‘There is overwhelming evidence that UK government policies and our economy are extremely intergenerationally unfair.’
UK Parliament Select Committee on Work and Pensions, 2024
The massed ranks of Government MPs waving their order papers when Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the abolition of the 2-child welfare benefit cap might have given the impression that they were welcoming a new strategy for tackling poverty amongst children and young people.
A Child Poverty Task Force led by Liz Kendall, then Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, and Bridget Phillipson, Minister at the Department for Education, was set up to report last June. This was delayed until the autumn, but to date its only outcome has been this welfare cap abolition. Whether its abolition actually does take 400,000 children out of poverty, as the Prime Minister claims, is a moot point; but this policy announcement is more about placating restless Labour MPs than reforming the strategy for tackling poverty for children and young people generally.
So this week we focus on three areas with a substantial impact on the well-being of children and young people which have received no attention in the Budget:
- The 1.7 million young people who were allocated Child Trust Fund accounts by the Inland Revenue under the previous Labour government, 51% of whom are ‘low income’ but who were never properly informed about their funds — these are now worth up to £3,000 each, and remain substantially unknown and unclaimed;
- The punishing burden caused by student loan repayment terms, with cripplingly high interest rates and frozen thresholds at which repayment must start; and
- The immense strain on the child care and adoption system which was highlighted by the BBC last week, resulting from familial breakdown and social instability. This can be tracked down to both migration and the fact that more than half of all children being born out of wedlock — so it's not hard to see how this alone may result in 400,000 children being in poverty.
While young people suffer, we still hang onto the triple-lock system for pensions and the outdated welfare system of Attleean universality which results in free healthcare costs primarily benefiting older people, who are also the wealthiest generation. Another quote from the DWP Select Committee read, ‘The economy has become skewed in favour of baby boomers and against millennials’.
There is no inter-generational strategy here; there hasn't been for the past fifteen years. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were primarily responsible for the massive burden of student debt. The current Labour administration is responsible for the failure to deliver Gordon Brown and Ruth Kelly's ground-breaking Child Trust Fund scheme to the young people who need it the most. And we are all responsible for the insecurity and instability which result in so many young people having to suffer throughout their adolescence.
—> please READ ON ..
..........
We've published over 425 of these weekly commentaries covering a wide range of issues, and you can find links here to the full list over the past eight years.
