Regional campaigners are pressing the Government to get on with publishing its plans to tackle child poverty, after new figures show that the number of children growing up in poverty in the North East, and across the UK, is rising.
The data published by the Department for Work and Pensions today (27th March) indicates that 31% (170,000) of all babies, children and young people across the North East region were living below the poverty line over the three years to 2023/2024. This is up from 30% over the three years to 2022/23.
Across the UK, 4.5 million (31%) of all children were living in poverty in 2023/24 according to the figures published today, a record high number and up from 4.3 million the year before.
Nationally, the new figures show that 43% of children in single parent families, and 33% of children living in families where someone (adult or child) has a disability, are growing up in poverty. This is a significant concern for the North East, which has the UK’s second highest proportion of children living in single parent families, and the highest rate of children living in families where someone – adult or child – has a disability.
In summer 2024, the Government established a Child Poverty Taskforce, to ‘oversee the development and publication of an ambitious cross-government child poverty strategy to reduce and alleviate child poverty.’ This strategy is currently due to be published in Spring 2025.
Early analysis by the national charity Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) indicates that – based on current Government policy – the number of children living in poverty across the UK is set to rise to a staggering 4.8 million by the end of this Parliament.
Chair of the North East Child Poverty Commission, Beth Farhat, said:
“Ministers have made very welcome commitments to develop an ambitious national child poverty strategy, but today’s new data make clear why it’s increasingly urgent that they now get on with publishing and delivering it.
“The figures are not just unacceptably high, they are also heading in the wrong direction. And every single one of these numbers is an individual child who is having their life chances limited and opportunities restricted as result of not having what they need to thrive.
“Nobody gets a second childhood, and the babies, children and young people growing up in hardship across the North East today cannot wait much longer for meaningful national action on this issue.
“As a first step, that has to include scrapping policies like the two-child limit – the only outcome of which has been to drive up child poverty both here in our region and across the country.’
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