It's getting worse not better !

Well it can only get better, remember the slogan and the song from the Labour Party's campaign from the 1997 election ?

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Blair painted a picture of Britain in a dire old state back in 1997, which could only get better with a change of government -a good dose of 'Nu Labour'. Well, as is well known there are 'Lies Damned Lies and Statistics' (Mark Twain).

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We have discussed recently how the government is fiddling crime statistics - particulary those that effect the UK's smaller businesses. Amazingly with only tame complaint from the Federation of Small Businesses, who first higlighted the problem in a report two years ago.

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Well in reality on Labour's founding issue - poverty - the situation has got worse. Since the Labour party came to power in 1997, the gap between the rich and the poor in Britain has increased, a new report argues. This is particularly interesting since the report contradicts government spin.

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If how much money people spend - rather than earn - is looked at, the number of people spending significantly less than average has increased from 20 to 22 per cent since 1996/7, according to Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the (good old) Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF).

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However, the government's preferred measure of poverty looks at how much money people are earning rather than spending. Under this measure the number of people in poverty has fallen from 25 per cent to 20 per cent."

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While the government has made some inroads into reducing income inequality, it is yet to reduce spending inequalities, which arguably better reflect longer-term differences in society," the new report states.

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The IFS/JRF report argues that spending is a better measure of household wealth than income, as it reflects people’s material well-being and their ability to use goods and services.

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Additionally, spending can better reflect longer-term poverty, as people use their savings and borrow to even out their lifestyle over time and counteract changes to their incomes. When spending is used as a measure, the number of people in poverty (ie operating at less than 60 per cent of the UK average) has increased across a series of groups.

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Child poverty has risen from 25 per cent to 27 per cent, while it has fallen from 33 per cent to 28 per cent if measured according to household income.

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Pensioner poverty under the spending measure is largely unchanged, while the governments preferred indicator that of income, show pensioners in the UK are getting better of !

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Additionally, the families with the lowest income have seen earnings rise faster than middle-income families, but there has been little change when spending is looked at.
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So now we know why it can only get better - the government's well publicised key performance indicator on poverty is skewed in favour of it getting better. Deceptive lot these 'Nu Labour' bods.