The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has just published
its 2009 report on poverty and social exclusion and it’s a bleak indictment of the
Labour years. Whilst you would expect jobs and incomes to shrink
in a recession, the most shocking fact highlighted in this report is that unemployment
(especially youth unemployment) and child poverty were rising well before the
onset of the downturn. A few key facts:
- The
unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds is now higher than at any point
since the series began in 1993.
- Unemployment
has been rising since 2005, and the young adult unemployment rate stopped
falling as long ago as 2001.
- The
number of children in low-income households where at least one adult works is,
at 2.1m, the highest it has ever been.
So in all
those years of plenty, when Labour claimed it was closing the gap between rich
and poor, as well as pouring money into public services, the underlying rate of poverty
and its causes were actually growing. The Foundation says that the report is
not all bad news, citing a recent decrease in the number of children attaining fewer
than 5 GCSEs. Leaving aside the question of whether this is simply due to easier
exams, it’s clear that this increased ‘attainment’ is not resulting in greater
employability – so the reported 65% increase in education funding since Labour
came to power cannot be judged a good investment, by any stretch of the
imagination.
Anyone still
believe the Government’s pledge – now enshrined in law – to “end child poverty”? Does Gordon Brown think that a record number of NEETs represents a good outcome for twelve years of Labour rule?
