Child poverty UK
http://www.cpag.org.uk/child-poverty-facts-and-figures
Child poverty facts and figures
- There are 3.5 million children living in poverty in the UK today. That’s 27 per cent of children, or more than one in four.1
- There are even more serious concentrations of child poverty at a local level: in 100 local wards, for example, between 50 and 70 per cent of children are growing up in poverty.2
- Work does not provide a guaranteed route out of poverty in the UK. Two-thirds (66 per cent) of children growing up in poverty live in a family where at least one member works.3
- People are poor for many reasons. But explanations which put poverty down to drug and alcohol dependency, family breakdown, poor parenting, or a culture of worklessness are not supported by the facts.4
- Child poverty blights childhoods. Growing up in poverty means being cold, going hungry, not being able to join in activities with friends. For example, 61 per cent of families in the bottom income quintile would like, but cannot afford, to take their children on holiday for one week a year.5
- Child poverty has long-lasting effects. By 16, children receiving free school meals achieve 1.7 grades lower at GCSE than their wealthier peers.6 Leaving school with fewer qualifications translates into lower earnings over the course of a working life.
- Poverty is also related to more complicated health histories over the course of a lifetime, again influencing earnings as well as the overall quality – and indeed length – of life. Professionals live, on average, eight years longer than unskilled workers.7
- Child poverty imposes costs on broader society – estimated to be at least £29 billion a year.8 Governments forgo prospective revenues as well as commit themselves to providing services in the future if they fail to address child poverty in the here and now.
- Child poverty reduced dramatically between 1998/9-2011/12 when 1.1 million children were lifted out of poverty (BHC).9 This reduction is credited in large part to measures that increased the levels of lone parents working, as well as real and often significant increases in the level of benefits paid to families with children.
- Under current government policies, child poverty is projected to rise from 2012/13 with an expected 600,000 more children living in poverty by 2015/16.10 This upward trend is expected to continue with 4.7 million children projected to be living in poverty by 2020.
- 1. Households Below Average Income, An analysis of the income distribution 1994/95 : 2011/12, Tables 4.1tr and 4.3tr. Department for Work and Pensions, 2013
- 2. Child Poverty Map of the UK, End Child Poverty, March 2011
- 3. Households Below Average Income, An analysis of the income distribution 1994/95 : 2011/12, Table 4.3db. Department for Work and Pensions, 2013
- 4. For example, G Hay and L Bauld, Population estimates of problematic drug users in England who access DWP benefits, Department for Work and Pensions, 2008, suggest that 6.6 per cent of the total number of benefit claimants in England were problem drug users. While drug misuse may prove to be a key reason this group of people finds it hard to escape poverty, it clearly has no explanatory power for the other 93.4 per cent of claimants.
- 5. Households Below Average Income, An analysis of the income distribution 1994/95 : 2011/12, Table 4.7 db. Department for Work and Pensions, 2012
- 6. GCSE and Equivalent Attainment by Pupil Characteristics in England 2009/10, Department for Education 2011
- 7. Life expectancy at birth and at the age of 65 by local areas in the UK, 2004-6 and 2008-10, Office of National Statistics, October 2011
- 8. D Hirsch, Estimating the costs of child poverty, 2013
- 9. Households Below Average Income, An analysis of the income distribution 1994/95 – 2011/2, Department for Work and Pensions, 2013
- 10. J Browne, A Hood and R Joyce, Child and working age poverty in Northern Ireland, Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2103
Gagging Bill attack on democracy
The Gagging Bill is having it’s second reading today. Despite claims by the government that it has addressed concerns, the bill is still an assault on democratic campaigns while failing to address commercial and corporate lobbying .
UK politics news review
- Some Tory MP accuses UK Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron of being “a chambermaid” to UK Liberal-Democrat Conservative Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Interesting and revealing that chambermaids still exist.
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu refuses to be associated with Tony Blair due to Blair’s “morally indefensible” support for Iraq war.
- South African police asked to arrest Tony Blair for war crimes.
NHS news review : ConDem scum withdraw claim that they are privatising the NHS
- Conservative election poster 2010
The UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat(Conservative) coalition government – the ConDems’ – brutal attack on the National Health Service continues.
Update: Lansley does not withdraw the 49% cap on private patients. What’s going on? Did they do a Uee?
- So far the New Statesman and the Financial Times have noticed that Lansley is to announce today the abolition of the cap on private work that hospitals can do. Hospitals can now exclusively treat private, paying patients.
Lansley opens the door to full-scale NHS privatisation
Update 2: Just to clarify, this piece was based on a Financial Times story, which the Department of Health has told us is incorrect. The FT has silently changed the headline, standfirst and content of its story. However, we have decided to leave this piece online, with the relevant correction.
Update: The Department of Health has been in touch to say that the cap is not being removed, rather that the planned 49% limit will be introduced from 1 October 2012.
The 49% cap on private work done by NHS trusts will be abolished.
When the government unveils a policy change on a Friday it’s a sure sign that it doesn’t want you to notice. Today, Andrew Lansley will announce that the 49% cap on private work done by NHS hospitals, which his bill introduced, will be abolished (so far, only the FT has noticed). In other words, the Health Secretary has just opened the door to the full-scale privatisation of the NHS, with hospitals able to raise 100% of their income from private healthcare.
Sue Slipman, the chief executive of the NHS Foundation Trust Network, describes the removal of the cap as “a really creative way of bringing more money into the health service”. What she doesn’t say is that foundation trusts, in pursuit of profit, will likely prioritise the treatment and care of private patients over NHS ones. Since the most profitable procedures are usually the simplest, those requiring more complex treatment will be pushed to the back of the queue. As Howard Catton, head policy at the Royal College of Nursing, has previously warned: “NHS patients may feel a subtle pressure to reach for the credit card.” Since all of the remaining 113 NHS trusts are required to become self-governing foundation trusts by April 2014, the removal of the cap will apply to all NHS services – hospitals, ambulances, mental health, community services and clinics.
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http://www.google.com/search?q=nhs+%22not+privatisation%22+lansley
http://www.google.com/search?q=nhs+%22not+privatisation%22+cameron
http://www.google.com/search?q=nhs+%22not+privatisation%22+clegg
How the Orange Bookers took over the Lib Dems
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What Britain now has is a blue-orange coalition, with the little-known Orange Book forming the core of current Lib Dem political thinking. To understand how this disreputable arrangement has come about, we need to examine the philosophy laid out in The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, edited by David Laws (now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury) and Paul Marshall. Particularly interesting are the contributions of the Lib Dems’ present leadership.
Published in 2004, the Orange Book marked the start of the slow decline of progressive values in the Lib Dems and the gradual abandonment of social market values. It also provided the ideological standpoint around which the party’s right wing was able to coalesce and begin their march to power in the Lib Dems. What is remarkable is the failure of former SDP and Labour elements to sound warning bells about the direction the party was taking. Former Labour ministers such as Shirley Williams and Tom McNally should be ashamed of their inaction.
Clegg and his Lib Dem supporters have much in common with David Cameron and his allies in their philosophical approach and with their social liberal solutions to society’s perceived ills. The Orange Book is predicated on an abiding belief in the free market’s ability to address issues such as public healthcare, pensions, environment, globalisation, social and agricultural policy, local government and prisons.
The Lib Dem leadership seems to sit very easily in the Tory-led coalition. This is an arranged marriage between partners of a similar background and belief. Even the Tory-Whig coalition of early 1780s, although its members were from the same class, at least had fundamental political differences. Now we see a Government made up of a single elite that has previously manifested itself as two separate political parties and which is divided more by subtle shades of opinion than any profound ideological difference.
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