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

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

The welfare reform bill has carried the application of the economic theory of moral hazard to such extremes in its exaggerated claims of welfare dependency that unemployment benefits could be reduced to an amount incapable of keeping body and soul together.

The new universal credit will be made up of a standard allowance (SA), an amount for children, another for housing and one more for particular needs or circumstances. The bill does not attempt to explain how the level of the SA will be decided. There is no link to the escalating prices of food and other essential needs. The Centre for Research in Social Policy has calculated that some time in the next 10 years the weekly cost of a healthy diet will overtake the weekly amount paid in adult unemployment benefits.

The caps on housing benefit and the local housing allowance will create debts that will have to be paid out of the money needed for a healthy diet.

Rev Paul Nicolson

Sir, There are serious weakness in the flawed concept of society which is pouring out of 10 Downing Street. It is very Judgemental. And it contains no mention or practice of economic justice.

Contempt for British society has covered pages of newsprint. Britain is broken; we don’t volunteer enough; there is a dependency culture among the unemployed, and a sick-note culture In the civil service. But the unemployed need encouragement rather than demonisation. Of course, the absolutely poor unemployed depend on the taxpayer to prevent their starving and to pay the rent: with means-tested welfare, such a policy illustrates the meaning of the common good.

Research has shown that people would far rather work than draw the dole; and of course they should be willing to look for work. But unemployment benefits become increasingly valueless as they are cut and the prices of food and other essentials escalate, rendering some people unfit to work, owing to debt and stress.

Low pay and bad management are known to result in labour turnover and increased sickness absence. It was the accountancy company KPMG that wrote the business reasons for the Living Wage for London and then paid it to the company’s cleaners; it is refused by the Government for the civil service.

The treatment of poor tenants recieving housing benefit takes us back to the poll tax. Both parties of government since 1979 are responsible for the catastrophic consequences of the 1980s, deregulation of lending and the abolition of rent controls, which were exploited by irresponsible bankers, who nearly destroyed the economy in 2008. Money flooded into a housing market in short supply, forcing up prices and rent. Housing benefit exploded to more than £21 billion a year.

It was not the fault of the improverished tenants; but they are carrying the pain of enforced eviction from thier homes and rent arrears that they cannot pay from poverty-level Jobseeker’s Allowance, owing to the cuts in the housing benefit; the poll tax also reduced Jobseeker’s Allowance.

The Prime Minister claims that it is wrong for the state to fund unemployed people to live to a higher standard than those who go out to work. This is nonsense when the state has persistently failed to devise any policy for affordable housing since Harold Macmillan was at No.10 in 1957. Local authorities placed homeless people in available accomodation because they, quite rightly, had a legal duty to do so. A secure home is a basic necessity.

It will take a major campaign about Clause 68 of the Welfare Reform Bill, in which htis draconian policy is legislated for, to put this injustice right.

Rev Paul Nicolson.

Tom Clark is right to express concern about the seven flimsy pages issued by the government on 21 December (Poverty made permanent, 5 January). The problem for the coalition is that the Child Poverty Act 2010 requires the government to publish a strategy outlining its plans to work towards specific income targets and demonstrate how it will tackle socioeconomic disadvantage.

The deputy prime minister says poverty plus a pound does not represent fairness and suggests we need to look at people’s experiences of poverty in all its dimensions and not just in narrow statistical terms. So they have conducted an initial survey of the evidence and had discussions with experts about the meaning of “socioeconomic disadvantage”.

This is an attempt to wriggle out of the requirements of the act by redefining “socioeconomic disadvantage” while throwing doubt on the importance of measuring income poverty. No amount of political obfuscation can undo the logic of Micawber’s principle – “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery” – when 25 cuts are reducing the already inadequate incomes of the poorest citizens while the prices paid for essentials are increasing.

Paul Nicolson
Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust