Martin Narey (ex head of Barnado's) in today's Times really says what I have tried to say on the thread- the benefits will feed your children but some parents often not through their own fault cannot cope and manage the money.
Even our poorest children don?t go hungry
Martin Narey
The former director of Barnardo?s Martin Narey
Published at 12:01AM, September 11 2012
Save the Children is wrong to claim that our welfare state no longer covers basic needs
Good, I thought when I heard that Save the Children was to campaign against child poverty in Britain. But I was troubled when I looked at the charity?s website and saw its claims that Britain?s poorest children are missing regular hot meals, and that their parents go hungry to feed them or cannot afford warm coats and new shoes.
Child poverty in the UK is very real, but it?s not the simple poverty that Save the Children describes. Low income is certainly at the heart of it, but it?s also about poverty of aspiration, education and parenting. But I know why Save the Children is talking about missed meals: it captures public attention. Many times when I ran Barnardo?s ? and during the five years in which child poverty was our No 1 priority ? I declined to sign up to campaigns suggesting that British families do not get enough in benefits to feed or clothe their children. I did so for two reasons: because it?s not true, but also because such campaigns suggest that if we met the very basic requirements of a hot meal and warm clothing, people would think that poverty had been lifted.
This isn?t to say that there are not emergencies when families do need urgent help with food or clothing. But they are generally short-term and caused by an administrative glitch, a marital separation, because money has been lost and sometimes, frankly, because it has been squandered on drink or drugs. Such crises are not symptomatic of the welfare state?s failure to provide families with enough money for the basics of life.
Let?s look at the income of an imaginary family of two out-of-work adults and two children, aged 10 and 15. They pay £525 a month in rent and council tax for their home. After those costs are paid, they receive a further £290 in benefits a week, which is little enough when set against, for example, the cost of utility bills. And it leaves them about £150 a week short of what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates is needed for a socially acceptable standard of living. But that standard, quite properly for a family of four living outside London, includes the cost of a car as well as things such as a computer and internet access.
The picture does not get much better if the father has a full-time job at the minimum wage. Even then, they would be about £60 a week below the Rowntree reasonable income level.
Child poverty in the UK is relative, rather than absolute as in the Third World. But that doesn?t mean that it isn?t real and enduring. Recently, when I was trying to persuade a conference of doctors that benefits were inadequate for a reasonable standard of living, I was told by a GP that she could easily maintain her family on £290 a week. And for one week, or even two or three, she probably could.
But the nature of family poverty is that it is there every week and, in my experience, it is frequently made worse by debt. This is caused not by extravagance, but by taking out a loan, for instance, to replace a refrigerator or buy the children Christmas presents. A £150 loan from a company such as The Provident, paid back over four months, would attract an APR interest rate of 1,068.5 per cent.
But it is simply not the case that the welfare state no longer provides a safety net. And it is silly to claim as some do (such as Nick Cohen in The Observer who drew an absurd parallel between Britain and Africa: ?Hunger is not relative. Hunger is the same the world over.?) that this is all about lack of Tory compassion. I have never voted for Iain Duncan Smith?s party, but it is patently ridiculous to suggest that the Work and Pensions Secretary does not care about alleviating poverty.
Spending on benefits may have hit a temporary wall and may fall a little. But the magnitude of the growth during my lifetime is staggering. Last year we spent about £196 billion on benefits and pensions. In real terms, that is ten times what we spent in 1955 and 40 per cent greater in real terms than in 1999.
The real debate is about how we spend that budget. Means testing benefits such as free travel and winter fuel allowances for the elderly would allow a little more for families, particularly those where the parents work. Living in poverty when out of work is tough. Living in poverty when a parent works full time is a tragedy.
Martin Narey was chief executive of Barnardo?s, 2005-11 and formerly chaired the End Child Poverty coalition