Child Poverty in the UK

A report by the Office for National Statistics showed yesterday what we all know: the Government's attempts to tackle child poverty are failing.

And they're failing for a very simple reason: New Labour has failed to tackle child poverty because it has refused to address inequality and the distribution of wealth.

As a spokesperson from the ONS said: "the data suggests that the most significant influence on children's experiences growing up is likely to be income deprivation".

There's some very simple things the Government could do: raise the minimum wage, make the tax system more progressive, increase JSA and other benefits, restore trade union rights to increase bargaining power and stop undercutting through agencies.


The Morning Star rightly prioritises this story on its front page today.

According to the OECD, the "the gap between rich and poor is still greater in the UK than in three quarters of OECD countries". The OECD also reveals that "child poverty rates are still above the levels recorded in the mid-1980s".

That is shocking - children in the UK are more likely to be in poverty today than at the height of Thatcherism