Expanding poverty
More than a fifth of the population in the UK is at risk of poverty. The data shows that 14.4 million people lived in relative poverty in 2021-22 – a million more than the previous year, and almost two and a half times the number in 2017.1 Of these in 2022 3.8 million people experienced ‘destitution’, defined as struggling to meet the most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed. This number included about one million children.
Both parliamentary parties calculate working-age benefits and pensions as low as they can. Today a reduction in benefits can be expected because Hunt aims to save £2bn from the welfare bill. He can do this by calculating working age benefits and pensions based on a slight fall of the consumer prices index (CPI) – generally known as the inflation rate – to 4.6% (down from 6.7% in September).
The United Nations reports
Five years ago, the United Nations Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, declared: ‘Much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos.’ His comments followed a two-week tour of Britain visiting Jobcentres, tenants’ associations and talking to many who receive universal credit and rely on other social services.
Alston’s accusation of the ‘systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population’ was rejected angrily by the Conservative government of the time, but is now inescapable. This year, his successor as UN rapporteur Olivier De Schutter, concluded ahead of a visit to Britain that ‘things have got worse’. Universal credit payments of £85 a week for single adults over 25 are, he wrote ‘grossly insufficient’. 2
De Schutter confirms that British poverty levels violate international law and are ‘simply not acceptable’. His UN report goes beyond just citing the statistics to describe the lives of the poorest, recording that poverty is a destructive force on all aspects of life, affecting the physical and mental health of individuals, families, and communities.
Inequality is deadly
Child death rates are on the rise in England. There were 3,743 deaths of children in the year ending March 2023 – up from 3,452 in the previous year, a rise from 29.3 to 31.8 per 100,000 children. The death rates in the poorest areas were more than twice as high as in the richest.
For children of Black or Black British ethnicity the death rate stood at 56.6 per 100,000, for Asian or Asian British 50.8 and for White ethnicity 25.5. The steepest rise was for children under five.
As the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health president, Dr Camilla Kingdon, has said, figures such as these in a nation as rich as ours are ‘unforgivable’. Infant mortality is the standard by which countries judge the state of their healthcare systems. The differentials in early years’ health outcomes continue throughout a lifetime. In England and Wales, life expectancy at birth for men living in the most deprived areas is 74.1 years, compared with 83.5 years in the least deprived, a difference of 9.4 years. For women, the difference is 7.7 years. The average male life expectancy in the most deprived areas of Scotland is 13.7 years fewer than in the least deprived. For females the difference is 10.5 years.3
Housing and home
One of the necessities for a healthy life is a warm, secure, affordable home without the anxiety of eviction. The government’s own figures for 2020/2021 showed that just over two million homes in Britain suffer from at least one serious hazard such as damp or structural or electrical problems. Millions of people, many with long-term illnesses and disabilities, are living in damp, cold homes infested with mould and vermin, as well as other dangers that pose a significant risk to their health and even lives. Inhaling mould spores can cause allergic reactions, asthma, respiratory infections, wheezing and shortness of breath. Cold and damp can also increase the risk of heart disease, and have a significant impact on mental health. The NHS estimates that £1.4bn is spent annually on the immediate treatment of illnesses associated with living in homes not fit for human habitation, and £18.4bn for what it calls the ‘wider societal costs’ of unsafe, cramped, and damp accommodation.4
People need green spaces
It is widely recognised that wellbeing and physical fitness are increased by access to fresh air and open green spaces. For maximum benefit this should be a regular part of daily life, free and, preferably, within walking distance. Friends of the Earth 5 has gathered data on public green space, gardens, and open access land such as mountains, moors and heaths, and combined it with neighbourhood population data including ethnicity and income. The findings show a marked disparity in access to green space by income and a strong correlation between green space deprivation and ethnicity. People of black, Asian or minority ethnic origin are more than twice as likely as white people to live in areas in England that are most deprived of green space. Almost 40% of people of those origins live in England’s most green space-deprived neighbourhoods, compared to 14% of white people. Greenspace Scotland found that 57% of respondents live within five-minutes’ walk of green space, be it a local park, nearby field, or canal path. This figure fell to 39% for people from a black, Asian or minority ethnicity and 46% for those with a household income of under £15,000.
Growing up poor: school and work
700,000 children are reported to be in danger from unsafe schools, the majority of them in poorer areas. Damp, rotting interiors and inadequate toilets make an unpleasant environment for both pupils and staff. Small wonder then that, overall, school attendance (at 92.6%) has barely recovered from the immediate post-Covid drop-off. One in five pupils in England was persistently absent in the past school year. While for some poor children school is a refuge and possible provider of a free breakfast and lunch, for a substantial minority it remains a hostile environment. Exam targets at Key Stage 1, 2 and 3 dominate in the classroom culminating in the GCSE results at 16 years which are published in a league table and establish the hierarchy of schools.
In this context poor children are said to have ‘failed’ and not only ‘let themselves down’ but also failed the school and their teachers. NGOs, educationalists, academics, and researchers publish dozens of reports, year on year, that measure the achievement gap between the richest and the poorest pupils. The Education Policy Institute (EPI) uses months of educational development as a marker of the gap between school students. EPI concluded that by 2021 that gap was wider than at any other time in the past ten years and that no progress had been made in recovering ground lost during the Covid pandemic. Clearly, all the many programmes for ‘social mobility’ are ineffectual when poverty is the dominating force in a child’s life.
Many of the burdens carried by poor children are half-hidden within the family. The Children’s Society estimates that there are 800,000 young carers in England, with some as young as five, ‘or even three years old’. Their roles may include looking after a family member or friend who has a physical or mental health condition, or misuses drugs or alcohol. They may also look after brothers, sisters, or elderly relatives too. 39% of young carers said nobody in their school was even aware of their caring responsibilities. It is no surprise that many young people have a need to work for money. Some get a job in the informal sector with family or friends. Others are exploited by the notorious ‘county lines’, where illegal drugs are transported from one area to another, usually by children or vulnerable adults who are coerced by gangs. Others (number unknown) are working for the food delivery apps Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats who specify their employees must be over 18, but whose verified accounts have been lent out to underage workers as young as 14 or 15.
The ‘doom loop’
While the institutions of the state are deliberately enforcing poverty income levels on the poor, they are also undermining ‘the glue that has held British society together’. The better-off sections of the working class are beginning to panic over the shrinkage of public sector provision and the chaos and inefficiency of services starved of funds.
The Financial Times economist, Tim Harford,6 in a surprisingly dramatic account of the annual reports by the Institute for Government (IFG) thinktank and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy says this is now referred to as ‘the doom loop’. He details their data on the rise in waiting times for almost all public services from court cases, hospital treatment, special needs care, dentistry, and inquiries to local government departments about waste disposal, street lighting etc. Meanwhile, hospitals and schools are crumbling from decades of under-investment. The ideological and fiscal attack on state expenditure and in favour of privatisation and ‘free enterprise’ can now be seen for what it is, the fraudulent transfer of public funds to private pockets. Successive governments, Labour and Tory, were happy for capitalist companies to transfer their investments to the most profitable businesses while taking no responsibility for providing health services, child care, foster homes, parole services and all the other infrastructure of an efficient state.
Only socialism can resolve the inherent hostility between the interests of capitalism and the needs of the working class. While the ruling class, with its parliament, legal system, and media, claims to speak of ‘the duty of the government to bear down on inflation’, socialists know that they speak only for themselves. The working class must now speak for itself. We must not only resist the cuts in public spending but also fight to bring the state under the control of the working class as the only way to end poverty and move forward together.
Susan Davidson
1. Joseph Rowntree Foundation www.jrf.org.uk
2. Robert Booth, The Guardian, Sunday 5 November 2023
3. These figures are drawn from a variety of sources. Some include England and Wales, others Scotland and none have been used for NI. All published information notes that Covid had an impact, yet not fully explored, on deaths. Readers who want more precision should turn to sources like the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
4. Whose Land Is It Anyway? Housing, Capitalism and the Working Class, www.revolutionarycommunist.org
5. www.friendsoftheearth.uk/nature/englands-not-so-green-and-pleasant-land-millions-can-only-access-green-space-size-garden
6. Tim Harford, Financial Times, 11-12 November 2023
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 297 December 2023/January 2024
