Breakthrough London
NEW REPORT EXPOSES THE WIDENING SOCIAL GULF IN THE CAPITAL
Half the children in inner London live below the poverty line, violent crime in the most dangerous boroughs is three times that of the safest and nearly half the residents of the poorest areas do not have a job, according to a startling new report on social breakdown in the capital from a think-tank headed by the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith.
The report, Breakthrough London, warns of a widening gulf between rich and poor in the capital and calls for a raft of radical measures to reverse social breakdown.
In some parts of the capital, 60 per cent of families are headed by a lone parent – the highest level in England and Wales.
Mr Duncan Smith says in the report: “The London Mayoral elections provide an opportunity to focus politicians and policy makers on the most pressing issue of today.
“Politicians of all parties have so far failed to address the interconnectivity of the five pathways to poverty – family breakdown, economic dependency and worklessness, educational failure, addiction and personal indebtedness.
“Breakthrough London demonstrates the dire results of this failure. We recognise that there will always be some level of disparity between areas in the city, but the current extent is unacceptable.
“London is a tale of two cities.”
Mr Duncan Smith and the CSJ are hosting a hustings meeting on Wednesday April 16 for the three London Mayoral candidates to respond to the report and set out their ideas for tackling poverty and social disadvantage in the capital.
The report finds that despite London’s wealth – it is the sixth richest city on earth – growing numbers of its residents are being left behind.
“London’s cultural and financial success mask a harsh daily reality of poverty, worklessness and social breakdown,” the report says.
In inner London, the average salary is £45,000 a year – 80 per cent above the national average. But the same area contains seven of the 20 most deprived local authorities in England.
A quarter of London’s children – 650,000 – live below the poverty line. After housing costs are taken into account, this rises to 40 per cent. And in inner London, half of all children are living below the poverty line.
Life expectancy across the capital varies by as much as eight years, depending on where a child is born.
Key findings of the report include:
Education: Wide variation in exam results. Just 22 per cent of non-selective state schools in Islington meet or surpass the national average for 5 good GCSEs (including English and Maths) compared with 75 per cent in Kensington and Chelsea.
In Hackney and Tower Hamlets, more than one in four people lack any qualifications.
NEET (Not in education, employment and training) rates for 16-18-year-olds are 70 per cent above the national average in Hackney and 50 per cent above the national average in Southwark.
Family Breakdown: Nearly half of all families with dependent children in London are headed by a lone parent. This is 18 per cent higher than in Manchester or Glasgow and 65 per cent higher than the national average for England and Wales.
Lone parenting rates peak at 60 per cent in Newham and more than half of all families with dependent children are headed by a lone parent in seven other boroughs: Greenwich, Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark, Haringey, Tower Hamlets, Hackney.
Teenage pregnancy rates in Lambeth are double the national rate for England and Wales and four times the rate for Richmond upon Thames.
Only 45 per cent of lone parents in London are in employment compared with 58 per cent in the rest of the country.
Crime: According to Metropolitan Police Statistics, offences involving violence against the person increased by 17 per cent from 2000/1 to 2006/7.
Rates of violent crime per thousand people vary from 12 in Richmond upon Thames to 36 in Tower Hamlets. The average for London is 24. Some of the biggest increases of up to 50 per cent have been in outer London boroughs such as Bromley and Hillingdon.
The MPS has identified 171 gangs in London, with a quarter being involved in murder and nearly half in serious assaults. Studies carried out in Waltham Forest and Lambeth suggest that this figure may be an under-estimate.
Worklessness and welfare dependency: Youth unemployment in London is 20 per cent, well above other regions of the UK. It increased 33 per cent between 2003 and 2007.
London’s overall unemployment rate of 7.5 per cent places it among the worst-performing cities in the UK such as Manchester and Glasgow.
London has the lowest working age employment rate of any area in the UK.
Four boroughs have worklessness (working age people not in work) rates above 40 per cent – Hackney, Newham, Westminster and Tower Hamlets.
More than one in five working age people are in receipt of benefits in London’s poorest boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Newham and Barking and Dagenham. The highest rates are 60 per cent above the national average for Great Britain.
Drug and alcohol addiction: One million Londoners are hazardous or harmful users of alcohol – 20 per cent of the capital’s adults.
The percentage of working age people who claim incapacity benefit based on alcoholism is more than twice the national average for England in five London boroughs: Southwark, Lambeth, Camden, Hackney and Islington.
London has an estimated 23 per cent of the UK’s drug-dependent adults. Numbers of problem drug users vary from 4-5 per thousand population in prosperous areas such Bexley and Harrow to over 34 per thousand in Islington (the highest rate of any local authority in England).
The report recommends a package of policies to reverse the tide of social breakdown in the capital.
These include a more prominent role for the voluntary sector in combating poverty and disadvantage, personalised support to get people back to work, welfare reform to end the something for nothing culture, measures to support marriage such as tax breaks and “family hubs” to coordinate services, and abstinence-based rehab programmes to get addicts permanently off drugs instead of maintaining them on methadone.
Apology:
Please note that this press release has been amended as of 1705 on 15 April 2008. We apologise to Islington Council for previously misrepresenting their GCSE statistics. Please note that the Breakthrough London statistics remain correct.
