Our analysis is quite clear: cuts in public spending hit poor people hardest – particularly women, who make up the majority of both public sector employees and public service users. What Toynbee does is put some figures on this. She asked Professor John Hills, Chair of the National Equality Panel, which produced the authoritative report An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK, to calculate how the burden of deficit reduction would fall in two different scenarios. And the figures are stark: if the deficit were reduced through spending cuts alone, the bottom fifth of society would lose 12%, while the richest fifth would lose less than 1%. If the money were instead raised by increasing all existing taxes, the figures would be a far more equitable 3.4% and 3.7%.

What I take from this is an important reminder that cutting the deficit is not a cold, managerial activity. There are some profound political and moral choices to be made in how it is done. The new government’s commitment to slashing spending and raising a little through taxes (predicted to come in large part through increasing VAT – one of the most regressive taxes) would have negative consequences across society, but in particular upon the poorest and most vulnerable. But it is not inevitable. We have a deeply unfair tax system, in which the poorest tenth pay 46% of their earnings in tax, while the richest tenth pay only 34%. Rebalancing those inequities is one way in which we can cut the deficit while making our society a little bit fairer.

On a similar note, in its haste to balance the budget in the shortest time possible, the government must not lose sight of the need to keep investing in people. Short-term savings can be illusory, and miss the opportunity to make much bigger gains in the future. For example, for a relatively modest up-front investment in welfare reform, the system could be transformed to allow people to build on their potential, and ultimately make us all better off.

There are myriad options for getting out of the fiscal hole we’re in. We mustn’t let ourselves be told that making our society still less fair is the only way.

Moussa Haddad is Oxfam’s policy officer for sustainable livelihoods in its UK Poverty Programme.

There are hundreds of events up and down the country, from a poetry workshop at the V&A to football tournaments in Exeter, Bradford and Newport; from cakes and live music here in Oxford to an art exhibition in Wrexham; from a comedy night at the Tron Theatre to an online film festival at (or should that be @) the world wide web. Look up events in your local area, here.

You could even go one step further and hold your own event! How about cooking a dish from another country, or learning a few words in another language, or reading a book about exile. They’re all small, Simple Acts, which all add up to make a big change in the way refugees are perceived in the UK. This year we’re aiming for 20,000 simple acts, so start now and record your acts here! You can even upload a picture or a video to show us what you’ve done.

And for the film buffs, there’s the Online Film Festival, a selection of six award-winning films that document the journeys of hope made by people fleeing war and persecution and the difficulties they face rebuilding their lives far from home. The festival is being launched at the BFI in London this Thursday, and includes a panel discussion with film directors and Channel 4’s Samira Ahmed.

There’s also a celebration of exceptional journalism at the Refugee Week Scotland Media Awards in Glasgow. At Oxfam, we support fair reporting of asylum because negative media portrayal can reinforce myths and provide the stories and material to justify prejudices, which in turn can result in poor policy and exacerbate poverty by acting as a deterrent to refugees claiming the rights they do have.

To cap things off, there’ll be an Umbrella March through central London on World Refugee Day, Sunday, 20 June. Everyone who takes part will be given a huge white umbrella to carry, as a symbol of care and shelter, representing the UK’s proud tradition of offering safety to those in need of international protection. There’ll be similar parades taking place in eight other cities in Europe so we’ll be marching in solidarity with thousands of others across the continent. Come ready to show your support!

I watch statistics on poverty pretty closely, and this report doesn’t tell us anything new. Every year prestigious bodies such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) monitor poverty and inequality in excruciating detail. We also recently received the latest report by the National Equality Panel, ‘An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK’. There is no shortage of evidence out there in the public arena. I do often wonder how, in one of the richest countries in the world, there is so little public reaction to this regular explosion of shocking facts.

So far so predictable. Both parties in the new coalition government put reducing poverty and inequality at the heart of their electoral platforms. It is only natural that the new government should now examine official statistics in order to establish the extent of the challenge ahead. It’s good that the new government is being completely frank about the scale of the poverty problem this country faces.

Yet what is really significant is that the government appears to be trying to examine the root causes, not just the statistical manifestations, of poverty so it might take action that could help to resolve some of the problems that underpin Britain’s persistent malaise. This approach presents big opportunities to think afresh. It also contains risks if we misdiagnose symptoms of poverty and inequality as causes. Here are three examples:

Welfare dependency

Of course the benefits system doesn’t work. That’s a no-brainer, especially for the millions trying to cope with a stigmatising and hugely complicated system that doesn’t even deliver enough for people to live on. However, welfare remains as vital a buttress against greater poverty and suffering as any other public service. It’s not just a system that helps with money when people can’t get work; it also provides a much wider range of social protection services. We forget at our peril, that for people on low incomes, access to a decent education, to quality health services, to key universal benefits, are absolutely crucial to their ability to cope. When the government looks at the welfare system, it has to look at the whole picture – not just benefits.

The Centre for Social Justice’s (CSJ) policy reports and recommendations, which have clearly influenced the new government’s report, recommend reducing the number of benefits from 54 to two. Reform on such a monumental scale must be made sensitively. An equalities impact assessment could prove enormously valuable. In a time of austerity, reform should be particularly careful not to adversely damage those whose main job is actually caring for others. Changes to everything from child benefit to disability living allowance should be assessed on this basis.

Multiple disadvantage

This is a huge and un-addressed problem and I am glad to see that a chapter of this new report is devoted to it. There is, however, relatively little attention given to the way gender, race, and class intersect to perpetuate disadvantage. An Oxfam report out this week highlights how social protection mechanisms, particularly universal ones, benefit the poorest the most. The majority of people in more vulnerable groups – single parents, pensioners etc – are still women. Poverty for women is huge and persistent but not often immediately evident from many typical statistics.

Family structure

I have real problems with the assumption that family structure is per se a major cause of poverty. Do children in non-nuclear families tend to be poorer? Yes. Yet I have seen no clear evidence to suggest that ‘family breakdown’ is a cause and not an effect of poverty and deprivation. Also, there’s plenty of evidence about to suggest that single parenthood has little absolute impact on social problems. The alleged relationship of cause and effect becomes even more uncertain when social class and age are factored in. It seems that some statistics in this report are accurate, and yet presented as conclusive proof, when the relationship is not necessarily so clear-cut.

Extending inaccurate logic to deploring social choices contains risks. For those of us old enough to remember, there used to be a climate of stigma against single parents during the 80s, that was deeply corrosive and damaging. There is no reason to suppose that this new government will take the same approach, but planning to influence some social choices could bring disadvantages. In his first speech on the steps of Downing Street David Cameron celebrated the fact that ‘this country is more open at home’. He should stick to his guns on social liberalism while trying to tackle the structural causes of poverty experienced by families – a good approach to solve many of Britain’s social puzzles that are often caused by poverty and tawdry rates of wellbeing. For example, let’s make sure that women don’t end up poorer at the end of their lives by fixing a pensions system rigged against those with broken work records, where women still find that being in and out of caring means they will rarely qualify for a decent pension.

There is much to be welcomed in the DWP report. Yet we should be careful not to draw hasty conclusions about social choice by examining statistics through the prism of our particular assumptions. Let’s not shy away from encouraging deep thinking about what the causes of poverty and inequality in Britain really are. We have a chance to go beyond policies that tinker with statistical measures, and really change the fundamental underpinnings of persistent poverty in the UK.

It is not the case that women’s jobs have not been hit by the recession, as Fraser Nelson of the Spectator’s article of 27 May suggests. Oxfam’s recent report an Invisible Crisis shows that the problem is an underreporting of female employment.

There are lots of reasons why female unemployment is underreported. Many women don’t register as unemployed; they just move out of the workplace, and ‘stay at home’. Others take on casual, badly-paid, work which does not show up in official statistics.

The problems with women’s employment certainly have not disappeared. The Gender pay gap still exists: women working part-time earn 40% less than men, and full-time, 17% less. The majority of women work part-time with less access to employment benefits. Many jobs still typically occupied by women in the caring, retail and service sectors remain low status and insecure.

The Invisible Crisis looked at the impact of recession in 10 European countries, and revealed some disturbing trends. More women are working in precarious conditions, for less money, and without social security. Pregnant workers are being illegally sacked. And women reported having less and poorer quality food to put on the table, a rise in household debt, and increasing domestic violence because of the financial pressure currently faced by families.

The fall in male employment is real and worrying, but we shouldn’t neglect the plight of British women for a moment. The poor quality, badly-paid nature of many women’s work, the difficulties faced by women in combining paid work and caring responsibilities, and now the additional impact on women of the economic crisis – must be urgently addressed by responsible employers and the new government.

Oxfam and the European Women’s Lobby have just reported on the impact of recession on women across Europe, based on research carried out in winter 2009-10. There is an invisible, long-term crisis where women are hard-hit, and the impact is invisible.

The results are shocking. Women in the labour market are doing badly – with growing discrimination in the labour market, including sackings of pregnant women, more precarious working conditions; increasing, and a shift to informal work. But those not in paid work are not protected either. They are dealing with rising housing, energy and living costs, higher levels of debt and difficulty with repayments. Women are eating less, and poorer quality food. Cuts in public services including hospitals and schools are having a particularly devastating impact on women, who still form the majority of carers in every European country. Most shocking of all, it reports rising levels of domestic violence in every country in the study.

So what’s to be done? Oxfam and the European Women’s Lobby have ambitious and specific recommendations (see below). But the biggest problem is the failure of politicians to speak out loud and clear about women’s continued poverty.

Oxfam and the European Women’s Lobby are calling for:

• Governments to compile data on complaints of sex discrimination filed in the recession
• Greater employment rights for migrant women so they aren’t stuck in part-time and insecure work
• Systematic monitoring of progress in relation to violence against women.
• Gender-sensitive universal social protection standards across Europe
• Assessment of the gender impact of expenditure cuts in health care and education
• New childcare targets which recognise not only numbers and costs, but also the quality of care.

For more details about Oxfam’s support to poor women in Europe click HERE.

To find out more about the British electorate’s real views on women’s poverty, see the Fawcett Society’s campaign “What about women”.

A more progressive taxation system:

>>National Insurance has been rising rapidly but it is effectively capped meaning higher earners don’t pay any more than anyone else. Where possible necessary rises in NI, should be replaced by increases in income tax.

>>Reduce indirect taxes such as consumption taxes that disproportionately impact the poor, and reduce demand – much needed during this fragile recovery.

>>Resort to regressive indirect taxes only when they achieve worthwhile social goals, and offset regressive impacts elsewhere in the tax, and benefits system.

>>Reduce the tapers on tax, and benefits

Make welfare a genuine springboard for all:  Pay for strong, and comprehensive social protection (compared to consumer citizens, and narrow workfare policies).

>>Investing in a less myopic welfare system will be cost neutral over the long-term anyway as it will lead to greater employment in more highly skilled, and better paid roles that in turn will increase the net tax-take. The system should also be designed to prevent people being forced into the informal economy. The informal economy proves there is untapped productivity, which if utilised could increase tax receipts.

>>Invest a net £2.7 billion per year to increase earnings disregards and introduce a standard 55% withdrawal rate for both out-of-work and in-work benefits, to end the benefit trap.

>>The administration of the welfare system is far too complex and makes benefits less predictable, which in turn increases financial insecurity and people’s ability to make rational financial decisions – the system has to be radically simplified.

>>There also should be a full analysis of the differentiated effect these measures will have on women and men.

>>As a first step in welfare reform, roll out the Create Consortium’s proposals for a Community Allowance beyond the pilot areas, especially if further evidence supports the view that the model would prove cost-neutral.

Expanded community ownership: With measures to enable poor communities to organise, and access benefits. This would cost £5m to start up the infrastructure, and the facilitation, and would yield savings in the long-term.

Tackle debt at the bottom: Continue and increase investment into DWP’s growth fund that provides small loans with wider access, and longer repayments. £100m would directly enable 225,000 people access affordable credit (rather than having to use high cost lenders), and 80,000 people would be enabled to open a basic bank account or savings account.

Increase family-friendly jobs:

>>Create a pool of employees to provide extended maternity cover so small businesses have no excuse not to hire women.

>>Realise long-term ambitions to extend paternity cover; enabling couples to break away from traditional gender roles at the beginning of parenthood by ensuring the law doesn’t actively encourage one gender to take on the role of primary child-carer.

Economically empower women: £3bn to make childcare affordable, flexible, and accessible. The lack of affordable childcare in Britain (childcare in the UK is the most expensive in Europe) is a key stumbling block for women that want to work. This is the single best way to . Spending here would also enable good nurseries to meet their obligations to provide a minimum amount of free childcare without having to close because of financial pressures. The Government could also remain committed to its recent action on the gender pay gap.

Tackle domestic violence: Ensure secure and stable funding of specialist services for women and girls who have experienced violence (such as rape crisis centres), which are at constant risk of closure. Almost half of women in England and Wales experience domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking in their lifetime, but face a postcode lottery when seeking support

Increase the tax take through better Labour rights:

>>Increase enforcement of labour rights – eg. through more on-the-ground inspectors. The two key agencies the GLA and the EAS only have 64 inspectors between them to inspect the largest and most fragmented agency sector in Europe. We currently only spend about £3 million on these government bodies that have a remit to protect the most vulnerable in society.

>>It is proven that better enforcement is likely to lead to people being brought into the formal economy – increasing tax revenues, and enhancing observance of basic standards like the minimum wage.

Reduce fuel poverty: Invest £5 billion to fully insulate every home in Britain – saving around 10 million households over £200 a year on their energy bills, and helping to eradicate fuel poverty. Fully insulating every house in the UK would reduce household emissions (that amount to a quarter of national carbon emissions) by more than 20%.

Re-skill the unemployed: Provide training for roles in green growth, manufacturing and digital technology. A £5bn investment in the training and mentoring could help drive new growth. This properly funded overarching approach will be accompanied by robust policies to encourage sustainability, and strong policies to support manufacturing, such as targeted Government export insurance guarantees.

Improve social housing: Smash the social scourge of bad housing by investing £2.6 billion per year to meet the government’s annual target of 45,000 new social houses annually. This will also help the construction industry that remains in dire economic straits, and which is an enormous employer, is economically strategically important, and accounts for between 6% and 9% of UK GDP.

Alistair Darling should use the budget tomorrow to introduce a Currency Transaction Levy across Sterling – a safe and lucrative first step towards an international Robin Hood Tax.

Spend 2 minutes to urge the Chancellor to act.

This article also appeared on the Robin Hood tax website

Structural impoverishment in Britain is rife.  13.5 million people live in poverty, that’s one in five. The historical trend and outcomes of recent attempts to make things better indicate that without radical reform this situation won’t change much in our lifetimes. If this was widely understood, decision-makers would be far more likely to implement radical but rational measures like the Robin Hood Tax.

The state of the Nation

Here are some hard facts:

Rich richer, poor poorer:
Since 2002 the poorest tenth have become £9 a week poorer (a lot if you can barely get by). Meanwhile, the richest tenth have £94 more a week (DWP). The assets owned by the richest tenth in Britain utterly dwarf the poorest tenth’s possessions; they are at least 100 times more valuable (The Government’s ‘Hills’ Report’, Jan 2010).

Tax just isn’t fair:
The poorest fifth pay more tax as a proportion of their income than the richest fifth (39 per cent as opposed to 35 per cent). (ONS, 2009). In that context the 0.05% Robin Hood Tax doesn’t really seem all that radical. Did you know that the differences within the top 0.5% of the country (where many high-flying bankers live) is many times greater than difference between the top 1% and the bottom 1%? It ranges from just over 2.5 million up to Roman Abramovic’s £11 billion so the richest man is actually at least 4,273 times richer than anyone in the top 2%.

It was like this even before recession:
The Government’s figures show little change in the real value of earnings across the distribution for men or women between 2002 and 2008, even before the recession started. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s (JRF) latest data analysis, 2004-05 marked a “key turning point”, with poverty, unemployment and repossessions on the increase (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, December 2009). Poverty in Britain cannot be solved through economic recovery alone.

Things aren’t getting better:
The long view is far starker. Professor Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett document in their influential book, ‘The Sprit Level’ how Britain is far more unequal than it was in the 1970s. Inequality rose increasingly rapidly during the 80s and was almost 50% higher by 1991 than it was at the end of the 70s. We’re still in more or less the same place we were at the end of the 20^th Century.
Politicians of all stripes recognise this picture and worry about the wider implications for the whole of Britain. Alan Milburn, who works on social mobility for the UK Government, said as long ago as 2003 “Children born — as I was — in 1958 were far less dependent on the economic status of their parents than those born in later years. Birth not worth has become more key to life chances. If these trends continue, Britain will be in danger of grinding to a social halt. Responsibility and enterprise will be thwarted.”

Poverty in Britain is a trap:
For years political actors have agreed that equality of opportunity is right. Yet the harsh reality is that gross inequality of outcome (itself often unjust) often leads to inequality of opportunity. Many people just don’t get the chance to develop the merit they require to flourish in a meritocracy. Just look at exam results (often slated as too high). Last year only 27 per cent of children eligible for free school meals got five GCSEs at grade C or above including maths and English, compared to 54 per cent of other students. In 2009, 175 boys at Eton got three As at A-level. For the entire population of state schoolboys on free school meals, the total was 75. Government figures show that the paths of children from low and high socioeconomic status who have the same high IQ start rapidly diverging when children are as young as 22 months old (Marmot Review, 2010). The fact that it’s hard to escape poverty means that the problem isn’t just big, its endemic.

Many are trapped in debt:
At the bottom of society, even if you total up the value of everything someone in the bottom owns, you still find them deep in debt. They don’t just have next to nothing; they have less than nothing. These are people who play by the rules but still need to borrow to stay afloat however hard they work. It’s impossible to live like this endlessly.

Your identity can make you poor:
The Government’s National Equality Panel has concluded, “the inequality growth during the last 40 years is mostly attributable to growing gaps within groups rather than between them”. But as the panel also points out, there are still systemic differences between groups that are totally unrelated to experience, education and access to services. For example, 67% of Pakistani and Bangladeshi children are living in poverty, compared to 27% of white children (DWP).

Women are worse off than men:
Data in the Labour Force Survey shows that even when allowing for shorter working hours, women in full time employment earn 22 per cent less per week than those of men. Women’s earnings are highest for women in their early

thirties, and they actually decrease for subsequent years. Only women with high qualifications who work in the public sector tend to see their earnings rising throughout their lifetime (Hills Report).

Being poor means more than having no money:
‘The Spirit Level’ points out that the inequality in developed countries directly correlates with worse levels of wellbeing (social problems like crime and bad health). The Government’s recent ‘Marmot Review’ of health inequalities showed that poor people in Britain live much shorter lives, and on average die seven years earlier than the affluent. They also spend more time disabled: 17 years earlier on average. This is surprising given that Britain has a National Health Service which is free at the point of use and which must meet basic standards. The stats point ultimately to enormous disparities between the lives people lead as a result of the amount of money they have.

Poverty in Britain is similar in nature to poverty anywhere:
In developing countries people are often locked in poverty because their monolithic undeveloped economy is intertwined with a rigidly stratified society that structurally militates against individual or small collective attempts to break free from poverty. There, new forms of economic activity can ultimately help to break these external constraints. One might assume that a developed economy that offered economic freedom, public education and health care, would contain the kind of society that enabled people to improve their lives by their own agency. The reality described briefly above completely contradicts that assumption.

Poverty harms us all:
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimate that poverty in Britain costs the economy £25 billion a year. This economic cost is just the beginning. The decreased wellbeing described above that results from inequality doesn’t just affect people in poverty; it creates social problems like crime, poorer mental health outcomes and decreased community cohesion that affect everyone.

Inequality in context

If any of this wasn’t clear to you before, don’t worry, you aren’t alone. The IFS have pointed out “Most people have little understanding of the income distribution, and many are much further up the scale than they imagine.” The number of people identifying themselves as ‘middle class’ has increased markedly in recent years. As Alastair Muriel who has led the IFS’s work recently observed in the Financial times, whilst you might think a young single graduate in a first job in the civil service fast stream or a top accountancy firm on around £25,000 would be about in the middle of the income distribution, only about a fifth of the population stands between that person and the Queen. Consider almost any classic scenario of ‘middle England’ and you are probably in for a shock. Only 13 per cent of the population are richer than a couple without children earning £50,000 between them. If they have two children under 13, they are still better off than 70 per cent of the population.

The fact that most people (rich and poor) are unaware of where they sit in the income distribution is part of the problem. Widespread unawareness helps to deter politicians from enacting policies that would reduce inequality – policies like the Robin Hood Tax.

Robin’s role

We can draw two lessons from the reality of UK poverty – one sobering, one cheering.

Firstly, even experts have underestimated how complex and comprehensive the problem is. The fact that poverty has only remained roughly stable over the past 20 years despite political consensus that poverty in a rich country is wrong shows poverty is a tough nut to crack.

Our lack of progress requires some deep soul searching. As outlined above, gross inequalities destroy any pretence of meritocracy by preventing many from acquiring the means to compete for opportunities that are only nominally available to all. This reality is already eliciting a variety of responses. For example, Philip Blond and John Milbank recently asked whether, if we want to make society fairer but we accept that some inequality is the product of real variations in merit and graft, won’t we need to find ways to differentiate between merited and unmerited inequalities before we start ending them? There are big discussions ahead, but one thing is certain: poverty will be endemic in Britain until there is massive social and economic renewal.

But more positively, if innovative measures like the Robin Hood Tax are passed the outlook will be much brighter. We might not know everything, we do know a lot. We know that basic faults in the system make things worse. The state’s actions sometimes inadvertently worsen poverty. That means the Government can achieve real change through reform. For example, aside from the blatant unfairness of much of the tax system, why is it that Marginal Tax Rates (the proportion of the additional income gained through working that is then rescinded to the Government through tax or the withdrawal of benefits) are far higher for people earning less than £13,000 than anyone earning more than that? In fact it is 50% higher than for people earning more than £150,000! This situation gets far worse if we go further down the income scale. For example, for those who can earn just enough to pay tax but can’t find more than 30 hours of work a week, working brings no material reward. When you play by the rules, do your best to contribute by working and still lose out, that’s not fair.

That’s just one of the reasons we need a Robin Hood tax. We estimate it will cost £2.7 billion per year to increase earnings disregards and introduce a standard 55% withdrawal rate for both out-of-work and in-work benefits, to end the benefit trap (based on calculations by the Centre for Social Justice and the IFS). A Robin Hood tax would give us billions each year so the landmark achievement of pro-poor welfare reform would be just the beginning of what a Robin Hood tax could do. Actually we could also end fuel poverty, create affordable housing, help break the manacles of personal debt, and meet the Government’s targets to halve child poverty.

If there’s one final lesson to be drawn from the small example of welfare reform it’s this: the Robin Hood tax isn’t about stealing from the rich and just giving to the poor. In a time of severe fiscal constraint, a Robin Hood tax would be a lifeline that if deployed effectively would allow people in poverty to make a better life for themselves and their children, a chance denied to many for decades, not just since the downturn.

A Robin Hood tax could help us create the society we all wish to live in. We may be in the shadow of recession, but we shouldn’t wait until recovery dawns to fight poverty. After all, Robin Hood didn’t wait for the Lionheart’s return.

Ben Morgan works on policy and public affairs for Oxfam’s UK Poverty Programme. His post here first appeared on the Robin Hood Tax website.

Kate Bell is Director of Policy, Advice and Communications at the single parent charity Gingerbread.

Gingerbread is the national organisation supporting single parents in England and Wales. It is 92 years this month since we were formed as the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child – but some of the problems we’re facing today would have looked pretty familiar to our founders.

In 1918 we were campaigning against the Bastardy acts which stigmatised the children of unmarried parents. Today, we’re launching our ‘lose the labels’ campaign, as single parents have told us they’re still being stereotyped and stigmatised.

Single parents head one in four families today, and bring up over three million children. Their average age is thirty six, most work, and most were in a stable relationship when they had their child. But our members tell us they’re still portrayed as scroungers and bad parents – 83 per cent said that the media portrays them in a negative light.

Gingerbread’s campaign aims to tackle the stereotypes. We’ve got Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg to sign up to a pledge to tackle prejudice against single parents; you can ask your MP to sign up too here. We’ve also produced a film to try and challenge the stigma.

We hope that we’re starting a debate about how single parents are portrayed, and we hope its one that will lead to fairer treatment. We want single parents to be seen as individuals, not as a short-hand for social problems. Ninety two years on, its time to lose the labels.

Belatedly, this government has spent some of what is probably its last year trying to legislate against the class system. Yet it isn’t clear that this approach will achieve much, while income and particularly wealth are increasingly concentrated at the top, and the wider government attitude seems to be to blame people for their own poverty. Meanwhile, social mobility continues to grind to a halt, and wealth is more and more passed down through the generations rather than earned – with the effect of the recession increasingly to close off housing wealth to those unable to draw on parental financial assistance.

All in all, this article is somewhat sobering. It also says that it’s time the debate moved on from the barking out of catchphrases – like ‘Tory toff’ and ‘politics of envy’ – designed to shut down debate, and to a mature discussion of whether we want a fairer, more meritocratic society, or to continue down the road to a society in which where you end up is increasingly determined by where you began.

Who Cares? published today by Oxfam and Kalayaan, the specialist organisation for migrant domestic workers, highlights the exploitation of migrant carers at the hands of unscrupulous agencies. The research revealed workers who were forced to work excessive hours (more than 60 hours per week, and sometimes up to a 100), underpayment of wages, denial of holiday pay and sick pay, and the provision of accommodation by the employer in order to coerce and intimidate the worker into being constantly available for work. Indeed, one worker, Jula (not her real name) from Poland, said that following exploitation from her agency – deductions from her wages and being overcharged on her accommodation – she was forced into such a dire financial situation that within three months, she had been forced to spend the savings which had taken her ten years to put by in Poland.

We have seen these forms of exploitation before. Underpayment of wages, excessive hours, and coercion through links to workers’ accommodation are all forms of exploitation by agencies (or gangmasters) that were common within the agricultural sector now regulated by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA), set up in 2006 after the Morecambe Bay disaster in which 23 cockle-pickers died because of the negligence of their gangmaster. It should come as no surprise that we are seeing similar exploitation in the care sector as in agriculture: gangmasters tend to operate across several sectors where there is a similar demand for flexible labour, sectors such as agriculture, construction, care and hospitality.

But whilst the GLA has been successful in regulating gangmasters and rooting out exploitation in the agricultural sector, agencies operating in the care sector are currently regulated by the Employment Agency Standards inspectorate (EAS). And EAS’s approach – which relies on workers to report abuse, rather than proactively investigating employers – has been shown to be much less effective than the GLA’s in upholding labour rights and preventing exploitation of workers in the sectors in which it operates.

Which is why Oxfam is calling on the government to extend the remit of the GLA to the care sector (as well as to the construction and hospitality). It won’t solve all abuses of labour rights in the sector: but we believe that it is a vital first step in helping to protect Jula and workers like her who have shared their experiences with Oxfam for this research. With the government’s commitments on the personalisation of care in the Personal Care Bill, the use of agencies to deliver care is only set to rise and we must ensure that this positive initiative does not lead to the exploitation or impoverishment of the  workers who care for older people.

This morning the Guardian covered Oxfam and Kalayaan’s research on this subject