Council leader’s anger over the ‘failure to tackle child poverty’
The leader of Sunderland City Council has slammed the Government for its “failure to tackle child poverty”.
Cllr Graeme Miller hit out after new research revealed that the North East has the highest rate of childhood poverty in the UK.
The data, published by the Nuffield Foundation, found that, while child poverty rates have fluctuated since 2000 there has been a sustained increase since 2013/14, with families in the North East experiencing the steepest rise (46%), ahead the rest of the UK.
Cllr Miller said: “This report makes for deeply unpleasant reading and shows just how shallow the Government’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda is.
“While rates of early childhood poverty in the South East and South West continue to stabilise - and in some instances even fall - densely populated and working-class areas such as the North East continue to bear the brunt of the Tories’ policies. As the rich get richer, the poor continue to get poorer.
“Add to that the Government’s decision to cut the £20 uplift to Universal Credit and increase National Insurance, and the stark reality is that it will be difficult to turn around the fortunes of a generation of young people who are being failed by a Conservative Government that seems to be doing everything in its power to widen the rich/ poor divide. “The research shows that the most significant fall in child poverty was between 1997/98 and 2004/05, largely reflecting increased spending on cash benefits and tax credits by the Labour Government.
Carey Oppenheim, Early Childhood Lead at the Nuffield Foundation, which campaigns for better education and social policy, said: “The increase in poverty for families with children under five is stark and has both short and long-term implications for children’s development and future.
"Addressing early childhood poverty requires an approach that provides a financial bedrock for families through improved social security benefits and access to employment.
“Even with those measures, it will be difficult to sustain reductions in child poverty unless we also address longer-term changes in society such as insecure and low-paid work.”