The Economy

One year on, it is now abundantly clear that last year's emergency Budget hit women much harder than men. Some 72% of the cuts are being borne by women, whether they are cuts in the health in pregnancy grant, in tax credits, in Sure Start maternity grants or in child benefit. What is more shocking is that it did not even occur to the Chancellor at the time to consider the impact that his savage cuts would have on women and that he failed to carry out his legal duty of undertaking an equality impact assessment before his policy decisions were taken. Indeed, such was the blatant unfairness and scale of the impact on women of the Chancellor's first Budget that the Fawcett society stated that it showed"““a whole new level of disregard for the importance of equality law and everyday women's lives.””" The Chancellor's first Budget also showed a whole new level of disregard for children and families, flying in the face of the Prime Minister's promise to be the ““most family-friendly Government””. One year on, I am particularly concerned about the impact on child poverty—an issue that directly links to the impact of the cuts on women. Although good progress was made by the previous Government, the number of children living in poverty remains unacceptably high. Figures recently published by the End Child Poverty campaign suggest that almost one third of all children in Newcastle are living in poverty. The coalition's policies of cutting funding to Sure Start centres, removing the health in pregnancy grant, cutting tax credits, increasing VAT, cutting housing benefit and dramatically reducing local government funding will have a serious impact on household incomes, which I fear will lead to more children growing up in poverty. My fears are backed up by the OECD, which recently reported:"““Progress in child poverty reduction in the UK has stalled, and is now predicted to increase, and so social protection spending on families...needs to be protected.””" Of course, the cuts imposed by the Chancellor's first Budget are also hitting home at a time that is already particularly difficult for women.