Select committee calls for a Poverty Commission

The Treasury Committee has recently called for a Poverty Commission to be set-up to tackle the issue. In the report,  Budget Measures and Low -Income Households, the Committee believes that the government should focus on all forms of poverty:

The problem was with the tax system, and required a tax solution’, it concludes that, in the longer term, ‘reforms should be centred on the greater challenges faced by the government in combating child poverty, pensioner poverty and in-work poverty.

The report also looks at the impact of the abolition of the 10pence tax band, they welcome the government’s attempts to compensate those who lost out but highlight the fact that 1.1 million households will continue to lose out.

After 11 years of New Labour there are still a huge number of people stuck in poverty. Do we really need a Poverty Commission when the answers are so bleeding obvious?

Tax Credits and sure start are the crumbs falling from the table. Where were the policies of building the housing people needed, providing free universal childcare, making sure that the public sector created the kind of jobs that need to be done…keeping hospital wards clean springs to mind. Only the public sector can make sure that the jobs created come with training that makes sure that people move into better paid jobs that create real value for society.

A real labour government could have done this with 11 years of solid majorities. It would now be looking at another 11 years of solid majorities.

Reactions to the report from CPAG and CAB.

Jury condemns excessive use of restraint

I wrote about the opening of this inquest recently. The jury returned a seven page narrative verdict that described the prolonged use of restraint as “excessive” and catalogued other series of failings by the hospital. Kurt Howard died while under a section at Cefn Coed Hospital in Swansea in 2002. His family had to wait 6 years for an inquest.

Deborah Coles from Inquest argues:
“Evidence heard at this inquest is a damning indictment of the treatment of a vulnerable mentally ill young man who died a horrific death while being restrained. The scandal is that six years after Kurt’s death there is still no mandatory training on the use of restraint in psychiatric hospitals as recommended by the Rocky Bennett Inquiry in 2003.  Excessive levels of restraint continue to be used in psychiatric institutions behind closed doors.  The government must enforce national guidelines and implement compulsory training on restraint before further vulnerable patients die.”