Labour must oppose cuts to child benefit and defend our record on child poverty

By Josh Fenton-Glynn

On the face of it, the noise and briefings around the forthcoming budget on cutting benefits to middle and upper class families seems no bad thing. However, with evidence showing that the more restrictions put on benefits the less effective they are in tackling poverty, make no mistake: this budget will be an attack on the poor. In particular, it is likely to hit poor women and therefore lead to an increase child poverty.

The debate around means testing child benefit, threatened freezes on wages for public sector workers – 65% of whom are women – and the mooted rise in VAT, a regressive tax that the poorest 10% of the population pay three times more of their incomes, proportionally, than the richest 10%, mean this could be a budget that undoes much of Labour’s historic progress on child poverty since Tony Blair’s promise in 1999.

In the years between 1999 and 2010 one of the Labour Party’s greatest achievements was to reduce the number of children in poverty, that number having fallen by over 600,000. That progress is under threat and the role of the Labour Party in opposition must be to protect that legacy by arguing against these cuts and presenting a case for benefits where they’re not seen as handouts but as a way of meeting people’s right not to live in poverty.

Due to their simplicity, universal benefits have a much greater uptake amongst those who really need them. Adding conditions to benefits make them more complex and difficult to claim, for those they are intended to help in particular. They make the costs more expensive to administer and add stigma to receiving them. Increased levels of error also mean that many families don’t receive the benefits they are entitled to.

Though there is a natural discomfort with giving the already well off benefits – which has been exploited by the Conservatives – when combined with more progressive taxation, such as is levied in Denmark and Luxemburg, for example, those doubts can be overcome. Up rating child tax credits and child benefits have been consistently shown to be the most effective way of reducing child poverty, for instance. So in reality, we have much to fear from the Conservative proposals, and need to be confident we can win our arguments.

So what should Labour do? This is a time when Labour can distinguish themselves from the Conservative/Liberal coalition as the party of social justice. We need to take up the case defending universal child benefit for all and calling for an increase in tax credits. We need to argue against a rise in VAT: if there is a shortfall to be made up through increasing revenue let’s start with the £120bn in taxes avoided and evaded by the rich, not on a punitive tax that hits the poor.