathers as 'deadbeat dads' not only fails to appreciate that most want the best for their children but risks creating a backlash of future non-compliance.

Make education truly free at the point of delivery

Education should be free at the point of delivery. Too often it is not. A Department for Education and Skills (DfES) survey published in 2004 investigated the costs associated with schooling, including trips and activities; contributions to school funds; meals; and travel.57 Overall, the researchers found that £736.22 was spent per child. Although the poorest households spent somewhat less in cash terms than the richest, this is actually a bigger share of their income. Moreover, the poorest households are those most likely to report difficulty in meeting these costs. The increasingly common use of private tuition by richer parents, along with poorer parents' difficulty in meeting educational costs, will inevitably widen the educational achievement gap between their children.

Spending levels are key for two reasons: first, spending may open up new opportunities for children (for example, trips and activities) and so if income precludes spending, affected children will be denied the experiences open to many of their peers. Second, parents make sacrifices themselves to give the maximum opportunities to their children, so spending on schooling may be at the expense of other necessary outgoings. For both reasons, CPAG would like to see action to ensure all children have equal access and to ease the burden on family budgets.

School meals

Though school meals are available to some (linked to receipt of other benefits) they are poorly taken up. All too often the existing system openly identifies those in receipt of free school meals, resulting in stigma and low take-up. A recent CPAG publication, Recipe for Change, profiled good practice in this area (for example, cashless systems using swipe cards), arguing for improved current practice on the route to universal free school meals. As the take-up of free school meals is low, the provision of universal free school meals would ensure full take-up and protect families who are relatively poor but not entitled to claim free school meals. In 2003/04 in the UK 16.5 per cent of children were entitled to free school meals,58 a figure that falls well short of the 28 per cent of children income poor in Great Britain the same year,59 demonstrating how restricted entitlement is.

School clothing

Clothing for school costs money, more for older children, and this need is focused around very specific transition points in their development - growth spurts and changes of school. School uniforms can have a protective effect if it means that no child stands out because parents have not been able to spend as much on their clothing as their peers. This is dependent, however, on adequate clothing grants to help to prevent childhood stigma. A recent report from Citizens Advice suggested that the costs of uniforms for the start of secondary school could amount to over £20060 and demonstrated an extremely patchy picture of local education authority (LEA) support for parents in meeting the cost. It showed that two out of five LEAs provided no help at all with school clothing, a situation that has worsened significantly since 2001.

Trips and activities

School activities, including trips and hobbies, are a vital element of childhood learning and experience, but charges often apply. Although official guidance discourages charging for activities occurring in school time, schools may ask for 'voluntary' contributions for certain activities, and can charge for activities associated with school which fall outside the school day. Charges or 'voluntary' contributions confront parents and children with an odious choice: preventing a child from participating in an activity, or paying for them to do so out of an already stretched budget. Both work against effective anti-poverty policy.

Extended schools

As the DfES acknowledges in its guidance to help schools plan and fund their extended schools,61 such schools offer particular benefits for the most disadvantaged children and young people, such as study support activities, after-school and holiday activities, childcare, parenting support and referral to wider support services. All schools are expected to offer some free study support and some free after-school sport activities but schools may (after local consultation) fund other study support activities by charging parents. While schools may use their delegated budget to fund access to study support activities for the children and young people in low-income families (and to support access to educational activities which are normally included as part of the childcare offer), this will undoubtedly differ from school to school. And, like free school meals, it runs the risk of openly identifying those children in low-income families, resulting in stigma and low take-up. Many will, therefore, be denied the educational benefits of these study support activities.

CPAG is concerned over the policy presumption in extended schools - notwithstanding the benefits they offer to the most disadvantaged children - that parents have less and less time to parent and children require more and more state care. We do not believe that this is what most parents want; instead they want a better work-life balance.

The way to resolve the problems that have a particular impact on children from poorer families is firstly to consider the appropriateness of costly trips or uniform (such as uniform badges or uniforms with only one supplier) and, where such services are necessary, either to provide adequate grants or to provide such services universally, free at the point of delivery with a test of educational need, not ability to pay.

Provide benefit entitlement to all UK residents equally, irrespective of immigration status

Benefits and tax credits must be provided on the basis of need. As need does not vary by immigration status, neither should entitlement. Managing migration is the proper preserve of the Home Office, but the mechanisms by which this is achieved ought to operate entirely independently of the benefit and tax credit system. Failure to implement such a system is not only counter-productive, but violates natural justice and constitutes a poor welcome to those who have arrived in this country and may well stay.

Those seeking asylum receive a lower entitlement to financial assistance than British citizens, receiving 70 per cent of the adult payments in income support, plus full entitlements to the child elements (but since the child elements are a smaller element of the family's total entitlement, the effect - reducing total entitlement - is a marked one). Parents seeking asylum are also prohibited from working until their asylum application is resolved - there is no option here for work as the route out of poverty.

The treatment of children in families subject to immigration control, and particularly those who are seeking asylum, is in stark contrast to the considerable support directed towards children in the UK. Those immigrant groups are numerically small, but face a high risk of poverty - and yet it is a group on which no official poverty statistics are produced.

The key step to reducing the additional risk of poverty faced by children of parents subject to immigration control is to provide them with the same rights to social security and tax credits as are received by British citizens. Providing entitlements through the benefit and tax credit systems, provided by the HMRC and the DWP, is the route to achieving this aim. This would demonstrate that the paramount concern for children is the level of their families' income, not their immigration status. Furthermore, for this group to be brought in line with the population as a whole, the restriction on paid work should be removed, giving these families the same route out of poverty as the rest of the population.

Reduce the disproportionate burden of taxation on poorer families

The very poorest households pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the richest households. This is because indirect taxes on goods - unlike income tax and national insurance - tend not to be based on ability to pay. About one-third of the poorest tenth of households with children are taxed this way by the state, more than cancelling out the progressive nature of income tax. It is not just indirect tax that is regressive: council tax costs proportionately more to the poor than to the rich. Even after council tax benefit - which rebates the cost of those eligible and who claim it - the poorest tenth paid an average of 3.8 per cent of their gross incomes on council tax; the richest tenth paid 1.4 per cent.62

Valued added tax (VAT) constitutes the largest element of the tax paid by the poorest households. VAT costs the poorest households with children about 12.7 per cent of their gross income, whereas it only costs the richest about 4.4 per cent. The next largest element paid by the poorest families is taxation levied on tobacco63 and then on petrol. For richer households, the taxes that stand out are the direct taxes on income and national insurance contributions. The 'intermediate taxes' - those paid elsewhere such as employers' national insurance contributions but which are likely to have been offset against an individual's income - also have an overall regressive effect. Tax relief is very unlikely to have as progressive impact as benefit or tax credit spending since it is of greatest benefit to those with the highest taxable income.

Some taxes, though regressive, are designed to influence consumption behaviour rather than raise money - the so-called 'sin taxes' on tobacco and alcohol or possible 'green taxes' on fuel. Whereas policy makers might not wish to change such taxes, the overall balance is wrong. Reform is needed to make the burden of taxation proportional. For example, the reliance on regressive taxes - council tax, VAT and others - could be reformed and reduced, or the gradient within existing proportional taxes (income tax and national insurance) could be sharpened. The possibility of some kind of local income tax, which would be proportional to ability to pay to replace council tax, also warrants serious attention to ensure that council tax does not work against anti-poverty policies. Many of the poorest families will, however, continue to pay proportionately more since they have to spend all of their incomes (and so are taxed upon the spending).

Addressing the tax burden is complicated, but vital to ensure we have a truly progressive taxation system that does not undermine anti-poverty policy and does not fly in the face of overwhelming public opinion - three-quarters of people in a British Social Attitudes survey believe that taxes should be proportional to the ability to pay. Greater redistribution through benefits and tax credits is required to offset the regressive effect of tax on the poorest people.

Improve the quality of delivery and gear it to the needs of the poorest families

To support the policy developments called for elsewhere in this paper we feel that greater attention also needs to be given to the mechanics of how policy is implemented. Alongside pre-existing delivery problems (for instance in the Child Support Agency), the staffing cuts following the review under Sir Peter Gershon have reduced the numbers in both HMRC and the DWP. The pre-announced settlement of 5 per cent real budget cut over the period of the next spending review also marks the territory as one where the Government expects to reduce the amount it is spending on administration. At the same time, significant delivery problems have been occurring in Jobcentre Plus, the tax credit system and the Child Support Agency. Alongside the existing problems, the DWP faces significant challenges in delivering the current operational improvement plan in the Child Support Agency and reforming it, along with rolling out the Pathways to Work extensions proposed as part of the welfare reform legislation currently before Parliament.

Existing administrative challenges are great and where poorer families do not receive effective, appropriate services this directly undermines attempts to reduce child poverty. Examples of current problems are not hard to find - for instance, delivery of child support policy has been widely criticised, not least by the Sectary of State ultimately responsible for it:

The overall performance of the CSA has fallen well short of expectations. Only a minority of cases handled by the CSA receive any maintenance. There is a backlog of around 300,000 cases. Debts of over £3 billion have built up with limited prospects of recovery. There is a net cost to the taxpayer of around £200 million per year. And levels of customer service, although they have improved recently, have never reached the standards of quality and consistency the public are entitled to expect.64

Significant problems - both policy and administration - with the delivery of the tax credit system have compromised its impact, with the harsh recovery of overpayments and often impenetrable administrative systems for reporting changes of circumstances. Major policy and administrative reforms were announced in May and December 2005, which are welcome and will have a significant impact in reducing poverty in the medium and longer term. However, these changes are not yet fully implemented, and the IT support for the scheme appears inflexible to policy and delivery need - demonstrated by the length of time required to implement the December 2005 changes (still underway in late 2006). Above and beyond these, much more work is needed to ensure forms are comprehensible, the administrative process is better understood by claimants, and access to information and advice is improved.

Recent reforms in Jobcentre Plus have shifted delivery from being based primarily on local offices to a network of contact and processing centres, underpinned by the IT Customer Management System. The introduction of the new model was heavily criticised by the Parliamentary Work and Pensions Committee in March 2006:

We conclude that the service delivered by many Jobcentre Plus Contact Centres to their customers suffered a catastrophic failure in the summer of 2005. This led to additional hardship among the most vulnerable in society.65

In its response, the Government rejected the extent of this criticism, although it did accept there had been many problems.66 These may have been most acute while the system was in transition in summer 2005, but a more recent CPAG survey of advice agencies dealing with Jobcentre Plus shows continuing evidence of extreme difficulties in getting through, of advisers not being informed of service changes, and of lost paperwork and official error.67

The DWP has announced it will poverty-proof new policy. CPAG believes this should extend both to policy and to administrative mechanisms of delivery. These should, therefore, be developed to cater effectively for the most disadvantaged claimants, rather than being driven primarily either by the desire to save resources or to deliver for the 'average' claimant.

Non-take-up

Non-take-up of many benefits and credits - including income support, child tax credit, working tax credit and disability living allowance - is common, with around £8 billion going unclaimed in means-tested benefits and a further £5 billion in tax credits.68 The principle reasons for non-take-up of benefits are structural and administrative; they are about the complexity of understanding entitlement criteria, dealing with forms and processes, the hassle of dealing with benefits administration, and about the - often stigmatising - ways in which claimants - and 'benefits dependency' are described. As the causes and solutions are structural, the ultimate responsibility for failing to deliver rights lies with official agencies.

Government - including through the DWP's benefit simplification unit - needs to work to simplify the experience of claiming benefits in order to make it easier for people to take up entitlements and to challenge wrong decisions. It should also be more careful about the way in which benefits and claimants are described, including in its messages on fraud, disability and worklessness, by avoiding stigmatising those rightfully entitled. Encouraging public prejudice discourages take-up and thereby worsens poverty. The public service agreement to deliver pension credit to three million households by 2006, and its successor target,69 are a welcome acceptance that the state has the responsibility to deliver rights - and not just that individuals have an entitlement to claim. There is a greater potential for both more exploration of the barriers to take-up and the use of targets to help drive policy to increase the proportion receiving their entitlements.

Error, delays and poor decision making

Errors and delays are a clear indicator of system complexity and system failure to work effectively. Error shows up both in departmental estimates and in the successful appeals against decisions - if initial decision making were good, the rate of claimants overturning decisions at tribunal would be low, yet for income support nearly half of cases (44.8 per cent) are overturned and awarded at appeal. For disability living allowance, this is 55.2 per cent, for incapacity benefit (for cases going through the personal capability assessment), this is nearly two in three (57.2 per cent).70 Delays in making decisions or processing paperwork also place families at great risk and are shown through the use of other provision (including private debt, the social fund and charities). Social fund crisis loans made to cover 'alignment periods', gaps between first payments of benefits or wages, take up 37 per cent of social fund expenditure.71 As well as evidence of poor service in itself,72 using loans in this way reduces the amount the social fund has to spend on the poorest families73 and shows the extent to which the social fund picks up the pieces of delays from other parts of the system.

Though fraud usually hits the headlines, error is far more substantial in cash value terms. For income support, jobseeker's allowance and pension credit in 2004/05,74 1.9 per cent of resources were overpaid as a result of fraud, and 3.3 per cent because of error (1.3 per cent claimant error and 2 per cent official error). In 0.4 per cent of cases, claimants got less than their entitlement as a result of their own error, while more than double this proportion got less because of official error. Analysis of recent trends for income support and jobseeker's allowance shows that fraud has reduced by 57 per cent since September 1998, official error reduced by much less than this (33 per cent) and claimant error actually increased by 38 per cent. Data from the first year of the operation of the tax credit system75 shows the occurrence of error (not separated into official or claimant) massively outweighing fraud, with 1,130,000 estimated cases of error ('favouring the claimant'), compared with just 30,000 cases of fraud. Using data from the first year of operation of the scheme does not account for the subsequent improvements noted earlier, nor does it account for the impact of the systemic fraud attack which resulted in HMRC closing the online claim facility (the 'e-portal') in late 2005, rather it reinforces the point that much greater emphasis should be placed on reducing error rates. In terms of the DWP experience, though, clearly the Government has an interest in fraud reduction; this is already falling in line with official targets. What is not falling at the same rate is error.

Reducing error and delays should be a key focus, and this can be achieved both by simplifying systems, where appropriate, and by improving the ability of staff to cope (by IT improvement, better training and addressing work pressures) where processes are inherently complex to meet complex need. CPAG has argued elsewhere76 that the importance here is the felt experience by claimants and the strength of backroom processes. Likewise, delays in decision making or processing, which often result in the use of crisis loans, show up in one part of the system having to deal with the problems of another - speedier decision making in these cases would reduce hardship for families caught between systems.

Accessibility

Both HMRC and the DWP rely heavily on telephone-based systems for initiating claims and reporting changes of circumstances. Though clearly this route of communication may suit the needs of many claimants, it does not and cannot work for all claimants. CPAG has particular concerns about the poorest claimants, who have often the most complex needs, and for whom telephone-based services may not be the most accessible, either because of cost (if calling from mobile telephone), language (where either English is not the first language spoken or literacy is poor), numeracy (especially important in understanding tax credits) or confidence. For these groups, we believe that readily available face-to-face access to HMRC and Jobcentre Plus services remains an extremely important (often unmet) need. Since face-to-face information is a need for many of the poorest and most vulnerable families, gearing the system to meet their needs first and foremost means providing face-to-face access through home visits or local offices alongside good-quality helpline-based services.

Independent advice

Independent advisers are crucial to provide information and advice on the maze of entitlements, enabling families to access their entitlements and advocating on their behalf. Yet despite the Government acknowledging the sector's value, there is a dearth of advice on some key areas, such as child support, and financial pressure in others, while different government agendas seek to influence voluntary sector organisations in conflicting ways.

The DWP is clearly aware of the value of the voluntary sector and is looking to private and voluntary contractors to deliver Pathways to Work and to be more involved in child support policy. CPAG understands the governmental need to develop capacity quickly, but we do not believe the voluntary sector exists to deliver state services, and for it to do so risks perverting its ability to advocate on behalf of claimants. CPAG is especially worried about the possible impact - on claimants and on the sector - of the powers being proposed to allow decision making and ultimately sanctioning by the private and voluntary sector providers of Pathways to Work.

At the same time as the DWP is looking to the voluntary sector to help with delivery, the Department for Constitutional Affairs (which holds the legal aid budget) is seeking to concentrate civil legal aid funding in ways which concentrate on specific local centres (community legal and advice centres) and networks (community legal advice networks).This risks excluding smaller under-funded community groups which would result in less diversity of provision, exacerbating problems of access and hindering the desired plan to target groups that often do not access current services. CPAG is concerned that this model may also develop to exclude solicitors from being part of the Community Legal Service, thereby reducing access to justice where a client's problem can only be progressed through a solicitor. The growing use of discretion in the fields of welfare benefits and tax credits where legal challenges can only be made via a judicial review increase the need for access to solicitors. At the same time, the plan for the Community Legal Service has overlooked the strong need for the second-tier provision77 to support the front-line sector in giving high-quality advice.78

To protect and develop independent advice provision so that advisers can fully play their role in helping individuals take up entitlements and reducing poverty, there needs to be a clearer acceptance from the Government that the independence (from government) of the sector is important and a more joined-up and strategic approach to developing funding streams to support (including second-tier) advice.

Notes

1 E Balls MP, written ministerial statement on the Children and Young People review, July 2006
2 Department for Work and Pensions, Households Below Average Income 2004/05, Corporate Document
Services, 2006
3 S Machin, P Gregg and S Harkness, Poor Kids: trends in child poverty 1968-96, Paper presented at the Royal Economic Society’s 1999 Annual Conference, University of Nottingham
4 B Bradbury and M Jantti, Child Poverty Across Industrialised Nations, Innocenti Occasional Paper, 1999
5 See note 2
6 Institute for Fiscal Studies, Poverty and Inequality in Britain: 2006, 2006
7 See note 6
8 See note 6
9 O Letwin MP, ‘Why We Have Signed Up to Labour’s Anti-poverty Target’, the Guardian, 11 April 2006
10 J Hutton MP, ‘What Will it Take to End Child Poverty?’ speech to Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 6 July 2006
11 G Preston (ed), At Greatest Risk: the children most likely to be poor, CPAG, 2005
12 Fabian Society, Narrowing the Gap: the Fabian Commission on life chances and child poverty, 2006
13 D Hirsh, What Will it Take to End Child Poverty? Firing on all cylinders, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2006
14 Using the poverty threshold of 60 per cent of median income after housing costs. See J Bradshaw, N Finch, E Mayhew, VM Ritakallio and C Skinner, Child Poverty in Large Families, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2006
15 See note 14
16 Cabinet Office, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People, 2005 (a joint report with the Department for Work and Pensions, Department of Health, Department for Education and 30 Notes Comprehensive spending review 2007 Skills, and Office of the Deputy Prime Minister)
17 See note 16. See also D Gordon, R Parker, F Loughran and P Heslop, Disabled Children in Britain: a reanalysis of the OPCS Disability Surveys, The Stationery Office, 2000
18 N Sharma, Still Missing Out? Ending poverty and social exclusion: messages to government from families with disabled children, Barnardo’s, 2002
19 E Emerson, ‘Mothers of Children and Adolescents with Intellectual Disability: social and economic situation, mental health status, and the self-assessed social and psychological impact of their children’s difficulties’, Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 47: 4/5, 2003, pp385-99
20 G Preston with M Robertson, Out of Reach: benefits for disabled children, CPAG, 2006
21 See note 2
22 G Craig, ‘Poverty Among Black and Minority Ethnic Children’, in G Preston (ed), At Greatest Risk: the children most likely to be poor, CPAG, 2005
23 Social Exclusion Unit, Minority Ethnic Issues in Social Exclusion and Neighbourhood Renewal, Cabinet Office, 2000
24 H Crawley, Moving Forward: the provision of accommodation for Travellers and Gypsies, Institute for Public Policy Research, 2004
25 Commission for Racial Equality, Gypsies and Travellers: a strategy for the CRE 2004-2007, Commission for Racial Equality
26 Judicial Studies Board, Equal Treatment Bench Book, 2004, section 1.5.8, available at www.jsboard.co.uk.
27 Department for Education and Skills, Ethnicity and Education: the evidence on minority ethnic pupils, 2005
28 C Power, Room to Roam: England’s Irish Travellers, Action Group for Irish Youth/Community Fund, 2004
29 C Kiddle, Traveller Children: a voice for themselves, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1999
30 C Clark, ‘Race, Ethnicity and Social Security: the experience of Gypsies and Travellers in Britain’, Journal of Social Security Law, 6:4, 1999, pp186-202; L Webster and J Millar, Making a Living: social security, social exclusion and New Travellers, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2001
31 See note 28, p7
32 R Lister, ‘Citizenship on the Margins: citizenship, social work and social action’, European Journal of Social Work, 1, 1998, pp5-18; P Kemp, J Bradshaw, P Dornan, N Finch, and E Mayhew, Routes out of Poverty: a research review, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2004
33 B Broad, Improving the Health and Well Being of Young People Leaving Care, Russell House Publishing, 2005; J Dixon, J Lee, J Wade, S Byford and H Weatherley, Young People Leaving Care: an evaluation of costs and outcomes, Report to the DfES, University of York, 2004; AS Allard, A Case Study Investigation into the Implementation of the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000: the experience of eight London boroughs, National Children’s Bureau, 2004
34 J Hills and K Stewart (eds), A More Equal Society? New Labour, poverty, inequality and exclusion, The Policy Press, 2005
35 L Harker, Delivering on Child Poverty: what would it take?, A report for the Department for Work and Pensions, The Stationery Office, 2006
36 See note 35
37 A £40 top-up to wages, targeted at those lone parents moving from benefits into work (over 16 hours) and available for 12 months. At the moment this is available only in parts of the country.
38 These have sought to invest time supporting and training people in specific areas of work to encourage longer-term sustainable employment.
39 See note 2
40 See note 2
41 Department for Education and Skills, National Curriculum Assessment, GCSE and Equivalent Attainment and Post-16 Attainment by Pupil Characteristics in England 2005, 2006, Table 44
42 See note 2
43 Albeit one in the process of being changed.
44 See note 35
45 Department for Work and Pensions, The Abstract of Statistics for Benefits, National Insurance Contributions, and Indices of Prices and Earnings 2005, 2006, Table 5.7
46 F Bennett with P Dornan, Child Benefit: fit for the future, CPAG, 2006
47 The 2 December 2004 and 5 December 2005 Pre-Budget Reports and associated documents confirm an earnings rise for the child element of child tax credit but a freeze for the family element.
48 See www.makechildbenefitcount.org
49 D Primarolo MP, Written Parliamentary Answer to David Laws MP, 25 October 2006
50 See note 46
51 Take-up of working families’ tax credit was 62-65 per cent in the first full year, 2000/01, and reached 72-76 per cent in its last year of operation, 2003/03. HM Revenue and Customs, Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit: take-up rates 2003-04, 2006
52 Daycare Trust, Childcare Costs 2006, at www.daycaretrust.org.uk
53 See K Stanley, K Bellamy and G Cooke, Equal Access? Appropriate and affordable childcare for every child, Institute for Public Policy Research, 2006
54 See note 52
55 Strategy Unit, Delivering for Children and Families, 2002, section 3.1.2; also see Department for Education and Skills, Department for Education and Skills: five year strategy for children and learners Cn6272, July 2004, p21 for graphical illustration by local authority.
56 Public Accounts Committee, Early Years: progress in developing high quality childcare and early education accessible to all, House of Commons, September 2004, HC-444, para 3
57 T Brunwin, S Clemens, G Deakin and E Mortimer, The Costs of Schooling, Department for Education and Skills Research Report, 2004
58 Department for Education and Skills, Statistics of Education: education and training statistics for the United Kingdom, The Stationery Office, 2004, Table 2.10
59 See note 2
60 Citizens Advice, Help with Uniform Costs: update, p4: a previous study came to very similar results, see National Association of Citizen Advice Bureaux, Uniform Failure, CAB evidence report, 2001, p18
61 Department for Education and Skills, Planning and Funding Extended Schools: a guide for schools, local authorities and their partner organisations, The Stationery Office, 2006
62 Analysis of Table 21 in F Jones, The Effects of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income, 2004/05, National Statistics, 2006
63 The poorest spend more on smoking than the rich in both absolute and relative terms. However, the cash difference largely disappears when the ‘sin taxes’ on tobacco and alcohol are added together.
64 John Hutton MP, ‘Statement to House of Commons on Child Support Re-design’, 24 July 2006, at
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/aboutus/2006/24-07-06.asp
65 Work and Pensions Select Committee, The Efficiency Savings Programme in Jobcentre Plus, Second Report of Session 2005–06, HC 834-I, March 2006, para147
66 See Work and Pensions Select Committee, The Efficiency Savings Programme in Jobcentre Plus: Government response to the Committee’s second report of session 2005-06, HC 1187, June 2006
67 See Child Poverty Action Group, Jobcentre Plus: changes to service delivery, September 2006, at
http://www.cpag.org.uk/cro/Briefings/CPAG_JobCentrePlus_survey.pdf
68 See National Statistics, Income-related Benefits Estimates of Take-up, Department for Work and Pensions, 2006; HMRC, Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit Take-up Rates, 2003/04, 2006; G Preston with M Robertson, Out of Reach: benefits for disabled children, CPAG, 2006 also explores non-take-up of disability benefits.
69 Department for Work and Pensions, Departmental Report 2006, 2006. The first target was not met.
70 Department for Work and Pensions, Quarterly Appeal Tribunal Statistics, March 2006, Table 3. Figures for the quarter to March 2006 and are for oral hearings.
71 National Audit Office, Helping Those in Financial Hardship: the running of the social fund, The Stationery Office, 2005
72 This itself is indicative of poor administration as Jobcentre Plus staff can use more appropriate ‘interim payments’ instead of crisis loans, which would also reduce the pressure on the fund.
73 K Legge, Y Hartfree, B Stafford, M Mayadi, J Beckhelling, L Nyhagen Predelli and S Middleton, The Social Fund: current role and future direction, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2006
74 Figures from Department for Work and Pensions, Fraud and Error in Income Support, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Pension Credit from April 2004 to March 2005, National Statistics, 2006
75 HMRC, Child and Working Tax Credits Error and Fraud Statistics 2003-04, 2006, available at
www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats
76 In evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, see Tackling the Complexity of Benefit Regulations, December 2005 available at http://www.cpag.org.uk/info/briefings_policy/CPAG_simplificiation_benefits.pdf
77 CPAG is a provider of this – including handbooks, second-tier telephone support and training.
78 See CPAG’s evidence to the Carter review of legal aid, Making Legal Rights a Reality, October 2005, at
http://www.cpag.org.uk/cro/Briefings/CPAG_Making_Legal_Rights_a_Reality.pdf