Please convince me that the Tories WON'T create wider divisions btween the rich and poor and haves and have nots?

[poshsinglemum]

I'm not great at politics but I am under the imptression that things like inheritance tax and tax breaks for married people are going to widen the gap between the rich and poor?

Am, I wrong? Would anyone like to explain how the Tories would improve my lot as a single mum. Would they find me a nice man to marry for example?

Right. The generally accepted way of measuring poverty (it is pretty hard to pin down, but this is how the main academics and so on define it numerically) is below 60% of national median income after housing costs, and they do some jiggery pokery to adjust for different types of households.

The poverty line at the moment stands at £322 per week, after housing costs, for a couple with two children aged 5 and 14. For a single person it is £115.

On a search for more facts...

Child poverty costs Britain at least £25 billion a year (Rowntree foundation, 2008) this is all related to almost every area of a childs life chances being worse if they have the misfortune to be born into a poor household.

I'm having trouble finding the Tories actual policy on child poverty, beyond that they have signed up to the Labour pledge of ending it by 2020. Can any Tories help on this? I have found mention of a radical welfare reform, but no actual facts. I'll go back and continue looking though.

I shall go and look for the Labour policies, is there a Lib Dem about who can help us with their policies? Or indeed any of the other parties? If not, I will find some myself.

I just think we need to get the actual facts so we can debate with some accuracy.

BP - is that right? that's over 1200 a month after housing costs? if that's right we are living in poverty [we really are not]

Ooh, this is interesting - see where you are compared to the rest of the uk

oh i see 'housing costs = council tax' not rent/mortgage.

now it makes more sense, before you deduct rent we do have more than £322 p/w.

Ooh, we came out remarkably wealthy, then I realised I hadn't taken the tax off - doh!

Jackie - that is the measure used when politicians and academics talk about child poverty. I've always found it a bit dodgy tbh, eg using after housing costs means that someone who chooses to buy a massive house rather than rent a smaller house is poorer, whereas imo they are just daft, but I suppose you have to allow for housing costs to be different around the country and so on.

It's not rich, by any means, lets take 1200 pcm as the income of an imaginary family with kids aged 5 and 14. With kids those ages, they would probably want three bedrooms, so lets say council tax of about £150 a month. Utility bills of about £100 a month, water about £40. Tv licence, telephone landline and internet charges of about £40. A weekly ticket for the bus and metro round here costs about £20 for an adult, so I'll guess at £10 for a child, lets say they all take public transport to school and work (because I have no idea how much cars cost ) So that's approx £240 a month. My food bill is currently about £70 a week, but my kids are a lot younger and we tend to cook from scratch, so for ease we'll say £400 a month on food. That leaves 230 pcm for clothes, insurance, savings, school trips, toys and luxuries such as holidays, after school activities, the odd bottle of wine, newspapers and so on. Just under £15 per person per week. I know a lot of my figures could be questioned, eg I'm not sure a 5 year old would go to school so far away they would need a bus pass and it wouldn't be paid for, but still, it's hardly rolling in it, is it? We have much less coming in and are quite happy, btw, but we are aware of every penny.

Right, either I am rubbish at searching or parties have a distinct lack of hard policy on their websites...

ButterPie, did you add in rent/mortgage costs?

I'm curious now. I'm a Labour party member (I probably should out myself at this point) but I couldn't actually tell you the hard numbers of what Labour plan to do about child poverty. I am the mother of two children who apparently live in poverty, so I can point to how they benefit, eg Surestart, CTC, Healthy Start, NHS and so on, but I couldn't tell you any national figures. I will send emails to the three biggest parties and post the replies on here.

Wubbly, yeah. The figure of after housing costs is after rent/mortgage (no idea why that other site uses council tax, presumably it guesses your rent/mortgage from that, but I did social policy at uni, and it is definitely after rent/mortgage has been taken out)

if that figure is after deducting rent then officially we live in poverty. which is bollocks. we are not rolling in it by any means, but we can pay our rent and bills and buy enough food for everyone, by my standards we therefore do not live in poverty.

also according to that website we are better off than 40% of the population - so how can we live in poverty, unless half the bleeding country lives in poverty?

Jackie, it is an age old debate between "absolute" (ie starving and homeless) and relative (ie not able to participate fully in society) poverty.

www.cpag.org.uk/povertyfacts/index.htmthis is a useful site for info.

Measuring poverty on income alone is problematic, as there are many more factors, eg my kids are better off than our income would suggest due to me and DP being relatively educated and intelligent, our family being supportive and so on. But it is very hard to put an official measure on things like that.

www.cpag.org.uk/povertyfacts/index.htm

I'll try the link again...

thanks for the info - it is interesting reading. although it is saying something when my dh is a teacher, i work for the nhs, and we live below the 'official' poverty line. £322 net per week after housing does seem a lot to me tho, lots and lots of my friends have less than this, and i would class them as well educated, with good jobs and on fairly good incomes.
(but yes skint - as in no money to go on holidays etc)

anyway, i have been distracted from the original debate, back to the evil tory barstewards

Wubbly - I am married to a public sector worker, so we would be going ouch as well if we followed the Irish model. I don't want public sector pay to be cut, but this is one area that HMG does have control over as they are the paymasters; that was my point, not that I want it cut.

Raising taxes across the board will impact equally hard on the lowest paid as a pay freeze; it will mean less money in their pockets, and will hit them harder than the better paid. The tax rise would be permanent, or at least long term, and the pay freeze may be for a shorter time. I agree the banking crisis was not of a dustbin man's making - but it was HMG who intervened to bail the banks out, and we are now paying for Gordon Brown's generosity with our cash.

As for public sector pensions it always makes me smile when these are targeted. Private pensions were doing well as I recall until Mr Brown in his incarnation as Chancellor decided in his infinite wisdom to exercise again his socialist principles and remove dividend tax from the private pension schemes. This netted the treasury billions and screwed up the pension system. It used to be the case that it was accepted the public sector had not so good wages in return for getting a decent pension. If you are not happy for wages to be frozen in the public sector as they wages are low for many, then why do you think that altering their pensions for the worse is going to help then when they retire? There have already been changes to the Armed Forces Pension scheme, and the Teachers Pension scheme, and not to the advantage of those in them or new entrants to the schemes either.

I think if the benefits system was more transparent; fraud was detected more quickly and acted on we would save a lot of money. If the government raised the tax free allowance, we would get rid of the need for means testing and CTCs altogether as people would be keeping more of their income and therefore not need CTCs perhaps. From what I read on here there are always cock ups going on with the Benefits Agency having miscalculated WTC/CTC and large sums in repayments being demanded from claimants. The system is a shambles as well as very expensive to administer.

Re child poverty - GB has had 13 years to get this sorted and he has failed as chancellor and PM to do so. That's a hell of a long time to have an intention to do something. His hand has been on the levers of power since 1997 and he has had ample time to amend and improve his policies. He hasn't. Go figure.

scaryteacher, I agree with you with regards to the increase in the tax free allowance. I quite sure that the tax system could be tweaked to ensure that the poorest workers wouldn't have to should an unfair level of the burden.

As to pensions, in the private sector, the switch from defined benefits to defined contribution started to happen long before the tax dividend came into play. It was in response to the 1995 Pensions Act, following the Maxwell case and covered the equalisation of retirement ages as well the minimum funding requirement.

At the very least, public sector defined benefit schemes should be closed to all new entrants.

You'd be hard pushed to find any private sector employer offering a defined benfits scheme in this day and age, most were wound up and closed many years ago, a process that started under the last administration.

I restate my point re child poverty. Yes the policies have failed but efforts have been made. I remain to be convinced that the tories have any intention in that direction. ButterPie will no doubt keep us posted as to the responses received from the 3 main parties.

I do find it interesting that people cite the failure of some Government policies as the reason for electing Cameron. For me, I'd like to know what he plans to do, not what he thinks the Government have done wrong. I've read his webpage and there is nothing on there other than criticisms of the Government, no policies, no aspirations, no ambition - so it looks like we'll be getting a new Government by default. Baby and bathwater and frying pan and fire spring to mind.

Have a look at the Conservative website as opposed to DCs. They support sure start, tax credits (although will reform the admin), free nursery places and aim to lift half a million children out of poverty. There are draft manifestos there and green papers on security and defence for instance. Hopefully the Tories will also address the issue of rural poverty and not just urban poverty - something the current government can't seem to do.

Pensions: many public sector schemes are changing; I know the Teachers one has changed, and the Armed Forces one has also altered, but the latter is still not a defined contribution one, and I can't see that it ever will be. I don't see however that these schemes can be altered retrospectively. If you have signed up for one scheme then you should be allowed to stay on it. This is what happened with the Armed Forces one, those who thought they'd get more out of the new scheme could move across and did, and all new members of the Forces are on the new scheme. Those who considered that the old scheme was better for them, and this depended where you were in your career, your rank etc, decided to stay put.

I will be voting Tory because I am one instinctively; I've been voting that way since 1983, and the last 13 years have given me no incentive to change at all, especially with the mismanagement in defence and education; the rise of means testing and the sheer weight of bureaucracy and waste of money over that time; and in the approach to Europe which should be done forcibly and with a large handbag attached, not rolling over and waiting for your tummy to be tickled as Blair did and giving away our rebate in return for diddly squat.

ScaryTeacher, I would not rule out voting conservative myself, but I just can't see me voting for Cameron. He's just a poster boy as far as I can see.

ButterPie - I'll be interested to know about the figures re: child poverty from the 3 main parties. I'm presuming that the Tory line on child poverty will be informed by the findings of Iain Duncan-Smith and his research for the Centre for Social Justice www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/

And I agree with scaryteacher with regard to the Government tackling rural as well as urban poverty, the former seeming to be a hidden blight on our society.

Scaryteacher - how can they be supporting surestart when they have said they will cut it and just concentrate on extremely deprived areas? Basically they want to have poor people in their separate little ghettos and then anyone on medium or higher income, or even in a medium or higher income area, to have to pay top dollar. To me, surestart services are vital for everyone - posh mums get pnd too, middle income Dads might need some help getting used to playing with their kids, never mind the benefits of people from different backgrounds mixing at surestart centres.

I voted labour twice - never again.

I grew up in a working class family under a labour government (winter of discontent and all that) and then a tory government.

Under a Tory government my factory working father could afford to buy a property, run a car and take us all on holiday - all without TC's.

Tax credits are a con and a disgrace. They hide the fact that companies are paying people wages which are impossible to live on. Why should someone working full time on the minimum wage have to jump through hoops in order to get their derisory salary topped up?

I voted labour because I thought that they would address some of the inequalities in our society. I did not expect them to price poorer families out of education by introducing tuition fees, I did not expect them to push through the academy programme, I did not expect them to send our troops to be slaughtered in afghanistan, I did not expect them to outsource more and more of our public services to the private sector.

Some people on this thread keep on holding up surestart and TC's as an example of what the lanour party have done for us. Whoopie fucking doo. What a difference they have made to the families living on the 'sink' estates of my city. They've really broken the cycle of inequality and poverty over the past 13 years {ironic smilie] ... Yes that totally mitigates the total mess that this country is in.

Butterpie - if the help is targeted at those who need it most financially or because they can't access help is that not a good thing?

It's not about ghettoising people as far as I can see, but making sure the neediest get the help. A posh mum may get PND, I did, (not posh though), but I knew what was happening and got it sorted. DH wasn't used to babies, but we coped in 95 when we had ds. People coped before Surestart. Those with a higher income can pay for help, but help is available through GPs and HVs.

I think there is an element creeping in of spoonfeeding from Labour. We are adults who can make our own decisions and take responsibility for ourselves. Those that can't, need the help more than those of us who can. I wouldn't have used Surestart as I am capable of sorting myself out; I don't want or need to access help from the state in that context.

I was having this conversation just the other day ST.

The vast majority of families don't need Surestart. That money could be far better spent elsewhere.
Those that do need help should get it.