Blame is directed at those living in poverty, whose conduct is seen as needing correction, rather than at social structures
Kate Green calls for a new alliance to end child poverty
Human rights, equality and anti-poverty campaigners share much common ground. It is surprising this has not been made more explicit in the past – after all, we’re concerned with the same issues: fairness, the opportunity for all to participate fully in society and the protection of individual and family rights.
Yet in anti-poverty policy, rights are being made subject to ever more onerous individual ‘responsibilities’. Any suggestion of a right to an adequate income on which to raise a family is at best ignored and frequently derided. Britain continues to have one of the highest rates of child poverty of any developed country, with 3.8 million children growing up poor. The overall child poverty rate is bad enough at 30 per cent, but it doubles among some minority groups.
The children most vulnerable to poverty are most likely to come from minority or marginalised groups championed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and its predecessor organisations: children in lone parent families (usually headed by women); those in households where there is a sick or disabled family member; and children from ethnic minority groups.
The reasons for the economic disadvantage of these groups are of course already well understood. Disadvantage and discrimination in the labour market leaves many families without work or in low-paid, unsustainable jobs. Unequal access to services and discriminatory attitudes and expectations from service providers and professionals affect the families with whom they work.
Important work by the three former equality commissions highlighted unfair economic disadvantage faced by many and led to improvements in their rights. But despite their efforts, a 17 per cent gender pay gap and a 15 per cent ethnic minority employment gap remain, alongside lower rates of pay and employment for disabled people compared with non-disabled people who have equivalent qualifications. The failure of our education system to provide real equality of opportunity for some ethnic minority children and many disabled children continues to damage their wellbeing.
The problems that put families into poverty are not caused by individual failure or a refusal to engage. They are systemic problems in the way society is organised and structured that fail to address - and indeed perpetuate and extend - disadvantage and discrimination. Yet recent policy responses from the main parties have too often pandered to the very prejudices that result from these systemic problems. Blame is directed at those living in poverty, whose conduct is seen as needing correction, rather than at social structures.
There have of course been some welcome policy initiatives to strengthen rights at work, to improve education and training for disadvantaged groups, and to address low pay (particularly benefiting women) by introducing the national minimum wage. But the policy emphasis has recently hardened around individual conduct. The language of 'rights and responsibilities' has been enthusiastically adopted from America by all our main political parties, despite US child poverty levels being even worse than the UK’s poor record.
The parties have become fixated on forcing more parents into employment as the only route out of poverty for their families, but little attention is being paid to the need for sufficient family-friendly, well-paid employment. This can end up forcing parents to put the wellbeing of their children at risk and may simply mean they join the 1.9 million children currently in families with work yet still living in poverty because of low pay.
Government reforms (and similar, though harsher, Conservative proposals) to increase work requirements for lone parents and narrow the gateway to benefits for disabled people assume that people are reluctant to work. This ignores employers’ reluctance to employ lone parents and disabled people. It disregards the lack of affordable childcare. It pays no attention to the overwhelming evidence that many families are cycling in and out of low-paid, unsustainable jobs. Job retention and progression and employers' responsibilities must be priorities if the government is to help poor families.
To be fair, the government has said that lone parents won't have to take work that would leave them worse off than on benefits. But ministers have failed to specify what 'better off' means, and the current calculation used by the Department for Work and Pensions excludes so many work-related costs and benefit losses that it can't form the basis of a statement of a family’s economic rights.
For those at greatest risk of economic disadvantage, the renegotiation of family security rights at the heart of the UK’s welfare system is putting in jeopardy the rights to enjoyment of family life and a childhood free from poverty. However, we shouldn't see the widespread political consensus for a ‘work first’ approach to child poverty, which sees long-held family security rights as open to renegotiation, as an unstoppable force - despite its current momentum. Basic human rights, particularly for those who are already disadvantaged and vulnerable, must be immovable.
The advent of the Equality and Human Rights Commission offers a new opportunity to end the injustice of child poverty, but the poverty, rights and equality lobbies will have to venture together into unpopular political territory. Socio-economic rights have long been the poor relation to human rights, but if there is little sign of public or political enthusiasm for that to change, it is because we have too often failed to explicitly connect the two.
We must assert the inalienability of economic rights if we are to protect poor children. And we must tackle economic inequality if we are to ensure that everyone, regardless of background or personal circumstances, can achieve social equality and realise their full human rights.
Now is surely the time for a firm alliance between rights, equality and anti-poverty campaigners to speak up for those who face the greatest social discrimination and economic disadvantage. This is, after all, a natural alliance between different branches of what it is ultimately the same movement, built on the shared foundation of equality and justice for all.
Kate Green is chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group