Sat 7 Mar 2020, 11:49 AM | Posted by editor
LETTER from Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour Party
A Dispatches programme, Growing up poor in Britain, reported that one in three children are growing up in poverty. This is around the four million mark and according to the Resolution Foundation, an independent think-tank, this figure will rise by a further million by 2023. The narrator, Sheridan Smith, interviewed a family from Cambridge who rely on a food bank for their basic needs.
Smith pointed out that Cambridge is one of the most unequal cities in the UK. The city, famous for its university and hi-tech companies, is a place where the bottom fifth of the population have only 2% of the total wealth. This family, which consists of a single mum with two children, often sleep without heating. Smith pointed out that in the East of England the number of those losing their homes has tripled in the last five years. Nationally, around two and a half million children have been pushed into poverty over the same period.
House prices in Cambridge are nearly twice the national average and this is reflected in renting costs. This family had a three-bedroom house and had their housing benefit cut because it was deemed that that the children can share a room. This has forced the family to move out of Cambridge in order to find cheaper accommodation.
Smith interviewed a family that had recently suffered bereavement. They struggled to pay for the funeral. The mother worked but after working 16 hours a week, out of every £1 earned, 63p was deducted from Universal Credit. Imagine the hue and cry, if Labour had proposed a 63% tax rate on the top earners, rather than the modest 50% rate suggested in Labour’s programme!
Smith then interviewed a family in Sudbury who had suffered mental health problems and lived in one room. She concludes that poverty goes hand in hand with mental health issues and it damages the life chances of children that live in poverty.
In truth, the Tories are not fit to rule and should be removed from office at the earliest opportunity. To end the nightmare of child poverty, we need a mass campaign to drive the Tories from office and the election of Labour committed to socialist measures.
You can catch this programme on YouTube, here
