Brown: Tories failing kids in welfare crisis

Longer wait to see docs

SHOCK Ex-PM Gordon Brown

CHILDREN are being “levelled down” by the Tories’ failure to safeguard their welfare against the impact of Covid-19, Gordon Brown has warned.

The former Labour Prime Minister told the Child Poverty Action Group children “are in a far more difficult position and face more difficult prospects” than two decades ago.

He said 4.2 million children who were in poverty pre-Covid now face lasting economic effects of the pandemic.

Mr Brown said he had not expected “mind-destroying, humiliating, grinding poverty” to return in his lifetime – nor to scar Britain so badly.

Urging ministers to increase child benefit and abolish the two-child limit during the crisis, he said: “Levelling up is the Government’s phrase. Children are being levelled down.

“When we look back at this crisis, we will be shocked.”

WAITS for GP appointments and cancer checks are increasing, a study suggests.

Even before being diverted to carry out Covid vaccinations, many family doctors were being swamped.

In a survey of 1,000 GPs, 38% said their practice was finding it hard to meet demand for remote consultations.

And 75% of those polled by Cancer Research UK reported longer waits for ultrasounds.