The Labour Party really has it in for poor people.

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The other day, to more or less blanket media coverage, Andy Burnham (Britain's most shameless MP) launched Labour's public health strategy - "Protecting Children, Empowering All" is its title:

Changes to diet and lifestyle mean it is all too easy to lead a less healthy life than in times gone by, and we all risk taking on more sugar, fat and salt than is good for us and failing to move about enough to burn it off. Our complex and fast-moving modern world is exposing children to ever-more sophisticated commercial pressures. We are all absorbing higher levels of stress and insecurity which can erode mental health and well-being and lead to poor diet and addiction. For too many people this is the new reality of modern living in the 21st century. Helping people deal with it will require a new approach to public health.

The authors of this 'new approach' go to great lengths to tell us that this isn't the 'nanny state' - mostly because those authors have chosen to redefine what we mean by that term. But what is most shocking - from the political party that claims to champion the interests of the working class and the poorest in society - is that the proposals are for a series of highly-regressive interventions based on a combination of poor science and a snobbish attitude to the personal choices of those people. As Dick Puddlecote puts it:

It reads like it was written in Islington by a bien pensant yogic chakra-chasing millionaire surveying life outside their window with disdain and revulsion at how the unwashed choose to enjoy themselves. This, apparently, is what the modern Labour party thinks will chime with working class people...

The core of the policy is a renewed legislative attack on booze, fags, burgers and fizzy drinks. Or, as Labour describes it - alcohol, tobacco and sugar.  The proposals are founded - as ever - on poor science and an almost complete absence of evidence. On alcohol the proposals are for a series of specific actions targeted at the lowest cost alcohol - bans and taxes that hit the poor not wealthy folk like Andy Burnham. We will see bans or a new higher duty on cider, giving public health directors the power to oppose licensing decisions and, I would expect, a renewed effort to introduce a blanket, regressive attack on the poorest in the form of minimum unit pricing.

On tobacco, we'll see the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes - a policy that will destroy good manufacturing jobs in Bradford without making (as we now know from the policy's effect in Australia) the slightest difference to rates of smoking. And - as befits a bunch of fussbuckets - Labour leaves the door open to bans and restrictions on vaping. Yet again, this is pointless posturing that does more harm than good for the working classes Labour claims to represent.

But it's the attack on sugar that reveals Labour at its worst. Chris Snowdon reminds us that the source of Burnham's anti-sugar position (a position almost entirely without evidential support) is pretty dodgy:

Time and time again Action on Sugar make hyperbolic and downright false claims that cannot be supported by their own citations, let alone by the wider scientific literature. It is scary to think that there are people in power who take them seriously.

The sad truth is that Labour has accepted these false arguments almost entirely, telling us that we're eating more sugar, fat and salt than we used to and that this is why we are fatter. This is quite simply untrue but it doesn't stop Labour launching into yet another attack on advertising and further judgement of the pleasing and personal choices that millions of Britons make, choices to smoke, to drink and to eat salty or sugary food.

These proposals are not only ill-founded but represent a direct, regressive attack on the poorest - things like a soda tax (which Burnham is very keen on) falls heaviest and hardest on the poor and a sugar tax would be even worse. New powers on licensing mean that pubs and clubs in poorer areas will be targeted for closure - on the grounds of combating 'health inequalities' and the entirely false belief that concentrations of licensed premises lead to higher alcohol consumption.

Hardly a day passes without some posh left-winger sniffily and disdainfully dissmissing the choices and preferences of ordinary people. For all the protests of Burnham, these labour proposals represent an extension of the nannying, controlling and dictating state. What Labour's policies tell us - yet again - is that the party doesn't believe that people, especially poorer people, are capable of making their own decisions and choices. Egged on by the health fascists in the growing public health industry, what Labour is doing is planning to ban, control or limit the pleasures of ordinary folk. The pleasures that make like just a little bit more tolerable for the poorest in society.

Labour, it seems, really has it in for poor people.

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This isn't public health it's an attack on the lifestyles of the poor

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I want to be angry. I really do.

So we are launching a 10-week consultation, seeking views on five key areas:

 

• a ban on multi-buy promotions in shops and off-licences to reduce excessive alcohol consumption
• a review of the mandatory licensing conditions, to ensure that they are sufficiently targeting problems such as irresponsible promotions in pubs and clubs
• health as a new alcohol licensing objective for cumulative impacts so that licensing authorities can consider alcohol-related health harms when managing the problems relating to the number of premises in their area
• cutting red tape for responsible businesses to reduce the burden of regulation while maintaining the integrity of the licensing system
• minimum unit pricing, ensuring for the first time that alcohol can only be sold at a sensible and appropriate price

But somehow, since I knew it was coming, I am resignedly depressed. I joined a Party that stood for personal responsibility, choice and independence but now find myself watching as an unjustified and unjustifiable attack on the lifestyles of ordinary people is prosecuted in the name of “health”.

There is no evidence to support the contention that alcohol is an especial problem – consumption has fallen and is falling further, violent crime is at its lowest level for thirty years and young people’s drinking behaviour is extremely moderate (and is matched by sharp declines in other drug use).

I can only conclude that these proposals are the bastard child of a terrifying union between temperance campaigners and a disdainful upper middle class that cannot countenance the idea of poor people drinking. It is Titus Salt revisited – a man who wouldn’t permit his workers to drink while enjoying a drink himself.

These proposals hand to public health officials the power to shut down pubs (the few that survive the smoking ban, massive hikes in duty and now the late night levy). The reason for this appears to be that we, like Sir Titus, don’t approve of working-class people drinking. It’s not the consumption of alcohol that is the issue but by who and where it’s being consumed. We appear to be OK with public school educated journalists and doctors quaffing champagne. We can just about tolerate a couple of university educated chaps enjoying a pint (just the one, you know) of “craft beer”. But some poor old man buying a can or two of cheap lager – that is terrible and eats away at the foundation of society.

The advocates of minimum pricing are quite clear – they are deliberately targeting the cheapest alcohol, the stuff that the least well off buy. This is despite the fact that – unlike smoking – drinking rates increase with social class and income. It’s those middle-class journalists who are drinking too much not the ordinary working class bloke.

These are not public health proposals.

These are not community safety proposals.

These proposals are a patronising and offensive attack on the lifestyles of ordinary people who, for whatever reason, can’t afford posh beer, malt whisky and fine wines. Why should they be punished just because we don’t approve of their tastes?

I give up.

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Can we reduce the "poverty premium" without repeating those sub-prime mistakes?

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Niall Cooper from Church Action on Poverty has written a piece of what he calls “fair pricing”:

And secondly, fair prices.  Much of the ‘logic’ of the way markets have developed in recent years is to move towards ‘risk (or cost) pricing’ and away from shared risk.  Some of the assumptions behind this are extremely dodgy:  The majority of high cost lenders claim that their premium prices are based on the ‘risk’ of lending to low income customers… any yet, when customers pay week after week, year after year, the cost doesn’t go down.  But fundamentally, is it socially (or morally) acceptable to operate ‘cost’ pricing models which force the poorest to pay most?  How can companies square all their talk in recent years of corporate social responsibility, with charging their poorest customers the most?

It has become a mantra of anti-poverty campaigners that poor people pay something they call the “poverty premium”:

Lack of access to the best online prices, bank accounts and managing their budget via cash all adds together to give the poorest families the worst deals around. The result is a poverty premium that costs the poorest families more for the same energy, cookers and household items, credit and insurance than their wealthier peers.

The two prime culprits for this premium are energy and financial services especially lending. In the case of energy this is mostly about methods of payment – the understandable reluctance of people on low incomes to use direct debit as a means of payment. So, in reality, the whole problem is – as Niall Cooper implies – down to financial services. Especially since the ‘food desert’ argument turns out to be a bit of a myth.

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines a food desert as a low-income census tract where a large number of residents are more than a mile from a grocery store…. [L]ess than 4.5 percent of the U.S. population [falls into that category].

The question then is how to make is easier for poor people to access affordable financial services given that those poor people are less likely to repay loans, more likely to over draw and live in places where car crime and burglary heighten insurance risks. For this Niall Cooper suggests intervening in the market:

And if individual businesses are unwilling to offer products to low income consumers at fair prices (not least by claiming they can’t do so if their competitors don’t), then is there not a role for market intervention?

The problem is that – certainly where lending is concerned – we have been down this route before. After all mandating lending to high risk borrowers was a central driver in creating sub-prime problems especially in the USA. And if you introduce price caps (as Stella Creasy wants) without mandating lending to poor people then you kill the market entirely. The consequence of this is to create an even bigger problem for which the only solution is unregulated and illegal lending.

Rather than looking at forcing price cuts on suppliers, we should instead consider whether block buying is an option. Social landlords could, for example, purchase energy more cheaply than tenants and have the systems to collect payments in place already. And, certainly for contents insurance, the same should apply. It would be interesting too to look at whether local councils or social landlords could broker other insurances such as third party car insurance helping to spread risks and reduce costs.

If we look to new generation mutuals such as credit unions there are perhaps similar opportunities to reduce costs and spread risks. What we can’t do is wholly eliminate those risks (something the world is finding out very painfully right this minute) meaning that poor people will continue to have problems with access and pricing in financial services. In using co-operative solutions we can ameliorate these considerably and, in market terms, safely. Mandating prices simply takes us back into the financial disaster of sub-prime lending.

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What is regeneration for then? A comment on the Select Committee report...

I mean seriously how can we begin to know whether a given regeneration strategy, policy or programme is right or wrong, effective or ineffective when we seem not to have the first inkling as to what we mean by regeneration.

For some regeneration is simply the process of transferring money to poor communities rather than redistribution to poor people. It is a victory for the collective outlook, for the idea that deprivation is communal rather than personal and individual. And the worst among these people are the poverty-mongers, those who argue against the sin of ‘gentrification’ who seem to delight in the existence of the poor. For whom the elimination of poverty is a goal until the improvement of a place transforms its demographics when we are told we’re pushing poor people out.

Others see regeneration as a process of development – the improvement of the physical environment of a place so as to enable change, most usually economic change and typically change driven by shiny office blocks or sleek business parks. This – what we might call the ‘field of dreams’ approach to regeneration – relies on the belief that places cannot fix themselves, that inward investment is critical to regeneration. And they make a mission with the poverty-mongers by promising the jobs and economic advancement they demand as the price of preventing gentrification.

Whatever approach to regeneration is taken it has a vital element – government funding. Here’s the conclusion of the communities and local government select committee:

Funding for regeneration has been reduced "dramatically and disproportionately" over the past two years, and unless alternative sources can be found, there is a risk of problems being stored up for the future

The government is wrong to place so much emphasis on funding streams such as the New Homes Bonus, the Regional Growth Fund and rail investment, which, "whatever their benefits, are not focused primarily upon regeneration"

The withdrawal of Housing Market Renewal funding in particular has created significant problems, "leaving many residents trapped in half-abandoned streets"

The government has "apparently paid little regard" to the lessons from previous approaches to regeneration

There are concerns that, in spite of its aspirations for ‘community-led regeneration’, the government’s approach will do little to support it. At a time of significant spending reductions, many of the community groups most closely involved in regeneration are uncertain about their future

Other than learning lessons from past regeneration programmes, every single one of these conclusions is about funding – about the direction of taxpayers’ money to the process of regeneration. Yet the very lesson from the past – one that coalition ministers seem to have learned despite the best efforts of “experts” to persuade them otherwise – is that 40 years of intervention in “deprived communities” simply hasn’t worked.

Targeted, area-based regeneration doesn’t work – especially when it’s mostly nice middle-class community development workers going into poor communities and stroking them while sympathising about the lack of good schools, jobs and aspiration. Yet the regeneration industry trooped down to London so as to give evidence to this select committee – or rather to plead the case for their industry’s continuing existence despite forty years of failure.

 

The truth about poverty – and poor people – is that most of it (that is most of those poor people) isn’t in places with multiple deprivations. For sure, those deprived places have a high proportion of poor people but people without jobs, the elderly without savings or pensions, single mums and others struggling to get by are in every neighbourhood.

Our regeneration efforts should be directed to people who are poor – be it in cash or aspiration – rather than to selected communities chosen because there’s a concentration of poor people. Our aim should be to “renew” people rather than to “regenerate” places.

In the end the regeneration debate is a dead end. Scoffing at the government because they say “it’s up to neighbourhoods” takes us nowhere. And saying there’s no strategy suggests that, without those middle class community development and regeneration “experts”, people and places can’t improve.

If those “experts” want to make a difference, let them go to these places and make a business of improving them. Not by grant farming but through enterprise and effort. Not by taking government cash to pay themselves good wages but by reaping the dividend from the success of others – the value that comes from helping someone out of poverty.

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...or you could just cut taxes?

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Read this attempt to create a distinct economic strategy for Labour - at it's heart is the idea that the share of GDP that is wages and investment need to rise for a sustainable economy. Now leaving aside the fact that the peak for 'wage share of GDP' was in 1975 - just before we crashed into the IMF's bail-out and during the height of the union power that destroyed out manufacturing industry, I was struck by an obvious alternative.

Here is our social democrat writer quoting the IMF:

"...without the prospect of a recovery in the incomes of poor and middle income households over a reasonable time horizon, the inevitable result is that loans keep growing, and therefore so does leverage and the probability of a major crisis that, in the real world, typically also has severe implications for the real economy.”

So 'poor and middle income households' can't afford to pay back loans and maintain current living standards - creating the borrowing pathology that infects our economy. The propsed solution is:

Support for a living wage in the public sector and in public procurement

That's it really. A rehash of the economic nuttiness promoted by Ed Miliband during his leadership campaign (and largely directed to the successful strategy of sucking up to big union bosses - oh, yes folks, the 1970s all over again).

And that alternative? Simpler, cleaner, less-controlling, more effective and popular?

Just cut taxes for 'poor and middle income households'

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Poverty? Why am I not surprised....

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The Institute for Fiscal Studies has been looking at poverty and income:

Research by the IFS discovered that those at the bottom of the income spectrum had higher living standards than those with slightly better pay.

The findings suggest low spending is a better indication of poverty, instead of low income.

In fact, those with the lowest income had a high level of spending, suggesting they were only temporarily at the bottom of the income pile - drawing upon savings or other assets as a buffer against poverty - or that they are underreporting their earnings.

Yep, all those satellite TVs, iPhones and better cars than mine! They grow on trees!

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