Half of children in Inner London live in poverty

No progress has been made in reducing the number of children in poverty in London since 2000. Over a quarter of all children in London are living below the poverty line, and after housing costs a massive four in ten children live in poverty. In Inner London, this rises to half of all children.

This is just one of the many startling statistics uncovered by the Centre for Social Justice in its Breakdown London report released today. Other key findings include:

• A baby boy born in Islington has a life expectancy more than eight years lower than one in Kensington & Chelsea.
• In the last seven years there has been a 17.5% increase in offences involving violence against the person.
• In the last seven years there has been a 128.5% increase in drug offences.
• In the last four years there has been a 33% increase in youth unemployment.
• A fifth of adult Londoners (one million) are hazardous or harmful users of alcohol.
• Despite being an economic powerhouse London has the worst working age employment rate of any area in the UK and a rate of economic inactivity 16% higher than the national average.
• Nearly half of all families with dependent children in London are headed by a lone parent, 65% higher than the national average for England and Wales.
• An estimated 1.68 million working days are lost every year in London because of alcohol, at a cost to the London economy of £294m and to the NHS of £52m.

Livingstone hasn't dissented from any of the government's failed approaches. Boris Johnson believes a lack of focus from the Mayor's office has contributed to "Breakdown London". One of the proposals he has already made in this area is the establishment of a Mayors Fund - a match-funded pot of cash that will be made up of investments from the City, Film Industry etc. This fund will manage the whole process for people wanting to give something back to the city.

We hope that he takes a serious look at the approaches advocated by the CSJ such as an expansion of abstinence-based drug treatment and more relationship/parenting support. More widely, a radical agenda of empowering the voluntary sector in London (not in a politically correct, vote-chasing, corrupt Lee Jasper way!) would do wonders for the city.

The CSJ is holding a (fully booked) mayoral hustings on Wednesday which will focus on these issues and on how to use and learn from the voluntary sector in tackling them. Ken Livingstone has pulled out - perhaps the meeting would have brought home to him too many uncomfortable home truths about the state of London.

The Breakdown Britain and Breakthrough Britain reports have also been applied in this way to Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow.

This opinion piece by Iain Duncan Smith appears on Page 2 of today's Evening Standard:

A Tale of Two Cities

"London is incredibly successful, the financial centre for the rest of the world, where telephone number salaries are earned by a young metropolitan elite, whose international tastes, dominate the cultural nightlife of the city. With some of the best theatres, galleries, clubs, restaurants and sporting venues, social life in London is hectic and expensive. It’s no surprise that the media and politicians are focused on this, after all being associated with success, never did anyone any harm. 

Yet there is another London which too often goes unnoticed, where life expectancy is years lower, where educational outcomes are appallingly low, where family Breakdown is endemic and children are unlikely to know their fathers. Drugs have become the currency and the street gang the alternative family, brutal and dysfunctional. Worklessness and dependency characterise their families and children growing up in such an environment will find their outcomes reduced before they even enter nursery school.

These pathways to poverty are threatening to create a lost generation. Take, for example, the experience of a young male born in Lambeth. He can expect to live 8 years less than his counterpart in Kensington and Chelsea; he has a 50 per cent chance of being born into a single parent family; he has less than a 40 per cent chance of attaining 5 good GCSEs; and is 5 times more likely to become a problem drug user than his counterpart in Richmond. 

Having experienced family breakdown, attended a failing school and been exposed to drugs his life chances have been significantly reduced. He is likely to join the 1 in 6 adults dependent on state benefits in the borough.

Excluded from mainstream society he seeks an alternative source of income and affirmation. The 40 plus street gangs in Lambeth offer that alternative. Whether or not he joins a gang, there’s a chance he won’t see his 20th birthday.  In May 2007, 18 year old Dwaine Douglas was stabbed to death, in July 2007 16 year old Abukar Mahamud was shot to death and in August 2007 18 year old Nathan Foster was shot to death – all in the borough of Lambeth. Last year 27 teenagers were killed on London streets, 18 were stabbed, 8 were shot and one was beaten to death. In 2008 the tragic deaths of our young people continue.

In London boroughs such as Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Islington, too many residents suffer from the cumulative and compounding effects of family breakdown, educational failure, worklessness, drug and alcohol addiction and debt. Living in poverty and excluded from mainstream society, these communities are forming an ever hardening underclass.

With an economy larger than either Sweden or Switzerland, it is unacceptable that in Inner London half of all children are living in poverty or that in some boroughs over half of all working age people are workless. Too many of our housing estates have become places where dysfunction, breakdown and criminality are the norm.

Family breakdown, worklessness and dependency, debt, Drug and alcohol addiction and failed education are the five issues which run like a thread through London’s underclass. They feed off each other. For example, we know that nearly half of all families with dependent children in London are headed by a single parent yet research tells us a child brought up in a broken home is 75 per cent more likely to fail at school, 70 per cent more likely to become a drug addict and 35 per cent more likely to experience welfare dependency. However, we also know that debt is the biggest cause of family breakdown. 

As our ‘Breakthrough London’ report shows, all of these must be dealt with at the same time. A programme that deals with the drugs scourge by getting people off drugs, not maintaining them on drugs. That reforms the welfare system to make it a pathway to work not an entrapment. That force parents to increase their involvement in their children’s education and reward good head teachers and most of all, that puts stable family formation at the heart of society. 

For too long successive governments have penalised couples financially, including married families. Today on benefits, you are far better off not living together if you have children. In the tax system if you are married and one of you chooses to stay at home for a few years to nurture your children you are penalised. It is time to change all that. 

To do this properly, we need to learn from the small voluntary sector which works every day in London mending our broken society. These are the risk takers whose success is often achieved at a tiny fraction of the money wasted by big government, yet too often government stands in their way. Because they are not owned or run by the Government they are made too jump innumerable hurdles to receive any help. From short contracts to civil service demands and checks, as a result, many small voluntary groups prefer not to deal with government, local or national.

This mayoral election should be seen by the candidates as an opportunity to put this anti poverty issue in London at the heart of their campaigns and for Londoners to recognise its importance. That is not to say that the Mayor has the power to change everything, for national and local government must shoulder their part in this. However the Mayor can do certain things, he can change the terms of the debate, and ensure that through the offices of the GLA, Town Halls and the Government, much more is done.

As one poverty campaigner said the other day, it was strange that this issue of poverty in London hadn’t reared its head during the campaign. Perhaps now is the time for the candidates to change all that and end this tale of two cities."

Comments

[Ali T]

Some truly shocking stats and yet more proof if any was needed that Labour’s attempt to spend their way out of these problems is failing and consigning a whole generation to the scrapheap.

Well done IDS. The question is whose listening and who will take up the recommendations?

[ACT]

Half of children in Inner London live in poverty - no they don't. And subscribing to the left-think that makes it possible to even make this absurd claim with a half-way straight face goes a long way to detailing, yet again, the painful inadequacies of IDS.

[James Strachan]

I think that ACT should go to Hackney or Lambeth or the other boroughs set out by the CSJ.

If ACT comes back alive and still with a mobile phone, ACT will be, if not wiser, at least better informed.

[Matt Kellett]

Great work - Boris should be openly endorsing it.

[ACT]

Notwithstanding the fact that the last time my phone was stolen it was in millionaires' row in W1, it remains a boring fact that, only by subscribing to really quite absurdly far left definition of relative poverty is it possible to even begin making the ludicrous claim that half of children in inner London 'live in poverty'. To repeat: they don't.

[olivepeel]

In this country, 'Poverty' is a lifestyle choice.

That is the conclusion from this report.

[spagbob]

this is shocking. it's a good job someone i.e. Ian Duncan Smith is actually doing something about it, its about time the rest of the politicians started becoming concerned about these issues. Good job Ian. What a shocking picture after 11 years of a labour government. they should be ashamed of themselves.

ACT, yes they do live in poverty. so what if its measured in a "left-wing" way. Don't be so pedantic. the facts show that these people live in relative poverty and we need to help them, not argue over whether its a left wing measure or not. It's that kind of extremism on the right that turns people off the conservative party. IDS is a great man and deserves our respect.