Since David Cameron’s speech in Manchester last Thursday, a large part of the political discourse has been about what cuts can, and should, be made in public services. It is important that in a debate about saving money and reducing the deficit, we don’t lose sight of the important services that people on low incomes rely on – and that poorly-paid public sector workers aren’t used as a political football.

The main thing that concerns me when looking at the increasingly radical agenda around public sector cuts coming from all the main political parties, is that although efficiency savings can doubtlessly be made, they will have to be on a level that seriously effects front-line services in order to make a significant dent in the deficit. I think any government needs to think hard before making cuts in the services that people on low incomes use the most, in this light it was a relief when the Conservatives ruled out calls from some in their ranks to abolish Sure Start centres – although it is concerning that there is no such protection for funding of libraries, job centres, social workers and housing services.

Public sector cuts Conservative’s proposed public sector pay freeze will also risk poverty for public sector workers themselves. Public sector workers are already payed less than those in the private sector for equivalent jobs with half earning less than 20,000 a year. A pay freeze will allow their wages to fall further behind the private sector. It is likely, that public sector cuts and a pay freeze would impact the government’s child poverty targets: with 65% of public sector workers being women, 90% of lone parents being women, and half of lone parent families being in poverty already – then freezing the pay and cutting the jobs of a large group of already poorly paid women workers will have detrimental effects on children in poverty (already over 4 million).

It’s important that politicians avoid using our public sector as a political football. The relatively low saving of around £200m a year to be gained from a public sector pay freeze  risks pushing more people into poverty and any significant cuts risk limiting services for those who need them the most.

Both the Conservatives and Labour party have a policy to retest everyone on incapacity benefits. And it was also in Manchester yet a world away from mini quiche and free beer that I had met a young woman who had fallen foul of such a policy in the past – and through falling through the cracks had landed in dire poverty.

Louisa [name changed] had lost a child from cot death, and as a result of this she had become depressed to the extent she developed agoraphobia. When I met Louisa she had had her benefits taken away from her for failure to attend an assessment of her agoraphobia in central Manchester because of her illness. Now she was supporting herself and a child on only the child benefits.

It is never unpopular for politicians to say they will be tough on people on benefits; but in our experience, people on benefits are often not lazy and milking the system, but claiming because they are in genuine need. By being tougher these people, some of the 40% of those on incapacity benefits because of mental health problems will fall through the cracks as their illnesses are less easy to prove. I would have done anything to introduce Louisa, or indeed Vince to the  to the people in this room who were talking about making sure everyone had a chance to work, without a understanding of what it really meant.

There is lots to welcome in conservative welfare reform – especially making more funding available for those whom it is more challenging to get into work, and there is a lot we welcome in the Centre for Social Justice’s dynamic benefits report.  However, the government must support people into work and not punish them for being poor.

Earlier this year Oxfam produced the Close to Home report that looked into the problems the recession caused to those already on low incomes.

As Laura Kuenessberg points out in her blog on these figures the percentage increase in workless households hasn’t been terribly great to reach this new high (a rise of 1.1 per cent) – and the number of people in workless households remained relatively stable even during the boom years.

But now, people who weren’t working even during the good times – some disabled and ill people, single parents and people who have been out of work for a long time – are being forgotten as policy attention and resources are diverted to the newly-unemployed. This is pushing those who have been on benefits for years rather than weeks or months further from opportunities to work, due to the influx of people without the problems associated with long term worklessness into the labour market.

There are now 2 million children now growing up in workless households and the effect of growing up in poverty is one of the most consistent indicators for a child’s life chances. If it isn’t addressed, the effects will be felt into the next generation.

Government responses to this are all too often to go to populist short term measures forcing people into work without recognising the more profound problems, what is needed is to make the transition to work sustainable. The government needs to understand the implications of these statistics and address these issues not only to help bring the country out of recession but to avoid people being condemned to a life in the benefits cycle.

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If that is the case then there is concern for us all.

The Government announced yesterday that they are cutting the benefits given to asylum seekers from £42 to £35 a week. They claim that £35 a week is sufficient to enable asylum seekers to meet their basic needs in the UK, given that their housing and heating costs are also met.

This is just not the case. £5 a day is not sufficient money for an adult in this country to feed and clothe themselves, travel and buy necessary medicines. It’s less than many of us will spend on our lunchtime sandwiches. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work by law, making this the only income they have and to take this away from people fleeing persecution in their home countries is, frankly, shameful.

Somewhat ironically, on the same day a government working party announced that it was recommending that the amount of money pensioners living in residential care (where not just housing and fuel costs, but also food is already paid for) should see a rise in the amount of money that they are left with from their benefits rise from £21 a week to £40 a week. The reason? To recognise that £21 a week is “insufficient to enable them to live fulfilled lives”.

This is, of course, to be welcomed, although pensioner poverty has fallen by a third since 1997 the level remains shamefully high and any measure to put more money in pensioners’ pockets is a step in the right direction. However, it would be nice to see some joined up thinking from the government and recognition that asylum seekers are entitled to the same dignity as anyone else in our society.

Since I have worked for Oxfam I have met many asylum seekers, many of whom tell truly harrowing stories of the persecution they have escaped. Despite not being allowed to work, many I have met do voluntary work to put something back into the country that has taken them in. What makes this measure all the more shameful is that it clearly has nothing to do with cost cutting as the government claimed. With 25,670 applications for asylum in 2008 the saving will be minimal but the suffering for the people it effects will be massive.

And one of the things I have noticed is that, when it comes to migration, the newspapers can be so selective as to be positively misleading. There was an example of this yesterday. Both the Sun and the Daily Mail featured a poll showing that 81 per cent of the British public want a cap on migration. What neither publication mentioned was that the poll was in fact conducted by the anti-migration think thank Migration Watch – hardly a disinterested source!

And neither publication picked up another independent piece of research by University College London, which showed that not only do migrants from the EU pay their way, but also they are more likely to be in employment than their British counterparts and less likely to be claiming benefits. In short, here’s the proof of what anyone who works with migrants knows: migrants put far more into our national pot than they take out.

Other than the Financial Times no other national newspaper had picked up this story. We should expect better from our national press – after all, how many of the unfavourable public attitudes to migrants are rooted in failure of our press to give a clear picture of the contribution migrants make to society?

But most of all, I found it impossible to put into my list of facts what being in poverty really means. This is something of which – since working at Oxfam – I have become acutely aware. I met a mother who had to decide whether to give her children Christmas presents or hot meals in the month before Christmas. And a couple (see the video below) who looked after four children on benefits with the mother suffering from depression after the loss of a child and the father unable to work because of his caring responsibilities.
I have also become aware of is how easy it is to find yourself in poverty through no fault of your own. There was the woman I met who had a comfortable life until her husband died, spent her savings looking for a new job, and could no longer look forward to a secure retirement. Or the young woman who had to quit her job because of stress and lived on £500 a month.

I now know the statistics about poverty in the UK inside out, but it is too easy to forget that behind the 13.2 million people in poverty and the 2.9 million unemployed are as many stories about how they got there, what they have to go without and what they have to give up through no fault of their own.

So the background… I spent much of last week writing a response to a government consultation on the change in the Local Housing Allowance, which will cap – at five – the number of rooms for which a large family can claim housing benefit. The current regulations don’t have a limit but are based on making sure everyone has adequate living space.

In October last year the media created a furore by highlighting a few exceptional cases in which large families were living in expensive houses on benefits. In particular, the case of Toopakai Saiedi – an Afghan mother of seven whose family were living in a house with rent of £12,000 a month. The Daily Mail’s Richard Littlejohn complained; ‘One person who will not be losing any sleep over the impact of the financial crisis is Toorpakai Saiedi, an Afghan mother of seven living in West London and receiving £170,000 a year in benefits…she is luxuriating in a £1.2 million double-fronted, seven-bedroom Edwardian villa, her staggering rent of more than £12,000 a month picked up by the British taxpayer. ” While the Sun asked the somewhat unbalanced question: ‘Do you think state spongers should be stopped or are you fine with freeloading?’

The government’s consultation on the law admits that this case is unrepresentative; this media campaign missed the true face of people living on housing benefits and the problems of overcrowding. According to the housing charity Shelter, in 2006/07, 554,000 households in England were overcrowded… overcrowding has a detrimental effect on family relationships and health, as well as having a damaging influence on children’s education and emotional development.

However, the government’s housing policy seems not to respond to the work of expert housing charities such as Shelter. Instead, James Purnell announced the current review with the aim of bringing in a 5 bedroom cap – hailed as a “victory for the Sun” – on Oct 21st. This policy is entirely symbolic, as can be seen by the relatively small number of families that will be affected, an estimated 5,000 people (less than one per cent of the housing benefit case load). Policy and media discourse that suggest poor people are lazy or greedy is often based on these atypical cases and leads to hugely unhelpful lack of information on poverty and ultimately to bad policy.

This change goes against current government policy on ending child poverty. Children are disproportionately represented in large households who claim benefits for houses with over five rooms, making up around 3,000 of the 5,000 households that will be affected.

This kind of knee jerk response to a regressive media campaign has the potential to condemn children to a cycle of re-housing, repossession, and overcrowding for the crime of having been born in a large family. It is one of many recent issues highlighting the importance of campaigns on public attitudes to poverty.