Child Poverty Is Public Policy in the UK
It’s no surprise that Tories are fine with keeping kids in poverty. But if the Labour Party refuses to oppose such a heartless policy, Labour doesn’t deserve to be in power.
Barefoot children in Britain before World War I. (Imperial War Museum)
A decade of austerity, followed by a pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis, has brought millions of British families to the brink of destitution.
According to the Resolution Foundation, 20 percent of people in the UK are not confident about their finances over the next several months, with the figure rising to 32 percent for those on low incomes and a shocking 43 percent for those not in work. Forty-five percent of all survey respondents are worried about paying their energy bills in the winter, rising to 63 percent for those on low incomes.
A shocking 28 percent of people said that they could not afford to eat balanced meals, and 11 percent of people in the UK reported experiencing hunger in the last month because they had not been able to afford food, up from 9 percent and 5 percent before the pandemic, respectively. Twenty-three percent of people on means-tested benefits experienced severe food insecurity over the winter.
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