The Liberal Democrats and poverty
Posted on Friday 27 July, 2007
Filed Under Politics
They talk of Lorenz curves, Gini coefficients and 90/10 ratios. But strip away the jargon economists use to discuss income distribution in Britain today, and the message is clear. The UK has become a dramatically more unequal society since 1979.
Even after a decade of New Labour, that trends continues unabated. But at least it has managed to reverse the non-stop growth in absolute poverty that commenced under Thatcherism, which is the minimum its members and voters would expect from it. Check out the facts for yourself at this website.
The period 1998/1999 to 2004/05 saw six years of uninterrupted decline in poverty statistics, with improvements among pensioners and children particularly noticeable. Even so, in 2005/06, that achievement slammed into reverse gear: the number of people in poverty grew by 750,000.
And the end result? Using the most widely accepted benchmark – household income at 60% or below the median household income – some 13m people, representing 22% of the population, are living in poverty.
Yet poverty can substantially be eradicated, even under a capitalist society. The comparable 2002 figures are 2.6% for Sweden and 3.9% for Norway.
Now the other parties are trying to get in on the act. Following the recent Tory package from IDS, today the Liberal Democrats have published a plan they claim will lift 5m out of relative poverty by 2020. Only another 7m people left to worry about, then. But, hey, let’s gloss over that one.
The proposals will be funded by taking entitlement to tax credit away from 2m families made up of ‘higher earners’, while increasing child benefits by a fiver a week, and paying state schools a ‘pupil premium’ of £1,500 a head to take on poorer kids. State pensions would once again be index-linked.
The suggestions seem welcome enough. But just one question: how does a relatively modest fine-tuning of means testing, spaced out over more than a decade, amount to anything like the ‘radical new agenda’ Lib Dem spokesman David Laws proclaims it to be? It certainly isn’t going to turn Stockwell into Stockholm overnight.
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9 Responses to “The Liberal Democrats and poverty”
Hmmm not sure about the 2.6% in Sweden
This graph suggetss it is closer to 9%
http://www.poverty.org.uk/01/c.pdf
Otherwise reasonable assessment.
point of order, comrade dave, the Lib Dems don’t control Stockwell, but they are running Southwark and have (in Bermondsey) an MP, Simon Hughes
it’s touch and go which is worse, Lambeth or Southwalk.
Lambeth is trendy and in the north of the borough there’s range of a Georgian properties and a gross of MPs, then again Southwark has genteel Dulwich
I think Southwark’s a little ahead on the shootings league
If Labour can’t win and hold on to boroughs like Southwark what can they do?
strangely, the Lib Dems seems to be better at PR but that’s about all
This might sounf like a facetious comment but I do mean it…If the Government would do something about high prices for food, energy and accommodation, that would solve a lot of the poor’s problems.
Sue is absolutely right (and add water as well).
Fine words butter no parnsips. Not that you could butter anything with the ersatz concoction offered by the Liberal Democrats.
The biggest sources of relative and absolute poverty are 1) Low waged, ‘flexible’ jobs, temporary, agency work, and part-time employment. 2) The complexity of the Tax Credit system , and its inefficiency (same applies to Council Tax, where the poor only pay a relatively slightly smaller ammount than the rich). 3) The shrinking rate of Income Support and Invalidity Benefit, both of which in relative terms have declined steadily since Thatcher and are now at a level on which few can live without some kind of fiddle or massive debt.
I don’t see a hard man like Brown – who loathes the feekless poor, and only likes those who doff their caps politely when he forces them into low-paid work or some cack ‘training’ scheme of no value whatsoever – changing that.
But if anyone was serious about tackling real poverty they’d start by dramatically raising the level of benefits, drastically increasing the minimun wage, extending EU law on rights as work to the UK, and financing this by very high rates of taxation of high earners and company profits.
The Liberal Democrats round here, in Ipswich, are in coalition with the Tories. They have proved their ‘anti-poverty’ credentials by cutting back on services to the highly deprived estates and the even more deprived central town area, giving parts of social provision (Community Resoucres Centres) to religious and chartiable Mr and Mrs Bountifuls, raiding the Municipal Bus Company funds and cutting back timetables, in probable anticipation of its privatisation (thus attacking the less-well off, carless why rely on this) and a whole host of privatisations – that is providing public funds for various chisselers.
Indeed generally grinding the faces of the poor. All on behalf of the small minority (who of course vote) of the comfortably off who live *in* this town (the bourgeoisie generally lives in nearby villages, now middle class enclaves).
That should of course read Minimum Wage.
Please note: I am full of rage against the Liberal Democrats today. Last night the new privatised company that took of the Municipal Cinema – now renamed Hollywood Film Theatre – put out its forthcoming programme.
All the kind of World Cinema that made the Ipswich Film Theatre part of the UK circuit of Independent Cinemas has gone. It really was a brilliant place, standing comparison, in relative terms, with the best London places.
Now: kids stuff, Harry Potter etc. Films already shown, Becoming Jane, Marie Antoninette (since thay’re on DVD must be cut price, Mrs Potter and soem duff thriller etc. One French Film – la Vie en Rose (that’s the sole World Cinmea – but they only shew it because it was already there at the Municipal Theatre).
Two ‘treats’ from classic cinema: Casablanca (who hasn’t seen this at least ten times?) and the Jewel in the Crown, The Sound of Music.
Another public service destroyed: Mission Accomplished.
Err, Dave, you rather contradict yourself when you say the “trend continues unabated” and then say that actually there were a good six years where significant progress was made.
I know you all love to hate the government, but unlike any one of those previously saintly and very left wing Labour governments of The Good Old Days, this one actually submitted itself to being measured against an extremely tough poverty target – namely relative poverty. Back in the 1970s the demand that governments do this was a big call from Marxian voices – so fair play, eh?
But, yes, it is tough going. Relative poverty declines quite rapidly in recessions in western states because of the welfare state – getting it to go the other way in the good times is hard.
But please, don’t repeat Tory propaganda here. If we wanted to read the Daily Mail we’d be on their website.
Of course, my point was that only relative poverty declines in a recession. Not many people are getting better off.
Interesting about the municipal theatre Andrew.
The same thing happened here in Swindon a few years back when the municipally owned Wyvern theatre was privatised.
Previously they had put on, among the dross, some really good cultural output, theatre, modern dance, classical ballet and opera, all of which used to pack the place out. Once privatised they showed tribute bands, puppetry of the penis, George Galloway, and occassional Hollywood films alreasy out on DVD. Hhardly any audieence.
So last year when it had to close due to finding blue asbestos, there has been no campaign to reopen it, after all who cares whether a town has a venue that shows a tribute to the Eagles, called Motel California?
It is interesting that the free market ideologues assume they can make profits from reducing the cultural level, but in fact that is not where the audeince is – people are only prepared to go out and spend money of something is worth seeing, and the audeicne for culture is bigger than they think.
Of course it is harder to reduce poverty in periods of capitalist growth, especially when the economic model you have decided on is based on the rich enricing themselves at the expense of the poor. If anyone thinks income differentials is a good measure then they are kidding themselves. Have a look at what happesn after necessary expenditure i.e. the breadline britain surveys. We have had 60 months of consecutive capitalist growth and more and more people are now living on the edge. The debt mountain of £1.3 trillion is a key factor here. Millions are in effect indentured labour, serfs to the banks, but not technically in poverty. Dave, you give to much grace to the headline figures that claim reduction. What has happened is that Labour heaved a layer over the relative poverty line during a boom period – but their place is fragile. Child poverty went up by 100,000 last year. What do we think is going to happen when a rcession hits – just who, under Labour’s neo-liberal model will be hurt most? All tax and benfit changes are irrelevant unless there are deepepr structural changes in the economy. One in four in poverty, another quarter surviving on the edge – that is what the Dorling study showed. A social disater brough to us by New Labour.