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Leading Article: A rich nation should budget for the poor

Monday 25 November 1996 00:02 GMT
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Which century is this? A two-year-old child has pneumonia because she lives in a cold, damp house. Children suffer from malnutrition and rickets, parents from tuberculosis. None of this is surprising, because their families can't afford to heat their homes.

It could be Dickensian London. Instead, such cases are appearing on the books of family health workers in Britain at the end of the 20th century. Our special report on page 8 shows that people are suffering from avoidable illnesses - diseases we thought had been almost wiped out a few decades ago - because of the grim conditions in which they live.

Current levels of poverty and ill-health may still seem tame compared with Victorian Britain, or even the early post-war years. Nevertheless, we should be shocked and outraged at the deprivation, particularly for children, that persists. It isn't good enough. In a rich and civilised nation such as ours, we can and should do much, much better.

For most of us, it is easier to shrug our shoulders and turn the page. It's terrible, we nod, but what can one do? The myth of the unfortunate underclass has taken deep root. Many dismiss them as feckless - too lazy to work, too foolish to manage their budgets, or their fertility, churning out babies without the wherewithal to support them.

Even those who realise that this caricature is nonsense still sigh and turn away. We convince ourselves that only a tiny minority are really in trouble, the rest all have tellies, videos, cars and comforts, even if they are not as well-off as we are. Moreover, given the constraints of a growing economy and a democracy, we believe we are doing all we can.

This won't do. For a start, living conditions for some have really become worse than they were 20 years ago. The incidence of illnesses such as TB is rising. Even if most people are better off, there is no excuse for allowing an unfortunate few to suffer such discomfort and indignity. Especially when so many of them are children.

Nor are the poor a tiny minority. As The Independent on Sunday revealed yesterday, an astonishing one baby in three is born to parents on benefits; that means 215,000 babies born last year into families not far off the breadline.

Peter Lilley, the Social Security Secretary, assures us that all is not as dire as it seems. Most people who are poor one year, are not poor the next. He has a point. We should not waste too much anguish on the plight of the middle-class family that runs down its savings during temporary hard times.

The trouble is that many people don't actually move very far out of poverty. The same people rejoin the dole queues time and time again, when their low-paid temporary jobs run out. Households increasingly have two earners, or no earners at all, as both partners get trapped on benefits.

Admittedly most of those stuck on welfare do indeed have televisions, telephones, fridges, and even central heating, videos and cars. So what? Central heating isn't a luxury, it stops people getting cold and ill. Television is extremely cheap entertainment, and provides many people with their only access to our common culture - from news to soap operas, cartoons to documentaries. And cars make it possible to drive to the out-of-town supermarket, rather than negotiate infrequent buses with several shopping bags and a toddler in tow.

Even more important, relative poverty matters. Inequality is actually bad for our health. Surprising as it may seem, the evidence shows that more unequal societies have much higher death rates. Being poor in a rich country is far worse for our health than being poor in a poor nation, alongside everyone else. It seems that the stress of exclusion, or a sense of failure, or even envy, can drive us to an early grave.

The most pernicious aspect of the underclass myth is the idea that nothing can be done. Our national income is around pounds 13,000 a year for every child, woman and man in Britain. It should not be beyond us to make sure that toddlers live in houses with central heating.

After all, we are not talking about a sub-Saharan state torn by war and plagued by corrupt government. Nor is Britain a former Communist country, dealing with the unavoidable problems of transition as it tries to restructure an entire economy. This is placid Britain, haunted by nothing more serious than the odd recession to interrupt the path of progress.

As Polly Toynbee makes clear over the page, there are plenty of programmes that do good, alleviating poverty and helping people into work. But they are being cut by local authorities to cope with budget squeezes from on high. Conservative governments could have done countless things in the past 17 years to help those who lost jobs in manufacturing and skilled manual work into new jobs, or to make it easier for mothers to find child care and work. Instead, they have ignored the problem and made matters worse. For this week's Budget to deliver tax cuts - especially cuts in inheritance tax or capital gains tax - in the face of such poverty and deprivation, would be appalling and immoral.

But we can't place all the blame on politicians. The Conservatives have exploited our willingness to turn a blind eye to other people's problems. If we vote for tax cuts rather than policies to get the poor into work and out of hardship, then the toddler's pneumonia should rest on all of our consciences. We shouldn't feel guilty about poverty, or resigned to inequality, we should be angry and determined. Only when we demand more, and better, of our government, will our government start to deliver.

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