Government policies wilfully impoverish the most vulnerable

Were you, like me, fuming at the sight of photographs of the measly food parcels provided by private food companies that were posted all over social media? I thought this Government’s disdain and disregard for poor families could not be any worse. Clearly I was wrong.

A social media storm started after a mother posted a photo of a food parcel on Twitter which consisted of two carrots, two potatoes, a tin of baked beans and a small range of other food items, which she calculated to have cost about £5.

The mother, who is disabled, thought the items were supposed to last ten school days and should have been worth £30. Her post set off an avalanche of complaints from other food parcel recipients about the quality and quantity of the food.

These hardships are not just a result of the Coronavirus epidemic, although undoubtedly they have been exacerbated by it; they are largely attributed to successive Conservative governments and their deliberate dismantling of the welfare state.

The privatisation and outsourcing of free school meals comes as no surprise. The contract awarded to Chartwell, whose former Chair is a Tory donor, without the scrutiny of competitive tendering, exemplifies the ongoing normalisation of privatisation, cronyism, and unfair tendering.

Writing in the Independent, comedian and author Mark Steel summed up how huge profits can be made at the expense of hungry children, saying: ‘Chartwell is paid £30 for each “food delivery”, which turns out to consist of the sort of stuff that was dropped behind a cupboard in 1996’, and will last a week ‘if your child is a millipede’.

THE FOOD SCANDAL

When the scandal emerged, the Prime Minister proclaimed the packages ‘a scandal’ and ‘disgrace’. Robin Mills, the managing director of Compass Group plc, which owns Chartwell, said: ‘The first thing I want to do, personally and on behalf of Chartwell and Compass, is to say sorry… The quality and quantity of the produce in the images on Twitter fell short of our usual standards.’

However, it soon emerged that the Government’s food parcel guidance was not dissimilar to the dismal array of items seen in the numerous social media images. Its guide states an appropriate menu for five days is

• 1 loaf of bread or pack of rolls/10-inch wraps
• 2 baking potatoes
• 1 cucumber 
• 3 large tomatoes or 1 pack of cherry tomatoes
• 1 standard tin sweetcorn in water
• 5 portions of fresh fruit (for example, apples, satsumas, bananas) or 3 portions of fresh fruit and 1 tin fruit in juice (for example, pears, peaches, fruit cocktail)
• 2 items from the following: 1 pack sliced cooked meat (for example, chicken, ham or vegetarian alternative) or 1 tin meat or 1 tin tuna in water or 6 eggs
• 200g block of cheese
• 1 tin baked beans
• 1 500g pot plain low-fat yoghurt or 3 individual serving yoghurt pots

However, according to Dr Max Davie, of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the contents of the food parcels were ‘not nutritionally sufficient for children and young people’.

I can’t help but surmise that the guidance has been produced without the benefit of expert knowledge of essential nutrition for young children. This would certainly follow the pattern of the Government’s continued disregard for professional and scientific knowledge.

SOARING POVERTY LEVELS

In my last article ‘Child poverty – Slipping through the net’ (Nursery World, July 28, 2020), I argued that without Government intervention, the Covid-19 outbreak could increase the number of British children living in poverty to 4.5 million.

At the time, I realised that for some, the assertion that millions of children are going to bed hungry and at serious risk of malnutrition was simply unbelievable. And worse still, too many people refused to accept the reality of the situation, which continues to be desperate for so many families.

This disbelief persists in spite of the facts and figures highlighting the problem, not just during the coronavirus pandemic but year on year.

Thanks to the work of organisations such as the Child Poverty Action Group, and the Joseph Rowntree Trust, we can no longer ignore the effects of child poverty and its impact on the life chances of children, even if the Government seems unwilling to listen and acknowledge the severity of the problem.

IN TOTAL DENIAL

In 2019, the Government bullishly rejected the UN’s Statement on Visit to the United Kingdom, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. Alston concluded that ‘14 million people, a fifth of the [UK] population, live in poverty. Four million of these are more than 50% below the poverty line, and 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials. The widely respected Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts a 7% rise in child poverty between 2015 and 2022, and various sources predict child poverty rates of as high as 40%. For almost one in every two children to be poor in twenty-first century Britain is not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one.’

Alston, an eminent New York-based human rights lawyer, said the Government response to his report amounted to ‘a total denial of a set of uncontested facts’ and that when he first read its public comment he thought it might actually be a spoof. 

Conservative governments have disregarded evidence of rising child poverty since they came to power in 2010. I suspect this is because those in power were born into a world of wealth and entitlement and simply cannot understand the life experiences of families who may be just a month’s pay away from financial crisis. How can Government really understand a family’s slide into poverty and its impact on the children’s life chances if they believe that poverty is a result of personal failure.

PROBLEMS WITH THE UNIVERSAL CREDIT SCHEME

Of course, this level of ignorance is not limited to ministers and policy makers. Too many individuals respond to stories of poverty and hardship with ‘this is why we have a benefit system’. However, the Universal Credit scheme has major flaws and many families applying experience several weeks delay in receipt of benefits. This does not help families that need immediate help.

Also, limiting financial support to two children per family directly discriminates against larger families, leaving them in even greater poverty. In April 2020, during the first lockdown, 2.1 million people claimed unemployment-related benefits, an increase of 850,000 in one month. Since then, despite Government support, significant numbers of families are having to manage with wage reductions, loss of earnings and business closures, with increasing numbers of welfare recipients.

FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE

Aneurin Bevan and William Beveridge, constructors of the welfare state, must be turning in their graves. Their vision of the state providing a safety net ‘from cradle to grave’ for those in need has been decimated over the last four decades.

Margaret Thatcher asserted that at the root of poverty was a ‘really hard fundamental character-personality defect’; in other words, you are poor because you are weak and defective. This opinion continues to pervade Government policy. However, the reality is that 10+ years of harsh austerity measures, Brexit, and Covid 19 have combined to create a tsunami of hardships, resulting in too many families struggling with debt, job losses and job insecurity; and with minimal financial support via the cruel Universal Credit system.

The irony of the food parcels debacle is that instead of again ‘rolling back the state’, central Government decides what children should eat – presumably because they not trust parents to buy the right foods for their family.

Families living in poverty deserve better, they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. In times of hardship, they need sufficient state support (hard cash) to empower them and to get through the difficult times. What they do not need is the humiliation of appallingly inadequate food parcels, or vouchers.

I know many of you, like me, are greatly impressed with footballer and campaigner Marcus Rashford, who uses his own childhood experiences of poverty to raise public awareness of the seriousness of the problem. According to Food Foundation estimates, 200,000 children had to skip meals during school holidays in the first lockdown.

In an open letter to MPs, Rashford writes, ‘As their stomachs grumble, I wonder if those 200,000 children will ever be proud enough of their country to pull on the England national team shirt one day and sing the national anthem from the stands. Ten years ago, I would have been one of those children, and you would never have heard my voice and seen my determination to become part of the solution.’

PERCEIVED POPULARITY

One problem with having a populist Government is that they lack social awareness and seem to react only when public outrage impinges on their perceived popularity. The Government’s flip-flopping decision-making and deafness to the suffering of children and families, both before and during the pandemic, continues to offend those of us with a sense of social justice.

We need to thank Marcus Rashford, with his huge social media influence, for shaming the Government into action. The Government’s U-turns on free school meals policy meant that almost two million children received packed lunches during school holidays. But the Government cannot be relied upon to always help our most vulnerable children. Consequently, we cannot rest on our laurels.

As food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe pointed out in an interview with The Guardian, ‘We all fought so hard for that half-term meal provision this time last year. And then we had to get up and fight again for it in April, and again in the summer. Do we have to do this every time? Can we not just feed the children? Why do we keep on having to come back and beg for it?’ (15 January 2021).

Why indeed!

Deborah Udakis is an early years consultant and former Ofsted inspector