As part of our Fighting Poverty in an Age of Affluence project, kindly supported by The Webb Memorial Trust, Professor Peter Townsend gave a lecture to the Fabian Society on 20 May.

Universal child benefit would reduce the abject poverty of many millions of children, said Professor Peter Townsend at a Fabian lecture.

"Social justice is an unending struggle. Just when means are found of subordinating the worst horros of the human condition...the changes taking place in that condition oblidge those rules to be urgently updated and even transformed," said Townsend.

Townsend discussed the origins of the UK welfare state, from Beatrice Webb's 1909 Minority Report to Labour's progress since 1997 in dealing with poverty. The lecture explored political debates that accompanied the evolution of the welfare state and argues for a move towards global social security.

"The early Fabians gained applause for their substantial analysis of social and economic conditions and for practical recommendations for action," said Townsend.

Inspired by the Fabian doctrine of the "national minimum" well-being, Webb’s Minority Report laid the foundation for today’s National Health Service and national minimum wage.

Subsequently, Webb’s influential work has led to various schools of political thought on the welfare state.

Townsend said the anti-collectivist theory, "…is important in the UK because the idea of welfare reform – emphasising conditionalities and reduction in costs through privatisation, self-help and charitable initiatives – is driving the Government’s relationship with the millions who cannot be in the labour market as well as the thousands who might be."

In particular, the "functionalist" theory sees the welfare state as instrumental in the survival of capitalism and suggests the absence of a welfare state would lead to grand scale disparities in wealth and inequalities.

Townsend argues that the success of globalisation has allowed for an unforeseen degradation of inequalities in the industrialised and developing world.

"The trend carries dangers for our futures…the huge scale of HIV/AIDS, the disastrous prospects of climate change, young children engaged in bonded labour, the hundreds of million still existing in extreme poverty."

However, Townsend suggests that such inequalities exist alongside a widening global allegiance to human rights that has seen a rapid increase in international agreements since 1948, and which provide a basis for fighting inequality.

"Human rights instruments provide a framework for the analysis of development as well as for the eradication of multiple violations of rights that occur every year."

Townsend praised the UK for taking "decisive action" on economic and social rights, but also delivered a critical assessment of Labour’s record on inequality and child poverty.

"Successive Labour administrations have allowed broad-brush inequality to go on increasing," he said. Too often Labour has "retreated" into a position of only providing "conditional welfare for the few".

Internationally, Townsend suggests using human rights treaties to "re-build social security for all", especially the most vulnerable.

In the UK, he argues, a substantial rise in child benefit is the "best bet" for Labour to meet its commitment to end child poverty by 2020.

"[Child benefit] is easy to administer and efficient in coverage, as well as providing a monetary base for families in paid work as well as outside paid work and therefore not diminishing incentives".

Townsend estimates that an extra £2.5bn would reduce child poverty by 300,000, and could be off-set by introducing a higher threshold of inheritance and corporation tax.