Work and pay

Responding to Walking the Breadline, a new report published today on UK food poverty by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty, the Head of Policy for Child Poverty Action Group, Imran Hussain, said: “It’s a national scandal that half a million British people are now having to turn to food aid.

Responding to the publication today of new projections for UK child poverty rates, prepared by the Institute for Fiscal Studies for the Northern Ireland Executive (OFMDFM), Alison Garnham, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said: “We always put our children’s needs first in family life, and we should do as a nation too. But today’s dire projections reveal we are in danger of failing the next generation...

A new report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that relative child poverty will increase by 34% and absolute child poverty will increase by 55% in the decade from 2010-2020.

Responding to the findings of the Poverty and Social Exclusion report, The Impoverishment of the UK, Alison Garnham, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said:  “This is a landmark study; the largest and most authoritative study on poverty and deprivation conducted in the UK...

The government has today announced a new scheme, to start in three years' time, to give tax relief to families for childcare costs. However, CPAG is concerned that it would do very little to help the families that need it most, or to reduce child poverty.

Responding to the government’s announcement that they will cover up to 85 per cent of childcare costs for some low-income families eligible for universal credit (UC) from April 2016, Alison Garnham, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group said: “We welcome this government recognition that the high costs of childcare in the UK act as a significant deterrent for all families..

New analysis for Child Poverty Action Group by Landman Economics has found that an increase of 600,000 children in absolute child poverty is likely between 2010 and 2015. The analysis is made on the basis of the Coalition tax and benefit spending policies implemented since 2010, and planned to be implemented up to 2015.

A speech today on the causes of child poverty by Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, made no mention of his department’s evidence that in-work problems like low wages and low hours are a factor in the majority of child poverty cases. Alison Garnham, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said: “Now is not a time to airbrush the main causes of child poverty out of the picture and move the goal posts...