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.

Just this moment walked in through the door back from the protest this evening, so here are some unvarnished reflections. As per usual, this place seems to be teeming with pro-Irving and Griffin activists (sorry, I cannot imagine another more appropriate way to describe people who promote ideas by enabling and defending their promulgation on a prestigious platform).

At 5.45pm, when I arrived, St Michael’s Street was home to three outside broadcast vans, swarms of journalists of all stripes and channels, some burly security guards with their SIA identification nowhere visible and a few protesters. I amused myself chatting to Matt Wilkinson of the Oxford Mail, who didn’t believe me when I said that more than a thousand were expected; he must have been surprised later on. More than six years ago, the last time the Oxford Union invited David Irving, there were a bunch of us organising, luckily more sucessfully, to keep him out of our city; I had a real moment of throwback as I bumped into David Mitchell, then a J-Soc stalwart and now a student rabbi, on my way to the demo, both of us grimacing ruefully at being back in Oxford having the same old arguments.

At its height, the demo stretched from Cornmarket to New Inn Hall Street, everyone packed tightly in together, rocking against the gates of the Union. Unite Against Fascism placards were next to handpainted signs calling on Oxford students to unite against the BNP, and more intrepid protesters scrambled up to perch precariously on the wall of the Union. As the samba band played and music rose from the sound system, the protesters, far more than a thousand I would have thought, shouted, sang and booed. Coachloads from London, Manchester and Liverpool, Oxford alumni, the Trades Council, the Labour Club, representatives from the Union of Jewish Students and NUS, Labour and Green councillors and even George Galloway joined in, calling on the Union to reject the BNP. Packed tightly in, three metres from the gates, I felt the crowd surge forward, and saw some protesters slip past the guards and police and into the Union gardens. We found out later, from listening to the live TV broadcasts over the shoulders of cameramen, that they got into the union debating chamber and delayed and disrupted the debate.

Back on the streets, the focus turned to the other entrance of the Union, on Frewin Court, as rumours spread that union members were being let in that way. Protesters surged round the corner, and arguments developed with union members waiting in frustration in a loose queue outside Gap to be let in, with little chance of success. It became clear how many police were deployed as we rounded the corner, particularly to watch a small group of men dressed in black, with their faces hidden by black scarves, carrying the banner of Bath AntiFa bearing the legend “no pasaran”. Some students, not seeing the banner, mistook the group for the far right, and certainly the police were not about to let them get close to the building, despite their best efforts to break out of the cordon. The BNP were not obviously present, though there were many snappers mingling with the corwd, and no doubt many photos will presently turn up on Redwatch. I hope that the nasty answerphone messages left for David Williams, a Green councillor who wrote opposing the invitations in the Oxford Mail, are the worst that happens.

As I was beginning to think about going home, I bumped into Evan Harris, the Lib Dem MP who spoke alongside Griffin and Irving this evening, stood outside. Having stood against him at the last election, our relations are none too cordial, so I went over and asked bluntly whether he’d attended in the end, hoping he’d at least had the decency to cancel at the last minute. Of course he hadn’t; apparently seeing the protesters climbing the walls of the union had only made him more determined to speak, and he had done so. I said how disappointed I was in him, which under the circumstances was, I thought, rather restrained of me. He then, exceedingly oddly, changed the subject and launched into criticism of my position on abortion. Incredibly strange. Worth remembering the credibility he gives to racists, mind.

So there we are; a successful evening in terms of not letting the BNP and Holocaust deniers swan about our city unchallenged, but a desperate one in that they’d even been invited. Who knows, and who cares, what was said in the rearranged and long-delayed meetings, when they finally started? I’m sure the clever clever undergraduates of Oxford University wiped the floor with Irving and Griffin, but what use is that when BNP leaflets are even now being printed saying “Of course, our leader Nick Griffin is a credible leader of a mainstream political party; after all, he was invited to the prestigious Oxford Union debating society at Oxford University, where Bill Clinton and Mother Teresa have spoken…” The damage is done, and now it’s apparently acceptable to give these types credibility, prestige and profile, all the while protesting your anti-racist credentials. Well done, Luke Tryl, and well done, Oxford Union.

So, it’s now pretty clear that this evening I and thousands of others will be sharing our city with a pair of Holocaust deniers. The Oxford Union debating society have invited Nick Griffin and David Irving to speak, despite the concerns of our local police and the city council, the student union and the Jewish and Muslim societies. I fully intend to be joining the demonstration outside the Union on St Michael’s Street from 7pm this evening.

Doubtless there are some who won’t agree with me (I fully expect to be featured on Tim Worstall’s or the Devil’s Kitchen blogs later today, which will inevitably be followed by an onslaught of disagreeable comments). But I would just point out that having the right to freedom of speech doesn’t mean having the right to be invited to speak at a private members’ club. It’s not even as if Irving and Griffin get to expound their vile views and be challenged: they have been invited to speak instead on freedom of speech. And even if they were to, is it not breathtakingly arrogant that Oxford undergraduates believe that in a five minute debating speech they could somehow defeat either, when it took a Cambridge Professor of Modern History weeks on the stand to rebut Irving’s assertions?

More here from Deborah Lipstadt.

Peter Tatchell in saying something sensible shocker:
“I don’t believe the defence of free speech requires the Oxford Union to proactively offer these hate-mongers a prestigious platform to secure respectability for their odious views”

Those with long memories will sigh as they realise that the egotistical buffoons of the Oxford Union Society have decided, once again, that their Oxford-educated brains can defeat Nick Griffin and David Irving in debate.

PS: Peter Tatchell is someone for whom I have great respect for his record of activism for lesbian and gay and human rights. Since deciding to stand for the the Green Party in Oxford East at the next election, though, he has come out with some considerable nonsense, so it’s good to see him back on form.

One of the things that I’ve found most difficult about the discussion following the horrific murder of Rhys Jones has been the seeming dismissal by much of the media and many commentators of the possibility of change. The wilful misunderstanding of those who ridicule the home secretary for proposing more acceptable behaviour contracts for young people on the brink of crossing over into serious criminality is infuriating: no-one is suggesting replacing prison sentences for gun crime with agreements not to misbehave, but there surely is a place for trying to nip bad behaviour in the bud long long before it gets to the stage of an 11 year-old being shot, presumably by another young person. I don’t believe that anyone is born a criminal (one of the reasons why I’m on the left); I think that society makes it possible, and thus can prevent it. That’s no comfort to a grieving family in Liverpool; and there’s nothing we can do now to change the course of the killer, who is rightly heading for decades in gaol. But can we do anything to make sure that this doesn’t happen again? The kids who these days are tagging walls or skipping school, can we make sure one of them doesn’t end up killing someone someday? I think we can - and that Jacqui Smith is right to think about that too, as well as catching and punishing the killer of Rhys Evans.

While I’m on the subject of the Tories’ social justice commission report, I can’t leave uncommented upon the chapter about the better involvement of the voluntary sector in fighting poverty. My worry isn’t that this appears in the report - after all, Tories are supposed to think private philanthropy is better than democratically-controlled taxpayer-funded universal provision, it’s sort of what they exist for.

No, my dismay is the enthusiasm with which many not-very-bright medium and large charity (sorry, “third sector”) CEOs will greet this. For those of us that work for campaigning charities to change the things that are wrong with the world as we see it, there is something vastly miserable about watching our sector forget that:
1. charitable provision will never replace the state adequately (that is, if you have any concern about services being provided consistently to everyone in every area, which you should);
2. charitable provision is not in and of itself high quality, simply as a result of the sector from which it originates;
3. it’s elections which guarantee a political voice to millions of working people, not NGOs helping marginalised people of whatever stripe to participate, though that top-up participation is valuable;
4. if sustainable funding is what you are after, the Tories see NGO provision as a way to spend less money, not more, so your battle cries of “respect the COMPACT!” and “for a long-term funding settlement with full-cost recovery!” will go unheard. (Well, did you really think that a shrinking state would give masses more money to NGOs, rather than in tax cuts?!)

I’m not in practice against charities taking on state contracts or delivering public services (though I have red lines around charitable delivery of coercive services such as prisons and making funding allocation decisions, both of which I think require democratic accountability). But I do think that the sooner that the leadership of the sector recognises that it is deluded if it thinks of itself as inherently better or more responsive than the state and realises that the main distinguishing feature of a charity is that, independently funded, it can advocate for structural change, the better for the variety of disadvantaged people we’re supposed to serve. Charities exist to solve the problem they were set up to tackle: our aim should be to put ourselves out of business.

Apologies if this last post is intelligible only to other regular readers of Third Sector magazine. Once again, none of these points reflect the views of either the Oxford city Labour group, nor of my employer.

So, the excitement of the day has been about the Tories’ publication of their policy commission report on what they call “breakdown Britain”. And their policy prescription to end poverty in the UK? Well…

Reinstatement and full public use of the term ‘marital status’ and associated terms ‘husband’, ‘wife’, ‘spouse’ and ‘marriage’, sending a clear and unambiguous signal about marriage.

Okay, so that was a cheap shot, but it says so much about the report that frankly embarassing nonsense culled from the letters page of the Daily Telegraph (”SIR: the other day, I was filling in a form for the Government, and did you know, my wife has become my PARTNER! It’s political correctness gone mad! I remain…”) has made it into the final version of policies that the party is recommended to adopt.

I will admit to feeling torn about this: much as when the Tories began to be reasonable rather than red in tooth and claw about women’s issues and lesbian and gay rights, the campaigner in me is pleased that they are seriously engaging with the issues (and don’t be mistaken: this is a serious engagement with the issues, and the Tories giving up on bashing poor people, if this is what this is, is to be welcomed). But at the same time, as a Labour member, I know that their prescriptions are going to be wrong - how could they not be, starting from such as dismal view of the world? - but may be enough to fool people who care about poverty in the UK into thinking that they’re reasonable, and electable… and that way lies ruin.

All day the mood music has been about marriage. You know I’m not one to worry about the nanny state, so I don’t believe that the way to argue against promoting marriage is to worry about what the state should or should not get involved in. I think we’re better off talking about how incredibly cheeky it is to pretend that you’re interested in ending poverty, whilst preparing the way for a cash bung to people who don’t need it - Chris D puts it better than I can. It’ll take £4bn or thereabouts to halve child poverty in the UK by 2010 - Labour’s target, which the Tories have signed up to, by the way. But these proposals for tax breaks and increased WTC for married couples will cost about £6bn, and given the depth and breadth of poverty in lone parent families, giving it all to married couples is literally taking desperately needed food out of the mouths of babes. Some of it may go where it’s needed; most of it won’t, and not only will the young people that need it not benefit from it, what will the Tories cut in order to pay for populist vote-grabbing marriage promotion?

And what a shame that the genuinely good stuff in the report (increased carers allowances, increased benefits for severely disabled people, stopping payment of HB in arrears, more help to pay for childcare for disabled children, suggestions for practical support for struggling families) and the stuff that we need to have a debate about (whether we should pay parents to stay at home with their children, whether childcare tax credits should pay family members to provide care, how to ensure that getting people into work doesn’t mean getting them into the first minimum wage job and leaving them there) is obscured by numpty nonsense about marriage, plus a daft dogmatic proposal about stopping state nurseries competing with private ones, when we’ve barely got enough nuresry places as it is. Oh well, what did we expect?

One of the things I love about this blog is that it is my personal space to talk about the issues that matter to me, so you’ll understand that none of these points reflect the views of either the Oxford city Labour group, nor of my longsuffering employer. I’m glad that’s clear.

One of the things I’m really enjoying about my new(ish) job is the opportunity to work across the range of issues affecting people in poverty in the UK, both in terms of who those people are (women and men; younger and older; UK citizens, refugees and migrant workers), and where they live (Scotland, Wales and England). So it comes to pass that I’m in Glasgow for a few nights to meet people who use the projects my employer supports.

Today was a wonderful example of a project that genuinely is a grassroots changemaker (and I use the dreadful jargon deliberately). The community centre I visited was set up in 1991, and as far as I can see, has had the same small dedicated team keeping it going on a shoestring ever since. Developing welfare advice, education and leisure services for people in their area, the centre must be responsible for changing thousands of lives. I heard today about just one example - a lorry driver injured in an accident driving abroad and unable to work, who didn’t know what he was eligible for and was existing on almost nothing, now enabled by the centre to claim the £400 per week he’s entitled to, to support his family while he recovers.

From my description so far, it’s remarkable but far from unique - great independent advice centres all over the UK do this sort of work day in, day out. What so impressed me was the analysis that powered the work of the centre, grounded in a conception of the rights of ordinary people to education; welfare benefits when elderly, out of work or ill; representation and a voice. The centre’s links with the trade union movement, with campaigns for change and with international counterparts were astonishing. I could have spent all day reading about the campaign against jobseeker’s allowance in 1995/96; the struggle to get a computer suite; the visit of Abdullah Muhsin; fraternal visits with Australian and Polish trade unions; the candlelit vigil against unemployment in the early 90s recession; the current campaign to make the regeneration of the riverside work for local people and be more than importing jobs for people for elsewhere and building homes to house them. The community centre stands up for local people - it’s not a centre for service delivery tied to contracts and service level agreements with staff talking the language of targets and monitoring and soulessness, clients and numbers. It reminded me of what the voluntary sector can be when it’s right there, tied to the grassroots and unafraid to challenge councils and statutory services - transformative.

There’s an article in today’s Observer about Milliband and Brown scrapping about climate change. So far, so tedious. I was happily sat with the paper and a coffee when I read a splutteringly preposterous comment from a Friends of the Earth spokesperson, which I just have to share with you. For context, he was talking about personal carbon allowances, something I think I probably support. The article says:

Official figures recently released to parliament showed better progress in reducing CO2 levels had actually been made under the Tories in the years 1990-97 than under Labour after the election, he said, although not due to any eco-friendly efforts they made: ‘We were switching at that time from coal fired power stations to [cleaner] gas stations but it was more driven by Arthur Scargill and the miners’ strike than the environment.

Okay. Then the money shot:

‘The recesssion did also help a bit: during times of recession people aren’t going to work and are driving less.’

See what I mean?! Not the same world as the rest of us. Never mind millions of unemployed people and people losing their homes right left and centre; the early 80s recession was good because it decreased carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere, of course. As was commented to me earlier today, I’m sure there was decreased carbon consumption during the Black Death - doesn’t mean we should hope for a pandemic to decrease our carbon footprint. More seriously, don’t people like FOE realise that buying in ordinary people who like having a job and being able to pay the rent or mortgage is pretty vital in creating a coalition big enough to force action on climate change?

I wondered why I had been called a fascist and threatened with violence five times in the last 24 hours. I deleted most of the comments, but here’s a choice example, from someone who calls herself “Sarah”. Her email is slaw453@hotmail.co.uk, and she’s posting from 84.68.143.127:

Antonia, without a doubt you are utter unwashed scum, and I am seriously looking forward to bumping into you for a little chat real soon.

Turns out this post had been linked to from the BNP’s chatroom at some point in the last day or so.