An Exploration of the Relationship Between Low Birth Weight, Poor Nutrition and Poverty

Posted on by

by Matt Crow, Manchester University, Z2K Volunteer.

Introduction

  • Low birth weight, as defined by Dr Gail Rees, is when an infant weighs less than 2.5kg at birth which, as Rees goes on to state provokes an “increased risk of mortality and morbidity[1].” Whilst the figure of 2.5kg is generally accepted as the demarcation point for low birth weight it would not be unreasonable to propose that 3kg is the more appropriate figure for concern as the risk of perinatal mortality has been shown to increase when just below that weight[2]. Continue reading →

Decades of failure in housing and land management policy

Posted on by
by Professor Peter Ambrose
Visiting Professor in Housing and Health
Brighton University

(download this article in PDF)

  1. We need to understand how this huge call on the HB budget (£21bn per year) arose. It arose because of the failures in financial management over the period 1980-2005. The financial deregulations of the early 1980s allowed house purchase lending to spiral out of control thus driving house prices to unprecedented levels and with them rents – which by various mechanisms reflect house price movements and consequentially housing benefit. Simultaneously the Housing Act 1988 allowed landlords to charge a market rent, thus leading rents to spiral after 15th January 1989. This removed rent controls from the Rent Act 1977 scheme yet again inevitably increasing housing benefit. So it remained until the bubble burst. Continue reading →

Will Hutton review on fair pay in public sector

Posted on by

This submission is made on behalf of Citizens UK and London Citizens which among other things have been successfully campaigning for the London Living Wage since 2001 (download this article in PDF). See below for more information about these two charities.

  1. How to introduce a public sector pay multiple that would mean that no public sector manager can earn over 20 times more than the lowest paid person in their organisation.
  2. When meeting with organisations to request that they pay a Living Wage, we commonly encounter the argument that all in house staff are paid a Living Wage. Our case is usually based on the experience of staff who work in that organisation on a regular basis but have been contracted out. Typical jobs include cleaners, security guards and domestic staff such as cooks. No organisation is able to function without these jobs being done. Continue reading →

Reforming welfare – our response

Posted on by

On the 5th June 2010, it was announced that Frank Field MP will lead an independent review - Review on Poverty and Life Chances, on poverty in the UK and what the Government can do to improve the lives of the least advantaged people in our society

On 30th July 2010, the 21st Centrury Welfare Paper was published. It sets out the plans of Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to completely change the benefits system.

Below are our views, which is also available as a PDF for download Continue reading →

The Great Repeal Bill

Posted on by

The coalition government has pledged that it will get rid of unnecessary laws and regulations in the interests of creating a freer and more inclusive society.

It is asking the public to nominate laws which should be repealed and we have nominated the laws which allow bailiffs to use force to gain entrance to premises and generally for the purposes of enforcement. The recent introduction of this power overturned over 400 years of laws upholding the principle that “ An Englishman’s home is his castle” and that no one ,not even the State, can enter private premises uninvited without a specific court order.

If you would like to support our proposal please follow the link below: (Update: the site is now closed although the content is accessible via the Your Freedom archives).

You will need to register at the above website before you can vote and comment.

The ABC of early years intervention – The Guardian, 4th July

Posted on by

The passion of the secretary of state for work and pensions (Two babies, one future, 2 July) for early intervention to increase the chances of a disadvantaged child moving out of poverty brings horses bolting and open stable doors to mind. For too many children disadvantage starts with a mother who cannot afford a healthy diet and might not know enough about the food she needs to give birth to a healthy baby. International research, headed by the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition, has shown that poor maternal nutrition leads to poor cognitive ability, developmental brain disorder and a higher risk of cerebral palsy.

The last government took the point and added the health in pregnancy grant, the baby entitlement of the child tax credit, the toddler entitlement of the child tax credit and the child trust fund, but it too should have started before women conceive by increasing their unemployment benefit of £53.45 a week. The present government abolished all these benefits, so reducing the income during pregnancy and the first year of a baby’s life by £1,735, as calculated by Family Action.

An unemployed woman aged 18-25, before and during pregnancy, has an income of just £53.45 a week. This will be more vulnerable to rent arrears from housing benefit caps, still vulnerable to unregulated loan sharks, and is likely to be overtaken by the escalating weekly cost of a healthy diet and domestic fuel, with the annual uprating now pegged to the RPI. The public health white paper only mentions food when abolishing the Food Standards Agency and never mentions debt, another source of mental illness.

 

Rev Paul Nicolson

Chair, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust

On the fault lines of fractured Britain – Guardian, 3rd June 2011

Posted on by

On the fault lines of fractured Britain

Behind the Department for Work and Pensions press release about benefit fraud of £l.5bn (Chav: the vile word at the heart of fractured Britain, 31 May) has been debate in the welfare reform bill committee about the £2.6bn of benefit claimants’ debts which are the result of overpayments made in error. Administrative errors in tax credits are not recorded by HMRC but have been very substantial. Enforcement of these debts against claimants has been illegal since 1975, if they were in no way their fault, a law endorsed by John Major’s government in 1992 – but it will be allowed in the welfare reform bill at the discretion of the same officials unless peers maintain the status quo when the bill reaches them. Continue reading →

Funding New Houses – Daily Telegraph – 12 April 2011

Posted on by

SIR – The Treasury, in rejecting all economic policies but immediate cost-cutting, is lagging behind current thinking. We need to move away from use of a “single bottom line” of profit to provide a case for investment, towards a “triple bottom line”, taking into account people, planet and profit.

Nowhere is the need for this approach more obvious than in house building. Some 3.5 million households need affordable homes; the planet could benefit from fuel-saving houses, and the building industry from employment and profit.

A report from the Pro-Housing Alliance suggests the Treasury should consider that future cost savings in the NHS, education and other sectors – because of the improved health of families no longer encumbered by bad housing – would exceed the cost of borrowing £50 billion a year to build 500,000 green homes. The capital cost would be recovered by the sale or rental of the houses.

Steve Battersby President, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health
Peter Ambrose Visiting Professor in Housing and Health, Brighton University
Stephen Hill Director, C2O Futureplanners
Angela Mawle Chief Executive, UK Public Health Association
Peter Archer Chairman, Care and Repair England
Adrian Cooper Director, Team Homes
Rev Paul Nicolson Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust,

Chris Grayling’s “Building Block”. The Guardian, 05.04.2011

Posted on by

There are times when exchanges in the Commons reach a new level of unreality. Chris Grayling, the minister for employment, answering an amendment to the welfare reform bill, said on 31 March that £67 a week “is the building block that we intend to use for the universal credit”. Therefore, if the amounts to be added for children or the disabled are not to be reduced by debts, the £67 will have to pay the rent remaining unpaid by a capped housing benefit; the childcare unpaid for when the allowance does not cover 100% of the cost; the council tax remaining unpaid by a level of council tax benefit set below 100%; a £50 charge for an application to use the child support service; and the £2.6bn, excluding fraud, to be enforced by the government as a result of errors in the delivery of welfare by officials and claimants, which also excludes an amount from errors by officials unrecorded at HMRC – thus obliterating the very small building block, which reduces in value every year and is described in the bill’s explanatory notes as an amount to cover basic needs.

Rev Paul Nicolson

Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust

Cuts are affecting the poorest

Posted on by

Letter in The Independent – 30 March 2011.

There is a different interpretation of the ICM opinion poll to that suggested by Dominic Lawson. Maybe the “57 per cent support for the cuts or more” tells us that 57 per cent of the population have not been as seriously affected by the crisis as they were led to expect.
They should thank the fellow citizens who are taking a disproportionate £18bn reduction of their welfare incomes, which were already below the Government’s poverty line and even further below the Joseph Rowntree minimum income standards. They comprise 2 million pensioners, 4 million children and 7.5 million adults, who will be forced into unpayable debt because their incomes will not keep up with rising prices of food and domestic fuel and increasing rents.

The Rev Paul Nicolson
Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust