FactCheck: truth about poverty
Updated on 19 September 2007
Is it possible to lift five million people out of relative poverty in 13 years?
The claim
"Five million people will be lifted out of relative poverty ... by 2020."
The Liberal Democrats, 18 September 2007
The background
Tackling poverty has been one of Labour's great battles. The numbers of those living in poverty have - at least until the most recent set of figures - dropped pretty steadily since the party came to power.
The Lib Dems have now thrown down the poverty gauntlet, and signed up to the government's claim to eradicate child poverty by 2020.
At their annual conference, the Lib Dems debated measures which they claimed would lift five million people out of relative poverty by 2020. The measure is based on the difference in income between the poorest incomes and average incomes in the country.
Do their proposals live up to the promise?
The analysis
The policy document ranges from specific pledges - well, a few of them - and broader, brushstroke ideals.
The party reckons its plans will get two million more people into work, improve education for up to 1.5 million children by offering a "pupil premium" of extra funding for the most disadvantaged, and deliver a million more affordable homes.
It's not clear, however, exactly who the 5 million people they plan to take out of poverty are.
As Mike Brewer, director of the direct tax and welfare research programme at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, points out, there are currently 2.8 million children living in poverty, at least according to the measure the government uses.
And according to the IFS's calculations, there are 2.3 million poverty-stricken parents.
Surely to remove these children from poverty, as the party has pledged, also involves removing their parents from poverty.
So, taken literally, the effect of meeting the child poverty promise should be to take 5.1 million people off the poverty roll.
It doesn't sound that simple, though. The report starts by saying that the measures will "remove up to five million people from relative poverty by 2020 - including eliminating UK child poverty and delivering further reductions in pensioner poverty".
Confused already? You're not the only one.
It's not possible to eradicate child poverty without a pretty major rethink of the benefits system.
Numbers aside, how do the poverty-zapping plans shape up? They set down all sorts of promises, with a praiseworthy commitment to reduce the number of means-tested benefits given out.
A general aim is to put more people into work - which often does take households out of poverty.
One of the few policies of which the Lib Dems measure the impact is a £5 increase in child benefit, expected to take 400,000 people out of poverty, 150,000 of them children.
The precise impact, and costs, of other policies are far more vague. One thing they have in common is that they're going to be pretty expensive.
And they don't go far enough, either. Probably the biggest, and the most expensive, measures missing from the plans is the lack of a promise to increase benefits above inflation.
"Even if you get more people into work and more children into education, there will still be some families depending on benefits, perhaps because the parent is ill or unable to work for some time," said Donald Hirsch, author of a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, "What will it take to end child poverty?".
Because currently, state benefits tend to rise in line with inflation rather than in line with most people's living costs, those on benefits are left behind. It's not possible, therefore, to eradicate child poverty without a pretty major rethink of the benefits system.
"A £5 increase in child benefit just won't go far enough," said Hirsch.
The verdict
The Lib Dems' imaginative thinking and commitment to ending child poverty wins praise, as do their plans to cut the number of benefits given out on the basis of means-testing.
But they don't really show how they are going to end child poverty or pay for it.
"They're now in the same position as the government - they have the target, but haven't shown how they're going to meet it," said Mike Brewer.
And the five million figure might as well, according to the evidence they've set down, be picked out of the air.
FactCheck rating: 4
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Sources
Lib Dems propose radical anti-poverty plans
Freedom From Poverty, Opportunity For All
Poverty rises for the first time since 1997, IFS
Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2007, IFS
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