Labour's 'brutal' neglect hits two-parent families

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Labour's drive to end poverty among children is doomed to failure because of its "brutal" neglect of two-parent families, a former minister has said.

A decade of pouring welfare payments into the pockets of single parents has meant a growing struggle for parents who stay together, according to Labour MP Frank Field.

He warned Gordon Brown that his plans to combat poverty will become a huge and pointless drain on taxes unless the benefit system is revamped to help couples.

Mr Field said: "The tax credit and benefit strategy, which costs the equivalent of a four pence cut in the standard rate of income tax, brutally discriminates against two-parent families.

"This discrimination helps to explain why children in working two-parent families now make up the single most important group of poor children."

The intervention from Mr Field, who served as welfare reform minister in Tony Blair's first term before being cold-shouldered and sacked, piles new pressure on the child poverty campaign that the Chancellor claims as one of his proudest achievements.

Figures published this spring showed that far from going down to meet Labour's aspiration of halving child poverty by 2010, the number of children below the officiallydesignated poverty line went up by 100,000 in 2005.

One charity chief, Martin Narey of Barnardo's, called the rise a "moral disgrace".

A report by Mr Field and researcher Ben Cackett for the Reform think-tank said that all the children newly fallen into poverty come from two-parent families.

It pointed to a tax credit and benefit system that demands two parents work much harder to make a reasonable income and which encourages single mothers to stay single or lie about it if they start living with a man.

According to the report, a single mother with two children under 11 on the minimum wage received tax credits that last year took her weekly income to £487 if she worked only 16 hours a week.

A two-parent family with one earner would have to put in 116 hours of work on the same pay to get the same money.

The reason why the two-parent family must work for an extra 100 hours for the same income is that tax credits are paid to a single a reduction of a quarter by 2004, was missed.

The Field study said that £13billion a year, the equivalent of four pence on income tax, is already being spent on the tax credits and benefits being used to try to cut child poverty.

It warned that a further £4billion a year, another one and a half pence on tax, would be needed to hit the 2020 target.

Mr Field said: "Severe child poverty has been untouched and persistent poverty remains high.

"To come anywhere near hitting the target for 2010, the Government would need to spend an extra £4billion a year.

"Does anybody think this is a realistic option? A radical restructuring is needed.

"The clearest failing of its approach so far has been its treatment of two-parent households in work.

"Children in working two-parent households represent the largest single group of poor children."

Overall, 43 per cent of children who are counted as poor live in two-parent families where someone is working; 17 per cent in workless two-parent families; 33 per cent live with non-working single parents, and seven per cent live with a single parent who has a job.

 

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