Views
Tackling the legacy of a disadvantaged upbringing - for The Inverness Courier
THE new political season entered full swing last week, with the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton. It will be followed by the Labour and Conservative party gatherings, with speculation about the possibility that Gordon Brown will call an early election no doubt following too.
Each of the parties will be trying to demonstrate to a sceptical media and public that they have the right ideas for the country.
Gordon Brown will no doubt continue his attempt to persuade us that he has had nothing to do with running the country over the last 10 years — though I suspect people will not be slow to forget his support for the Iraq war, the chaos in the tax credit system, lack of progress on climate change.
For me, I was delighted that last week the conference endorsed the proposals I put forward on how to tackle the growing inequality in our society and the continuing scourge of poverty.
Over the last year, in my role as Work and Pensions spokesman, I have met and talked to people across the UK who are succeeding in this area to see how their success can be replicated.
For most people, work is the best route out of poverty. Yet for many, the barriers to employment are hard to overcome — and the government is simply not providing the right support.
Lack of skills, education or confidence, disability or mental ill health, lack of access to transport, and the complexity and bureaucracy in the system all stand in the way for many disadvantaged people who want to work.
Many of the most inspiring examples are here in the Highlands. The SHIRLIE project in Inverness has been enormously successful in breaking down barriers to work. The T2E project helps people in many more remote parts of the Highlands find transport to employment. The list could go on.
What many of the best initiatives I have seen across Britain have in common is that they are funded and supported by the taxpayer, but not provided directly by government bodies like JobCentre Plus.
There is a very different atmosphere when people feel that by talking to people in an independent organisation their benefit is not under threat. I want to see all back-to-work support in the hands of such organisations, paid for and closely monitored by the government as they do in Australia.
One of the most disgraceful facts about Britain today is that we have one of the lowest rates of 'social mobility' in the developed world.
The family circumstances you are born into are more important in determining how you will succeed in life in this country than in almost any other. We need to become a country where everyone has the chance to succeed through their own efforts, rather than too many people simply forced to accept the disadvantage they were born into.
I have criticised the chaotic operation of the tax credit system in these pages before, but another problem with it is the way that money that should be helping poorer families can be paid to those earning up to £60,000 a year. By concentrating the money on those who need it most, we can make significant financial savings which could be much better used to challenge inherited disadvantage.
One in three British children live in poverty. Some of the money should be used to raise child benefit — by £5 per family — because we know that almost every family, even the poorest, claims this.
Education, especially in the earliest years, is critically important to enabling people to take opportunities in life. The remainder of the money that would be saved by reforming tax credits, I would direct to schools in the form of a 'pupil premium'. This is an additional payment that would go directly to schools for each disadvantaged child on their rolls.
The debate about tackling inequality and poverty is, to my mind, one of the most important that we have to get right. Everybody feels the consequences of the social problems that follow. There is much more to be said and done than there is space for in this column, but I hope that tackling these problems can be a big part of the debate at the next election. I will certainly do my best to make it so.
Posted on: 25/09/2007
