The Ugly Truth About Poverty In Britain
David Cameron gave his keynote
speech at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester last week and
there was a definite change in the political wind with an attempt to
move towards the centre ground. He said that central to tackling big
social problems is an all-out assault on poverty. Perhaps, Cameron could see the Conservatives being seen as the ‘nasty’ party again, some have said that this is the true man.
Amongst others things he mentioned that
if the Conservatives understood the problem there was a need to tackle
the root causes of poverty and that the best route out of poverty is
work – “It’s simple, get the adults a job”. “So let the message go out:
if you work hard, want to get on, want more money at the end of the
month…the party for you is right here in this hall”.
Yvette Cooper made poverty central to her leadership campaign.
The truth about poverty in Britain is
much more wide ranging and deeply ingrained and David Cameron, no matter
what his motivations has little or no chance of making
meaningful reductions whilst the status quo remains in place.
The UK economy has just about doubled in
size since the early 1980s – yet the number of those suffering
below-minimum living standards has increased by more than double, a
study claims. In addition, the study determines the number of British
households falling below minimum living standards has more than doubled
in that same period of about 30 years. It’s the same in the US.
According to a study by Poverty and Social Exclusion
(PSE), 33% of all UK households endure below-par living standards –
defined as going without three or more “basic necessities of life”, such
as being able to adequately feed and clothe themselves and their
children, and to heat and insure their homes. In the early 1980s, the
comparable figure was 14%. A 140% increase.
Almost 30% of working women are
earning less than the living wage. The figures also showed nearly 50% of
young people are on low wages in London, with the figure rising to 58%
outside the capital. In all, this accounts for 6 million hard working people, the number jumping 19% in just four years.
Billed as the most detailed research
study ever of poverty in the UK, PSE claims that nearly 18 million
Britons live in poor and inadequate housing conditions and that 12
million are simply too poor to take part in all the basic social
activities. It reiterates that one in three people cannot afford to heat
their homes properly, while 4 million adults and children are not able
to eat healthily.
Having a job does not prevent British
families from facing tough living conditions either. The research
determined that many households were financially struggling with the
aforementioned and had at least one adult in work.
The report makes a number of
observations, for instance; that 5.5 million adults go without essential
clothing; that 2.5 million children live in damp homes; that 1.5
million children live in households that cannot afford to heat them;
that one in four adults have incomes below what they themselves consider
is needed to avoid poverty, and that more than one in five adults have
to borrow to pay for day-to-day needs. It is estimated that Britain will have 5 million children living in poverty by 2020.
One thing is clear, attempts by
government to tackle overall poverty has failed. Poverty and deprivation
has increased. The poor are suffering from deeper poverty and the gap
between the rich and poor has widened considerably in the last 30 years.
It is interesting what this high
quality, scientific evidence highlights. The statistics show that
poverty has come about due to the cost of housing, cost of heating, the
cost of clothing and food – these are the basic measures of poverty.
Successive governments in Britain since
the Thatcher era have gone down a political ideology leading to over 4
million council homes being sold off in the ‘right-to-buy’ scheme that
eventually saw 40 percent of them in the hands of private landlords. Another 1.3 million under Cameron are heading that way.
The selling of council homes stock was
accompanied by the slashing of housing budgets and ever more draconian
controls on local authority borrowing and spending. The result was large
rent rises, falling house building and, by 1986, an estimated £19bn
repair backlog for council homes and £25bn for private sector homes. The
more the Conservatives cut and financially constrained, the more
privatisation became the norm for both tenants and local authorities.
The Conservatives also introduced greater powers for private landlords
and liberalised mortgage lending for buy-to-let investment (continued by
Labour) to boost the private rental sector and help to develop major
property companies, agencies and estate agents.
This 30 year strategy has led to a
housing crisis with home ownership now a dream more than an aspiration
for millions of ordinary hard working people. The average deposit
today to buy a property now stands at over £70,000 or £41,000 if you’re
a first time buyer. 40% of property sold in the UK today are to
wealthier cash buyers.
Successive governments in Britain have also supported privatisation of the state infrastructure.
Surging energy prices was the universal experience
of everyone after privatisation that is now having a savage consequence
for household discretionary incomes. Thousands of old people will
certainly die this winter again as a result of the corporate
deception that some like to euphemistically label a ‘regulated’ market –
designed in large part by the same John Major who you may remember
called for the introduction of a windfall tax on energy profits as even
he can see the awful consequences on an already strained working class.
During the winter months, an elderly person dies every seven minutes in
Britain due to being too cold in what is called ‘fuel poverty’. That’s
206 deaths every day or 25,000 per season. For five million pensioners,
heating bills are a major concern.
Then we had water privatisation. Prices
rose by over 50% in the first 4 years and privatised water companies are
planning to increase prices by 40% by 2020.
Food prices
are predicted to rise faster than incomes every year until 2018, and
that was a statement made in 2013 that has only got worse. Meat and
fresh fruit and vegetables becoming only an occasional treat for many as
we now have ‘food poverty’. Over 2 million people in the UK are
estimated to be malnourished, and 3 million more are at risk of becoming so.
Amazingly, 36% of the entire UK
population are just one heating bill or a broken washing machine away
from hardship with 1 in 6 parents going without food themselves to
afford to feed their families.
At the end of the 19th century about 25% of the population was living at or below subsistence level. Surveys
indicated that around 10% were very poor and could not afford even
basic necessities such as enough nourishing food. Not much has changed
then.
The scenery of the ‘cost of living crisis’ saw British workers suffering the biggest drop in real wages
of all major G20 countries in the three years to 2013, according to the
International Labour Organisation. It gets worse. A report at the end
of 2014, by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), found that overall
wages having fallen for six years in succession and are now at levels
last seen 14 years ago.
According to an annual report, “Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2014” by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation,
based on research by the New Policy Institute, as many of the poor now
live in working households than in non-working households.
Leading charities and independent
experts now state that child poverty is on course for the biggest rise
in a generation, reversing years of progress that began in the late
1990s that saw Tony Blair’ government half child poverty in just eleven years from 1999 to 2010.
Enver Solomon, of the National Children’s Bureau, said:
“Over the next five years, as austerity bites, we risk creating a
country where poverty is so stark that children grow up in parallel
worlds where rich and poor families have entirely different lifestyles
that are poles apart.”
London is the sixth richest city in the world, it provides 20% of UK ‘s GDP and yet alongside prosperity lives poverty.
4 in 10 London children now live in poverty. In some inner city areas
of London it’s 50%. Britain is now on the approach to having one third of ALL its children living in poverty.
The reasons for increased poverty are
both complicated and simple. There has been a massive increase in the
profits of corporations in the last three decades accompanied by a 140%
increase in overall households falling into poverty as a result of
suffering the effects of real declining wages and terms of work. In just
the last 15 years, property prices have risen by about 250% in the UK. Private renting has soared in the last decade, and now 2 million sit patiently on a council housing list.
Almost 40% of British families don’t
have enough money for a socially acceptable standard of living. Hardly
surprising when Britain is the only country in the G7 group of leading
economies where inequality has increased this century.
Given the political will, which is
little more than token words along with general corporate greed, David
Cameron’s words on meaningfully reducing poverty in his final few years
as PM are only as absurd as it is unattainable.
Copyright © Graham Vanbergen, True Publica, 2015
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