Thought blog readers might find it useful if I flagged up the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ thoughts on how the Budget affects progress towards the government’s target of halving child poverty by 2010. Don’t forget that they and JRF first put remarkably similar figures, back in 2006, on how much the target would cost to achieve, then set at £4billion.

From the oral evidence to the Treasury Select Committee on the Budget on 17 March (uncorrected, so the link might wander):

[responding to question 67 from Sally Keeble MP] Robert Chote, IFS: One way of hitting the 2010 target, our best guess would be that if you were to increase the child element of the Child Tax Credits, the means-tested element, by £7.50 a week and then give a new payment of £12.50 a week for the third and subsequent child through the family element [...] that would cost £2.8 billion. That gives you some sense of how much more money there is to find.

Also interesting is this:

Q68 Ms Keeble: We have talked about this before, but how about going into work as a solution to child poverty, particularly given the prospects of increased unemployment?
Mr Chote: It does not make much difference on the timescale for 2010. [...] success on that front does not really get you very far in terms of the near-term target, it is either transfer payments or nothing at this stage.

So, getting more people into work isn’t the key to the 2010 target - putting more money in the pockets of families living below the poverty line whether in work or not through tax credits and benefits is. Longterm, talking about the next target of ending all child poverty by 2020, of course getting people into work and making sure they are paid decently is crucial (IPPR have recently published an interesting report on this) - though good social services, education and healthcare are important too.

But in order to think about what comes next, in order to have any chance of the 2020 target, we’ve got to get this one right. If you’ll forgive me badly paraphrasing a credit card ad - more money in tax credits for poor families: £2.8bn. Halving (then a shot at ending) child poverty: priceless.

EDIT, next morning: turns out I wrote a post setting out the background last December - here.

A couple of shorts:

Some Tory councillor in Kent wants to sterilise benefits recipients. You know the people that write frothingly awful rightwing-as-fuck comments below any blogpost about the welfare state? Well, one of them actually got elected! Christ. You know how, whenever our government has a new idea, someone somewhere says sanctimoniously “This is Britain, we don’t do things like that here”? For once, I feel a chorus coming on (all together now): “This is BRITAIN. GREAT Britain…” It’s never that good an argument, really, but then this one doesn’t really need a good argument, does it?

It would appear that the National Union of Teachers, my mother’s union, have decided to basketweave (it’s a technical term, related to the tendency of (usually student) unions to waste time on irrelevancies). Quite why they think every half-hour on News 24 is a good place to broadcast that their members are worried about the promotion of imperialism (one speaker really did use that word) in schools caused by the armed forces attending school careers events, I don’t know.

This made me laugh: a Conservative envoy to the union movement. Note how the virulent anti-union rightwinger gets hushed up in the comments by the nodding heads.

Onto serious matters. Over here, Alive and Kicking have an American-style database of MPs (literally American-style, with crosses and ticks; next they’ll be saying “Sarah Bloggs MP scores 3%, an extreme pro-death voting record”, just like the Yanks). One MP I spoke to has received more than 100 letters from the other side, arguing for reducing the time limit for abortions (often leavened with interesting views on other aspects of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, such as a spot of homophobia about the removal of the requirement that there be a father involved in IVF.). In contrast, he’s had just one pro-choice letter. And it’s not cos pro-choice people don’t care; I just don’t think we’ve appreciated the scale of the challenge to rights to abortion provision. So take a moment to write a letter - there’s a handy template here.

Some really good news. Several years ago (how can it be that long?) I wrote about the severe underfunding of Rape Crisis services. And last week, Harriet Harman announced a million pounds to help fund Rape Crisis services, working in the immediate aftermath and longterm with women who have been raped and abused. Hurrah! Now the government needs to do that every year, and local authorities need to realise that Rape Crisis centres aren’t an optional add-on, a nice-to-have, but absolutely vital for women year-in, year-out.

Hopi Sen on privacy and politicians is worth a read. Mind you, I could say that about all of his posts:

So perhaps the challenge for the next generation of politicians is to break that wall that divides the public life from the personal life. To put their lives up for inspection as a whole, while pointing out that just like a friend’s past or a colleague’s divorce, it doesn’t really matter all that much

Tom Freeman supplies the detail of why David Cameron’s plans to topslice SureStart are so wrong, and ends with this pithy observation:

If “money is tight and we’ve got to make choices”, why not choose to forsake some of that inheritance tax cut?

Finally, Miss Bimbo. Sigh. An online game with thousands of young users aged 9-16, in which they enter beauty contests, take diet pills, get boob jobs and compete to win over a billionare boyfriend. And what’s missing from all this coverage? The fact that we’re not talking about young people, we’re talking about young women - girls, even. We’re talking about reinforcing regressive stereotypes about what it means to be a woman and what achievement looks like if you’re female. We’re talking about a game in which the ultimate happiness is getting your guy and letting him pay for your next bout of surgery. ‘Scuse me while I go a bit old school feminist crazy.

Today was a good day to be a councillor for Rose Hill. We had the big press launch of the new housing scheme, replacing horrible pre-fabs with 250-odd new homes (lots of social housing, some part-rent part-buy, some elderly, some for private sale to fund the rest). Councillors, council staff, housing association staff and the guys from Taylor Wimpey doing the heavy lifting, as well as most importantly, local residents who will move into the new homes, gathered in front of the first homes. Another step forward for Rose Hill. Here’s the Oxford Mail’s article.