[A-List] UK state: London mayoral election

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

53% of inner London children 'live in poverty'

John Carvel, social affairs editor
Tuesday November 19, 2002
The Guardian

More than half the 600,000 children living in inner London are being brought
up below the government's official poverty line, according to a report today
for Ken Livingstone, the city's mayor.

It will show that 53% of children in the capital's core boroughs are
suffering deprivation, casting doubt on whether the chancellor's
anti-poverty strategy is working in an area that suffers from high
unemployment and rocketing housing costs.

The report shows child poverty in inner London is worse than in any other
region of Britain. It compares with 37% in north-east England, the next
highest area, and 22% in the eastern and south-eastern regions. Other big
cities have deprived centres, but Mr Livingstone will argue that inner
London counts as a region in its own right, with a population of nearly 3m,
equivalent to Wales or north-east England.

The figures - based on analysis by the Greater London authority of data
collected by the Department of Work and Pensions - are the first to show how
poverty is divided between inner London and the city's relatively prosperous
outer zones. In outer London 33% of children are being brought up in
poverty.

Other groups are also affected, with 36% of the 400,000 pensioners in inner
London living below the poverty line and 30% of the area's 1.8 million
working age adults. These are the highest proportions in Britain.

Mr Livingstone said: "For the first time this report reveals the full extent
of the problem. London's formidable wealth generating capacity coexists with
truly staggering levels of economic disadvantage."

The mayor's figures were based on the proportion of children, pensioners and
working age adults in households where income after housing costs was no
more than 60% of the national average - the poverty line.

They are likely to provoke debate on the government's plans to shift
resources from London and the south to benefit industrial areas of the
Midlands and the north.

Ministers involved in a review of local authority's standard spending
assessments - the basis for distributing council grants - will be asked to
explain how it makes sense to switch money and services away from the area
with the worst poverty.

The report shows poverty is highest among ethnic minority groups, with 73%
of Pakistani and Bangladeshi children in inner London and 55% of black
children living in poverty after housing costs.

Inner London includes prosperous areas in parts of Kensington, Chelsea,
Westminster and the City, as well as the most deprived parts of Hackney,
Tower Hamlets, Newham, Lambeth and Southwark where unemployment "is the
rule, not the exception".

The report says: "Virtually all the increase in full-time employment since
1992 has been in occupational groups where a university degree or equivalent
is a prerequisite." Migration into London has been running at about 150,000
people a year. "One implication is that London residents without the
qualifications to command this type of employment may be left behind."

Real earnings of men in manual employment in London rose 9% between 1991 and
2001, but for men in non-manual occupations the increase was 26%. Female
manual earnings rose 12% compared with 31% for non-manuals.

The working families tax credit gave less incentive for Londoners to move
from unemployment into work, due to high childcare and housing costs in the
area.

Poor housing was contributing to a spread of tuberculosis, with
notifications in London running between three and eight times those in other
areas. Poverty was also feeding through into low educational standards and
increased crime.