Tax credits support our whole society – it’s in no one’s interest to cut them
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Version 0 of 1. MPs file through the parliamentary division lobbies hundreds of times each year. Many of the votes are routine. Sometimes, though, a vote takes place on an issue of principle and conviction. Monday’s vote on the welfare bill was one such vote. Mum worked as hard as anyone I’ve ever met, as a receptionist, on the tube and selling beauty products door-to-door As I walked through the lobby to oppose this bill, I had my mother, Rose, at the front of my mind. She arrived in the UK in 1969, unskilled and unsure of her prospects. Life as a black woman in Tottenham in the 70s and 80s was not easy, and recession-hit Britain was hardly overflowing with job opportunities. Like so many of those in work but poor, she was left anxious about a livelihood that she had little control over. Life got harder still when my dad walked out on the family when I was 11, leaving her to raise five children alone. Despite all this, mum somehow found a way to keep the family afloat. She worked as hard as anyone I’ve ever met, taking jobs as a receptionist and a tube station assistant and selling beauty products door-to-door to make a few extra pounds. If there is one reason why I was able to avoid the fate of many of my contemporaries – prison, poverty, mental illness – it is her hard work and dedication to her children. But she didn’t do it alone. Like 5 million people in Britain today, her employers didn’t pay her enough to support her family. As a result, she relied on family income supplement and child tax allowance – the in-work, family-based benefits that were later renamed tax credits. It is exactly these kind of benefits that George Osborne is seeking to slash. He is determined to persuade the British public that those on benefits are unemployed, lazy and a drain on society. It is a pervasive, pernicious lie. In reality, an ever-increasing proportion of welfare payments are going to people in work – to subsidise, all too often, the minimum-wage work that jobcentre staff herd people into. It is these benefits, that play such an important role in topping up the wages of the lowest paid in our country, that are now at threat. If things were difficult for those in low-paid work in the 1980s, they are even worse now. Britain in 2015 is a country in which most people in poverty are in work (according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, nearly two-thirds of children living in poverty are from in-work families). Conservative ministers line up at the despatch box to declare that work is the best way out of poverty but millions of low-paid people around the country know the truth. These are the people like my mother. They work hard and live by the rules. They take second or third jobs to support their families – not as newspaper columnists or non-executive directors but as cooks, cleaners and caretakers. They are the strivers and the grafters who sweep our streets, staff our restaurants, clean our hospitals, drive our buses and look after our elderly. Yet through no fault of their own, they are not paid enough to support their families and must rely on the state for support. That we have a low-pay, low-skilled economy is the fault of exploitative employment practices and a political class that for years has neglected the importance of vocational education – not the working people who suffer because of it. Even the new minimum wage that George Osborne is giving with one hand will not compensate for the tax credits that he is taking away with the other. The worst thing about the welfare bill, though, is that it doesn’t just punish some of the lowest paid in our society – it also attacks the founding principle of the British welfare state. This is the principle of contribution – the guarantee that, if you pay in to the system then you will supported by it. That principle is under sustained attack from a government that expects people to continue to pay in but pulls the rug from beneath them in terms of what they are given in return. Nowhere is this clearer than in the government’s decision to limit child tax credit to a family’s first two children. The logic is clear: if you’re poor then you shouldn’t be having more than two children. Putting this callous, eugenics-tinged argument to one side, Osborne and his allies have missed a fundamental point: circumstances change. The idea of a family sitting round the kitchen table and carefully planning their future family size based on the certainty of years to come is a complete fantasy. Back in the real world, jobs are lost, livelihoods taken away, families break apart, partners leave or pass away. A family or a single parent who was previously able to support three or four children could, overnight, find themselves in a very different situation. The welfare bill will make it much more likely that, in these situations, children will be pushed into poverty. Related: For too many families work is no longer an escape route from poverty In the long run, it isn’t just those directly affected who pay the cost but society too. More people in prison, a greater burden on health services, kids being left to raise themselves as parents work longer and longer hours – this is the very real impact of short-term, short-sighted cost cutting. The idea that these cuts don’t have a huge, long-term cost for society is a fantasy. And at some point this must be confronted – though, as seen this week, it’s easier for some on the political right to simply take to Twitter to incorrectly attack me on technicalities. Labour’s acting leader Harriet Harman is right to emphasise that the party cannot oppose every measure the Conservatives propose. We must be credible and serious, not a party of protest or opposition for opposition’s sake. But when it comes to measures that hurt the working poor hardest, Labour must stand up for the values of fairness and social justice that are at the heart of our party. Tax credits are a crucial lifeline for the thousands of people who, just like my mother, are working hard but not seeing the rewards they deserve. When this bill comes back before parliament, we must, this time, fight tooth and nail against it. |