REBALANCING SUPPORT FOR CHILDREN

Meg Munn

Earlier this year, members of the House of Commons Treasury Committee said they were 'alarmed' at the lack of action in the Budget to reduce child poverty. They fear the government will fail by 'a significant margin' to meet its 2010-11 target to halve child poverty. This commitment by the government was widely welcomed, but accompanied with nervousness, given how difficult it would be to achieve. The current economic circumstances make attaining this goal much more difficult.

A self-evident case 

For Labour Party supporters, the case for taking children out of poverty is self-evident. But there are also societal and economic reasons why we should keep to this pledge. Growing up in poverty can mean a life in poverty – little money often leads to poor nutrition and children in bad health, leading to lifelong problems, bad attendance at school or work and low aspirations.

The government can be applauded for lifting 600,000 children out of poverty (2005/6 figures). The focus has been on helping children regardless of family circumstances, with nine out of ten families with children currently getting tax credits. This does mean, however, a bureaucratic system administering the funds.

Much of Labour’s new financial architecture is clever. It attempts to direct help to those in most need, but it’s often too complicated for civil servants to easily administer. Families do not understand it, leading to confusion about what exactly they are entitled to receive. As we saw, public support and political credit was threatened because of the widespread failures in administration, for child tax credits in particular. 

Increasing basic entitlements  

We could rebalance the support for children by abolishing child tax credits and childcare tax credits. Instead the money would be channelled into providing a wider and increased range of basic universal entitlements for children. These would be similar to the provision of free education for all 5 to 18 year olds, and the guarantee for all 3 and 4 year olds of 12.5 hours of nursery provision every week (due to rise to 15 hours by 2010).

We could fund free school meals –  a healthy breakfast at every school for those who need it, in addition to a nutritious lunchtime meal for all pupils. Providing breakfast would help children from poorer backgrounds to get a better start for the day, helping their health as well as their intellectual development.

With the Olympics in mind, how about an entitlement to so many hours a week access to swimming or a sports club? This would build on the free swimming now been offered in many parts of the country. I know some professional sports teams have links with schools to encourage children to take part.  Perhaps, with clever financing, we could extend and deepen these links so that every school has a direct connection with sportspeople whom the children admire and will want to emulate.

Extending the provision of free childcare in schools during the holidays would take away a big problem for parents. This would be particularly welcome in poorer areas, where alternative childcare can be hard to find and often expensive. Having children in a secure environment would help working parents, removing the need for complex childcare arrangements that might not be ideal for the child. Providers of this new childcare in schools would have to show they were giving children projects, trips, sport and cultural activities that they would enjoy.  

Rechanneling resources 

Some will say it’s the nanny state gone wild. Don’t parents know how best to bring up their children? To which the answer is ‘yes, most parents do know how best to bring up their children’. But the truth is that some parents have more resources to do so than others. At the moment, attempts by the state to help remedy this are inevitably complex, bureaucratic and lack the virtue of simplicity and openness.

Rechannelling funds from the child tax credits and childcare tax credits system would take us away from complex state bureaucracies toward easily understood universal entitlements. The current child benefit arrangements are a universal entitlement and well understood. No longer would a stigma be attached to a free school meal; all children would have the opportunity to take part in and enjoy sport and leisure activities.

An important part of providing services in this way is that universal services always have the best take-up. It also ensures that more of the money goes into providing the services and less into the bureaucracy of form-filling, processing applications and payments. The services will be everywhere because the services are local – in each school, swimming pool and sports club. People will be able to see and understand where their money is being spent.

At a time of straightened circumstances, we need to focus on better ways of providing services. We should review the systems we currently use, changing those were we can see good practical and political reasons. Replacing the over-bureaucratic child tax credit system with one that gives people the opportunity to see it working in their locality seems to me a way to go.

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