Ditch ‘bedroom tax' to save more children from poverty

Yet we all know that the impact of the cuts will be to heap further misery on families already struggling on the breadline.

The changes will drag more children into poverty. We rarely talk about child poverty being a breach of human rights, but the new “bedroom tax” is in direct breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Experience and evidence demonstrates the corrosive impact poverty has on children’s social, emotional and mental wellbeing, and, as a consequence, their rights.

Consider the impact on children when families are forced to move to smaller properties. Children will be uprooted from their communities, losing friendships, social contacts and extended family support. Children will live in families straining under increased pressure that will impact on their mental health. Children will experience disruption to their schooling, putting their educational attainment at risk – especially so where they are already living in poverty.

It is the “bedroom tax” that most graphically illustrates where children’s rights are being flouted, specifically their rights to a decent standard of living, to develop healthily and to reach their full potential. These are set out in the UN convention, which covers all aspects of children’s development.

In Scotland, it is estimated that the new measures will affect 100,000 households. Citizens Advice Scotland has highlighted that there is not enough one-bedroom social housing stock to cover all the country’s one-bedroom households. Using Scottish government analysis, it says that while 60 per cent of tenants need a one-bedroom property to avoid under-occupying their home, only 26 per cent of occupied social rented properties have one bedroom. Families living in rural communities are most likely to face the prospect of having to move away from their communities and friends as a result of this tax.

The cost of benefit reforms
So where are evicted families going to go? They may have to use the private rented sector – a sector that costs more than social housing, is less rigorously regulated and has a poor reputation of housing vulnerable families.

But it is the personal cost that really brings the issue to life. For instance, a Citizen’s Advice Scotland branch reports of a father who has received a letter from the local authority regarding his tenancy being under-occupied. The father has a two-bedroom flat that he says is necessary because his young son stays with him every weekend. The local authority has informed him that this reason does not justify a second room as his son is permanently housed elsewhere.  There is little consideration here as to what is in the best interests of the child.

I expect there will be many more cases that will highlight the brutal impact of the changes on families, and these will make a compelling case for reversing the policy. While the “bedroom tax” and other proposed changes are the immediate threat, the longer-term challenge is the complacency with which we tolerate one in five children in the UK living in poverty – and reforms that so blatantly impinge on children’s rights.

The child poverty rate across the UK makes a mockery of our international obligations under the UNCRC. All of the children’s commissioners will be holding the UK government to account in the next round of reporting to the UN Committee. Our hope is that by then, the “bedroom tax” will not need to form part of that report and that progress in reducing child poverty will be reinvigorated.