Tackling child poverty: CPAG's manifesto

Poverty is devastating. It puts children’s education, health and life chances on the line.

More than four million children are living in poverty in the UK. That’s nine kids in an average classroom of 30.

This isn’t right, and it doesn’t have to be like this. 

We need a comprehensive strategy for tackling child poverty. A strategy that prioritises policies that directly affect children living in poverty by putting more money into families’ pockets, and eases pressures faced by families by, for example, helping to increase earnings and reduce school costs. 

These four steps would immediately lift a million children out of poverty:

• Scrapping the two-child limit.
• Scrapping the benefit cap.
• Making free school meals available to all pupils. 
• Increasing child benefit by £20 a week for all children.