Is poverty in Britain still a major issue?

Published on Friday 23 September 2005 01:07

YES: Judith Robertson

As well as having no money, poor people are left out of mainstream life - and they know it

POVERTY in Scotland doesn't look the same as poverty in Mozambique or the Philippines or Brazil. It's less visible, to start with, and it's often disguised with housing or benefit payments.

But some people in our society know what it looks like. The doorstep lender will recognise a mum struggling with three children in a poor community in Scotland and know exactly how to offer her loans at exorbitant rates of interest. Our banks know what it looks like - they have long since abandoned poor communities as not being financially viable, ensuring that people in these areas have very little or no access to financial services such as a bank account or credit at an affordable rate of interest.

But Oxfam believes that poverty isn't only about income - it's also about much less tangible things - having control over your own life, having rights that are respected and valued, having a voice in decisions that affect your very existence.

One in every three children in Scotland is living in poverty. A quarter of all households live on less than half the average wage. There's a remarkable correlation between poor communities and low voting records. Poverty in this country isn't just about not having money; it's about being excluded from mainstream life and knowing it.

But, like Nelson Mandela, Oxfam believes poverty is not natural - it is man-made and can be overcome by the actions of human beings. That's as true for Scotland as for Malawi or Haiti.

We live in a rich, sophisticated economy but we degrade those who are the most disadvantaged in it. We punish our poor people for their poverty and deny them access to quality services and provision that would support them to get out of it.

There is much we can do, such as looking at all the policy we make and determining how it affects poor people - does it help them get out of poverty or make it worse? If we looked at the benefit system from the perspective of people in poverty how would we go about reforming it?

We can also genuinely ask people who are poor what is going to help make the difference. We've done that in Oxfam and one of the things people say is that they would like a job that pays enough. If you work a 35 hour week, 52 weeks a year, on the national minimum wage you will earn 9,191. The fact that we have a minimum wage at all is hugely important but set at these levels it is still hard for people to thrive.

We don't like poverty in this country but don't like people who are poor either. We don't respect the daily struggle that women, men and children endure to keep families together, keep turning up for school and try to get a meal in their stomachs. And when people fail in that struggle we condemn them as delinquents or worse.

It doesn't cost much to change attitudes or to learn to look beyond the headlines. It would cost a little more to increase the minimum wage - both would be good steps towards eradicating poverty in Scotland.

• Judith Robertson is the head of Oxfam in Scotland.

NO: George Kerevan

Consistent economic growth has put paid to hardships faced in the past

BACK in the days I was a local councillor, I used to visit elderly constituents in my ward. Portobello is a settled community and often these pensioners had lived in the same rented house all their days. Sometimes the absolute poverty they lived in brought me close to tears.

However, I am not convinced that the standard mantra of the poverty industry - "poverty is getting worse in Britain" - represents reality.

I can remember growing up in the 1950s, in working-class Glasgow, where no house in my street had an indoor toilet, no-one had a car (which made the street safe to play in), most mothers did not have a job and children's clothes were hand-me-downs from older brothers and sisters.

Anyone who tries to argue that absolute poverty has worsened in Britain over the past 50 or even 20 years is talking piffle or is being deliberately disingenuous in order to raise more money for their NGO.

Absolute poverty is falling due to consistent economic growth, never mind the fact that we have record employment levels. Over 90 per cent of low- income households have central heating, while the proportion which do not is now less than it was for households on the average income back in 1999.

Some 85 per cent of (statistically) low-income families posses a video, freezer and washing machine. In the decade until last year, the number of single pensioners classed as living in poverty fell from a third to a fifth. The proportion of children living in low-income households also fell over this period.

All told, the number of people on low incomes in the UK (12 million) is smaller than at any time since 1987. However, the poverty brigade will tell you that this number is still higher than in the early 1980s, when it was only seven million. This is the basis for claiming that poverty is getting worse.

Statistical sleight of hand is involved here. In this case, poverty and low income are being defined in relative terms, not absolute. Officially, a low income is set at 60 per cent of the national median income after deducting housing costs. There has been an increase of 24 per cent (58) in median income (less housing costs), from 239 to 297 per week, in real terms, between 1996-7 and 2003-4.

Consequently, the 60 per cent low-income threshold, which is used to derive the relative low income poverty figures, has actually increased by 35 per week in real terms, from 144 to 178 for a couple with no children. If you say there are more people on low incomes today than there were 20 years ago, you miss the point that they are considerably better off now in real terms than they were two decades ago.

True, income differentials have widened and you may object to that, but I hardly classify that as a poverty issue. If you want to close such income differentials then you will have to find a way of putting more people through university and getting them into high-paid service jobs. Or else (my choice) revive manufacturing industry to swell the ranks of skilled engineers.

One caveat: the number of low-paid adults in Scotland (who are single and without children) has been rising, in distinction to the experience in England. This reflects weaker economic growth in Scotland. Again, the solution is not income redistribution but the Executive getting serious about aiding business and stimulating the economy.

None of this is to deny that genuine financial hardship exists, as I discovered in Portobello. Indeed, the massacre of private pensions by Gordon Brown has raised the possibility that pensioner poverty might even grow in absolute terms. But let us keep the problem in perspective, rather than pretend that things are not infinitely better than they used to be.

Your views

Wrong turning

Yes, of course poverty is still a major issue. One only needs to make a wrong turn while driving through the outskirts of any of Britain's major cities to realise there is a world that most of us reading this newspaper never see - few cars that aren't burned-out, poor-quality housing and ragged children who are clearly not being well-fed or well cared-for. But if we don't take that wrong turning, most of us - if we are honest - don't spend much time worrying about these issues.

James Newman, Edinburgh

Lack of thinking

Poverty is a real problem, but not just in the sense of financial poverty. There is a real poverty of thinking when it comes to tackling the problems of Britain's inner-cities and finding real solutions to poor housing, endemic crime and a lack of quality jobs, education and training. The solutions being pushed by this government are all private sector-driven and display a poverty of ambition in our leaders.

Allen Davis, Edinburgh

It's a start

In driving up the minimum wage to ensure jobs at the bottom end of the scale provide a decent income, the Labour Party has gone some way to addressing the damage inflicted by 18 years of Tory rule. However, crime is still so rife in many towns and cities that it dominates communities and undoes any efforts to raise standards.

Jim Mackin, Borders