Charity arm tells Government ‘jobs do not solve poverty’

THE SOCIAL action wing of the Church in England and Wales this week rejected government suggestions that employment alone is the key to solving the poverty crisis faced by millions of Britons today.

Caritas Social Action Network (Csan), which includes more than 25 Catholic charities working to alleviate child poverty, called for greater efforts to address low pay and the hardship it causes.

“It is extremely important to note that employment on its own is not a solution to poverty,” said Csan in its response to the Government’s Draft Child Poverty Strategy 2014-17, on which a consultation was launched earlier this year by the departments of Education and of Work and Pensions.

Csan supports the draft strategy’s statement that worklessness and low earnings are root causes of poverty and welcomes the Government’s aspiration to combat child poverty by helping families into employment and tackling low pay. However, it says that more needs to be done to reform the labour market to rectify the causes of poverty suffered by those in work and help ensure that work pays an adequate wage.

“Work does not provide a guaranteed route out of poverty in the UK. In-work poverty has increasingly become a reality for families in recent years. In many cases low-paid workers struggle to meet basic food, housing and utility costs,” added Csan.

The organisation points out that there are 6.7 million working families living below the poverty line, which is more than the number of workless and retired families in poverty combined (6.3 million). In addition, it is estimated that 66 per cent of children growing up in poverty live in a family where at least one member works. The Government sets the poverty line at 60 per cent of the median United Kingdom household income. By this definition there are some 13 million people defined as living in poverty in the country.
Csan described the necessity for food banks as “an unacceptable feature of life in the UK”, citing changes and delays to benefits as one of the reasons for their increased demand.

Meanwhile, research this week released by charity Save the Children, showed that British youngsters living in poverty could reach 5 million by 2020.

The chief executive of Csan, Helen O’Brien, said: “The fact that children in one of the world’s richest countries live in poverty is shocking enough – but what is even more worrying is that two-thirds of those children live in working families.”