“Children shared harrowing accounts of hardship, with some in almost Dickensian levels of poverty. They don’t talk about ‘poverty’ as an abstract concept but about not having the things that most people would consider basic: a safe home that isn’t mouldy or full or rats, with a bed big enough to stretch out in, ‘luxury’ food like bacon, a place to do homework, heating, privacy in the bathroom and being able to wash, having their friends over, and not having to travel hours to school.”
That’s the children's commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza talking to the Guardian today about her report Growing up in a low-income family: Children’s experiences.
Dame Rachel is surely right when she tell the newspaper that the two-child benefit limit must be scrapped. But so deep is the “crisis of hardship” her report reveals that I doubt the welfare system alone can resolve it.
In recent years society has become more and more unequal. Executive pay raises ahead – apparently mundane British managers are constantly on the point of being poached by multinational corporations – while lower down the scale many employees have not seen an increase in real terms since the Credit Crunch of 2008.
To reverse some of this trend, government could look to an increase in the higher rate of income tax and a wealth tax to raise the funds to cut the basic rate or increase the tax allowance. This wouldn't help the poorest, which is why increasing benefits is important, but there are many people in work who are still struggling to get by.
I am struck, too, by the appalling housing conditions the report reveals. I assume that this accommodation is rented and mostly in the private sector, though there is also poor housing in the public sector.
Landlords have a duty to ensure the properties they rent out are fit for human habitation, but clearly some are getting away with breaking this law. Is it because local authorities are too stretched to take them to court? Certainly, if the onus is placed on impoverished tenants to bring cases, the law is unlikely be enforced.
Yes, we've ended up at my new favourite bugbear, landlordism.
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