SOCIETY TODAY

Perpetuating poverty and homelessness

Moyra Bremner

"Poverty is when you have to save up to buy food each week." This is not a quote from Mayhew or Dickens, but the words of a single parent in 1975 which were quoted in the Finer debate last week. A debate which must have saddened all but the most disillusioned with democracy.

It is six years since Richard Crossman recognised the difficulties of one-parent families and set up the Finer Committee. Its report which took four years and cost the taxpayer £200,000, showed that one-parent families are the poorest and most disadvantaged group in Britain. They are poorer still today. The latest survey shows that subsistence incomes and rising prices are forcing parents to go without essential food and clothing in order to feed their children.

There had been fears that few members would return from their constituencies for the debate on a Monday. But Mr Stonehouse's statement preceded it, and the House was packed — packed, that is, until the debate on Finer was announced, when almost to a man they left. Thanks to Mr Stonehouse we saw that the majority of MPs do not care that today there are children growing up in the kind of conditions which should have gone out with the nineteenth century. As Helene Hayman remarked, it was extraordinary that the problems of one man could fill the House and those of a million children could empty it.

From then on the House resembled nothing so much as a firstclass railway carriage which a scattering of members travelled in for just long enough to speak. They unanimously pressed the Government for more action, although few had bothered to update Finer's figures and some seemed more concerned to be seen to 'care' than to make any practical suggestions for solving the problem.

Mrs Castle opened the debate by explaining that most lone parents are neither feckless nor unmarried but are ordinary people who through death or desertion find themselves bringing up a family alone. She said the case for some form of special help for them had been proved but added that there was "no early prospect" of such help being available. In fact her speech was a masterpiece of pseu

do-sympathetic waffle in which she failed to put forward even one concrete proposal to improve the lives of these families. The closest she came was in saying that she would look at proposals for an additional earnings disregard for one-parent families on Supplementary Benefit. A statement which would have carried more weight had she not chosen to ignore the fact that the recent doubling of the disregard to £4, of which she boasts, still gives less buying power than the level set in 1966.

It is typical of the schizoid attitudes of the DHSS that Mrs Castle refused to make it easier for lone parents to care for their children, either by giving a guaranteed maintenance allowance, as Finer recommended, or by reducing the number,of working hours need to qualify for Family Income Supplement. But the next day Dr David Owen, addressing the National Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital, waxed lyrical over the fact that mothers shouldn't have to go out to work because children need their mothers.

It is a pity he isn't equally eloquent in an attack on poverty and injustice, because, as MPs showed, the system which his department administers perpetuates both. And it is geared actively to preventing those on Supplementary Benefit or Family Income Supplement from lifting themselves out of poverty by their own efforts. David Penhaligon quoted a lone mother in his constituency who found that by working a twenty-hour week — the most she could manage with a young child — she could not improve her net income by even one penny. She was lucky. The 'Catch 22' rules on social security mean that it is possible actually to lose money by working.

Mrs Castle attacked the Opposition for having forced her to relax the earnings rule for pensioners, as this had used up money which should have gone to single parents. This doesn't bear examination. All government spending is a matter of priorities. If Mrs Castle cannot find money it is because her priorities lie elsewhere. Even at a time of recession the choice is not between money for the old or for the poor. It is, for example, between them and the proliferation of bureaucrats which burden us. This year enlargements of the civil service cost, at a conservative estimate, £100 million in salaries alone. Hidden and cumulative costs vastly exceed this and it leaves aside the growth of administrators in the NHS and local government. It is also significant that on the same day that she was pleading poverty, Mrs Castle refused to allow the Royal Commission to look at the cost to the NHS of phasing out pay beds.

But not all the measures which

Finer recommended are costly. Mrs Chalker told the House that 41 per cent of the homeless in Greater London are one-parent families. Being homeless they are forced to move about, so they are seldom able to get on a housing list. And if they do get on a list they are still unlikely to get a home because of the way the points system works. Equally, councils are reluctant to give joint tenancies. So a deserted wife and her children may be turned out of their councilhouse because they are not the official tenants. She asked for this to be put right. Reg Freeson said he would be trying to secure the co-operation of local authorities to make changes. This is not enough. He should have been able to offer concrete proposals and, at the very least, to say that in future all council tenancies would be held jointly. Perhaps it is not money but concern that the government lacks.

It was equally depressing to hear that the outdated workings of the magistrates' courts will remain unchanged until yet another inquiry has been completed. And that there will be no attempt to prevent local authorities cutting back on nursery schools and the already minimal day-care facilities. Without these there is no hope of single parents working to support themselves.

The one form of help which society never refuses to give is to take children into care — `help' which deprives the already deprived. This costs us, the taxpayers, between £80 and £100 a week for each child, exclusive of hidden administrative costs. And no one can measure the long-term costs in delinquency, retardation and mental illness. We don't even know how much we spend each year on keeping children from one-parent families in care — Mrs Castle's cost-conscious department doesn't keep a record. What is certain is that this year it will be more than last year, and that it will continue to grow until lone parents are given adequate help. Do we really want our taxes spent on splitting up families rather than on keeping them together?

Each year there are 1,100,000 people living in one-parent families. As Peter Bottomley pointed out this is the same as the membership of the TGWU, which is the largest union in the country. Would this, or any other, government pay as little attention to the needs of Jack Jones. and his members as they do to the Finer Joint Action Committee?

Perhaps the Government should heed the words of John 9venden who said: "It has been a central principle of the Labour Party's economic philosophy that . . . the poorest people must be protected. Unless we give a firm commitment to one-parent families these words will have a very hollow ring indeed."