So now it’s started. Within a couple of weeks of taking office, and even before we hear the Queen’s Speech tomorrow, the new government’s cuts to funding for families are already underway. Today we hear that the government intends to introduce secondary legislation to scale back government payments due to Child Trust Funds from 1 August 2010. From that date, payments at birth will be reduced from £250 to £50 for better off families, and from £500 to £100 for lower income families; and payments at age seven stopped. What’s more, the government intends to introduce primary legislation to stop all payments from 1 January 2011 – just seven months from now.
This is just the sort of mean-spirited, below the radar cut we can expect to get used to now. Young people wouldn’t actually have received the money in their Child Trust Fund till they reach age 18 – so today even the first potential recipients won’t yet have reached their teens. By the time families notice what they’ve lost, the blame that attaches to George Osborne for this ungenerous decision will have been long forgotten. But for two parties that have made such play of improving social mobility, this is a cynical step. The evidence that having some assets behind you as you start out on adult life makes an enormous difference has been casually brushed aside. For low-income families in particular, who struggle to find even modest sums they can save for the future, this will be a big blow.
But the axing of the Child Trust Fund also tells us how little regard this government has for the wider concept of universal support. The Child Trust Fund was one of the best examples of Labour’s philosophy in government of ‘progressive universalism’ – all received something, but the poorest received more. That’s important in reducing stigma and binding society together, but it’s already clear from this early measure that the new government wants to residualise spending on financial support for families – expect more and more targeting to be the order of the day. So some funding will be recycled for disabled children – a small and important concession, but one that exemplifies the government’s approach to supporting only those it believes deserve help. Labour MPs must be vigilant – or risk this first measure as coming to be seen as just the thin end of a very thick wedge.
Kate Green is MP for Stretford and Urmston and former chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group
Obviously this isnt at all biased…..
“Labour’s philosophy in government of ‘progressive universalism’ – all received something, but the poorest received more.”
This is nonsense. “All will be winners” is Alice in Wonderland stuff. The money for child trust funds has to come from taxation. So you are taking away with one hand and giving with the other. There is no supply of ‘free’ money. You are paying for the child trust fund with other people’s money.
You can make your “claim” about every aspect of government spending. Taxation is one source of government money but I doubt you would complain because the health service is available to all but used by those who need it with greater resources going to those in most need? Or that education, available to all offers more support for those with greatest difficulty in their studies? Progressive universalism is not only about tackling the stigma which comes from recieving government assistance it is about creating a common bond between everyone – hence the notion of universalism. The child trust fund and child tax credits are the first clear examples of this idea put into practice because it is about giving everyone a helping hand but giving more to those in need. It ties in with notions of equality and social justice.
One of the sadest things about today’s decision is that the additional benefits of holding assets (psychological and social benfits develop from asset holding, not just financial) will be lost. This will result in few young people growing up in the knowledge that they will have behind them, when they start their adult lives, a asset-base from which new opportunities will be available to them. Without that base and without growing up in the knowledge that this base will exist in the future there is no encouragement for young people to work hard and develop a more positive outlook for their future. Rather they will be left to the face the same limited chances and opportunites as their social class dictates without the ability to develop their own capabilities.
Great post but it hurts to read this.
I moved away from Labour during the Iraq war and I only started coming back very recently when I began to realise the services of Gordon Brown for this country. This is indeed one of his great endeavours for which I am already starting to miss him. My baby is nearly 7 months now. We first received the health in pregnancy grant for £190 and after his birth we received the Child Trust Fund. I can tell you it was one of the only times I felt the state was with us. It’s not many times you feel the Governments’ presence in your life in a positive way. It showed the commitment and personal relationship of the Government with your individual family. The new coalition seems as though it wants to disown you in that respect. This is a mistake, not only for the fact the families will miss out but also because people already mistrust the state for “not doing anything for me.” Sadly, any future children I have will not benefit from this.
I can tell you that there were few times when I was more disheartened than I was seeing Tony Blair’s behaviour when it came to foreign policy. On the other hand, some of the things that Gordon Brown did in terms of domestic policy bring a smile to the face.
People will soon start to regret the fact they voted Tory. I think admiration for Gordon Brown will only grow now that the media propaganda against him is settling, and that the true face of the Tory-Lib coalition is being unveiled.
It’s when you stand this alongside their policy on tuition fees that you realise what a nasty, help-the-middle-classes-and-stuff-the-poor party the Lib Dems really are.
They are proposing, in effect, to take £1000 away from every child in a low-income household and use it to cut tuition fees for children from middle- or high-income households. (Children from low-income households already get a grant to cover fees.)
Meanwhile, children from middle- and high-income households lose just £500 – and then, in all probability (since they’re more likely to go to university), get it all back with interest in the form of reduced fees.
It’s naked redistribution from the bottom to the middle and top. The CTF money poor children would have got is just being funnelled into the pockets of better-off families.
…the thinking seems to be ‘don’t waste £1000 on some oik who’ll just spend it on drugs. Put it towards a university education for a nice middle-class child.’
Oh, and we need to firmly reject any claims by the Lib Dems that these are ‘hard decisions’ aimed at reducing the deficit. They’re not – they’re simply about different spending priorities. Scrapping old spending commitments (like CTFs) in order to pursue new ambitions (like tax threshold rises and lower tuition fees) is not a debt-reducing measure.
(Yes, I know the coalition hasn’t committed to scrapping tuition fees – but as a comment on the Lib Dems’ principles and ambitions, I think my point still stands.)
A message to women There is a problem with the women in this culture. Yes, I know, there are problems with men, too. Believe me, I have heard about them for the last forty years. Some of it true and fair, much of it neither. It was a necessary dialogue just the same. So is this. To understand this we need a brief look at history. Women, in the past, were denied voting rights, couldn’t own land and didn’t have much access to employment that would give them the freedom to make it on their own. This needed to change, and of course, did, as can be confirmed with a cursory glance at the world around you. I laud those changes. But the problem was in how we got here. The reality is that the gender roles of our history were traps for both men and women. Women were relegated to home and children; men to sacrificial roles as protectors and providers. It wasn’t a conspiracy. It was just a matter of survival, and for many thousands of years it worked quite well to that end. But once men made the environment safe enough for women to metaphorically “leave the cave,” it was only natural and right that men change and allow that to happen. And ladies, we did. This is the simple but accurate truth of the matter. Men and women developed gender roles that facilitated the survival of the species. And once those roles were not necessary, they did begin the often complicated path to change. The problem here is that your knowledge of these historical events is largely shaped, convoluted rather, by feminism. Feminists taught you that your history with men was of unremitting evil; that you were chattel, slaves to men who held all power and shut you out with extreme intent. They even gave it a name. Patriarchy. It is a word that has become synonymous with oppression. But feminists were loathe to remind you that “Women and children first,” was the patriarchal mantra, and that much of the social norms, even when misguided, were a product of a code adopted for the sole purpose of preserving your life. It wasn’t always fair, but the unfairness wasn’t always yours. Men died by that code, and trained their sons to do the same. The fact that we still do is the subject for another essay. So what happened? As feminist distortions were increasingly embraced, and intertwined with the legitimate need for change, men did what they usually do. They reacted to the message and not the messenger and unblocked the entrance to that cave. Many of you spit on us on the way out. Many of you still do. It has to stop. This isn’t just about decency. And it is not just about the chasm of mistrust that separates us from each other, or the legions of the walking wounded from this godforsaken gender war. It is about our future. The vilification of men that you have accepted as appropriate now translates to catastrophe for our sons, for your sons. The problem is that what we say, think and feel about people invariably translates into what we actually do to them. Nowhere is this more evident than with our sons, in the here and now. If you take an honest look at the academic environment to which our boys are subjected, you will see that their masculinity itself is under attack with ideology that teaches them they are inherently flawed. Christina Hoff Sommers documented this in her highly recommended book “The War Against Boys.” She writes, “The pedagogy is designed to valorize females, such as teaching history in a woman-centered way. Boys are to be inspired to revere Anita Hill and to “enjoy” quilting. At the same time, schools discourage activities that are natural and traditional to boys, such as playing ball together.” She goes on to say, with sad accuracy, “Most parents have no idea what their children are facing in the gender-charged atmosphere of the public schools.” What Sommers didn’t add to that but I will is the fact that most parents have no idea about this because they choose not to. As girls and girls programs increasingly flourish, boys are falling to the sidelines in ever growing numbers. The results of that are chilling. Boys are more likely than ever to drop out of school and engage in delinquency and other problems. They are representing less college graduates every year. With this diminishing education and wholesale marginalization, they are on a fast track to being the “second sex,” that position that so many feminists touted as the greatest evil of human history when they claimed it applied to women. This is the lasting legacy of spitting on men. Your sons will not be the exception. Young men now grow up to be destroyed in corrupt family court systems where women are encouraged to and even praised for using children, their children, like pawns in order to drain the father of assets. And those same children also have their badly needed connection to their fathers severed in the process. When those exploited, abused children start quite naturally to act out and get in trouble, we blame the father who was removed against his will, for of all things, being absent. And the “freedom” women gained on this frenzied path of vengeance and victimization? It doesn’t appear to have settled well. Women are growing increasingly violent. They are matching men in domestic violence, blow for blow, and they are causing the lions share of injury and death to children in the home. But we don’t speak of these things. We are not supposed to. In your position as the identified victim, and mine as the identified perpetrator, there is supposed to be an indelible silence on these matters. For the most part, there is. That silence is destroying us. And it is a silence that is maintained with the collusion of shallow, weak men and misguided, self-serving women, which is to say most of the culture. The only answer I can think of is for men, and for women, to change. Perhaps you will consider this before concluding that men’s rights activists are whiners or woman haters or products of bad mothers. You might actually decide that most men’s rights activists are men who above all else, seek justice. For their children, for themselves, and ultimately for you. I hope that a few of you will read this and consider it the next time you hear someone say “men are pigs,” or when you hear a woman refer to her first born child as “the insurance policy,” or before you nod your head in unconsidered agreement with whatever negatives about men happen to be making the rounds. All of this will be visited on your sons, and their sons. I hope too, that some of you look at your sons and think, and ask yourself what kind of world in which you really want them to live. When your sons choose wives and marry, I hope you consider the agony they will go through when “taken to the cleaners” and robbed of their children in the family courts. You will be forced to stand by powerlessly and watch them have their hearts ripped out. As always, it will look much different to you when the system you help maintain with your silence crushes your son, and not just some obscure, unknown male whom you quietly think is getting what he deserves. It will happen to more than half of them. The best prevention for this last one is to teach our sons to choose carefully; to scrutinize a woman before committing his life and work to her; to evaluate her morals and values as a woman prior to putting a ring on her finger. or even whether it is wise any more to marry in the first place. But how can we do this if we keep teaching them that such evaluations are the stuff of misogyny? Indeed, how can we do this if scrutinizing women at all is such a taboo? And therein lies the rub, ladies. It is indeed time, just as it was for men, for women to be held to scrutiny, and to account. More importantly, it is time for women to do this on their own. I’ll do my best to provide a fair and compassionate mirror in my writings. It is always up to you whether that mirror is a place you want to look.
This makes me sick!