Published: January 24th 2011 - at 3:06 pm

Tories to cut maternity grants, hitting poorer women hardest


by Richard Exell    

Today the government published their plans for new regulations on Sure Start Maternity Grants.

The Grants help low-income families meet the extra costs of maternity and having a new baby and the government’s plans will stop families qualifying if they already have a child under 16.

This will halve the numbers qualifying and cut spending £73 million a year.

Measures like this have to go to the statutory Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) before they can be introduced.

The TUC sent them our views on the proposals. We pointed out that:

  • A cut to maternity benefits must have negative equality implications – it will have the worst effects for women and members of some minority ethnic groups.
  • Large families – which are disproportionately likely to be poor – will be hardest hit, so this change will increase child poverty.
  • It will also hit families with unexpected late additions, second families, migrant families, women escaping violence and families that have come down in the world and never realised that one day they would need means-tested help.

We were glad to see that the SSAC’s report makes these points. They made two main recommendations: either that the government should wait until plans to extend Budgeting Loans to cover maternity costs have been brought in or that the savings should be made by halving the payment, rather than cutting eligibility.

The government’s reply is breathtaking – their answer to the first recommendation is basically that they want their savings now, and they don’t care to wait. On the second, they say they announced this policy back in June and they don’t plan to change it now.

They add that fewer than 10% of second children were born more than five years after the first child. The government has nothing to say about what is to be done for this minority and refuses to accept any other reason why families may not have items that can be reused for other children.

It’s hard to know which is worse: the hard-hearted unwillingness to consider the likely impact on poverty or the bald-faced insistence that they’ve decided their policy and nothing anyone else says is going to change their mind.


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About the author
Richard is an regular contributor. He is the TUC’s Senior Policy Officer covering social security, tax credits and labour market issues.
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Reader comments


1. Watchman

OK – I can’t be bothered confirming this myself, but my basic recollection is that Surestart grants are not for support of the child (we have child allowance and benefit for that) so are presumably for something else. I think this was meant to be things likes prams and the like (i.e. reusable things)?

Yet this post ignores the fact that this funding had a purpose and instead takes the view that the parents are entitled to this money (note no differentation as to whether it is used as it is meant to be). I would kind of appreciate it if people would remember that our current system of benefits actually provides such benefits for a reason, not just as a way of giving people more money, and discussed it as such. Or is the real purpose of benefits merely to give people money regardless (because that really helps get people out of poverty, honest…).

And, on a much more right-wing bent, should people have children they cannot afford? It seems rather strange that this seems accepted, since it will hardly be ideal for the children…

2. Mr Eugenides

Good grief, so the state has to pay for the birth of children now? (Quite apart from, you know, paying for the birth.)

I wonder how many of the people howling with rage about this “cut” would go to the barricades for the married couples’ allowance.

Same shit, different tune, it seems.

3. Don Paskini

“Or is the real purpose of benefits merely to give people money regardless (because that really helps get people out of poverty, honest…).”

Of course giving people more money helps them out of poverty.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/to-beat-back-poverty-pay-the-poor/

4. Watchman

Don,

Interesting link. But I think I could argue that it kind of makes my point. For a start, that programme admirably required recipients to fulfill conditions to improve their or their children’s lots – it was not simply a blind handout such as Richard seems to be advocating. This is not just throwing money at people, it is using resources to improve people’s futures. Kind of exactly what Mr Duncan Smith wants to do, and kind of exactly what our present system fails to do (and yes, I’d even claim that for EMA which is not conditional on anything other than a certan level of attendance).

And also my grip on economics and sociology is not great, but I’m pretty certain that there is limited value in using Latin American economies with their huge inequalities and relatively high levels of absolute poverty as a comparator with our own. But if there is anywhere where straightforward handouts of money should work surely it should be such economies – but surprisingly, it doesn’t, so more sensible means have to be used.

Money on its own alievates poverty, but does not eliminate it – that requires structural change, and unless you believe the state can do this on its own (the evidence would be good…) then this requires incentives. Not just blind payments for every child, regardless of whether the money is really doing what is intended. It is not a question of taking from the poor, but a question of whether just giving to the poorest unconditionally is really the best option…

5. Don Paskini

Hi watchman,

Research on cash transfers suggests that they work equally well whether conditions are imposed or not – http://www.styluspub.com/clients/kum/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=234740

Poor people tend to use the money that they are given wisely – to send their children to school, to start a business and to feed their families. If that’s true in Brazil, Mexico and forty odd other countries, why wouldn’t it be true in the UK?

“Money on its own alievates poverty, but does not eliminate it – that requires structural change, and unless you believe the state can do this on its own (the evidence would be good…)”

The countries with the lowest levels of child poverty all have large cash transfers to the poor. Quite agree that this isn’t enough, but no one has ever succeeded in eliminating poverty without giving more money to the poor.

The insight that people tend to spend their money wisely without needing to be told what to do by government bureaucrats should be one which people on the centre right welcome, no?

6. Watchman

Don,

Poor people tend to use the money that they are given wisely

Sweeping generalisation there. I take it you didn’t have any grandparents who grew up in inner-city poverty before World War II then? Because many poor people spend money badly – the stories of the drunk men, the gamblers and the like were not exactly reassuring, and I doubt the problem has gone away.

Indeed – if poor people spend money wisely, then why is the scheme(s) aimed primarily at women and with conditions attached?

And I do fundamentally disagree that poor people in a system where they need money for education, clean water etc are comparable to the poor in Britain where they should get both for free – what are the sensible investments that they are to make with this money, since the state provides the basics?

7. Mr S. Pill

Jesus H. Only a right-winger would claim that money does not help people out of poverty.

Also “And, on a much more right-wing bent, should people have children they cannot afford?” < what do you suggest, sterilise the poor? Otherwise, how are you going to stop people from having children?

8. sl

#7 are you serious?

I managed to have two children as and when i could afford them, and I think most sensible people do the same.

9. Mr S. Pill

@8

Fine, but what do you suggest? Punish children who had no say in their existence by damning the parents?

10. sally

Right wing men don’t like woman, and they really hate poor woman.

Nothing new here.

11. sl

Sally you have no idea whether or not I am right wing, actually I’ve been in the LP since 1977. I just happen to think that people should take children seriously. I do of course reserve the right not to take you seriously, at least in this I’m in the majority.

12. sally

11 I was not talking to you. So I can only imagine you must have a guilty conscience.

I was just making a statement of fact. I care not one jot if you don’t agree with me.

13. Bob B

I’m reminded of the late Sir Keith Joseph’s ill-judged speech at Edgbaston on 19 October 1974:

“Many on the right-wing of the Conservative Party looked to Joseph to challenge Heath for the leadership, but Joseph’s chances of this were damaged by a controversial speech (written by Alfred Sherman) at Edgbaston on 19 October 1974. Covering a variety of social conservative topics, while drawing on an article written by Arthur Wynn and his wife which had been published by the Child Poverty Action Group, he warned about single parents ‘who were first pregnant in adolescence in social classes 4 and 5′, the traditional taboos against which were easing at the time. However, some of the references he made to the quality of ‘human stock’ raised the spectre of eugenics, and under fire for this, he accepted that he had no chance of winning and urged Thatcher to stand. The barrister Jonathan Sumption later admitted privately to a journalist that he had written the speech whilst working as an assistant to Joseph.”
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Keith_Joseph

14. Andreas Moser

We have too many children anyway.


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    [...] publish plans for new regulations on Sure Start Maternity Grants, Liberal Conspiracy note that poorer women and their children have much to [...]





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