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8 May 2008 : Column 732
Baroness Crawley: My Lords, the noble Lord makes a crucial point. In our discussions with the regime, we have continually wanted to ensure that the parameters of our action are as wide as possible. We have made that clear to the Burmese Government. We are taking incremental steps. At present, we need to get access. However, our discussions are not about narrow access but about whatever access is needed to help these hundreds of thousands of people. As I said, we have opened discussions with the MoD on the possible use of military equipment. That is where we are at present.
Lord Elton: My Lords, has the area of damage extended into those areas of Burma where the present regime has been exerting its most repressive measures against the indigenous population, notably in the homelands of the Karen and Karenni people? If so, will the Government undertake to exert their greatest efforts to see that aid is available there? Secondly, is any move afoot to have a central point for charitable donations to be made in this country, as there was during the tsunami?
Baroness Crawley: My Lords, on the noble Lord’s last point, I understand that there will be a flash appeal for relief tomorrow. On the ethnic areas and the people who have been persecuted so dreadfully by their government in the past, although the Karen state was affected by high winds and rain, it is not among the areas that have been worst hit by the disaster. Our emergency assistance for the cyclone will not cause any reduction in our support for Burmese refugees on the border area in Thailand. We are discussing this year’s contributions with Christian Aid and the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, taking full account of our recommendations of last year.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, a parallel has repeatedly been drawn with the tsunami crisis of a couple of years ago. I recall when I went to the Maldives for a holiday that my friends in Scotland said that I was under a moral obligation to stuff my pockets full of dollars and distribute them in the Maldives, because that was the only way in which they could be confident that the money would get to the people who really needed it. Apart from the great generosity which I acknowledge the noble Baroness has offered through DfID, does she see that there is an obligation on government to remove that sense of cynicism that is growing in this country? We are a naturally generous and compassionate people, and if that cynicism can be removed I am very confident that real generosity will be shown in the appeal tomorrow.
Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I absolutely agree. We have to go beyond a sense of scepticism. Sometimes scepticism is very well founded, and it is right that Governments should be pressed on this point. DfID’s record, as the noble Lord has said, is very good in this respect. We are very accountable for what we pledge and what we spend. However, the Red Cross appeal and the UN appeal need people to come out in very generous numbers to help these people. They are in great and grave need.
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Poverty
3.16 pm
Lord Bilston rose to call attention to the objective of tackling poverty through helping people into work and improving life chances, together with incentives and protections; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the subject of this debate—tackling poverty by improving life chances—has been at the heart of Labour’s philosophy since the Labour Party was founded over 100 years ago. Abject poverty in the midst of great wealth was the order of the day for millions of British families whose life chances were blighted by unemployment, wars, lack of education, disease and malnutrition, and in many families early death. It is therefore unsurprising that the party that I have been proud to be a member of for almost 50 years has the elimination of poverty, in all its forms, as its abiding mission.
At the top of my agenda for tackling poverty and improving life chances is the opportunity for employment. In our society, the independence and freedom that a wage packet or salary cheque bestows can liberate the spirit and engender confidence, self-worth and a sense of well-being for the individual and his family. Conversely, unemployment destroys a human being’s sense of dignity and pride, creates a climate of uncertainty and financial turmoil, and generates a poverty of the spirit which denies ambition and aspiration.
The mass unemployment of the 1980s remains indelibly etched in my mind. I was one of the 3 million unemployed at the time. Our Bilston steelworks was closed with the loss of 2,300 jobs. Factory after factory went out of existence, and 40 per cent of the Black Country’s manufacturing base was wiped away. Levels of unemployment ran at 30 per cent, and in some streets it was as high as 50 per cent. Some 35 per cent of our young people were denied their first opportunity of employment since leaving school. Training places were almost non-existent, and the careers service was moribund. A depressing sense of hopelessness and despair pervaded our whole community. Soon poverty made its degrading presence felt, and for many human beings, life chances were abruptly truncated at a crucial stage in their lives. Sadly for others, their life chances ebbed away at the moment of their worklessness, never again to return.
Those are the reasons why the Government’s commitment to full employment should be applauded and enthusiastically encouraged, particularly in a turbulent global economy where many decisions on investment and the employment of British workers are now taken thousands of miles away. It is self-evident that all partners in Britain plc—government, manufacturing industry, the financial and services sectors and trade unions—all have a vital part to play in the operation of the sound and dynamic economy that is axiomatic to a successful trading nation in the 21st century.
The virtuous link of full employment in the pursuit of tackling poverty and improving life chances together with the achievement of increasing national prosperity is an economic and social justice model that should bind us all. We should therefore celebrate the fact that Britain has the highest employment rate in the developed
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Social justice and fairness must always dictate how government respond to the needs of the poor, the weak and the vulnerable—the least fortunate in our society. The concept of the strong protecting and defending the weak has a resonance in the conscience of any civilised society. It requires a fair and adequate distribution of wealth and income and a high quality of service provision if the historic moral and social imperative for greater equality in society is to be fulfilled. The resolution of child and family poverty, low pay and income disparities in old age go to the heart of this industrial mission, and I believe that it is right to claim that the work in progress by this Government has achieved greater success than any previous Government in their search for the holy grail.
The chosen method of income distribution that this Government have so far adopted is a combination of universal and targeted benefits to individuals and families, additional weekly income through child, family and working tax credits, pension credits, and the introduction of the minimum wage. A prerequisite for the maximum take-up of these targeted benefits, which are central to the Government’s effectiveness in reaching those in need, is a concerted effort by the Government to communicate knowledge and ensure uncomplicated access to the payments and benefits.
Another beneficial contribution that the Government made to tax fairness in last year’s Budget was the historical reduction to a 20p income tax band which will significantly help millions of families. However, it would be churlish not to acknowledge the self-infliction of electoral damage and unpopularity brought about by the recent abolition of the 10p tax band. I share with all noble Lords our satisfaction that this vexed matter will be addressed.
However, if Labour is to fulfil its historic purpose then more radical plans on wealth, capital gains, income redistribution and taxation will need to be adopted. There is, for instance, a justifiable case for tax increases on the top 10 per cent of income tax payers. In order to show some sympathy and solidarity with the present plight of millions of our citizens who are struggling to pay excessive utility and fuel bills, the Government should introduce a windfall tax on blatant profiteering. They should also refer some food price increases to the Office of Fair Trading and cancel the fuel excise duties proposed in the Budget. These measures would considerably help to heal the hurt felt by electors last Thursday.
I return to my theme of tackling poverty by improving life chances. The Government have made a determined
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Unfortunately, time will not permit a lengthy explanation of other government initiatives dedicated to tackling poverty by improving life chances. Suffice it to say that the Government’s approach to education will find a panoply of policies designed to achieve this objective. One excellent example is the creation of the early years Sure Start health and education centres, a brilliant educational concept and a real success story which provides for multidisciplinary professional teams in specially equipped buildings to welcome babies and small children from socially deprived communities to educational stimulus and healthcare. These youngsters are often born into disadvantaged and dysfunctional families, but parents, single mothers, single fathers, carers and grandparents are all welcomed and encouraged to integrate into the learning, caring and education process, where healthcare, hygiene, debt, financial planning and many other important practical issues for the family are discussed. The confidence and well-being which this intervention and interaction engenders is having a profoundly beneficial effect on the early lives of hundreds of thousands of our young children, whose life chances are daily being transformed.
Education, at every stage of development, imbues empowerment in the individual, the family and the community, transforming lives with knowledge and opening up opportunities for economic and social advancement. Therein rests the real challenge of combating poverty through improving life chances. I pay tribute to the Government for their determined commitment to the value that they place on education and skills, for the improved standards and for the record levels of investment in our schools, colleges and universities. In the words of William Morris,
That day will come, when all our citizens are more equal and more equally share in the wealth that they have helped to create. That day, we shall celebrate society’s triumph over poverty and despair. I beg to move for Papers.
3.30 pm
Lord Haskel: My Lords, I cannot remember speaking in such an exclusive debate. I know we have had two debates recently on matters touching on poverty, but
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There are two routes to poverty: social and economic. There was a time when simple redistribution would help to lift people out of economic poverty, but not any more. Life has become a lot more complicated than that. That is because the main causes of economic poverty today are lack of work, globalisation and new technology. For some they have created prosperity, for others they have created poverty. We have a choice. We can deal with this by closing our borders and trying to keep the effects outside, or by opening up our borders and participating in globalisation and new technology. Quite rightly, we rejected protectionism and now live in an era of economic liberalism and global engagement. We are engaged in a race to the top and we need the best team that we can get. That means that everybody made poor by this competition has to be enabled to move out of poverty into better jobs. As my noble friend said, skills training, education, tax breaks for jobseekers and the minimum wage provide the means for people to improve themselves.
Moving out of poverty by being more productive improves not only people’s life chances, but the country’s life chances. Once again, this Government have been absolutely consistent and relentless over 10 years in empowering people in this way. Indeed, the public and private sectors have spent record sums on training during this past year. There is more to do. The Leitch report on skills training has to be implemented, education levels raised and everybody given the opportunity to improve their life chances.
The other kind of poverty is social poverty. For as long as I can remember, most of us have been concerned about it, but it has still not gone away. Increased prosperity and people having more power and control over their lives has changed the nature of social poverty, but it still goes on. In its recent consultation, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation identified poverty as,
- “a corrosive social evil in an affluent society, underpinning other social problems like homelessness and family breakdown”.
Family breakdown, addiction, indebtedness, dependence, disability, inability to cope—these are all causes of social poverty, and my noble friend spoke about most of them.
Those routes to poverty have been the subject of endless study, but one thing comes across loud and clear: unless you do something to break the cycle, disadvantage is passed on from generation to generation. Every UK birth cohort study, going back to the 1940s, shows that. The way you tackle poverty by improving life chances is to start early. That is why the Government are right to concentrate on getting children out of
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This is not a matter of left or right politics; either you believe it or you do not. There are people on all sides who have looked at the problem and decided that the earlier you break the poverty cycle, the cheaper it is and the more effective it is. Of course attempts can and must be made later in life, but the later you leave it the more difficult and expensive it becomes. Yes, it is complex; a simple agenda of tax cutting would be more populist, but it would do little to break the cycle of poverty. Yes, Governments can deal with the big picture, but poor people are also individuals, as my noble friend Lord Bilston movingly explained.
Problems of this kind are probably best solved locally. So I congratulate the City of Nottingham and Graham Allen MP, chairman of One Nottingham, on launching “Early Intervention in Nottingham” on 28 April. That is the kind of productive partnership between the Government and local authorities that allows anti-poverty strategies to be tailored to local needs. As I said, this is not a matter of left or right. While congratulating Nottingham on its early intervention programme, I also congratulate Iain Duncan Smith MP, who has been calling for an integrated approach to tackling disadvantage that is shared by people across the political divide. He is right. This is a generational matter, and requires sustained political attention across the lifetime of several Parliaments. Indeed, he, Graham Allen and others from all political parties and from none are contributing to a pamphlet about early intervention that is to be published by the Smith Institute next month. I hope that that will inspire more local initiatives and co-operation. Although much has been done, much more remains to be done. I declare an interest as a trustee of the Smith Institute.
As I have tried to show, the Labour Government have consistently been concerned about poverty over the past 10 years, and have consistently tried to tackle it, whether the causes are social or economic. What the Government have probably not done is to explain why they have gone to all of that trouble and expense, and why they have made that sacrifice. Some might have said that the poor are just unfortunate victims of the market and left it there, but the explanation is that we stand for a fairer society. My noble friend described that.
That sense of fairness is being shared by more and more people. People want fairness with less raw capitalism; they want markets humanised, so as to restrain its worst effects on the poor. That is why some of our best thinkers are now concerned about the limits of markets, and why business is very ill-advised to be using threats such as relocation to extract concessions from the Government regarding tax and regulation, for we are beginning to understand that the cost of all this is increased poverty in our country. This is a time of
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3.41 pm
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool: My Lords, I should like to make a few comments in the gap on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bilston. I was hoping to be here today but could not be sure, and I am delighted to have sat at his feet and heard his contribution, because the noble Lord introduced into this subject the notion of justice. It is so refreshing, because that word has been singularly lacking in the language of urban regeneration over the past 10 to 15 years.
When I was Bishop of Hull, I was involved with the Single Regeneration Budget; as Bishop of Liverpool, I chaired the New Deal programme for communities. Those initiatives have been excellent in trying to break the cycle of poverty, but if we listen to the language of regeneration it does not capture what the noble Lord, Lord Bilston, has brought to this debate. For example, in regeneration we talk today not of justice or fairness, as the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, said, but about triggers, levers, targets, outcomes and outputs. There is a place for that language—the language of milestones—but it is secondary; the primary language is that of justice and fairness.
In the diocese of Liverpool, 45 per cent of my parishes are in areas of multiple deprivation. I believe that we can tackle these issues only if we have a sense of justice, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, said, if that is across parties. The language is there, but it needs to be brought to the forefront. That Single Regeneration Budget initiative was very much business-led, with a little community awareness, whereas the New Deal programme for communities was very much community-led, with some business awareness. What we need to regenerate our cities and break the cycle of poverty is, in fact, the twin engine of community and local business leadership.
I salute the initiatives we have had over the past 10 years but, in thinking further about regenerating our cities, renewing our communities and restoring justice, I would encourage us to look at creating real jobs in a real economy, supported by both local businesses and the local community. I thank your Lordships for the opportunity to intervene in this way.
3.43 pm
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate from these Benches, and I start by thanking the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool for his very welcome contribution. A little later, I will talk about the persistence of deprivation in particular areas of this country. However, since he spoke movingly about Liverpool I might point that on the recent indices of deprivation that the Department for Communities and Local Government has just published for England, five out of the 12 most deprived local areas are in Liverpool. I am afraid that all five were, again, in the top 12 in
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