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2. The impact of tax, tax credit and welfare changes 2.1 Overview This part of the assessment looks at the cumulative impact 20 of tax, benefit and tax credit changes implemented (or scheduled to be implemented, for changes) between the election of the Coalition Government in May 2010 and April 2015 21 . It covers The key UNCRC rights engaged by these changes (sec.2.2) Poverty and rights: what children say (sec.2.3) The impact that tax, tax credit and welfare benefit measures have had on children’s right to an adequate standard of living (sec.2.4) The distributional impacts of tax and benefit changes (sec.2.5) The specific impact of measures announced in/around Budget 2013 (sec. 2.6) An assessment of the impact of tax-benefit changes on children’s rights (sec. 2.7) 2.2 UNCRC rights engaged The UNCRC rights engaged most directly by these changes are Article 2 Article 3 Article 4 Article 6 Article 18 Article 26 Article 27 All children should enjoy all rights, whatever their ethnicity, gender, religion, abilities and whatever type of family they come from The best interests of the child must be a top priority in all decisions that affect children Governments must do all they can to make sure every child can enjoy their rights Every child has the right to life. Governments must do all they can to ensure that children survive and develop to their full potential. Governments must support parents by giving them the help they need, especially if the child’s parents work. Governments must provide extra money for children of families in need. Every child has the right to a standard of living that is good enough to meet their physical, social and mental needs. Governments must help families who cannot afford to provide this. 20 Chapter 5 of the Background Report considers a number of individual measures – changes in child benefit, changes to tax credit and the uprating of benefits, and the benefit cap in more detail. 21 These changes include benefits (changes to Child Benefits, Income Support, Jobseekers Allowance, Council Tax Benefits etc); changes to the tax credit system; changes to income tax and National Insurance contributions system; changes to the indirect tax system (particularly the increase in standard rate of VAT from 17.5% to 20% and reductions in taxation of road fuels in real terms); the introduction of Universal Credit (compared with the April 2015 rates for the tax credit and benefits that it replaces). Office of the Children’s Commissioner: Child Rights Impact Assessment of Budget Decisions June 2013 16
2.3 Poverty and rights: what children say This short section highlights some of the issues arising from work conducted and commissioned by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner between 2011 and 2013 to understand how children and young people understand poverty, and how an inadequate standard of living impacts on the realisation of children’s rights. All quotes are from this work. 22 Children see income as important and told us about the consequences of poverty. Money enables children and those who support them to buy basic goods, and live in decent housing with warmth. People in poverty “can’t afford healthy foods, so they just won’t eat healthily’. “can’t afford a decent standard home with heating and they will be overcrowded with like two or three children in one room.” “If someone is really struggling in the house, has no heating and can’t afford anything else, then they are poverty stricken.” Money also makes it possible for children to make use of services and so realise their rights to education, health and leisure. “In our school you have to buy your own pens, otherwise they say you’re not ‘ready to learn’ … if we haven’t got a pen and pencil, we’d just sit there‘” “schools are becoming computer-oriented, and it can be a problem if you haven’t got that access, or you’ve got very limited access.” Children link poverty to stigma, discrimination, and bullying “If you’re in poverty , or you don’t have much money and you’re just trying to get by, you suffer mentally, because you get bullied unless you are strong enough to shrug it off.” “[Poverty] says what people can and can’t do because of who they are.” “A lot of teachers just can’t be bothered …a lot of [students] are violent and don’t care about working … it’s linked to poverty, and people not caring … if something bad’s happening, everyone just turns a blind eye.” and to a stressful home life “It [having no money] may cause arguments between the parents over how they are going to pay for everything, which might affect the children [who] are hearing this.” “with not having any space really you tend to go out more, you just go out and do nothing on the streets.” 22 For more detail see, Office of the Children’s Commissioner ‘Measuring child poverty: a consultation on better measures of child poverty’, February 2013, and ‘Trying to get by: consulting with children and young people on child poverty’, 2011, together with work by the OCC’s young people’s advisory group Amplify on the impact of poverty on opportunities and aspirations, and by the University of Central Lancashire on the impact of low income on disabled children’s rights, both to be published in the summer of 2013. Office of the Children’s Commissioner: Child Rights Impact Assessment of Budget Decisions June 2013 17
Page 1 and 2: Office of the Children’s Commissi
Page 3 and 4: Contents Executive Summary 5 1 Intr
Page 5 and 6: Executive Summary Introduction This
Page 7 and 8: When spending was examined against
Page 9 and 10: 1. Introduction 1.1 The Office of t
Page 11 and 12: 1.3 The ‘maximum extent of their
Page 13 and 14: 1.5 Children’s budgets and impact
Page 15: 1.7 Methodology This assessment is
Page 19 and 20: 2.4.2 Impact of tax, tax credit and
Page 21 and 22: 2.4.4 The impact of tax, tax credit
Page 23 and 24: Taken together, these requirements
Page 25 and 26: income, lone parents lose the most,
Page 27 and 28: Figure 2.2 shows the same results a
Page 29 and 30: These outweigh the impact of the re
Page 35 and 36: 2.6 The impact of tax and benefit c
Page 37 and 38: 2.7 Conclusion: The impact of tax,
Page 39 and 40: 3. The impact of public spending de
Page 41 and 42: 3.3 Public spending and services: w
Page 43 and 44: 3.4 Methodology The results in this
Page 45 and 46: 3.6 The distributional impact of pu
Page 47 and 48: Table 3.2 shows (for working age fa
Page 49 and 50: Figure 3.4. Impacts of spending cut
Page 51 and 52: 3.6.3 Impact of cuts by number of c
Page 53 and 54: 3.6.4 Impact of cuts by ethnicity o
Page 55 and 56: A survey by the Association of Dire
Page 57 and 58: despite the fact that families with
Page 59 and 60: 4. Changes to childcare and early y
Page 61 and 62: Figure 4.1. Numbers of Families gai
Page 63 and 64: Figure 5.2 shows that the impact of
Page 65: For more information Frances Winter

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