Emdad Rahman: The Campaign to End Child Poverty has published the first instalment of a two part report providing a child poverty map of the UK. The publication provides local authority and constituency information for England. The End Child Poverty website is also providing local child poverty data down to ward level in England and the official data used for the local analysis will only be available for other parts of the UK later in the year, following which a further instalment of the report will be published which will include the rest of the UK and updated data for England.
The top 10 parliamentary constituencies for child poverty in England are:
Bethnal Green and Bow 57% Poplar and Canning Town 55% Manchester Central 52% Islington South and Finsbury 49% Birmingham, Ladywood 49% Hackney South and Shoreditch 49% Regent’s Park and North Kensington 48% Tottenham 48% Liverpool, Riverside 48% Holborn and St. Pancras 47%
The top 10 local authorities for child poverty in England are:
Tower Hamlets 57% Islington 46% Hackney 44% Newham 43% Manchester 42% Westminster 41% Camden 41% Haringey 40% Barking and Dagenham 39% Nottingham 37%
Alison Garnham, Executive Director of the Campaign, said: “David Cameron pledged to make British poverty history and we now have a local map of the child poverty rate in each area at the time he took office and his work towards this goal began.”
“The child poverty map shows a country divided between children born into very different lives, some fortunate, some with much poorer life chances. It reveals that we still have much higher rates of child poverty than in most other wealthy European countries, reaching 57% of children in one London constituency and more than 60% in some wards.” “The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister have our full support for the promise they made in the coalition agreement to end child poverty by 2020. The difficult economic circumstances we face mean it is more important than ever to end Britain’s child poverty shame.”
In the next two weeks the Chancellor and the Prime Minster will reveal Britain’s Budget and publish the Government’s Child Poverty Strategy. They will need to address warnings from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that both relative and absolute child poverty will start rising from 2013 onwards under current plans. Garnham added: “The Campaign to End Child Poverty is calling for the Chancellor to explain in the budget how child poverty will be reduced and how parents can access jobs they can raise a family on.”
“We need to protect jobs and work incentives for the good of both the economy and Britain’s families struggling to stay afloat. The Chancellor must tackle the jobs deficit and look again at unfair cuts to tax credits, child benefit and childcare support that will mean entering a job and staying in work is harder and less likely to make families better off.”
“Parts of Britain are booming again, with bankers getting billions in bonuses, yet we’re in danger of having a two-speed economy that leaves millions of families behind. Child poverty costs us billions picking up the pieces of damaged lives and unrealised potential, so it’s a false economy if we don’t prioritise looking after children today. The values we cherish and the long-term economic security we need will both be damaged if families facing hardship are left hung out to dry.”