Brown: ‘I never thought I’d see such poverty again’
Gordon Brown warned families are experiencing levels of poverty he has not seen since his childhood more than 60 years ago. The former prime minister said benefit increases not making up for energy price rises were plunging low-income families further into poverty.
Brown was speaking yesterday at a cost of living crisis emergency summit in Methil, Fife, organised by Fife Presbytery.
The ex-kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath MP said: “We are seeing poverty I didn’t think I would see again in my lifetime. I grew up in Kirkcaldy in the 1950s and early 1960s when the linoleum industry was falling, mining was contracting, there was still a lot of slum housing. Sometimes people were flooded in Kirkcaldy from the storms at sea because the coastal defences were not strong enough. I thought we had got rid of that.
“But what we are seeing now is children going to school illclad and hungry, we are seeing pensioners and the elderly having to choose between heating and eating, feeding their meter or feeding themselves, we are seeing mothers ashamed they cannot give their children the things they want to give them because they don’t have the money to do that.
“It will leave scars when children can’t participate in the class with other children and are sometimes kept off school because they don’t have the kit or things that they need to go to school.”
Earlier this year, Brown launched the Big Hoose Fife Project, which sees surplus goods from companies like Amazon destined for landfill, instead given to low-income families.
Brown said yesterday he hoped that by January, 500,000 goods will have been donated in Fife, worth £10 million.