The Poverty Strategy Commission, which seeks to forge a new national political consensus on reducing poverty, and which includes former ministers from the three main parties, says poverty levels are too high and hardship is becoming more extreme. It warns a “more of the same” approach to poverty in the future will fail.
It estimates the broad annual cost of significantly reducing poverty in the UK at £36bn – equivalent to £6,000 a year for 6 million families in poverty – a figure reached through a combination of benefits and wage increases, and investment to lower housing and energy costs, and improved health services.
The interim report of the commission, published on Tuesday, seeks to put poverty reduction back on the party political agenda before the next general election. It is concerned at the lack of urgency from the two main parties over the scale and nature of poverty, and society’s failure to offer adequate protection to its poorest.
As Holly Bancroft the social affairs correspondent for the Independent reported back in August, Hungry children have resorted to stealing food as more than 120,000 young people are now living in extreme poverty in the UK.
Buttle UK, which works with children and young people in crisis, surveyed over 1000 frontline workers, who collectively look after more than 200,000 children in poverty. Some 60 per cent of the children they worked with were living in destitution – up from 45 per cent the previous year and 36 per cent in 2021.
Responses to the survey laid bare the “degrading and unsustainable” levels of poverty that children in Britain are facing. They include:
Children rushing to open and eat a tin of cold beans they were handed because they were so hungry
A child refusing to go to school because she didn’t have any shoes that fit, was living in an unheated dark house, and was forced to steal an apple out of hunger “like a story from the 1800’s”
Unwashed children being bullied at school because of their ripped clothes. One boy was unable to attend a job interview because he could not afford the bus fare and had no suitable clothes
A three-year-old with extreme dental problems because his parent was using milk and juice to help him feel full because it was cheaper than food
A two-year-old seen playing with a button and some fluff on the floor because he had no toys
The charity described the term destitution as one describing the absolute lowest standard of living any adult, child or young person can experience, adding that the “lived reality is degrading and unsustainable”.
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