Responding to today’s All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) Child of the North report on Child Poverty and the Cost of Living Crisis, Chair of the North East Child Poverty Commission, Anna Turley, said:
“The North East can – and should – be the most fantastic place to grow up and raise a family, but this report couldn’t be any clearer about how challenging life is for far too many children across our region.
“Already high and steeply rising rates of child poverty across the North East pre-pandemic – driven by a decade of austerity and the erosion of our social security safety net – are now being exacerbated by the cost of living crisis, with deeply concerning levels of hardship being seen by all the organisations we work with.
“But this is not an insolvable problem. We know it’s possible to tackle child poverty in the North East because we’ve done it before and we can do it again, with the right investment in children and families in place.
“This report sets out a number of immediate steps ministers could take, which would make an enormous difference – both to children and young people right now, as well as to their future life chances. We now need a government with the ambition and vision to commit to ending child poverty, and to taking the steps required to achieve this.”
The North East Child Poverty Commission was invited to provide evidence to support the APPG’s work on this issue, which is cited in today’s report.
