Time Tories showed they care, just like Labour has
CHILD poverty was an epidemic of its own and was rising before this coronavirus crisis struck and caused so much hardship for millions of families.
And the child poverty epidemic in our country represents the ills of our society and our broken economy: poverty wages, insecure work and a social security safety net that successive Tory governments have cut to ribbons.
This year was supposed to be the year child poverty in Britain was ended for good. But we are going backwards, fast.
When the Tories voted against free school meals they said they wanted to focus on the structural causes of child poverty.
MINIMUM
So why did they scrap the target that the last Labour government set to eradicate child poverty by this year, abolish the Child Poverty Commission and happily leave 4.2 million children living in poverty – nine in every classroom of 30?
If the Tories really cared about the root causes of child poverty they would increase the minimum wage to a level people can actually survive and support families on. A real living wage of at least £10 an hour would make a massive difference to millions of families.
Nobody should be working for poverty pay, yet 70% of children growing up in poverty live in a working family.
There is no clearer sign that our economic model is broken when millions of parents are going out to do an honest and hard day’s work for wages that still leave them in poverty at the end of the week.
And the Government must commit now to scrapping the planned cut of £1,000 per year to Universal Credit they plan to bring in next spring, scrap the benefit cap, abolish the two-child limit and end the five-week wait for the first Universal Credit payment.