Children In England Living In 'Almost Dickensian Levels Of Poverty'

Children in England are living in “almost Dickensian levels of poverty”, according to a damning new report.

Some young people are forced to sleep in mouldy bedrooms in rat-infested homes, children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza found

She said the government must start to tackle the scandal by lifting the two-child benefit cap.

De Souza said: “Children shared harrowing accounts of hardship, with some in almost Dickensian levels of poverty.

“They don’t talk about ‘poverty’ as an abstract concept but about not having the things that most people would consider basic.”

Her report said it was “deeply concerning” how children in England appear to accept these inadequate situations “as normal”.

She said the UK, as “one of the richest societies in the world”, should be “ashamed that children are growing up knowing their futures are being determined by their financial circumstances.”

The commissioner said there is “no quick fix” to end child poverty but it’s “very clear that any child poverty strategy must be built on the foundations of scrapping the two-child limit”.

The cap, introduced by the last Tory government, means that families can only claim benefits on their first two children.

The Child Poverty Action Group say the policy pushes 109 children into poverty every day.

Scrapping the two-child cap would lift 500,000 children out of relative poverty, but would cost the government £3.4bn a year.

Keir Starmer is thought to be in favour of doing so, but his U-turn on welfare cuts last week has blown a £5 billion hole in chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Budget.

However, the U-turn will also lift 50,000 people out of relative poverty by 2030, according to a new impact assessment by the Department for Work and Pensions.

But education secretary Bridget Phillipson warned on Sunday that scrapping the two-child benefit cap will now be harder because of the welfare U-turn.

“It’ll be the moral mission of this Labour government to lift children out of poverty,” she told the BBC, before adding: “The decisions that have been taken in the last week do make decisions, future decisions, harder.”