Watching the coalition torch the programmes Labour designed to make a better society for the young is heartbreaking
Not since the war has Britain woken to so desolate a new year. Ahead lies an iron plan for �81bn of social destruction amid a wasteland of unemployment. Economically we face a neoliberal experiment threatening an era of low growth, no lessons learned from the 30s.
The only question is whether voters believe David Cameron's new year's message: "We're tackling the deficit because we have to ? not out of some ideological zeal. This is a government led by people with a practical desire to sort out this country's problems, not by ideology. When we talk of building a bigger, stronger society, we mean it." Or will they believe Ed Miliband's view that the "irresponsible pace and scale" of the cuts is a "political choice by those in power, not necessity"?
Cameron's brilliance lies in his easy, Blairish demotic warmth. He doesn't sound like a zealot. Blair-like, he may even believe cuts will magically create his "bigger, stronger society" just because he says so. Or perhaps he is a cynical manipulator and a state-shrinking Ayn Rand fanatic. But motive hardly matters as his "most family-friendly party" embarks on inflicting untold damage to millions. Apologies for what follows, it will be a long list but don't let your eyes glaze over: the coalition relies on few people knowing what the Institute for Fiscal Studies has revealed ? children are to be hardest hit.
Sure Start faces horrendous cuts: some will close, many becoming mere sign posts with a skimpy private nursery, lacking fully trained nursery teachers and professionals who can change life chances. Many Connexions services are closing, no longer picking up "neets" (not in education, employment or training) and other lost children. Don't blame Cameron: the new localism hands blame to councils. But with 27% cuts, what else can they do as home care for the old faces similar devastation? Watch how council cuts fall hardest on the most deprived and least on the affluent.
The assault on children starts before birth. Poor families lose the �190 health in pregnancy grant and another �500 for second or more children. Child tax credit for babies is abolished ? another �545 a year cut for the under-ones. Low-earning families will pay 10% more for childcare ? another �780 a year. The nest egg child trust fund ends, a �500 loss. Working tax credits are frozen for three years: inflation makes that a 9% cut. Freezing child benefit for three years loses another 9%. Disabled families lose �9bn in benefits. All benefits fall by 2% a year, on a stealthy new CPI inflation measure. Now add in housing and council tax benefit cuts, at the extreme end ejecting tens of thousands from their homes, while social housing raises a "market rent" for new tenants.
Jobcentres will now hand out vouchers for charitable food parcels: they will be needed in new Victorian Britain. But "big society" charities will never fill the gap as a third will fold. In Newcastle alone charities employing 7,000 people will lose 78% of state funds. Scores more cuts include Warm Front, losing 68% for insulating poorer homes. Now add all these up and see how they hit time and again on the same third of children. Add in the exceptionally vicious �30 a week cut in education maintenance allowance for poorer teenagers. Add in the VAT rise the IFS says falls hardest on those with least. Add in shrunken public services used most by the same families.
But the scene-stealing social disaster will be unemployment rising to 9%, catching the young, the under-skilled and the marginal. The 1980s showed how many never found their feet again. Growing up, their families will be castigated as the feckless workless, the ones Osborne says make the dole "a life-style choice". Many in work, especially the lower paid, will see their real pay fall.
The government might clear the deficit. But it will create a social deficit of incalculable cost in welfare, crime, health and mental illness that will set off another bout of hand-wringing national despair as Britain drops down international social league tables. Some cuts hit the headlines: school sport and free books for babies were reprieved (watch out for weaseling when the brouhaha dies down). But many cuts will pass unnoticed except by their electorally silent victims.
One thing stands out: as the coalition torches the programmes designed to make a better society for children, Labour's record looks quite bright. The last decade was a pro-natalist era ? a rare western exception where the UK birth rate rose in all social classes, as the government offered increasingly generous maternity leave. A warm message to families eased the financial burden for new mothers. A kinder state welcomed new babies with universal free nurseries, subsidised child care, Sure Start, a baby trust fund and first books. Perfect it certainly wasn't: maternity and health visiting services were stretched beyond capacity. But it was the sketched out start of a vision that valued and nurtured the nation's children.
Watching it being dismantled is heartbreaking and we shall never know what its effect might have been. The idea was based on the US HighScope Perry preschool experiment that proved its value for money seven fold in higher employment, lower crime, less welfare and more stable marriages compared with a control group of deprived children without the same head start. But it took 30 years to demonstrate its worth.
Nick Clegg's new year message boasts of his puny pupil premium and his raising of the tax threshold that yields a maximum �3.25 a week ? a sum drowned by the cuts. Coalition crocodile tears over stagnant social mobility leave me dumbfounded. The big society trope has succeeded thus far: sometimes the big barefaced political lie works best. But surely it won't fool all of the people all of the time? Some will always ignore inconvenient truths, but by this time next year many more will see just how shockingly far we are travelling from Osborne's "all in this together".
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/31/end-childrens-decade-coalition
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