Coalition is repeating Labour's mistakes on poverty says report

The Coalition Government is repeating the same mistakes as Labour on poverty reduction, according to a new report released today by the Joseph Rowntree foundation.

It's annual assessment of poverty in the UK warns that the Coalition does not have a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy, and relies too much on the tax and benefits system alone to encourage people into work, mistakes also made by Labour.

The authors calls for there to be a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy across all age groups whereas the Coalition, like Labour, has a strategy for child poverty only.

This ignores,says the report, the equally high level of poverty among young adults. It also ignores rising poverty among working-age adults without dependent children, which has risen by 1 million in the last decade.

The report found that in the year to 2009/10, the child poverty rate fell to 29 per cent, the second fall in two years.

Child poverty fell by around one-seventh under the previous Labour Government.

The report finds that like Labour, the Coalition's policies rely too much on the tax and benefits system to encourage people into work. There is not enough emphasis on putting the creation of more and better jobs at the heart of anti-poverty policy.

Millions more jobs are needed in the UK economy. Six million people were under-employed in the first half of 2011,this includes people who are unemployed (2.5m), working part-time but wanting full-time work (1.2m),and those classed as economically inactive but wanting work (2.3m).

Other changes to Tax Credits now mean that an additional 1.4 million households lose over 70p for each extra £1 they earn. Although the report welcomes Universal Credit as a reform heading in the right direction, it still will not address problems with low paid, insecure and dead end jobs. Without solving these problems, poverty can never properly be tackled – over half of all children in poverty are living with a parent who already does paid work.

Report co-author Tom MacInnes commented: '"A conservative estimate is that the country lacks at least four million paid jobs. In this situation, reforms aimed at improving incentives to enter work will increase the number scrambling for vacancies whilst doing next to nothing to reduce poverty".

Duncan Smith timetables the move to Universal Credit

Over one million people will be claiming Universal Credit by April 2014 Iain Duncan Smith announced today as he set out the Government timetable to move 12 million claimants onto the new benefit by 2017.

The works and pension secretary announced that the transition from the old benefit system to Universal Credit will take place in three phases over four years, ending in 2017.

He said that around 7.7m households will be receiving more support to find more work and be more self-sufficient.

Between October 2013 and April 2014 - 500,000 new claimants will receive Universal Credit in place of Jobseekers Allowance, Employment Support Allowance, Housing Benefit, Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit.

At the same time a further 500,000 existing claimants (and their partners and dependants) will also move on to Universal Credit as and when their circumstances change significantly, such as when they find work or when a child is born.

The move to the Universal Credit system is intended to reduce absolute and relative poverty.

However critics of the new system say that the net direct effect of the tax and benefit changes will actually increase them.

A recent report published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that the problem is that other changes, such as the switch from retail price indexation to consumer price indexation of means-tested benefits, will more than offset the impact on poverty of the Universal Credit.

A damning critique of our divided country?

A story that is bound to run and run today is the major review into health inequalities that has found that the poorest can expect 17 fewer years of healthy life, and that health inequalities cost £33bn a year in lost productivity.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot led the Government-commissioned review finding that the equivalent of up to 2.5 million years of life are being lost through people dying prematurely in England each year.

However it is once again the connection between health and being unemployed or poorly educated that is the most worrying.

Life expectancy in Britain is now 77.4 years for men and 81.7 years for women but coming from a deprived background can reduce that by seven years

The report recommends a series of measures including that income tax system should be revised, with possible cuts to encourage more people on low incomes to work.

It also said that action is needed in six key areas, including giving every child the best start in life, creating fair employment and encouraging people into work, and working to prevent people falling ill in the first place.

Gordon returns

So Gordon returns to work after his tour to Southwold and Scotland for a few days before flying off to Beijing.

The next few weeks are going to be the most important in his political life culminating his speech at the Labour conference in Manchester on the 23rd September

Today he is hit by two broadsides,the Tuc release a report today that says that while disposable income for the wealthiest in society has gone up the gap between rich and poor has more than doubled over the last 30 years

The report also claims inequality dramatically affects children's chances in life, with babies born to poor mothers more likely to develop health problems in later life, and working-class pupils half as likely to get five good GCSEs as their wealthier classmates.

Meanwhile Shadow Chancellor George Osbourne writing in the Guardian claims that Brown's

main instrument for tackling poverty - the redistribution of wealth - has failed.

adding

We know that redistribution alone, as the sole policy tool to tackle poverty, has failed," Osborne writes. "There are 900,000 more people in severe poverty than in 1997 and child poverty has been rising for two years in succession."

Whether it is too late for Labour to turn this around will also become apparent over the next few weeks.Eric Pickles interviewed this morning by the FT certainly thinks so

“The analysis is that it is now impossible for [Labour] to win the election, but it’s perfectly possible for us to lose it,” he asserted. Asked if he thought Labour was finished, he replied: “I do.”

The accusations particaully from Osbourne are pointed right at Brown central territory and his response must be spot on and calculated to knock the Tories back.If not then Pickles will be proved correct

Government burying bad news according to the Indie

The Independent is carrying a story that Labour is 'burying bad news' of poverty study until after elections

According to political editor Andrew Grice

The figures, normally issued in March, will be disclosed on 2 May, the day after local authority elections in England and Wales, The Independent can reveal. Many results, including the contest for London Mayor, will not be announced until 2 May and they are likely to dominate media coverage, swamping the poverty figures

adding that

Independent experts expect the statistics to show Labour is in danger of missing its flagship target of halving child poverty by 2010 and abolish it by 2020

.

Of course it will not be the first time that the government has been accused of burying bad news