Recently in Poverty Category

Retirement from politics has done little to broaden the anthropological horizons of Edwina Currie (pictured in her finery). Perhaps her mind has been on other things, dancing perhaps, so she must be strapped for time to muck up on issues such as poverty. 

Yet muck up she did, in a different sense, when she told 5 Live that she doubted anyone in Britain was going hungry in 2011.

Mind you, if listeners heeded the advice of Margaret Thatcher's former health minister and were left to choose between eating a boiled egg and starvation, malnutrition would surely follow.

But, in the real world, her poorly timed cry of disbelief came days after publication of a shocking report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies into child and working-age poverty.

The findings, summarised on the JRF website, indicated that the target for eradicating child poverty by 2020 looks unlikely to be met and, if anything, the figure is set to rise to 3.3 million compared with 2.6 million in 2010-11.

Despite enough anectodal evidence of parents, especially mothers, foregoing meals in order that their children may be fed, and of older people having to choose whether to eat or keep their homes warm, Currie insisted that these tales represented political point-scoring.

What she makes of the rise in food banks is anyone's guess, but charities have been launching them for a reason, one that seems to have eluded Currie.

It might be better that Currie has left politics because her comments about poverty (and why she was asked for them I cannot fathom) have left Egg-wina as a national yolk - and a rotten one at that.

Picture: Rex Features

It was prescient of work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith to choose the Sir Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture to inform us that giving money to poor people can make their lives worse. 

Sir Keith, Margaret Thatcher's economic guru...OK, enough said. Back to last night. Duncan Smith said the political classes had become "damagingly fixated by income levels alone". Was he referring to MPs' expenses by any chance?

No, of course not. He went on to fire a salvo at benefits and tax credits that "inflated" incomes and that unless something changes in an adult's life fecklessness (my word) becomes an addiction (his word).

His attempt to break the link between money and poverty is an odd one because I do not see many people on £100,000 a year living in squalor.

Duncan Smith's solution is to push people into employment.

So how about a job as a park keeper? Oops, local authorities have had to cut the parks budget.

How about a road sweeper? Oops, local authorities have had to cut the rubbish collection budget.

Retail? I see signs all the time in shop windows advising job seekers that there is no work inside. The signs in themselves are evidence that people are getting into their shoes, if not on to their bikes, and looking for employment.

And, if the job seeker is lucky enough to find work, they can earn nearly £6 an hour with little security and the likelihood that any benefits will be cut, leaving them worse off.

The timing of and nature of Duncan Smith's comments - as unemployment rises and the economy stagnates - is baffling and shows a lack of understanding of poverty, despite his honourable efforts to get his head around the issue.

Still, Sir Keith would have been proud of him.

Picture: SMG Newspapers

Lucky for the coalition that Libya is dominating the news that it was able to slip in a major change to social policy that erodes further the miserable living standards of the lowest of low-income families.

As Community Care reported, welfare minister Steve Webb (pictured) has announced a clampdown on Social Fund crisis loans from April. 

Intended for people in the direst of circumstances, the interest-free loans will continue - but access will be reduced. The number of claims will be restricted to three a year and, importantly, some of the essential household items that can now be purchased using the money, such as beds and cookers, will be unavailable.

Webb, a Liberal Democrat who in opposition was a cheerleader for people living in poverty, says those who need help can apply instead for a budgeting loan, ignoring the fact that this is based on a points system and, in any case, depends on how much money is in the district budget.

The Department for Work and Pensions justified this attack on the poorest of the poor on cost grounds. Presumably, Webb thinks the £360m a year is a drain on the UK economy, as opposed to the money spent interfering in the affairs of other countries, despatching SAS missions, rescuing them, employing PR people...and the list goes on.

But poor people are seldom visible to government. They are merely a figure on the balance sheet of a minister who wants to make an impact. Will they protest? Unlikely; for that they would need grassroots organisation, something that is lacking.

Webb's main successes are likely to be in increasing the disparity between the better off and the less well-off and empowering loan sharks. Hardly something to be proud of.

To paraphrase a former Labour aide after the 9/11 attacks: it's a good time to bury bad news.

Picture: Rex Features

There's nothing like an economic slump to tempt the loan sharks into shallower waters. The worse the economy becomes, the richer the pickings for the lenders.

It is often the vulnerable and the desperate who end up with short-term loans with interest rates running into the thousands of per cent.

Some borrowers are driven by competitive consumerism, but others need to pay off debts accrued when times were better, when work was more available or before a relationship break-up (single mothers are a mainstay of this form of exploitation).

Many of this target group do not have bank accounts. That there are 1.5m adults without them in the UK suggests endless possibilities for rip-off lenders.

Yet it is a myth that only illegal loan sharks demand the sort of interest rates that resemble an international telephone number.

There are plenty of lenders that operate within the law. One, Wonga, faced controversy at the start of the year when London mayor Boris Johnson appointed it as sponsor of free travel in the capital on new year's eve. Wonga's interest rates can be as high as 2,700% - and it is among the good guys. Yes, really.

However, their days of plenty could be numbered.

This week the House of Commons votes on whether to support the introduction of capping on the charges that legal loan sharks demand for their credit.

The move has all-party support, including Dudley South Conservative MP Chris Kelly, who said: "It isn't a party political issue - it's about doing what is right."

Let us hope the government does what is right and there will be at least some ministers at the vote in the Commons tomorrow, if only to emphasise how seriously the coalition takes the issue. 

Picture: Rex Features

Is multiculturalism doomed because of the irreconcilable tensions between the various communities, as some opinion-formers would have us believe? Not according to a study which concludes that poverty is far more divisive than ethnicity and creed.

Have things become so bad in the UK that food vouchers are to be distributed to the poor?

So the party of the family wants to shift jobless people from unemployment blackspots to areas of high vacancy rates. Not so much a brutal "get on yer bike" but a polite "let me help you on yer bike (with an almighty shove)". It's bike-lite.

It is seldom that the right-wing press and the leftish press harmonise, but the abolition of the child trust fund seems to have them singing from the same song sheet.

Perhaps when, in 1999, Labour pledged to halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it by 2020, the party leadership thought this grand aim would have been forgotten 11 years later.