Elimination of Poverty (Hansard, 17 October 1995)

§ Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require local authorities to monitor the condition of their population; to require central government to publish information on the poverty of the people; to exempt pensioner households from standing charges; to extend pensioners' concessionary fare schemes; to make provision for the calculation of old age pensions by reference to average earnings; to equalise retirement ages at 60; to make provision for the calculation of social security benefits by reference to average earnings; and for connected purposes. This is the 12th occasion on which I have sought leave to introduce such a measure, to recognise the problems that many poor people face and the poverty in which many pensioners are forced to live.

A media silence has been cast over the poverty that exists throughout Britain and over the campaigning work done by many pensioners' organisations to expose the disgracefully low state old age pension and demand fairer treatment. This summer, the Pensioners' Parliament was held in Blackpool, amidst a virtual media blackout of its work, despite its. decisions and widespread support for its call for the state pension to be at least one third of average earnings and uprated annually in line with average earnings.

I will cover some of the points in the Bill in a moment, but the House ought to be aware that the most telling statistic about Britain—one of the richest countries in the world—over the past decade has been that it has had the largest growth in the disparity between rich and poor, and that that is getting worse. People did not always sleep on the streets in this country; they did not always beg. Young people did not always have to sleep in barns and disused garages. We did not always have the sight of people being discharged from mental institutions to beg and roam without any visible means of support. It is a crying shame that such poverty exists in our society. My Bill seeks to draw attention to those problems and proposes some measures to alleviate it.

First, we must establish a national poverty line, which the Government have signally failed to do. The Bill requires the Government to publish information on poverty every year and set a benchmark figure for poverty. Every time such a figure is produced, the Government say that it does not tally with their figures. They have to be brought to account.

The most recent figures for the poverty line were provided by the Social Security Select Committee in January 1993. It reported that, between 1979 and 1989, the number of people at or below benefit level rose from 7.7 million to 11.4 million. Lone parents, the unemployed and pensioners are among the poorest people in the country.

Between 1979 and 1993, the number of individuals in households with incomes of less than half the average went up from 5 million to 14.1 million. That figure included 4 million children. In other words, 4 million children are being brought up in households in a desperate state of poverty. It is small wonder that there is a high level of under-achievement in school, and that so many other social problems are associated with it.

The figures for income change between 1979 and 1989 show that someone who, in 1979, was earning £321 per week was earning £520 per week by 1993; someone 164 earning £171 per week was earning £236. However, some of the poorest people in our society, who in 1979 were on £75 per week, were getting £62 by 1993. In other words, while the income for the richest has gone up by nearly two thirds, the income for the poorest has gone down by 17 per cent. That is a disgrace and a scandal. Those issues must be addressed.

If hon. Members care to read the reports of their local health and medical officers, they will find that, among the poorest people, life expectancy is lowest, the incidence of cancer highest and infant mortality highest. All the indices that led the great social reformers of the 19th century to introduce social reforms demonstrate yet again that the greatest enemy of good health is poverty.

Other statistics are, in many ways, more frightening. The suicide rate, for example, among young men aged 15 to 24 has increased by 75 per cent. 'The increase in the number of pensioners living in poverty who do not have access to an occupational scheme, a private scheme or any other scheme is increasing rapidly.

The Government like to claim that pensioners' incomes have gone up by 34 per cent. since 1979. That is not what people tell me on the streets and in the clubs of my constituency. That is not what one finds at any pensioners' meeting anywhere in the country. One finds the opposite to be the case. There is degrading poverty, especially among older women pensioners. There is the degradation of pensioners queuing up for stale bread outside supermarkets at 5 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, because that is the only way in which they can make ends meet.

The Bill is intended to address some of those problems. It is not possible to describe it all in 10 minutes. I make the point, however, about the huge increase in tax allowances for the richest in our society. If those tax allowances had been evenly distributed rather than handed to the richest, they would have made the poorest household at least £4 a week better off in real terms.

The Bill would require local authorities and health authorities to publish statistics every year on the poverty of the population whom they represent and especially on the services and provisions made available for the elderly within their communities. The Bill would also make the Government publish every year their statistics on the causes of and elimination of poverty within our society.

Many of us are fed up with the consensus that the welfare state is no longer affordable—that the state pension is too high and no longer sustainable, and that we therefore have to go down the road of the private, portable pension scheme. Most people are worse off and more insecure, and they live more precarious lives than was the case 15 years ago. The Bill would address some of those points.

Included in the Bill is a provision exempting pensioner households from standing charges as a way in which to increase the money available to them. In view of the profitability of the gas, electricity and telephone companies, such things are easily affordable. Likewise, all the travel schemes that were brought in by progressive Labour authorities in the 1970s and 1980s are under threat through the privatisation of our transport system. There is a need for a universal, nationwide scheme.

Above all, we must look at the way in which social security entitlements are calculated. In 1980, Geoffrey Howe, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, claimed that 165 his greatest achievement was to break the link between pensions and earnings and to substitute the retail prices index. He has cost every pensioner more than £20 a week by that single decision. The pension is falling from 24 per cent. of average earnings to a mere 10 per cent. of average earnings. On top of that, there is the insult of saying to women in work that they must work until the age of 65 to qualify for a state pension. We should be reducing the age at which people have the right to retire to 60 for both women and men.

This issue will dominate this country for a long time to come. If the policy of continuing to cut the welfare state and to encourage people to take out private health, medical and pension insurance continues, there will be disasters and crises in future. We must change the terms of the debate.

A civilised, decent society would not allow people to sleep on the streets. It would house everybody, and would not allow its senior citizens to live in the abject poverty and misery in which they have to live at present. The Bill would at least guarantee that their increases would be in line with earnings, and there would be a national focus on the problems of poverty for all our people.