Quality | 2009.03.15
Polly Toynbee: Eradicating child poverty - one legacy target Labour can't afford to miss
If this government is to be remembered for anything, it should be for meeting its pledge on eradicating child poverty
History is constantly rewritten. The anniversaries of the miners\' strike and Margaret Thatcher\'s rise to power are opportunities for fighting old wars. History changes because praise and blame shift in the light of what happens next. Look how Gordon Brown\'s golden decade of growth is now being shredded before our eyes. Labour\'s reputation will change again, depending on what flavour of government comes after. But one unassailable Labour legacy for the history books is still available, at a relatively modest price.
Next week it will be exactly 10 years since Tony Blair summoned, at short notice, a flotilla of economists and sociologists, experts in wealth distribution. They gathered on a bright March morning, perplexed as to the purpose of the meeting. Toynbee Hall in London\'s East End was chosen, as Michael White reported, as a place of symbolic pilgrimage since generations of Labour pioneers, including Clement Attlee, had worked there to improve the lives of the poor.
No one who was there will forget, because what came next was so unexpected - not least by Blair\'s own cabinet. "Our historic aim will be for ours to be the first generation to end child poverty. It will take a generation. It is a 20-year mission, but I believe it can be done." Jaws dropped and a whisper rippled through the room. Had they heard right?
Blair\'s speech was delivered with passionate conviction. "Poverty should not be a birthright. Being poor should not be a life sentence. We need to break the cycle of disadvantage." He listed the array of policies already put in place in the previous two Labour years, including the minimum wage and tax credits. "The child born on the rundown housing estate should have the same chance to be healthy and well educated as the child born in the leafy suburbs."
The experts wondered if he knew what he was doing. He was talking about narrowing inequality, though of course he never used the word. Had he any idea? The hard target of abolition by 2020 was soon made even harder with a promise to reach halfway by 2010. So now, here we are 10 years on, almost at the due date. Tackling poverty but not inequality has been like climbing Everest without oxygen or crampons - and the summit is still hidden in the clouds. Another 700,000 children have to be reached to hit the halfway target.
This anniversary will be marked with petitions from End Child Poverty, which includes the Child Poverty Action Group and all the children\'s charities. Now comes the crunch. Next month\'s budget is the last that can be used to reach the 2010 target. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says £3bn is needed, right now, in added tax credits and benefits at this make-or-break moment.
Here is the last chance for Labour to defy the economic squeeze and go into the next election boasting that it did what many thought impossible. David Cameron has not promised to honour the pledge, but it is an aspiration. "We can end child poverty - I mean it," he has said. But if Labour misses its own target by miles, Conservatives can dismiss it as empty Blair rhetoric. Yet if Labour succeeds, the Tories would never dare let it slide back. Cameron would have to match it in his manifesto. What\'s more, ex-Labour voters might see this as one success that trumps Labour\'s other egregious sins. In the end, this is what Labour is for. Yes or no?
If not, a future Tory government can safely dismantle the programmes and tax credits that have made the biggest inroad into child poverty to date. It will be easy to put anti-poverty projects at the top of the list for cuts, writing them off as "failed". Worried that "poverty" is a bad political word and an unpopular cause, Labour let its best programmes go largely unreported, invisible to all but the voiceless beneficiaries.
A few days after the 1997 election, Blair went to Aylesbury estate in south London to deliver his first speech on poverty, an issue so carefully avoided in the campaign. He promised, "No forgotten people, no no-hope areas". The Aylesbury is a frequent flying-visit destination for politicians wanting a gritty backdrop near Westminster. The reputation of its hideous, leaking, system-built blocks was sealed by the murder of Damilola Taylor. So I visited to find out what has happened here in the decade since it was given money as a designated New Deal for Communities estate.
Finally, after wrangling, delay and redesign, work begins this month on bulldozing and rebuilding. For the last decade, money has been spent on people, not buildings, with good results. In 1999 only 17% of Aylesbury pupils got five good GCSEs; last year it was 65%, equal to the national average. Children of 11 who were doing badly 10 years ago now meet the national average, and outdo it in maths. Extra classroom help, focusing on transition to secondary school, breakfast and after-school clubs, with a good homework project, have made the difference. Employment and training programmes got many into work - though can that last? Where 68% were once afraid to walk after dark, now it\'s only 29%. Youth groups and holiday schemes help explain why crime here is now below the London average.
The jewel in the crown is the First Place Children\'s Centre, where parents and toddlers drop in and children attend the high quality nursery. Now 63% of residents tell pollsters they are satisfied with the estate as a place to live, defying its reputation.
Improvements like these go unnoticed in the noise of Westminster. Cutting funds for such programmes would attract little attention. If crime, educational failure and poverty rose again, moral "broken Britain" reasons would be cited. If the story of Labour\'s legacy is "they failed on child poverty", the Tories are free to dismantle all this. But if Labour pulls off the most remarkable social change in history, it makes these programmes untouchable - and it might reverse the party\'s electoral fortunes. Far more important, spending the £3bn now will rescue the anti-poverty endeavour whoever wins next time.
Alistair Darling warns that his Treasury is empty. Tories warn of a horrendous national debt. But this spending benefits future generations, rich and poor, turning future state dependents into social contributors. How history judges the Labour era will be strongly influenced by this one symbolic test, whatever government comes in next.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]4/labour-welfare-child-poverty
