Child poverty increase "a moral disgrace"
Tuesday, 27 Mar 2007 13:52
More children are living in poverty, today's figures show
News that about 100,000 more British children are living in poverty has been branded a "moral disgrace" by campaigners.
The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) released figures today which revealed more children were living in relative poverty in 2005/06 than were a year earlier.
Figures for children in absolute poverty have remained the same and the number of pensioners in relative poverty has fallen by 100,000 against last year.
The government has promised to "refocus" £150 million of funding "towards greater
support for families" and chancellor Gordon Brown last week pledged to remove 200,000 more children from poverty in his Budget announcement.
But children's charity Barnado's has slammed the government for failing to make good on its 1999 promise to cut poverty in half by 2010.
"This is a moral disgrace," chief executive Martin Narey said.
He added: "These figures show that some modest progress has been made, but even with the concessions in the Budget, progress in taking children out of poverty has slowed and may stall all together.
"We are the fourth richest country in the world, we are a country where we can countenance individual bankers getting annual bonuses of £22 million while we give a family of two parents and two children, living on benefits, £10,000 to live on for a whole year."
The publication of the DWP's Households Below Average Income (HBAI) figures was also met with disappointment by the Child Poverty Action Group (Cpag).
"The figures are deeply depressing," chief executive Kate Green said.
"They show that while tax credits and employment have helped, reducing child poverty will require much more investment and a broader strategy."
Work and pensions secretary John Hutton insisted that "considerable progress" has been made in the effort to end child poverty in the UK but accepted that much more still needed to be done.
"We need to go further towards what is a very tough goal to reach," he said, insisting that 600,000 children had already been helped out of poverty since 1997.
"The measures announced in the Budget and built on today will help take hundreds of thousands children out of poverty in the years ahead and emphasise the importance of work as the sustainable route out of poverty for families in Britain."