Poor Young People not helped by 2009 Budget

Alice Miles comments in The Times today, 22 April 2009 that, even a budget can’t subsidise ambition or lethargy. She does not mention the long term debilitating poverty in this wealthy society of the young people she accuses, and of their families.

Today’s budget does nothing immediate for them. I have visited those young men in prison, helped them fill in their means statements in the magistrates courts and worked with their families over the past twenty years. Some had been in care or were born into poor families who remained poor and permanently under the stress of debt and the inadequacy of the welfare system as they grew up. Some do not apply for unemployment benefits because they are too low at £50.95 a week to sustain healthy living.  That income punishes them for being poor, the anti-social consequences of which all politicians who have governed us for past decades must bear the responsibility.

Legitimate work / training income is insufficient for the poor

The young people who burgled and trashed my home on Christmas evening last year made more money stealing my cash and then selling my lap top and mobile phones. Delivering illegal drugs at £50 a time several times a week is another better paid option.  If they get legitimate work or go into training  it will be at  £4.77 per hour, or less, for workers aged 18-21 inclusive or £3.53 per hour for all workers under the age of 18 with no holiday or sick pay and far from secure. Whether or not it is enough to live on is not in the remit of the Low Pay Commission when they set the level. The adequacy based living wage for London set by the Greater London Authority is £7.45 an hour taking account of welfare payments and would need to be nearer £10 to be above them. That really would encourage young people into legitimate work.

£77 billion was the cost of Mental Health in 2007

Dr Jo Turner of the Department of Health recently announced that Mental Health costs £77 billion in 2007, more than cancer and heart disease combined and vastly more than obesity at £4-£5 billion. There was total silence in the budget speech about this national disaster. There were no immediate proposals urgently to diminish poverty and its related debt, which are known to contribute to mental illness, so prevent this massive cost to the tax payer from increasing even further.

 
Rev Paul Nicolson, Chairman
22 April 2009