Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640
- 659)
TUESDAY 12 JUNE 2007
REVEREND GRAHAM
K BLOUNT AND
MRS EILEEN
BAXENDALE
Q640 Mr McGovern:
If we agree that for those people who can work the best way out
of poverty is via work then that leads us on to the incomes. Could
you tell me how we can best increase incomes for the poorest families
in your view?
Reverend Blount: Are you meaning
incomes of people who are in work?
Q641 Mr McGovern:
Yes.
Reverend Blount: The minimum wage,
which I know you have discussed with several of your previous
witnesses, has to be an important dimension of this. The minimum
wage was a massive step forward. It did not produce the widespread
unemployment that was the warning of doom when it was proposed.
Like many of your previous witnesses, we would like to see the
minimum wage increasing faster than it does to ensure that certainly
those who are working full-time on the minimum wage have a decent
standard of living and are taken well above the poverty level
by that. I am not going to trade figures in that regard, that
is not my area of expertise, but I think it does need to move
on faster than that. I think the issues that we were discussing
with Mr MacNeil a moment ago about the economy and the opportunity
for people to move on in terms of employment can be another dimension
of that.
Q642 Mr McGovern:
Are you not prepared to say what level you think the minimum wage
should be set at?
Reverend Blount: No.
Q643 Mr McGovern:
I do not need a monetary figure. It could be in comparison to
average earnings.
Mrs Baxendale: It is not enough
to live on. My daughter works extra nightshifts and all sorts
of things on a minimum wage to support her children. It clearly
does not enable somebody who is working hard full-time and who
has children to manage. It does seem tight.
Reverend Blount: I can remember
arguing at the time when we were discussing whether it would be
brought in in previous evidence to a body that it should be linked
to earnings in some way so that it is not a matter of reviewing
it every time the Government decides to review it but that there
is some automatic measure to bring it on. I think I would like
to see it moving on a bit in real terms from where it is at the
moment.
Q644 Mr McGovern:
The danger of that is it is my understanding that since it was
introduced increases have been significantly higher than the rate
of inflation. So to tie it to earnings could be dangerous, could
it not?
Reverend Blount: It is higher
than the rate of inflation. I am not sure if it is higher than
the rate of increase in earnings.
Q645 Mr McGovern:
My understanding is it is.
Reverend Blount: You know more
about it than I do.
Q646 Mr McGovern:
Do you think an increase in the minimum wage could be funded from
a reduction in the number of people seeking in-work benefits,
Working Families' Tax Credits and such like?
Reverend Blount: If that ended
up being cost neutral and neutral in terms of its impact on those
who are receiving it, we are not taking a huge step forward, it
might save the Government some money that is coming out of employers'
pockets. My primary concern on the matter would be to put more
money into the pockets of those who are working very close to
the poverty line at the moment. The tax credits system is something
that as churches in principle we would welcome as an imaginative
way forward. There are well known and documented difficulties
with administration. Apart from the individual difficulties that
these have created for many, many people, they are also operating
as a very powerful disincentive to people to apply for tax credits
because people know stories of folk who have received money and
then got in a mess because they have had to pay it back through
no fault of their own.
Mr McGovern: I agree with you.
Q647 Chairman:
When the minimum wage was introduced some people had concerns
in Parliament that it would increase unemployment and they have
been proved to have been wrong. Now there is a general acceptance
that it was the right thing to do. We have taken evidence from
a number of witnesses but nobody is able to pinpoint what the
level of the National Minimum Wage should be. Do you have any
figure in your mind?
Reverend Blount: I cannot honestly
say that I do. I think the figures should be arrived at by looking
at what kind of income is required to have a decent standard of
living. The concept of a living wage as some kind of entitlement,
however you actually achieve that, I think should underpin the
way in which a minimum wage is calculated. So what I am suggesting
is a way of calculating it rather than actually doing the calculation.
Q648 Chairman:
Many people say that if we have an increase in the minimum wage
that may have a detrimental effect on smaller businesses, ie the
businesses which employ four or five people. Do you think it would
be a good idea if there was some kind of subsidies given to these
smaller companies?
Reverend Blount: I think there
are dangers in starting down the road of subsidising companies
in that kind of way. I think we would be very sympathetic to the
intent of that and if we had a tax credit system working that
might be the way to achieve it in terms of delivery of something
adequate into people's pockets.
Q649 Mr Davidson:
Two or three of the groups who have been in front of us before
have said that the prevalence of trade unions in the workplaces,
where there is low pay and the potential for exploitation, has
helped bump up minimum wages but also reduced poor treatment.
Has that been your experience and would you endorse that view?
Reverend Blount: Yes. Scottish
Churches Industrial Mission is part of the network and they keep
us informed on these kind of issues. The constructive role that
trade unions can play in that kind of situation is important.
It is slightly worrying to look at the figures which say that
trade unions are better represented where pay is better. You have
got to isolate which is the cause and the effect. If what you
are suggesting is right then that is because the presence of unions
actually pulls wages up.
Q650 Mr MacNeil:
We have been talking in the territory of pounds, shillings and
pence where we are perhaps in the territory of Mammon. What moral
community religious duty to your neighbours do you think wider
society has to make sure that we are working towards, as best
we can, ending poverty, making sure that children are not being
raised in really disastrous situations, situations that affect
their life chances and their life expectancy as you mentioned
at the beginning happens in Shettleston? What voice do you think
the churches should be using to exert pressure on society and
politicians?
Reverend Blount: I think on one
level you start with clear traditional Christian obligations of
charity, but you go beyond that to a desire for justice. If you
like, it is a question about the nature of community, which was
a key word in your question. Do we want increasingly divided and
fragmented communities with these dramatic differences between
one community and another in terms of finances and health and
all sorts of things that go with that, or do we want a different
kind of community in which people genuinely feel part of something
wider? I think we see all sorts of signs of the danger of divided
communities. It is one dimension of issues to do with crime and
anti-social behaviour. It is one dimension of issues around alcohol
and drug problems and all of that. I am not saying that if we
sort poverty all these other problems will go away. I am saying
that there is a strong sense in which these problems are also
bound up with poverty. We are looking to a vision of community
that is far more about going forward together, sharing together
and recognising the different parts that we all play in the community
that underpins ideas of social inclusion too.
Mrs Baxendale: One of the things
that the Church has to say to the world is that everybody is valued.
That is not a message many of our young people get today and other
groups of society as well. We also put out a message about what
you might call mutual responsibility, ie everybody is valued,
but that also means everybody has obligations to function well
in society, to help other people, all this basic stuff. Out of
that we would hope to bring a view that poverty demeans people,
poverty destroys their self-esteem, not always, but it can do,
and poverty depresses aspirations. We would want to turn that
round and see people as people of value and worth and people who
can achieve and do things. Our society should be structured in
such a way as to enable that to happen for everybody, particularly
the most excluded and the most vulnerable. That is not always
by employment. It needs to be other things we do as well. That
is not to undermine our agreement that employment is the key thing.
Q651 Mr Walker:
How many people live in Glasgow?
Mrs Baxendale: Less than a million.
Mr Davidson: About 450,000 people.
Q652 Mr Walker:
How do you sell the idea of community? We have been on various
visits as the Scottish Select Committee to small villages where
you can feel there is a sense of community, eg there is one village
hall. You get the idea that they are in it not together necessarily
but there is more cohesion than when you go to a big city, be
it London or Glasgow. How do you sell the idea of community to
a vastly disparate range of groups, some who are rich, poor, some
who are newly arrived, some who do not speak the language? How
do you feel as churches you can create a shared sense of community?
It is a big question. We are talking a lot about community so
let us explore how you sell the idea.
Mrs Baxendale: I have lived in
Glasgow for 30 years and there is a definite sense of community
across Glasgow. It is not a huge great place. You can go from
one side of Glasgow to the other in 45 minutes. You can go to
another part of Glasgow and you will meet people you know. Then
the big challenge is how you build on that and I do not know the
answer. I do think the churches have a role. I think the church
community in Glasgow is fairly well connected, but how we move
on from that to do more for our city is a challenge for us.
Reverend Blount: I know that within
the church I belong to, the Church of Scotland, there have been
attempts at twinning arrangements between churches within the
same city, and across Scotland, not in a patronising sense in
which people from rich churches will do good to people from Drumchapel
or whatever, but that Churches Together have a huge amount to
learn from one another. These churches are embedded in their own
communities. A lot of the regeneration work in churches and other
faith communities increasingly now in Glasgow and beyond it is
to do with building up this sense of community and breaking down
the barriers. Eileen is involved with the Castlemilk Churches
Together which did work with asylum seekers and refugees in that
area and where there was a real sense of building up the community
and not fuelling possible tensions between different parts of
the community by bringing people together in a whole variety of
situations and working together for the benefit of the community.
Q653 Mr Walker:
We have Churches Together in Broxbourne and I think it is a very
effective grouping because we have a number of churches and as
individual voices it is difficult to pick them out in a crowd,
but as one voice it is much easier to hear them. I think that
is a very progressive way forward. I have experience of that in
my own constituency.
Mrs Baxendale: I think it is a
difficulty for the generality of Glasgow; it is a big busy city.
I am based in Castlemilk and there is definitely a sense of community
which has been created partly indeed by the churches and by John
Miller along with other agencies as well. So there is a very definite
sense of community in Castlemilk, but that is a population of
less than 20,000 now so you can do that. Across the whole city
is more difficult.
Q654 Mr Davidson:
It is fair to say that Glasgow is a bit like the Highlands with
its individual villages only it is squashed into an area one-hundredth
of the size. Glasgow is essentially a collection of villages and
you have overlapping communities where housing associations will
cover one area, churches will overlap and you will have gaps being
filled in by other organisations. There are Westminster initiatives
about poverty, there are Scottish Parliament initiatives and there
are local government initiatives. Do you not get in the road as
churches? What is it that you contribute that nobody else is picking
up?
Reverend Blount: I am not going
to say we get in the road, am I? In a variety of ways that evolve
within their own communities churches engage with the community,
whether that has been the kind of work with asylum seekers in
Castlemilk we mentioned earlier, whether it is arts projects or
all sorts of different ways. As Eileen said right at the beginning,
churches have a crucial role to play not as people who come in
to do something within a community but as a key dimension of the
community. I think it is that sense of embeddedness within the
communities that is a very important part of what we bring. We
are not people who come in to provide a service and go away again.
We are not there for as long as the funding for this project lasts
and then we will pull out and go somewhere else again. The Church's
commitment to areas is much more long term. Somebody said it is
within the horizon of eternity! We are going to be there because
we are part of the community and we will go ahead doing what we
can and playing a constructive role in that.
Q655 Mr Davidson:
How is your contribution maximised by us? I am conscious that,
having come from a local authority background as well, we are
very prone to having departmental silos and never the twain shall
meet and all the rest of it. I can see that to some extent you
are potentially in a bit of a silo as well and I am not quite
sure how you can be better involved to maximise the impact of
the financial flows into a community without making yourselves
almost exclusively the channel. I saw in your memorandum you mentioned
that you were a councillor. I assume that is a community councillor,
is it?
Mrs Baxendale: No. I am on South
Lanarkshire local authority.
Q656 Mr Davidson:
Given that there are community councillors as well, I am not clear
where the churches then play a role in all of that.
Mrs Baxendale: Some years ago
we looked into the whole issue of social capital and so on and
a vast amount of voluntary work and work in the community is done
by churches. That is an enormous addition to what is going on
in deprived communities. I have lost the thread of your question,
I am sorry.
Q657 Mr Davidson:
It is really a question of where you fit into all of this. Is
your goal to fill the gaps that public services do not provide
or is it to co-ordinate services at a local level? What is the
point of the churches from our perspective looking at poverty?
Reverend Blount: Sometimes, like
other parts of the voluntary sector, we will be contractual service
providers doing what the local authority or you want done and
are willing to pay for being done within a community, but that
will not be the limit of our engagement within that community.
Sometimes one of the reasons why churches are off the radar for
local authorities and even central government is that we do a
lot of things without coming to you for money. We raise money
ourselves to do things. Often local authorities in particular
only see as active the bodies that they fund to be active. One
of the dimensions of Scottish life, as you will know, is that
there is some element of history of churches at least being the
excuse for a divisive element within communities and I think that
is something that we are working hard to overcome. I mean the
kind of projects that we were talking about of churches working
together that undermine any sense of sectarianism, but I think
that has sometimes made local authorities a bit wary of churches
and being accused of backing one side against the other across
a sectarian divide. At the moment we are working quite hard to
get beyond that. Sometimes churches also distance themselves from
partnerships with government at any of its levels. Sometimes that
is about a fear of being told the way they have to do things.
People in churches can feel that they have a strong conviction
and they therefore want to go in and do things their way. There
are pluses in people going in and doing that and there are also
things to be gained from listening to other bodies and seeing
how they see the scene as well. I do think that increasingly we
are looking at partnership. I would have to say that I think in
England there has been a much more positive sense of partnership
between local authorities, national government and faith communities
than has been the case until fairly recently in Scotland. I think
the reason is maybe about sectarianism being a bit of a problem.
Maybe the churches have not been as good at coming forward and
engaging in this debate. I think it is something that we are coming
to, but we are coming to it as parts of the local community with
a long-term commitment to being there and the determination to
work for the good of the community.
Mr Walker: Picking up on what my colleague
Angus MacNeil said about the gap between rich and poor, there
seems to be a new class of ultra rich which is causing a lot of
people concern. They seem to be completely disconnected from everyday
society. A lot of them are venture capitalists, for example. Some
of them are very rich Russians and internationalists living over
here. I was wondering what you felt the impact of that was on
not just people living in poverty but also the middle classes
as well when they see this almost `super tier' of wealth which
seems to pay nothing towards the upkeep and maintenance of this
country that offers them so much. I say `this' country as we are
still in the United Kingdom for the moment!
Mr MacNeil: This week!
Q658 Mr Walker:
I would be interested in your views on that.
Reverend Blount: I think that
area was what was being hinted at in the comment that Angus read
out about wealth being as much the problem and that it is a very
short jump from saying that poverty is the problem to saying that
it is poor people who are the problem. I think these kinds of
scandalous disparities are a major part of the problem. It is
obviously tempting now and then to think that a Russian billionaire
willing to invest in my football team would be absolutely wonderful
but it is not actually the way forward. I take your point that
there is something unhealthy for our communities in that being
the case.
Mrs Baxendale: I think the other
thing we would say is that at that sort of level wealth brings
with it a high level of responsibility, but whether we see that
responsibility fulfilled is questionable. As to how much it impacts
on people living in poverty in terms of the everyday attitude
and feelings, I am not aware of people living in poverty who have
any great interest in the level of wealth of Russian millionaires.
Q659 Mr Walker:
I think it is just the overall tone that it sets. I think even
among the middle classes now there is a growing sense of injustice
at this, that people can come to this country and not avoid paying
their fair share but avoid paying any share whatsoever. You talk
about building communities, but how can you have a community when
there is now a super section that has no hand on this and no stake
in it?
Mrs Baxendale: I do not see how
they become part of a community unless they do take up some level
of responsibility to do something within their community, as some
people have done but not very many.
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