Government should increase benefit levels to allow healthy living, says trust
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《英国医生杂志》
A coalition of 66 UK non-governmental organisations, including the BMA, is calling on the government to review current methods of assessing poverty.
Current methods of determining acceptable rates of benefits and pensions do not reflect the costs of living healthily in the United Kingdom, says the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, a Christian organisation that, as an umbrella body, includes representatives from Age Concern, Barnardo抯, and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
The government sets minimum levels for benefits without giving adequate weight to the price of goods and services people have to buy, the trust says in a report that was due to be presented to the prime minister last Wednesday. Instead, for many decades benefit levels have been set at a level that reflects the state of the economy and other calls on public spending rather than the actual cost of living, the report argues.
Failure to consider real costs is undermining the government抯 commitment—given when it came to power in 1997—to reduce child poverty, the trust argues.
The report consists of a series of papers from leading academics in the field of social policy and is based on a seminar held in October 2003. It calls on the UK government to introduce minimum income standards as measures of poverty, in line with other some other countries, such as Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Canada. It wants a commission on minimum income standards to be set up to take forward the government抯 work on poverty.
Current criteria for levels of benefit bear "no logical relationship to any poverty threshold which could be determined in some more scientific or consumer-oriented way," says one of the contributors to the report, John Veit-Wilson, professor of sociology and social policy at Newcastle University.
Professor Jerry Morris, emeritus professor at the department of public health and policy at London抯 School of Hygiene and Tropical Health, argues that in setting the minimum wage the government should have taken account of whether the hourly rate was sufficient to enable workers to live healthily.
He carried out research into what would be an acceptable minimum income for healthy living, basing his calculations on food and housing costs and including an allowance for taking part in community groups, such as clubs.
The results, based on the rate when the minimum wage was first introduced, ￡3.60 ($6.70; �5.30) an hour, showed that a 22 year old single man working on the minimum wage would have to work 42.5 hours a week to meet the minimum income for healthy living.
"The policy process that produced the national minimum wage . . . has not attempted to relate the wage level set to the expenditure required to remain healthy," Professor Morris wrote.
The group says that although the government is signed up to the United Nations International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, which includes the "right of everyone to be free from hunger," it is passing laws that will deliberately make UK citizens—such as unemployed young people who refuse to sign up to the "new deal" programme for job seekers—and asylum seekers destitute.
Memorandum to the Prime Minister on Minimum Income Standards is available from the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, Inkwell, 713 Seven Sisters Road, London N15 5JT, price ￡12.50.(London Lynn Eaton)
Current methods of determining acceptable rates of benefits and pensions do not reflect the costs of living healthily in the United Kingdom, says the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, a Christian organisation that, as an umbrella body, includes representatives from Age Concern, Barnardo抯, and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
The government sets minimum levels for benefits without giving adequate weight to the price of goods and services people have to buy, the trust says in a report that was due to be presented to the prime minister last Wednesday. Instead, for many decades benefit levels have been set at a level that reflects the state of the economy and other calls on public spending rather than the actual cost of living, the report argues.
Failure to consider real costs is undermining the government抯 commitment—given when it came to power in 1997—to reduce child poverty, the trust argues.
The report consists of a series of papers from leading academics in the field of social policy and is based on a seminar held in October 2003. It calls on the UK government to introduce minimum income standards as measures of poverty, in line with other some other countries, such as Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Canada. It wants a commission on minimum income standards to be set up to take forward the government抯 work on poverty.
Current criteria for levels of benefit bear "no logical relationship to any poverty threshold which could be determined in some more scientific or consumer-oriented way," says one of the contributors to the report, John Veit-Wilson, professor of sociology and social policy at Newcastle University.
Professor Jerry Morris, emeritus professor at the department of public health and policy at London抯 School of Hygiene and Tropical Health, argues that in setting the minimum wage the government should have taken account of whether the hourly rate was sufficient to enable workers to live healthily.
He carried out research into what would be an acceptable minimum income for healthy living, basing his calculations on food and housing costs and including an allowance for taking part in community groups, such as clubs.
The results, based on the rate when the minimum wage was first introduced, ￡3.60 ($6.70; �5.30) an hour, showed that a 22 year old single man working on the minimum wage would have to work 42.5 hours a week to meet the minimum income for healthy living.
"The policy process that produced the national minimum wage . . . has not attempted to relate the wage level set to the expenditure required to remain healthy," Professor Morris wrote.
The group says that although the government is signed up to the United Nations International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, which includes the "right of everyone to be free from hunger," it is passing laws that will deliberately make UK citizens—such as unemployed young people who refuse to sign up to the "new deal" programme for job seekers—and asylum seekers destitute.
Memorandum to the Prime Minister on Minimum Income Standards is available from the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, Inkwell, 713 Seven Sisters Road, London N15 5JT, price ￡12.50.(London Lynn Eaton)