It’s time to end Child Poverty, Crawley Observer Column, Wednesday 21st August 2024

Over a third of Crawley’s children are living in poverty. This isn’t new. Rising rates of child poverty are something I have pointed out repeatedly over the last 14 years as a parliamentary candidate and councillor, but it remains a staggering indictment of our national priorities under the Conservatives, particularly after all the efforts made by the last Labour government to halve child poverty.

With a change in government comes a change in priorities, which is why in its first month back in office the Labour Party has announced the creation of a new minister-led Child Poverty Taskforce—drawing upon talent and expertise from across government and civic society—to produce a strategy for finally bring child poverty to an end, supported by a new Child Poverty Unit in the Cabinet Office.

It’s an ambitious goal and something no country has as of yet achieved. Although, with the UK currently ranked by UNICEF as having the 37^th worst rates of child poverty out the world’s 39 wealthiest countries, the room for improvement is considerable, just a short hop over the North Sea finds child poverty rates a third of the UK’s current level across Scandinavia.

The remit of the taskforce is extremely broad, looking at the full range of ways struggling families can improve their incomes, how cost pressures can be reduced, and other ways of limiting the impact of poverty upon people’s quality of life.

While the work of the taskforce will be dictated by evidence, it seems clear to me that one area of policy which needs to go is the two-child benefit cap. It should be self-evident why a cut targeted specifically at children in low-income households would increase child poverty, but as common sense is surprisingly rare we have the benefit of extensive research by thinktanks proving that the cut resulted in the fastest growth in child poverty.

Even if you don’t accept this, given that UK birthrates are now well below the replacement levels needed to maintain current living standards, you do have to wonder at the sense in further penalising people for having children.