Yesterday, Marcus Rashford’s plea to extend the food voucher scheme for children in poverty over the summer holidays was heard by the government. After initially rejecting his heartfelt letter, Boris Johnson u-turned and decided to extend the scheme for an extra six weeks.
His campaign has brought food poverty to the forefront of conversation, with many congratulating him for ensuring that millions of children don’t go hungry this summer. But when you think of the UK being one of the world’s largest economies, even despite the hit of Covid-19, and read that sentence, you can’t help but feel despair. Despair at the fact that it takes a 22-year-old footballer with millions of followers to plead with the government just to ensure children don’t starve.
What’s worse? The fact that, even in 2020, people are seemingly against this basic human decency.
‘Don’t have kids if you can’t afford them,’ some tweeted in response to Rashford’s plea. One of whom was of course, Katie Hopkins. But even aside from her there were others pedalling the same message. Courtney Lawes, an outspoken right-wing rugby player, tweeted then deleted ‘Maybe now would be a good time to bring some attention to the importance of being financially secure and preferably married before having kids? This would go a long way to treating a big part of the issue.’
While many have pointed out the glaringly obvious flaws in this logic, there are hundreds of supporters of this narrative online – if not more offline. And alongside the bewildering fact that some people are taking issue with feeding starving children, there are a number of things completely wrong with this line of thought.
First of all, and most obviously, it completely disregards the fact that anyone can be flung into poverty…at any time. A family that was once financially secure could suffer ill physical or mental health, job loss, death…a global pandemic that causes 6.5million jobs to be lost in the UK alone. That’s where this ‘argument’ is truly incomprehensible, because in the current context there has never been such a greater need for empathy and care from the rich and privileged.
‘If the pandemic has taught us anything it's that life is unpredictable and that anyone can lose income unexpectedly,’ says Louisa McGeehan Policy Director at Child Poverty Action Group. ‘Obviously no one could have planned financially with foresight of Covid-19 - no one could have seen it coming - yet tens of thousands of families grappling with the economic fallout from the disease are struggling to cover children's basics and pay the bills even though before Covid-19 covering costs wasn't a problem for them.’
And even without the argument that you can never predict your financial future, there’s the simple fact that impoverished families are not lazy, careless parents that didn’t think before having a child. Actually, they’re hard-working families that are subject to inequitable government policies that make low-paid, insecure jobs their only option.
‘Poverty is caused by a number of factors, largely to do with work - low pay, zero hour contracts, unreliable working hours, the lack of good quality childcare,’ McGeehan explains. ‘We don't do enough to support low paid working parents and now they'll be worst hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 70% of children growing up in poverty have a parent who works.’
The pandemic has magnified what was already wrong.
‘The pandemic has revealed that hardship can happen to anyone but it's also magnified what was already wrong,’ she continued. ‘Social security support has been cut or frozen for years - child benefit alone lost £5 in value since 2010 - so the budgets of low-income families have been pared away as wages have stagnated, housing and childcare costs have risen and work has become increasingly insecure.
‘And the two child limit on benefits has caused huge hardship in families affected. Because of the policy around 60,000 families who have had to claim universal credit for the first time because of Covid-19 are discovering that there is no support for their third or subsequent child if they were born after April 2017 yet those are parents who had a third or subsequent child in better times.’
According to research from Shelter and YouGov, one in three working families are only one pay cheque away from losing their home. The same study found that almost half of working people who rent are in the same position. Quite literally, millions of families are having to choose between feeding their children and keeping their home because of these policies and the exact logic these people purport.
Ultimately, those who ascribe to it are projecting their own privilege of never having to worry about financial instability – all of which likely speaks to generational wealth, circumstance and luck. Some people may have parents with big bank accounts to bail them out and thus never give them the wherewithal that actually poverty can impact anyone. Luckily for us, Rashford isn’t one of them – and him standing up for children affected by it bears no argument.
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