30 June 2006
The government's impending Welfare Reform Bill will be scrutinised by disability rights experts to assess its impact on child poverty targets, a leading practitioner revealed this week.
Bert Massie, chair of the Disability Rights Commission, revealed on June 26 that he would oversee an assessment on the impact of the policy. This was to ensure that ministers do not publish proposals that just make the current system cheaper or easier to operate.
The study will be the first of its kind in Britain and has been endorsed by Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton.
Massie told a parliamentary meeting of the Child Poverty Action Group that it was imperative that the welfare Bill, likely to be published by Hutton next week, added fresh impetus to ministers' plans to eradicate child poverty by 2020.
People with disabilities, including rising numbers of people with mental health conditions, are more likely to have children living in poverty, Massie said, because they are likely to experience barriers to employment, high living costs and low-paid work. A quarter of all children still living in poverty have at least one disabled parent, a new CPAG study revealed.
Hutton's Bill is set to divide the UK's 2.6 million incapacity benefit claimants into two groups: those who have to undertake work-related activity in return for state support and those who do not.
The Department for Work and Pensions said the aim was to get 1 million benefit recipients into work – boosting employment and reducing the cost of the system.
But Massie warned: 'Whatever category disabled people fall into, their income from benefits and tax credits must be sufficient to ensure that they and their children are not left living in poverty.'
To strengthen the government's anti-child poverty commitments – Chancellor Gordon Brown wants to halve 1996 levels by 2010 and eradicate child poverty by 2020 – welfare reform minister Jim Murphy this week appointed a specialist adviser to the DWP.
Lisa Harker, a former CPAG official and deputy director of the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank, will advise ministers on what John Hutton recently referred to as the DWP's 'number one priority'.
She will also review the policies for combating child poverty and inform a new strategy that will be published later this year.
Murphy is seeking to boost the government's policies after it narrowly missed its interim target to reduce child poverty by 25% by 2005.
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