When this government was elected, it made a promise to the people of this country: to end the need for emergency food parcels and to tackle child poverty. But appalling levels of hunger persist across the UK, with new research showing that severe hardship is ripping through our communities.
Today, new research by Trussell has revealed that 14.1 million people in the UK faced hunger last year – including 3.8 million children. This is equivalent to over one in six households at risk of needing to turn to a food bank, because they do not have enough money to live on. In one of the richest countries in the world, why are we seeing such severe hardship?
Shockingly, children aged five and under are the hardest hit, with one in three living in a food insecure household. No child should know what a food bank is, let alone need one. But the reality is far bleaker.
Tellingly, households with three or more children (42 per cent) are around twice as likely to face hunger as households with one child (23 per cent) or two children (20 per cent). This is the latest of mounting evidence that the two-child limit is pushing children into poverty and punishing them for having sisters or brothers. There is no route to reducing child poverty unless this policy is scrapped.
We know that children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds academically outperform children from poorer ones by a large margin. This is not through lack of talent or potential, but because hunger and hardship create enormous barriers to children’s learning. If you grow up in a home where your parents go without food so you can eat, sharing a room with your young siblings in a damp and cold house, with coats over the bed because you can’t afford to put the heating on, the anxiety, sleep deprivation and chill in your bones is likely to distract you from learning.
Children need the best start in life – it’s the right thing for families, for our communities, and for our country. Getting rid of the two-child limit is the most cost-effective way to lift 350,000 kids out of poverty, while reducing the depth of poverty for 700,000 more.
Hunger isn’t a food problem; it’s an income problem. People are turning to food banks because they are unable to cover the cost of the essentials we all need like food, bills and toiletries. These appalling levels of hardship highlight why food banks have become a normal part of our society.
Change will cost money – but inaction will cost us more. The right thing to do is also common sense for our economy, as scrapping the two-child limit would benefit the UK government by £3.1bnin economic and fiscal savings. If the UK government does not change course, it risks overseeing increasing levels of food bank need and deepening hardship, and its lasting legacy on living standards will be rising food bank need and child poverty. This cannot be right.
We know the Chancellor faces fiscal constraints and tough choices. But many economists, and former Chancellor Gordon Brown, have made the case that there are sensible ways to pay for a change that will bring enormous benefits to families, communities and our economy, as well as easing pressure on our over-stretched public services.
The IPPR think tank recently found that taxing the multi-billion-pound gambling industry more fairly could fund this change and help lift thousands of children out of destitution. This isn’t a pipe dream; it’s achievable. We just need political will to deliver it.
The government is right to approach its child poverty strategy carefully – but there is no time to waste. We must match urgency with ambition if we’re going to turn the tide on severe hardship in the UK. It is the job of political leaders to leave the world a better place than they found it. This government can offer change, it can offer hope, it can offer people’s futures back. But only if it gets this right.
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