§ Mr. BaldryTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will publish in theOfficial Report a copy of his letter to the director of social work of the National Children's Home concerning poverty.
§ Mr. Peter LloydThe text of the letter is as follows
Thank you for sending me your Factfile on children. The document as a whole covers an enormous amount of ground, but I was particularly interested in the point highlighted in your front page on 'dividing the cake'.In essence, your Factfile invites the unwary reader to freely associate 'poverty' with the pattern of household income distribution. Any suggestion that 'poverty' can be measured by the distribution of the cake without regard for the changing size of that cake must be questioned. Between 1975 and 1985—a period almost identical to the one you quote —average household real incomes and the incomes of the lowest fifth of households both grew by 14 per cent. Indeed, real household incomes grew throughout the distribution. Those who purport to claim that people are getting poorer —when in fact people are getting better off—cannot have got it right.It is also more than a little fanciful to invite the reader to use the value of Child Benefit as an indication of 'poverty'. Some 70 per cent. of families who stand to gain from an increase in Child Benefit have incomes above average male earnings and what matters to them and most other working families is the real value of take-home pay. It is therefore worth noting that since 1978–79, at all multiples of full-time adult male earnings, real take-home pay has increased by well over a fifth.I am releasing a copy of this letter to the press tomorrow.