Liberal Democrat Christian Forum - Freedom from Poverty, Opportunity for All

Freedom from Poverty, Opportunity for All

Written by Christian Moon
Wednesday, 07 November 2007
LDCF's conference theme this year is poverty, which ties in with the party's major new poverty policy paper, which will be debated at 15:10 in the conference chamber on Tuesday 18th September. Lib Dem Deputy Head of Policy and Research, Christian Moon, sets out the main policies in the paper. Freedom from Poverty, Opportunity for All is the party's most comprehensive ever set of proposals for attacking poverty on a broad front, looking not just at benefits and incomes but also at housing, mental health, education, training and family structures. The approach is very much in the tradition of the Beveridge Report and steers a liberal course between two dangers: on the one hand, a paternalist welfare state which would undermine individual or community responsibility and over-reliance on voluntarism which would inevitably allow many to slip though a threadbare, underfunded safety net. At the heart of the programme is a package of measures aimed at boosting the life chances of poor children. This includes extra funding for early years education, giving access to the Childcare Tax Credit to workless families (providing the money is used for educational provision) and setting up a £1.5 billion 'Pupil Premium' to channel school funding into assisting educationally disadvantaged children. The paper acknowledges that the existing tax credit system penalises couples who want to live together. As part of comprehensive reforms to the tax credit system, it therefore proposes to introduce a couple's premium into tax credits. Tackling the crisis in affordable housing, the paper aims to make a million extra affordable homes available by 2020. It is here that some of the potentially most controversial measures are found, notably a radical freeing-up of planning restrictions, and a push to create more mixed communities in place of sink estates by allocating lettings not simply on the basis of greatest need. The role of the voluntary sector is particularly developed in the provision of training and back-to-work support services. Job Centre Plus would be scrapped, and replaced with a First Steps Agency which would only administer the benefits system, with a range of local private and not-for-profit providers delivering employment support. Baroness Barker and her working group have come up with a refreshingly wide- ranging and radical package. The debate should be one of the highlights of the Brighton Conference.

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