According to the National Survey for Wales 2014-15, 40 per cent of the people in Wales have some difficulty keeping up with bills. We also know that one in five people in Wales live in relative poverty. Can I put the report in some sort of context? My thanks to Poverty Times, which produced a list of headlines relating to poverty. I’ll run through some of them.
Poverty-stricken people forced
‘to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit’
due to crippling court costs—‘Independent’, August 2015.
Poverty pay—
‘one in four jobs now pay less than the living wage, with almost a THIRD of women on less than £7.65 an hour.’
No, that’s not from the ‘Morning Star’; it’s from the ‘Daily Mail’.
‘Death has become part of Britain’s benefits system. More than 80 people a month are now dying after being declared “fit for work”. The safety net that used to be there for the most vulnerable is being torn to shreds.’—
‘The Guardian’, August 2015.
‘More than six out of 10 parents with a household income of less than £25,000 are struggling to feed their children outside of term time.’—
Northumbria University, Kelloggs report, July 2015.
This is something that affects a number of my constituents: the summer holidays are something that is dreaded by many parents, not because they have to find something for their children to do; they have to find a means of feeding them. We have examples of Faith in the Community, which does a tremendous a job in my constituency, because there would be children who would be going hungry—not not eating at all, but certainly going hungry—if they did not exist.
Zero-hours contracts are offered to a quarter of all unemployed people. The number of people evicted from rented homes has soared since housing benefit cuts began. The key levers for dealing with poverty lie at Westminster. The Westminster Conservative Government has made matters worse with the bedroom tax. This is a tax which fails the two reasons for a tax, which is either to raise money or modify behaviour. It costs rather than raises money, and it cannot modify behaviour because there are no smaller properties for people to move into held by councils and housing associations. As the Westminster Government carry out their commitment regarding tax credits, even more people on low wages will be unable to provide the essentials for themselves and their children.
Poverty in Swansea East is far greater than I would like it to be, and I’m sure far greater than the Minister would like it to be. What’s it caused by? Sanctions by the Department for Work and Pensions. I know a woman who spent several months terrified that she’d have a job interview and have to go to the job centre at the same time: no matter what she did, she would be sanctioned if she failed to make one of those appointments. Zero-hours or low guaranteed hours contracts, normally on the minimum wage—especially low guaranteed hours contracts; we don’t talk about them very often, but lots of companies employ people on a guarantee of one hour a day, which can become 12 or just be one. Cuts to benefits, not the benefits cap, which affects very few people in Swansea East, and the unfair and iniquitous bedroom tax. As I stated earlier, the major levers to reduce poverty, such as benefits, the minimum wage, and macroeconomic policy, rest with Westminster.
I would like to highlight some of the programmes that are helping my constituents. Communities First: I’ve witnessed at first hand practical examples of Communities First programmes that have made a significant difference to the lives of many people, helping people find employment, helping reduce their financial outgoings, helping people improve their health and wellbeing. The Flying Start programme is creating positive outcomes for children. Far too often, children have started school at three two years behind some of their contemporaries and have then tried to reduce the gap over the next eight years. Children think they must be stupid because the child next to them knows things—it’s nothing to do with their innate intelligence; all to do with the opportunity that one child has had and the opportunity that the other child hasn’t had. Flying Start means that children at three should start with development exactly at their chronological age.
The Lift programme: I talked about that yesterday and I think it’s a tremendous opportunity for getting the long-term unemployed into employment. For too many people, unemployment becomes something they expect. They don’t expect to work, none of their family work, and we need to break that cycle. We need to get people to expect to work. We need to get people into employment, because employment is still the best route out of poverty. Although, as somebody who believes in the real living wage—as opposed to the pretend one brought out by the Conservative Government at Westminster—where people are paid enough to actually live on, I would very much like to see all employers in Wales pay the living wage. In fact, Mick Antoniw and myself supported trying to make Wales a living wage country in a statement of opinion just a couple of years ago. I think that really is the key: to get people being paid the living wage.
Unemployment threatens everybody. I look around this room now and a number of people here could well end up unemployed come next May. Remember: it’s not just other people; it could be you.
