Family, work and a cheaper shopping basket - getting a better narrative about poverty

As a conservative I want to do what Disraeli set as our purpose: improve conditions for working people and families. This means rejecting welfarism and being more direct in how we talk about poverty

This is a repost from my old blogger account an article referencing Marcus Rashford, a good man and fine footballer. I think the right’s narrative about politics is mistaken, as mistaken as the familiar and dominant narrative from the left. It is striking that Reform UK in Wales have taken a leaf from David Cameron’s ‘social action’ playbook through volunteering at food banks and other community focused activism:

“Let the liberal turn to the course of action, the course of all radicals, and the amused look vanishes from the face of society as it snarls, “That’s radical!” Society has good reason to fear the radical. Every shaking advance of mankind toward equality and justice has come from the radical. He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous” (Saul Alinsky)

We went for a walk at Ogden Water and, as we entered the woods from the car park, we met a woman, mid-forties, with three toddlers in tow. We greeted her (and the kids) cheerily and, in doing so overheard her talking to them:

“We haven’t got our boots on so what aren’t we doing today?”

She had to tell them again that jumping in puddles was not on the agenda, but we were struck by the easy way this childminder (for that was what the woman was) had with the children. And, when the cheeky little boy breaks the rule and heads for the muddy puddle, the stern “no” will be informed by what the child has already been told.

I know that sometimes there isn’t time or space to explain and saying “no, you can’t do that” or “no, we won’t do that” without context is necessary. But even then, you need to find that time and space to explain why you said no to what the child thought was such a super idea.

While the British public is not a toddler, the same principles apply to how government and politicians respond to ideas that the public think are incredibly super. We are individually and collectively a caring nation so, when somebody famous like an England footballer comes up with a proposal to help, we line up enthusiastically behind the idea.

And, right now, what the government and politicians have done is simply say “no, we’re not going to do that”, partly out of ‘not-invented-here syndrome’ (how dare a 22 year old footballer propose policy, we don’t tell him how to take free kicks) and partly because government thinks this isn’t the best way to respond to the problem of child poverty. And the public don’t understand why it’s such a problem to give a dinner to kids when they already get a free dinner at school.

I happen to agree with the government (although in doing so, it raises real questions about the organisation and administration of free school meals) and, just as importantly, dislike the manner in which the opposition has tried to portray disagreeing over the best way to help poor kids as somehow tantamount to eating babies. But there’s a problem and it’s that conservatives, and especially those in the current government, haven’t spent any time creating a different narrative about poverty from the welfarist model that dominates current public policy.

Or rather, our narrative about poverty is littered with a set of moral judgements about the poor (“shouldn’t have kids if they can’t afford then”, “food isn’t expensive, learn to cook”, “personal responsibility you know, not the state’s job”). All these judgements have a good basis – people should consider the cost of having a child, they should learn to cook and personal responsibility, not to mention duty, is important. But none of these statements get anywhere near a narrative about poverty that sounds remotely caring, and let’s remember that regardless of the parent’s fecklessness (or more likely misfortune) it’s not the kids’ fault they haven’t got a dinner.

No welfare system is perfect, but we do spend a simply enormous amount of money supporting people, much of it directly intended to alleviate poverty. And this is before we consider the money spent on social services, on supporting local charities, and through the informal ways of friends or family. Anyone who claims we are an uncaring society is simply wrong. For over 100 years we have supported state welfare and these programmes are now the biggest part of government expenditure. Around £270 billion is spent on social protection and personal social services, and we can call perhaps half of that poverty alleviation. These are rough figures but if we’re spending £135 billion on alleviating poverty, there really shouldn’t be any of that poverty. Those, and this is where I part company with Marcus Rashford, who simply argue for more welfare are wrong.

So, though we should give those kids a dinner (because it’s the right short term thing to do not just because it defuses a political row or suits the left’s welfarist preferences), we should also think about the reasons why, despite those billions in alleviation, we still have poverty and how it is that people are poor.

One argument we get about poverty is that we don’t really have poverty but “relative poverty”. And, yes, it’s true that the measure of poverty preferred by those advocating for more welfare (below 54% of median earnings) is not a measure of poverty at all but a measure of inequality, made worse by the manner in which a fall in median earnings results in a reduction in poverty without changing the circumstances of a single child. But, as anyone who has their eyes open knows, this doesn’t mean there isn’t any poverty, just that the inflated figures (“One in three children live in poverty”) create a context for poverty that simply can’t be resolved.

There really are lots of children who might not get a dinner tonight. This shouldn’t be a controversial statement, there aren’t 3 million kids in this category or even half that number, but there are hundreds of thousands of children who might not get a decent meal today. And that is hundreds of thousands too many and we should, whether through the state or through private action, want to see those kids fed. One way to do this is to extend the voucher scheme created to cover for those children who received free school meals when the schools were closed during the spring lockdown.

Not everyone thinks that voucher scheme worked, and many felt that it did nothing to address problems such as parental addiction or alcoholism (and may have simply found another way for such parents to indulge their addiction). There were plenty of stories about people trying to use the food vouchers to buy clothes or cans of lager (or more commonly the “wrong” food) but again this is not how it worked for the majority who received the vouchers. It seems to me that any scheme is best devolved to local councils to administer rather than done through a national programme, councils should, we hope, through their social services department, have a better handle on the families where giving food vouchers may not result in children being fed.

The children are fed over Christmas and New Year 2020/21. Great, but what about the poverty? Do we carry on handing out food vouchers forever, continue with a flawed welfarist approach? Or do we begin to build a different narrative about poverty, one that isn’t just about taxing one bunch of people to give money to another bunch of people?

As conservatives we reject the “change the economic system, revolution” argument in responding to poverty. Mostly this is because, when those supposed alternatives are tried, they result in more poverty not less. We also reject the “free for all, every man for himself” argument that place individual licence above everything. Yet we do think that personal and private actions are the cause of wealth while recognising that the basic building block of society isn’t the individual but the family. And we should be saying loudly that our biggest problem is the collapse of family in the hyper-liberal world beloved of progressives and libertarians.

We can be reasonably confident saying that kids brought up in dysfunctional families (or with none) are far more likely to end up in poverty, more likely to get involved in crime, more likely to suffer mental illness, more likely to be abused, and less likely to get and hold a secure full time job. If we want a narrative about poverty this is, as conservatives, our first argument – marriage benefits society and should be supported.

Having set out that stable family life should be a policy goal, we should talk about the nature of work. Not the blanket “in work poverty” narrative but a more granular analysis. Insecure work, often part time, is a feature of poverty – its not the actual work that’s the problem or the hourly wage but rather the lack of hours and the sense that none of the work is secure. This is especially true for the sort of work often done by women – cleaning, care work, bar service. The benefits system responds poorly to this sort of employment resulting in payments gaps – and if there’s no job today and no benefits there’s no food. We should be looking at how we smooth benefits support for people in insecure work (maybe setting a level for in-work benefits and maintaining that, subject to annual review, regardless of the hours worked).

Our policy goals so far are, therefore, stable families and stable employment. This allows us to think about a third factor in poverty – low levels of skills and education. Again, it shouldn’t be controversial to say that people without skills are more likely to be poor. Around 5 million people in the UK do not have basic literacy or numeracy skills, something that represents a terrible failure in our education system but is not helped by the manner in which adult and further education has been deprioritised in preference for universities and higher education. We should change our emphasis away from universities and refocus on adult education, training and basic skills. Giving a couple of million more people the literacy skills that will let them get a job would have a massive impact on poverty.

All of this is about working with the people living in poverty. And we can add in better support for those with mental health problems and issues with drink or alcohol. But there’s another reason people are poor – things that should be cheaper are too damned expensive. Housing costs, utility costs, food, clothing, transport – these are the basics of life and some of them have been made more expensive from deliberate government policy. We have a national strategy of making electricity more expensive – prioritising marginal reductions in carbon emissions over making energy affordable – and this should end. We should also call out agricultural protectionists and public health fussbuckets who, quite literally, want to make food more expensive. Taxes on petrol and diesel represent a huge cost to public transport as well as the private car – why not let bus operators use red diesel and perhaps look at making bus travel free for families on benefits.

As a conservative I want to do what Disraeli set as our purpose – to improve conditions for working people and families. This, I believe, means rejecting welfarism and being more direct in how we talk about poverty – make it a mission to not only get kids fed this Christmas but to have all our children raised in stable families, with parents having a secure income, and national policies aimed at making their lives cheaper not more expensive. This means challenging the current policy orthodoxies around the welfare state, around climate change, and around our support for families. If we take such an approach, it makes for a narrative that matches concerns about the “left behind” and the political realignment that saw the “red wall” crumble. We should do it.