mudhook

The Association of Public Health Observatories (APHO) have published the 2008 health profiles today. You can read the report for Cornwall and for each of its six districts here .

For Cornwall as a whole the APHO report is generally good news. For example, in five of the districts there is a smaller proportion of people living in the most deprived fifth of areas of England than the average for England; and in every district men and women have a higher life expectancy at birth than the average for England.

The APHO report gives information for each district too and although here the news is generally good of course there are difficult spheres where it is less rosy compared to the averages for England. For example, look at the figures in Penwith for index-of-multiple-deprivation, child poverty, and educational achievement.

There is much here to be pleased about. Not complacent, but recognising a record of progress. Cornwall, again, isn’t at the bottom.

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Source: Association of Public Health Observatories website article Welcome to health profiles

I wondered in this post why organised Cornish nationalism was not responding to Labour’s pauperisation of the poor. The government has since helped most of those affected but pro rata there are still nearly 10 000 people in Cornwall who have been only half-helped.

Consider also:

How many people in Cornwall are in fuel poverty, households where gas and electricity cost more than ten percent of income? How many people in Cornwall with low incomes are on prepayment meters which charge more for heating and cooking fuel than direct debit payments? How many, in rural places without mains gas, are paying heavily for heating oil? Of course these questions affect people all over Britain not just Cornwall and, apart from the prepayment issue, are not easily and immediately solvable by a national government without vast subsidies.

These are real life questions which affect the everyday life of too many in Cornwall. They are not remote questions, not issues in the far past, they are current, they are about real life now for people here.

Now another small entertainment. Using your knowledge, skill, and judgement, which of these do you think best represents the present overall position:

(a) Yes, organised Cornish nationalism and the Cornish nationalist websites collectively - the Cornish nationalist movement, if you will - are aroused and publicly campaigning hard on these issues, fiery with denunciation, and gung ho with ideas for remedies

or

(b) No, they’re saying nothing, zilch, nada, sod all, not a sausage.

(Of course, individual nationalists may be engaged with these issues.)

My own view is that the government should immediately urge the companies to eradicate completely the higher differential price charged to domestic customers, mainly among the poorest in our country, for prepayment meter fuel; and if urging does not speedily work, a way should be found to outlaw it.

There’s a report in yesterday’s Times which will disconcert those among Cornish nationalists – and apparently some Liberal Democrats in Cornwall - who seem to believe that London is a pampered place, showered with largess from government, and with streets paved with gold.

Read it here.

It reminds us that there are 650 000 children living in poverty in London; that’s forty one percent of all children in the capital. In 1998 it was forty two percent. There has been only the most miserable progress. The inner London percentage figures are higher.

The article also reminds us that the national minimum wage is inadequate in London, something I explored here last July.

A competition in poverty, where has most, is unconstructive, but I think it is important to remind those in Cornish politics who cry up the material wealth of London, and use it to present Cornwall as victimised, of the simple and depressing facts of the whole picture of the capital. London is a tale of two cities. The facts of poverty and deprivation in London are readily available to everyone who wishes to know; there is no excuse at all for ignorance. Start here.

Incidentally, there are four wards in Westminster, where parliament is and MPs go, with more than half the children living in workless households.

To get a comprehensive view of deprivation and child poverty have a look at the figures on the numbers of children (aged 0-15) who live in households receiving workless benefits. They are from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the government and are here - the relevant file is called Local poverty data. They include the figures for Cornwall, the county and its districts.

And here are the figures for the latest indices of multiple deprivation published 2007 - my references to these in previous posts were based on the 2004 indices, then the latest ones available. These include figures for the 32 482 subwards of England (there are 327 in Cornwall) and really pinpoint the location of deprivation, the northwest of England being particularly hard hit: look where the Cornwall subwards are in the table and the range of their deprivation rank scores. For Cornwall they show us clearly where our collective efforts should be.

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“It’s a rich city but it has 650 000 poor children. It’s London.” Times 30 April 2008

I put some figures for the Cornwall constituencies here.

ONS: the Office for National Statistics

Has the Conservative party changed? No longer the nasty party but centrist and caring and kinder; for example, determined to tackle child poverty?

This matters for families in Cornwall: I have explored child and family poverty among some in parts of Cornwall several times on this mudhook website.

Begin by looking at the record. This is the party that sat back when last in government while the proportion of children in poverty doubled; that since has opposed Labour’s introduction of the minimum wage; that periodically fumes about lone mothers and tells us marriage (between one man and one woman) will save the planet. This is the party that cut the link between the state pension and pay rises, thereby costing pensioners dearly – something Labour is putting right and which will benefit thousands of people in Cornwall, as has the minimum wage.

The Conservatives are the party that gave us privatised expensive water and privatised expensive trains. This is the party whose government approach to welfare was to bayonet the wounded. Its record on poverty is appalling.

At present the Tories are weeping publicly for those losing out in the Labour government’s 10 pence tax folly or villainy. Last year when Frank Field moved an amendment in the Commons to assess the impact of the abolition of the 10 pence rate and to mitigate any adverse effects, the Tories abstained. No Tory tears then.

Now look at this, perhaps a glimpse of Tory future. The other day on the launch of a reactionary childcare report it both welcomed the report and promised the party would consider its ideas. At present £1.5 billion of help is targeted on low paid working mothers; the reactionary, regressive ideas that the Tories are considering are to give all mothers, working or stay-at-home, poor or comfortable, and, yes, including the very rich, a flat rate tax-free payment of about £55 a week. This would cost around £5.4 billion and be paid for in part by abolishing the £1.5 billion of the childcare part of the working tax credit and the one-off sure start maternity grant; that is, money which at present goes to the poorest working mothers, including those in Cornwall. I don’t know where the rest of the cost will come from, widows’ mites perhaps.

The idea, then, is to take from the working poor and give to the comfortable and well-off: and this is what the Tories promise they will consider. The very thing that they now denounce the 10 pence folly for. To me this looks like the same old Tories after all.

Equo ne credite.

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You can read more about these reactionary ideas at:

The cost of caring Guardian 22 April 2008

The Tories are eyeing up a plan to take money from the poor to give to the middle classes Times 23 April 2008

Policy Exchange parental care allowance

PS 28 April 2008:
And perhaps contrary to my views, here’s a joint initiative.

Equo ne credite, Teucri. Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis (Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they are bringing gifts). Laocoon warning the Trojans, in Vergil’s Aeneid 2.48-49.

Some of the lowest paid people in the UK are presently worse off because the Labour budget has abolished the ten pence income tax rate, though belatedly the government is perhaps putting this right. I explain here (Soaking the poor) why I think about 48 000 are affected in Cornwall.

I’ve looked at some publicly accessible Cornish nationalist websites. Not one of those websites I’ve looked at, as far as I can see, has discussed this pauperisation of the poor in Cornwall, let alone protested it.

An odd silence.

Of course, individual nationalists may be protesting to their MP or the chancellor.

Another set of data shows Cornwall is far from the most deprived part of England. This data refers to the proportion of children aged 0-15 in parliamentary constituencies in households dependent on workless benefits. These benefits are income support, jobseekers allowance, incapacity benefit, severe disablement benefit, or pension credit.

Here are the results for the five Cornwall constituencies for April 2007:

Falmouth and Camborne 21.1 percent

St Ives 17.2 percent

North Cornwall 16.1 percent

Truro and St Austell 15.5 percent

Southeast Cornwall 13.7 percent

These figures come from the department for work and pensions in answer to a parliamentary question on 6 February 2008 (DEP 2008-0366). For comparison the ‘best’ constituency has 5.1 percent and the ‘worst’ has 49.2 percent. The average for England, Scotland, and Wales is 19.9 percent.

The Cornwall constituencies fall in the middle of the range for England. Here are their percentile ranks (worked out by me):

Southeast Cornwall 68th percentile, Truro and St Austell 61st, North Cornwall 59th, St Ives 53rd, Falmouth and Camborne 38th. Percentile rank means Southeast Cornwall, for example, is as good as or better than 68 percent of the 529 constituencies. ‘As good as or better than’ means the lower the percentage (and the higher the percentile rank) for benefit-dependency, the better.

There are 202 constituencies in England which have a higher percentage of benefit-dependent children than the highest scoring Cornwall constituency, Falmouth and Camborne.

Now I think it is disturbing and unacceptable that very roughly one in six children in Cornwall are in households dependent on out-of-work benefits. It is, frankly, a poor start in life for them and we should be doing much more to help their parent(s) into profitable work if possible and to increase benefits for those who genuinely cannot work. We have to try not to punish children for the failings of their parents while trying to show them that for the able work pays and is important for self-respect. I believe the marxist saw, From each according to his ability and to each according to his need, is an excellent recipe for a good society.

However, to be parochial again, though there is serious deprivation in parts of the county, constituencies in Cornwall are not at the bottom of this workless-benefits league table. It’s getting repetitive, isn’t it, saying this sort of thing? Look at the numerous posts making the point. The evidence is very clear: people in Cornwall are not singled out for unfair treatment by central government; and they are not, taken generally, sitting at the bottom of the heap. The grievance agenda is tosh.

Child poverty is variously defined and I think it does not make sense to try to produce a figure for Cornwall as a whole as its incidence varies vastly from place to place in the county. Child poverty in Redruth North is not the same as in Saltash St Stephens, as we shall see. So I don’t see the point of Julia Goldsworthy, the Liberal Democrat MP for the seat which includes Redruth, the other day asking for a Cornwall figure; such a figure would not help one iota in the practical reduction of child poverty and we have better, more local figures.

Indeed, from the department for work and pensions (DWP) we also have detailed tables of the household and family characteristics for children in low-income households, though for the UK as a whole: see chapter 4 of ‘Households below average income’ here.

The Labour government has pushed hard the view that people can best work themselves out of poverty. However, ‘Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2006′ by Guy Palmer et al for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation points out that half the children in poverty live in families where someone is working: see the ninth report of December 2006 here. The main cause seems to be low pay rates. See too the above DWP tables. Nevertheless, the government has made good progress in tackling child poverty though it is proving more difficult than imagined in a free market economy.

Liberal Democrat MPs in Cornwall have, however, reasonably been reminding the government that its attempts to reduce child poverty in the county could be frustated by high water bills. They have identified a possible additional contribution to child poverty in Cornwall - they mean parts of Cornwall - and, though they do not say so, parts of the rest of the south west water company area.

So how much child poverty is there here?

The End Child Poverty campaign has given figures for constituencies in 2005 which showed for Cornwall the proportion of children in families on out-of-work benefits ranged from 14 percent in South East Cornwall to 21 percent in Falmouth and Camborne. The average figure for Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) was also 21 percent. On another definition the campaign said in February 2005 that 25 percent of children in Cornwall lived in poverty.

Free school meals are a rough and ready way of measuring poverty and the Hansard data for them are on this blog here though they refer to Cornwall as a whole.

Above all, there is an index of child poverty: this is a part of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation. See the IDAC file here where the child poverty figures are given for 32 482 subwards in England including all of the Cornwall ones. This is much more useful information. It enables us to identify quite precisely where to target any remediation which is what the whole-county figures do not. It defines child poverty as people of less than sixteen living in income-deprived families, income deprivation being defined as in receipt of certain benefits.

What does this dated but very local child poverty index show about Cornwall? What every other measure of poverty and deprivation shows: much variety in the county. Some places in Cornwall have completely unacceptable high levels of child poverty and others do not - and many other places in England have more child poverty than anywhere in Cornwall.

Of the 32 482 subwards in the child poverty index, where the lower the figure the worse the poverty, the range in Cornwall is from part of Redruth North ward in Kerrier at number 485 to part of Saltash St Stephens ward in Caradon in at number 29 153. The Kerrier subward has sixty six percent of children aged less than sixteen who live in income-deprived families, an appalling figure, and the Caradon subward has three percent. That is a vast range. Over a third of Cornwall subwards are in the top half of the 32 482 England subwards, that is score better than the median average for England.

The Labour government has made significant inroads into child poverty and in the seven years to 2004/2005 there was a sixteen percent drop in Britain. Nevertheless very much has to be done still. The progress should be acknowledged and welcomed; a government with the large ambition to abolish child poverty should be encouraged, chided, goaded, and cheered towards its goal.

It makes no sense to talk of ‘Cornwall’ when it comes to child poverty but rather we should talk about the different parts of Cornwall and their different needs. We need to know where most help is needed. To help tackle child poverty effectively we should not focus equally on Redruth North and Saltash St Stephens. Goldsworthy’s comment that “Cornwall is unique” is profoundly unhelpful; it blurs the focus. In any case everywhere is unique, every child is unique. Let me say it again: when it comes to child poverty every child is unique wherever they live and child poverty is a scourge wherever it is found. We shall beat it primarily by national measures and resources focussing on the children and families who need help the most.

See Vorsprung 1 on this blog for particular help given to Cornwall in March 2007.

And see here for Lisa Harker’s report of November 2006 for the DWP ‘Delivering on child poverty: what would it take.’

PS 7 August 2007
Writing in today’s Guardian about effectively tackling poverty through social enterprise, David Cameron, the Tory leader, says that local authority areas are “too large to get an accurate picture of what is going on…We need a more fine-grained approach to tackle multiple deprivation at the micro-level.”

I agree entirely. The micro data is available in the index of multiple deprivation and its subsets as this post shows for child poverty. I think for measures and projects that directly and effectively tackle poverty we should drop “Cornwall” and even the districts as data-identifiers and focus on the places and people in Cornwall that need most help.

However, for economic regeneration we need “Cornwall” to qualify for EU convergence funds which reflect the EU emphasis on regions.

A new report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), Poverty, wealth and place in Britain 1968-2005, has looked at patterns of inequalities across Britain over those years.

The report identifies four classes of households: Core poverty households; Breadline poverty households which include the core poverty households; average households, neither poor nor wealthy; Asset wealthy households which include the exclusively wealthy households; and Exclusively wealthy households.

The poverty and wealth data from SASI for the report can be seen here; the data also enables us to see how Cornwall fares compared with other places. There are 641 parliamentary constituencies analysed for the JRF report. For example, these are the rank positions for the Cornwall constituencies in the year 2000 in terms of core poverty, where the lower the number, the worst the poverty:

St Ives 294th out of 641

Falmouth and Camborne 299th

North Cornwall 367th

Truro and St Austell 396th

South East Cornwall 403rd.

The ranks for breadline poverty are similar.

What do these figures suggest? That Cornwall is not at the bottom of the poverty league in Britain; that there are around two to three hundred constituencies which are ranked poorer. This supports the findings from other surveys which I have discussed in these posts:

Free school meals

Is Cornwall poor

Victim Cornwall

and Suffering Cornwall.

The evidence from all these surveys suggests that there is both wealth and poverty in Cornwall, these are spread unevenly around the county so that generalisations about Cornwall are of limited use, most people in Cornwall are not poor or deprived, and no part of Cornwall is the worst place for poverty and deprivation in England. However, the large economic measures of GVA and GDP for the county are well below the England and EU averages though improving, and pay for many is low but house prices are high.

The Cornwall constituencies fare noticeably well in the JRF wealthy categories because of the value of houses in Cornwall.

Incidentally, in view of the recent comments on Islington and education spending by the Libdems, note that the two Islington constituencies ranked 17th and 21st in the core poverty league, very much worse than the Cornwall constituencies.

I thought it would be useful to put up a collection of website addresses for various data involving Cornwall. I have tried over the past months to show that Cornwall is not terra oppressa, sunk in universal poverty, neglected and treated unfairly by the British government. Judge for yourself. I have reduced some long urls to tinyurls.

Free school meals
HANSARD (primary) 4 July 2006 column 1021W, (secondary) 12 July 2006 column 1861W
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmhn0607.htm

GVA per head (ONS December 2006)
http://tinyurl.com/2449pu

GDP per head (Eurostat February 2007)
http://tinyurl.com/3cjqdy

Average pay(ONS April 2006)
www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=13101 (ASHE 2006, Table 7.1a)

Indices of deprivation
http://tinyurl.com/2b6m5s

Education funding (Dedicated schools grant)
www.teachernet.gov.uk/docbank/index.cfm?id=9405

Health profiles Cornwall districts
www.communityhealthprofiles.info/

17 March 1337 charter
www.statutelaw.gov.uk

1858 Cornwall submarine mines act
www.statutelaw.gov.uk

The 2007 health profiles have just been published by the Association of public health observatories (APHO) and the department of health. Read the profiles for Cornwall and the separate profiles for its six districts (Caradon, Carrick, Kerrier, Penwith, North Cornwall, Restormel) here.

For Cornwall they throw up interesting figures which show we are not the most suffering place in the land.

For example (in all these figures the England average includes Cornwall):

The percentage of residents dependent on means-tested benefits in 2003 in Cornwall 11.8, in England 12.9

The percentage of children in low-income households in 2001 in Cornwall 19.4, in England 21.3

The percentage getting five GCSEs A*-C in 2005/06 in Cornwall 57.3, in England 57.5

The rate of violent crime for 1000 of population in 2005/06 in Cornwall 12.0, in England 19.8.

Life expectancy in Cornwall for males and females is higher than England as a whole; death rates for cancer, heart disease, and strokes are lower in Cornwall than the average for England.

However, Cornwall has higher rates than England for (a) people claiming benefits for mental health problems and (b) admission to hospital for alcohol specific conditions.

The figures vary across and within districts in Cornwall. For example in Penwith 15.2 percent of residents are dependent on means-tested benefits and 24.8 percent of children are in low-income households, both higher and worse than the England average; in Caradon 9.5 percent and 15.3 percent, both lower and better than the England average.

These profiles do not support the Victim Cornwall agenda. They show some parts of the county in health and social deprivation in some spheres and other parts of Cornwall far from it. The profiles undermine attempts to present Cornwall as a uniform place and as a place suffering uniquely at the hands of an uncaring national government and its agencies. It clearly is neither. Will we read anything of these profiles from nationalists or the county’s MPs?

Look again at the posts Is Cornwall poor? and Free school meals in Cornwall, and Victim Cornwall. The evidence shows places of deprivation but that we are definitely not suffering, victim Cornwall.