Child poverty strategies

Ben Lomas is the Member of Youth Parliament for St Helens. He lives in St Helens, and will begin year ten at Rainford High in September. Earlier this month, Ben brought a motion on child poverty to the Annual Conference of the Youth Parliament. We asked him about his experience.

The new £10 a week Scottish Child Payment for each child in low income families, announced by the Scottish Government last week, is a game-changer in the fight to end child poverty in Scotland - and a pointer to what is possible, and so badly needed, at UK level. It’s also an inspiring reminder of what can be achieved when child poverty campaigners bring together partners across civic society at the same time where there is a political will, and a government with a statutory obligation, to end child poverty.

Responding to today’s report from the UN Special Rapporteur on Poverty, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group Alison Garnham said: “The UN Rapporteur has exposed the Government’s refusal to acknowledge the scale of child poverty in the UK. By shining an independent light on poverty in the UK, he observed the poor living conditions of children and their families that are seen every day in schools, playgrounds and doctors’ surgeries."

Last month the government published the latest Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistics, which showed that around 4.1 million children are living in relative poverty.

In the words of the Sergeant Pepper song, ’It was twenty years ago today…’, on 18 March 1999, that the British government pledged to be the first to end child poverty in a generation. By 2010, there were 1.1 million fewer children in poverty.

When the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Professor Philip Alston, completed his 10 day visit to the UK on 16 November, he found that the poverty he had observed was unjust and, in his opinion, contrary to British values.