“Child Poverty : Cllrs. Benson and Ralph should be ashamed of what their Government’s doing”

READING & DISTRICT LABOUR PARTY MEDIA RELEASE

2 January 2011

John Ennis: “Child Poverty : Cllrs. Benson and Ralph should be ashamed of what their Government’s doing”

Labour lead on Children’s Services John Ennis has brushed aside attacks from LibDem Daisy Benson and her colleagues on Labour’s record on child poverty, quoting columnist Polly Toynbee, a passionate advocate for children, as saying “as the coalition torches the programmes designed to make a better society for children, Labour’s record looks quite bright”, and being heartbroken at seeing what had been achieved being dismantled.
In her column in The Guardian on New Year’s Day, Cllr. Ennis says, Ms Toynbee says the last decade was “a rare western exception where the UK birth rate rose in all social classes, as the government offered increasingly generous maternity leave. A warm message to families eased the financial burden for new mothers. A kinder state welcomed new babies with free universal nurseries, subsidised child care, Sure Start, a baby trust fund and first books. Perfect it certainly wasn’t: maternity and health visiting services were stretched beyond capacity. But it was the sketched out start of a vision that valued and nurtured the nation’s children.”
“Contrast that real tribute to Labour’s achievements,” says Cllr. Ennis, “with what Polly Toynbee says in the same article, quoting the conclusions of the Institute for Fiscal Studies that under the coalition children will be hardest hit, both in local services and in terms of family income.”
“The assault on children starts before birth,” Ms Toynbee writes. “Poor families lose the £190 health in pregnancy grant and another £500 for second or more children. Child tax credit for babies is abolished – another £545 a year cut to the under-ones. Low income families will pay 10% more for childcare – another £780 a year. The nest egg child trust fund ends, a £500 loss. Working tax credits are frozen for three years: inflation makes that a 9% cut. Freezing child benefit for three years loses another 9%. Disabled families lose £9bn in benefits. All benefits fall by 2% a year, on a stealthy new CPI inflation measure. Now add in housing and council tax benefit cuts, at the extreme ejecting tens of thousands from their homes, while social housing raises a ‘market rent’ for new tenants.”
Cllr. Ennis concludes “Cllr. Benson writes of the scrutiny review that she and Cllr. Ralph squabbled through last year, but that review was into real programmes aimed at giving children a better start in life, and of course those programmes were open to improvement. Now, as Polly Toynbee has shown, this Conservative-led Government is wrecking huge and deliberate damage on poorer families in our town, torching those very programmes, with minimal protest from Cllr. Benson and her party, who ought to be saying they are ashamed of what the Government but are just dumb and powerless passengers in the boot of David Cameron’s car!”
//ENDS

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