Now, Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, has warned that too many children in our country (still the sixth richest in the world) are living in “almost Dickensian levels of poverty”.
You won’t see them on TikTok, so let me use words to take you through these sad lands.
We first met when she tried to steal nappies in a supermarket. I told the security staff she was with me and paid for them. Now I take nappies and sanitary towels for her eldest daughter when I visit. Jo is always grateful, but I see anger and humiliation in her blue eyes.
The older kids share the double bed. Jo and her youngest sleep on an old mattress. A few broken toys are on the floor. They eat tinned food most days because cooking costs too much. Jo worked in the local supermarket until her third child was born. Her mother took care of the older ones, but is now too far away to help.
She is dreading the summer holidays. In school, teachers were handing them food vouchers, washing their clothes and giving them books. The Commissioner states categorically that such kids need “a safe home that isn’t mouldy or full or rats, with a bed big enough to stretch out in, ‘luxury’ food like bacon, a place to do homework, heating, privacy in the bathroom and being able to wash, having their friends over, and not having to travel hours to school”.
The Child Poverty Action Group estimates 109 children are pulled into poverty every day by the limit: the Commissioner wants the limit scrapped. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that reversing the policy would lift 500,000 children out of relative poverty. That’s 450,000 more than the number saved by the PIP U-turn.Poverty is always the result of political choices. Starmer is spending billions on US jets, which will carry nuclear bombs, yet wants to cut disability benefits. If the latter policy had gone through, the savings would have been minimal.
square ELIOT WILSON Charles, the meddling King, is making his biggest intervention yet
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Sure Start was brought in by Tony Blair in 1999. It, too, was driven by political passion. He believed everyone deserved a good childhood and decent education.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies concludes that Sure Start greatly improved educational attainment and motivation and reduced depression and anxiety. Senior Tories loathed the initiative and did all they could to wreck it.
Up to 1,000 centres, properly funded – they say – will be rolled out across the country. The right will shriek about the cost. Let them. It’s a proven pathway to save left-behind children.
In the next decade, child poverty could become a nightmare that passed. Because politicians cared about children. That’s the hope.
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