'Missing' £3.6billion needed to lift millions from poverty - as progress undone
A "missing" £36billion must be found if the Government ever hopes to lift millions of people out of poverty, an alarming report found.
Experts warn that one in three children now live in poverty, while seven per cent of the population live in deep poverty. Meanwhile progress made at the start of the century is sliding away, with the current situation branded "unacceptable".
It is estimated that 1.6million more people were living in poverty in 2019-20 than in 2001-01. The cross-party Poverty Strategy Commission has said a huge resources gap needs to be closed if any future Government hopes to tackle inequality in the UK.
Baroness Stroud, a Tory peer who helped set up Universal Credit and chair of the group, said: “The Commission’s rallying cry is this: together we can tackle poverty. The status quo is unacceptable but not inevitable, as the work of the Commission shows. We can make a once-in-a-lifetime impact on poverty in the UK if all key actors play their part. Today’s report is the first step in setting out a plan for how this can become a reality.”
The commission found that despite progress being made in bringing down poverty rates for groups such as lone-parents and pensioners at the start of the century, this is now being undone. In 2000-01, 18% of pensioners lived in poverty, but this had halved by 2014-15, the report found. However it's on the rise again, with the most recent figure estimated at 12%.
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There was a similar picture for lone-parents, who saw a fall from 61% to 47%, before it rose again to 52%. Group members said an increase in £6,000 is needed for each of the six million families living in poverty.
The document found private renters living in poverty spend close to half (47%) of their net income on housing costs. And families in poverty spending 16% of their household net income on childcare, compared to 7% of their wealthier counterparts.
David Laws, Schools Minister between 2012 and 2015 and executive chairman of the Education Policy Institute, said: "The reduction in UK pensioner poverty over the last 20 years demonstrates that high rates of poverty are not inevitable and that concerted action by government and society can reduce poverty significantly.
"Recent trends in poverty are, however, disturbing - child poverty in the UK is shockingly high, and deep and persistent poverty has risen significantly. Poverty matters not only because it ruins lives but because it damages opportunity and social mobility. Societies with high income inequality tend to be those where being born into poverty becomes a life sentence."
Labour's Stephen Timms, who chairs the Work and Pensions Select Committee, said: “For too long, politics has been used to distract attention from the poverty around us in the UK. The Commission’s work has shown the potential for consensus around a fresh approach to tackling poverty, across political lines, amongst experts and with people in poverty themselves.
"This new approach requires a new social contract, creating a framework within which to eradicate deep poverty in the UK, and to reduce overall poverty significantly and sustainably.”
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