Did child poverty go up under Labour?
The claim:
“Child poverty has gone up not down.”
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Q and A, Liberal Democrat party conference, 19 September 2010
Cathy Newman checks it out:
Helping the poorest in society was in Labour’s DNA. But according to Nick Clegg, after thirteen years of a Labour government, child poverty has gone up not down. Shocking, if true. So is it?
The analysis:
When Labour came to power in 1997, just over a quarter of the UK’s children – 3.4m – were living in poverty. The official measure of poverty is any household getting by on less than 60 per cent of the median income. The median is the middle point.
In Labour’s first two terms, that figure went down to 2.7m, but then rose to 2.9m in 2007/08, before edging down to 2.8m in 2008/09 – the latest year for which data is available.
So contrary to Nick Clegg’s claim today, child poverty under Labour did go down not up, though not by much.
And it should be pointed out that Labour was forced to admit defeat on its pledge to halve child poverty by 2010. If current trends persisted, it was even on course to miss its 2020 target of ending child poverty altogether.
Cathy Newman’s verdict:
Some of Nick Clegg’s colleagues here in Liverpool think he’s a closet Tory. Certainly he sometimes walks and talks like one. His rhetoric on Labour’s child poverty record might have been drafted by Conservative HQ. But he and his new comrades need to check their facts. It is true Labour failed to meet its 2010 pledge, but around 600,000 children were lifted out of poverty under the last government.
There are 11 comments on this post
Love that someones being reasoned and analytical.
Do we know what percentage of all kids these numbers represent? If the number of kids went up, and the figures went down that’s huge. If the numbers went down and the percentage in poverty increased, that’s not so good. Still, over a half a million kids with a better life is worth something.
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60% of median income? What a very stupid measure.
So if all incomes go down people are ‘lifted out of poverty’ because the median they are judged against is lower?
Clearly the official use of the word ‘poverty’ is meaningless – how about you do a report on that? Something that really means something?
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No, if everyone’s income went down by say 10%, then the exact same number would be in poverty using this measure.
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You should check how many people have been shifted to just above that artificial poverty line thanks to Gordon’s horrible tax credits
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Cathy, when you wrote, “… child poverty under Labour did go down not up, though not by much …”, are you not actually suggesting two things:
(1) Nick Glegg is wrong – yep, the figures can’t lie can they …
(2) With 13 Years of Labour having been in government and having spent the nation into humungous debt, they didn’t make much difference to child poverty in the United Kingdom!
I imagine Nick Clegg’s mistake was spur of the moment but 13 years of Labour to not make much difference to child poverty in the UK is negligent, mismanagement or even worse.
Yvette Cooper might want to run and catch the Postie before the letter reaches Nick.
Two wrongs don’t make it right but Labour’s failure to actually make a difference to the number of children in poverty is much, much worse than Nick Clegg’s speech!
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not really the point of the article though is it Iain.
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Hmm, FactCheck blog. But wasn’t the measurement mechanism for child poverty changed by Labour in 2004 to artificially raise 900,000 children out of poverty.
Are your figures using government figures which would include this fakery, or have you done your own research?
It was rather well publicised and argued over when they did this mucking about it order to fake hitting their targets as I remember and a quick google confirms this change was the case.
Makes this assertion look a bit shakey.
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agree with Paul Perrin. These relative/equality measures are extremely irritating. If we want to measure equality then name it an equality measure.
Poverty should be absolute measure based on food/energy/housing costs. Corrupting it with medians devalues an important measure and does not do justice to those that are really in poverty. Any chance we can have targets based on sensible measures? An article would be useful.
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Cathy
Ace blog, thanks.
Apologies if I’ve missed it on here, but there’s another fact-check I’d love to see. Polly Toynbee made the following claim about Clegg’s speech, and I can’t find any source to check where her information comes from:
“Spending would return to 2006 levels, 41% of GDP he said – but with a sleight of hand omitted to add, minus 6%, making cuts deeper than ever before.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/20/clegg-talks-pure-cameronomics
Clegg’s claim is already a much-quoted factoid. We really need to know who’s right here.
Thanks.
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[...] keep up with my own series. The above is Question to Which the Answer is No, number 388, asked by Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News on Sunday. It does not strictly qualify, because the purpose of her report is to show that the answer is No; [...]
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I’m afraid it’s more complicated than this.
Clegg was highlighting Labour’s £10-Trick of giving tax credits to those on the theoretical threshold of poverty (40% of median income). Cosmetics.
Targeting those marginal candidates leaves those in real poverty (not the we-only-have-one-XBox type) substantially worse off.
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