Labour former PM Gordon Brown said Keir Starmer must act to help ‘austerity’s children’ as rising levels of child poverty could see 4.8 million kids living in hardship by 2029
Gordon Brown will pile pressure on the Government to do more to fix child poverty with a plan to raise billions from taxes on gambling industry and banking profits.
The former Prime Minister said Keir Starmer must act to help “austerity’s children” as rising levels of child poverty could see 4.8 million kids living in hardship by 2029. Pressure is mounting on the Government to spell out its plans to lift children out of poverty as a review promised for the Spring has not yet emerged.
In a submission to the Government’s Child Poverty taskforce, Mr Brown proposed creating a “Child Fairness Guarantee” to ensure a minimum amount of support to afford essentials such as food and household bills.
This would be funded by raising £9billion from online gambling levies, tiered interest scheme on commercial bank funds and reforms to Gift Aid and corporate philanthropy.
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It comes as a poll found more than 75% of UK voters believe it’s morally wrong so many children go to bed hungry or without a proper place to sleep. The survey by Hope not Hate found 82% think the government should be doing more to reduce child poverty.
Nearly 9 in 10 people (87%) would support taxes on from gambling industry and banking profits to fund a Child Fairness Guarantee.
Mr Brown warned that the “long tail of austerity” meant numbers of children in poverty were projected to rise by 100,000 per year over this Parliament.
He said: “The rising levels of poverty stem largely from the long tail of austerity and are the lingering result of decisions made a decade ago by George Osborne to create generation of austerity’s children which deliberately added one million children to the poverty numbers.
“Thousands more children are hit by benefit caps that have in turn created an enormous challenge for the current government’s Child Poverty Review to roll back the worst of the Conservative inheritance, before even beginning to tackle future challenges.”
He added: “70% of the children in poverty are in working families exposing the false argument that poverty is caused by feckless or work shy parents who are part of a co-dependency culture.”
In cities like Birmingham and Manchester, 46% and 44% of children respectively are already living in poverty, with some communities seeing rates as high as 85%. That means in some classrooms, 25 out of 30 children are condemned to live in hardship, according to the report.
Every night one million children are trying to sleep every night without a bed of their own, while each day three million children regularly skip meals due to the strains on family finances.
He said: “When asked why we must act, people say our children are our future — and we all benefit if they grow up healthy, educated, and productive. The costs of inaction are greater: in poor health, increased crime, and lost contributions to the economy.
“Britons say they are embarrassed and disgusted that countries like the Netherlands and the Nordics are doing far better for their children than we are.
“There is now a clear public mandate to act on the government’s manifesto promise to reduce child poverty in this parliament and to “end mass dependence on emergency food parcels.”
Labour committed to develop an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty, with a taskforce appointed last summer to develop a blueprint. The PM promised at the time to “leave no stone unturned to give every child the very best start at life”.
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