EDINBURGH, August 21 (RIA Novosti), Mark Hirst – The UK Government’s austerity measures have had a disproportionate impact on families and children and are leading directly to growing child poverty, poorer housing and generally poorer standards of living, two leading social policy experts told RIA Novosti Thursday.
“There is no doubt that the austerity measures of the UK government have borne down most on families with children. The recent declaration from [UK Prime Minister] David Cameron that he will have family impact statements for all government policies is welcome but too late,” Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, an expert in social policy at the University of York, told RIA Novosti.
“Child poverty is rising and sweeping away all the gains of the last government,” Bradshaw added.
A new study published by the Poverty and Social Exclusion (PSE) project found almost one million Scots, one fifth of the population, cannot afford adequate housing. The study also found 250,000 people in Scotland are unable to feed themselves properly, one third are unable to sufficiently heat their homes and have poor quality jobs, with low wages are leaving tens of thousands unable to escape poverty.
Bradshaw told RIA Novosti the solution was to introduce a set of radical counter policies.
“The measures needed to reverse these trends in poverty are increased child benefits, increased child tax credits. The Government also needs to stop cutting taxes for the corporations, fuel and beer and start spending the revenue forgone on childcare,” the expert said.
Bradshaw declined to comment on the outcome and consequences of a No vote in the forthcoming Scottish independence referendum which, according to other academic studies published this week, could result in a 10 percent cut to the Scottish Block Grant.
“Scotland has lower poverty rates and has many policies in place which are already better for families with children than those in England,” Bradshaw added.
“Most of the levers clearly lie with the UK Government,” added Professor Nick Bailey, an expert in Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow who also contributed to the study.
“We have a labor market in this country which increasingly produces jobs [which] don’t provide a wage which is sufficient to allow people to get out of poverty even when they are working,” Bailey told RIA Novosti.
“Traditionally we expect that moving from unemployment into work is good for peoples’ sense of well-being and good for their health. But increasingly people are moving into work which is such low quality and they have so little control over their tasks and hours of work, that their health goes down,” Bailey said.
“We need to fix Britain’s broken labor market,” Bailey added.
