Last week the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published its report – Prosperity without Poverty – on how poverty in Wales could be reduced so that by 2030 the poverty rate will be less than 10 per cent, and that nobody is ever destitute. A mere 14 years away – before the HS2 line to Manchester and Leeds is due to open – this is no small ask. But it is not only the ambition that marks this report out from the pack – it is its approach, too.
First of all, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation defines poverty in a much more nuanced way than the standard income-based approach. By including people’s needs and their costs as well as their incomes, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation opens up space for new areas of public action to cut poverty, perhaps most importantly by reducing housing costs. With the drive to cut social security benefits looking set to stay for some time, they have shown that there are other ways to ease the pressure on low income families.
Second, the approach is distinctive because it draws on evidence of ‘what works’ – something that has been conspicuous by its absence in work on poverty to date. There are some surprising findings as a result. For example, an emphasis on stable family relationships and good parenting are typically associated with rightwing thinking yet the evidence here shows they reduce the risk of poverty in later life, hence there are recommendations about strengthening relationship and parenting support services.
And third, the approach stands out because it recommends that change is needed across all areas of public policy, including the economy and labour market, childcare, education and skills, families and communities, and the cost of living. Work, perhaps inevitably, remains centre stage. The call for decent jobs, job creation in areas with weak labour markets, and access for adults to good quality training are relatively familiar refrains, although they have yet to be translated into meaningful action. But there is some new and important detail here too, such as upping the expectations of apprenticeship providers, supporting innovation and development in low-paid sectors like social care, more effective ‘segmentation’ of employment support services, and better advice and support for job progression.
Implementing recommendations on this range and scale will not come cheap. For example, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests that 15 hours of childcare should be available free for all two to four year olds. This is not costed, but a slightly different offer (20 hours of care for all three and four year olds in Wales) was recently estimated at £144 million a year. Add to this the costs of enhanced employment support services, raising standards of teaching, improved mental health services and help with housing costs – to name just a few – and the bill looks potentially very large indeed.
But then comes the killer argument.
The costs of not taking action are eye-wateringly high too. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that around 20p in every £1 of public money spent on devolved services in Wales goes on dealing with the consequences of poverty. That is some £3.6bn every year, spent simply on addressing poverty in health, social care, education and housing. The costs to the United Kingdom government for social security benefits and lost tax revenues are on top of this, and are at least as much again. And of course the human price of poverty is incalculable.
While the focus on this report is on Wales, Wales cannot go it alone. The UK government’s economic policies, the tax and benefit system and of course the fiscal and financial framework within which the Welsh government operates are all at least as important as the Welsh Government’s own actions.
Inevitably the report is not perfect – it is rather light on implementation and on some equality issues for example – but it is by far the most comprehensive and plausible approach around. And with a £3.6bn price tag attached to the poverty in Wales – and rising – it deserves to be taken very seriously indeed.
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Victoria Winckler is director of the Bevan Foundation and worked with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the report. She tweets at @vwinckler
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