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18/02/1999
ISSUED ON BEHALF OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITY
Alistair Darling today announced plans to prepare an annual audit highlighting Government action to combat poverty.
The move is part of a radical, cross-government strategy to fight poverty, rather than simply reacting to the problems it creates.
Speaking in Edinburgh, Mr Darling re-affirmed the Government's commitment to provide opportunities where there have been none and to ensure that people are encouraged to take them.
The Social Security Secretary announced that he will prepare an annual audit setting out how the Government is confronting and tackling the causes of poverty.
Mr Darling said:
"For the first time, a Government is prepared to be judged on its progress in tackling the causes of poverty.
"It is clear that the welfare state needs radical reform. Fifty years on, in this the final year of the 20th Century, a child can still be born poor, live poor, die poor.
"Benefits alone can't tackle this failure. It's easy to send out giros, but a giro won't get you a job or improve your skills.
"Today's benefits system was designed 50-years-ago - to provide a stop-gap for men during short and infrequent spells out of work.
"The system now needs to cater for a very different world - where most people can't rely on a 'job for life', where more women work.
"The social security system was designed for short periods of worklessness. It was never designed to deal with the poverty we face today. It has failed to adapt to this changing and uncertain world.
"Instead, the system has become part of the problem - encouraging dependency by passively paying out benefit. Encouraging people to feel that the best they can expect is a lifetime on benefit. That can never be good enough.
"Benefits can treat the symptoms of poverty, but they cannot tackle the causes. It is this poverty of expectation that has to be confronted.
"Complacency, an acceptance of social and economic failure as part of the natural order of things, is a betrayal of the generations that follow us," added Mr Darling.
The Social Security Secretary said the Government needs a new approach which challenges the poverty of expectation that lets the system write people off.
He said:
"Tackling the causes demands action across government. So we're moving the fight against poverty back to the centre stage of British politics.
"Right across government we are tackling poor job prospects, poor housing, poor education and poor health.
"It means making hard demands on people on benefit, like requiring them to attend an interview to look at work.
"The single gateway means that for the first time we will ensure that people's minds are focused on work, not benefit," added Mr Darling.
Tough action is also being taken to drive up standards in schools to give children a decent education and improve their prospects as an adult, said Mr Darling. Truancy is being tackled, and illiteracy is being made a thing of the past.
Mr Darling said the Government has invested half a billion pounds in the Sure Start programme to provide support to ensure children from deprived backgrounds are as prepared as possible for the start of full-time education.
The Social Security Secretary stressed that as part of the fight against poverty a radical change of culture - confronting attitudes and long-term dependency - is needed.
"We know too well the effect that years of unemployment or illness have on individuals. It demoralises. People come to expect nothing different. And, in turn, their children expect no better for themselves.
"This is the poverty of expectation that we must tackle by changing attitudes, and making sure that people know what help and opportunities are available to them," added Mr Darling.
BACKGROUND
Mr Darling was speaking to staff at Wester Hailes Jobcentre. £140 million has been invested under the Wester Hailes Partnership which has one of the best reputations for community action in an area facing difficult and complex problems.
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Internet address: www.dss.gov.uk
News Release: 0356/99
18 February 1999