Category Archives: Poverty

UK pensioners left on ‘financial cliff edge’ by cuts to winter fuel payments

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New analysis shows tens of thousands of older people may end up worse off than those who retain energy benefit

Tens of thousands of pensioners are on a financial cliff edge because of the government’s decision to radically restrict winter fuel payments, a new analysis has revealed. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, opted to introduce a means test for the payments, with only those on pension credit qualifying, stating it was one of the “difficult decisions” she had to make, as she accused the Tories of leaving £22bn in unfunded commitments.

The decision removes the payments from about 10 million pensioners in England and Wales. Officials said this weekend the policy would be among a package of measures “to fix the foundations of the economy”.

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Benefit cap traps families in crowded, rat-infested homes, report finds

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Limit on welfare support, introduced in 2013, leaves some with just £4 a day for each family member

Low-income families affected by the benefit cap are living on as little as £4 for each person a day, often in overcrowded, rat-infested and damp homes with little prospect of escape, according to a new study.

The cap puts a ceiling on the amount a working-age family can receive in welfare support if no one in the household is working or they are on very low wages. Families affected by it in many parts of the country are, in effect, trapped in poor quality, private rented properties they cannot afford, even though these are often already the cheapest homes available in their local area, the London School of Economics study said.

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‘Will the kids eat or not?’ In Keir Starmer’s constituency, families struggle with poverty

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Alongside prosperity in Holborn and St Pancras are thousands of households for whom lifting the two-child benefit cap could mean an end to hunger

• The two-child benefit cap: what is it, does it work and how much would it cost to scrap it?

It’s been one of Cat Onyac’s better days. Her two children are concentrating on their crochet project, sitting in the sunshine at HvH Arts in north London. And they’ve eaten. “All the children get a hot meal,” she says.

The family is at a summer scheme for children in Camden on the edge of Keir Starmer’s constituency, and food is just as important as learning photography, painting or music.

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Overhaul UK benefits to tackle child poverty, charities urge

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Report warns of crisis of poverty and mental health which ‘casts a shadow’ over young people’s wellbeing

Ministers have been urged to reform the benefits system to tackle child poverty, after a report found it to be a major cause of mental illness that “casts a shadow” over young people’s wellbeing.

The report, by the Centre for Mental Health, Save the Children UK and the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition, found that the number of children living in poverty in the UK had increased to 4.3 million, while one in five children and young people aged between eight and 24 had a diagnosable mental health problem.

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Labour MP calls two-child benefit cap ‘heinous’ in latest call to scrap policy

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Keir Starmer under pressure to scrap limit as more than dozen MPs thought to support king’s speech amendment

Keir Starmer has come under further pressure to scrap the two-child benefit limit after another of his backbench MPs described the policy as “heinous”.

Writing in The Sunday Times, Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield said the cap, which came into effect under then-chancellor George Osborne in 2017, was “sinister and overtly sexist” and had been the main reason driving her to stand for parliament.

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‘It’s put so many families in poverty’: people on the impact of the two-child benefit cap

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As Labour backbenchers call for Keir Starmer to scrap the cap, families reveal their struggles as a result of the two-child limit

Keir Starmer has launched a cross-government taskforce to tackle child poverty, but backbench Labour MPs are calling for the government to go further and scrap the two-child benefit cap. Here people reveal how the limit affects their families.

Alicia* is a mother of four children in Newcastle, and is separated from their father. She does everything she can to avoid going to collect a parcel from a food bank. She will often buy a big sack of potatoes and cook them in different ways throughout the week – jacket potatoes, fried chips, wedges – so her kids get variation. She often skips breakfast and lunch herself.

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Keir Starmer aims to avoid backbench rebellion with child poverty taskforce

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PM’s speech failed to specify measures to tackle issue, angering MPs calling to scrap the two-child benefit cap

Keir Starmer sought to ward off the first rebellion of his premiership with the launch of a new cross-government taskforce to tackle child poverty, as backbench Labour MPs were preparing to support calls for the controversial two-child benefit cap to be scrapped.

Starmer’s first king’s speech contained no specific measures to address child poverty, angering dozens of MPs on his own benches, given many of them have constituents suffering as a result of the policy introduced by the former Conservative chancellor George Osborne.

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UK adolescents get two-thirds of daily calories from UPFs, says survey

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Concerns over ultra-processed foods and effect on health have led some countries to introduce new labelling

Adolescents in the UK get nearly two-thirds of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, with consumption highest among those from deprived backgrounds, researchers say.

The findings emerged from an analysis of food diaries kept from 2008 to 2019 by nearly 3,000 participants aged 11 to 18 as part of the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey.

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Rough sleeping in London hits highest level in a decade

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Almost 12,000 rough sleepers were seen by outreach workers in 2023-24, a 19% increase on the previous year

Rough sleeping in the capital has hit the highest level in a decade, with more than 1,100 people living on London’s streets for the first time because of evictions.

The number of new rough sleepers seen for the first time by outreach workers between April 2023 and March 2024, surged 25% to 7,974 people – the highest in at least four years. Almost one in 10 people living on the streets was aged 25 or under – including 13 children.

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Low wages under Tories have pushed 900,000 UK children into poverty, report finds

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TUC says party has overseen ‘huge rise’ in poverty, as Resolution Foundation says average wages just £16 a week higher in real terms than in 2010

The crisis of poverty that has taken root in the UK over the past 14 years has been laid bare in two reports that reveal the devastating effects low wages and price increases on the lives of 900,000 children.

With both main parties proposing tough welfare spending plans, reports have highlighted the link between rising child poverty and slow wage growth under five Conservative governments since 2010 – the slowest growth since the second world war.

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Campaigners hope Labour will scrap two-child benefit cap once in No 10

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Manifesto has no pledge to end rule Angela Rayner called ‘inhumane’ but there have been hints at more to come

Senior Labour figures have been crystal clear in the past about the two-child benefit limit, with Angela Rayner saying it was “obscene and inhumane” and Jonathan Ashworth calling it “heinous”.

Yet, as expected, Keir Starmer’s safety-first manifesto lacked any promise to reverse it, and shadow ministers have been wheeled out to underline the need to make “tough choices” and avoid unfunded promises. Rayner has said Labour has to “prioritise”.

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Starmer faces further calls for Labour to axe two-child benefit cap

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IFS research shows 670,000 more children will be hit by policy by end of next parliament if limit stays in place

Keir Starmer is facing renewed pressure to scrap the two-child benefit limit, as research reveals that 250,000 more children will be hit by the policy over the next year alone.

Labour’s manifesto for government, published last week, included the promise of an “ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty”, but no mention of the two-child limit.

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Eight in 10 primary teachers in England spending own money to help pupils

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Increasing numbers of children hungry and lack adequate clothing, with two-thirds of secondary teachers also supporting pupils

Eight in 10 primary schoolteachers in England are spending their own money to buy items for pupils who are increasingly arriving at school hungry and without adequate clothing, according to new research.

Almost a third (31%) of those who took part in the survey said they were seeing more hungry children in class, with 40% reporting an increase in pupils coming in without proper uniform or a warm winter coat, research by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) found.

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Buenos Aires metro fare jumps 360% amid Argentina’s harsh austerity measures

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Libertarian president Javier Milei has slashed public spending as he wrestles to tame hyperinflation, now at 289% annually

Commuters in Buenos Aires have been hit by an overnight 360% increase in subway fares, in one of the most dramatic price hikes in a harsh budget austerity campaign launched by Argentina’s libertarian president, Javier Milei.

After weeks of hearings, a judge on Thursday lifted an order that had temporarily blocked the scheduled increase in subway fares. That cleared the way for the change to take effect on Friday morning as office workers across Buenos Aires streamed through the turnstiles of South America’s oldest underground metro.

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Braverman plan to criminalise rough sleeping dropped after Tory criticism

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Proposal, condemned by homelessness charities as dehumanising, had provoked threats of revolt among MPs

Ministers will drop plans to criminalise rough sleepers for being deemed a nuisance or having an excessive smell after Conservative MPs threatened a revolt over the proposals.

The plans, originally announced by the then home secretary, Suella Braverman, had been condemned by homeless charities as dehumanising.

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Sudan had largest number of people facing extreme food shortages in 2023, UN report shows

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The African country accounted for two-thirds of the additional 13.5m people needing urgent help as displacement drove food insecurity globally

Sudan had the world’s largest number of people facing extreme food shortages in 2023 as conflict and displacement drove food insecurity globally, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The war between rival generals meant Sudan accounted for two-thirds of the additional 13.5 million people needing urgent help last year, while conflict also plunged Gaza into the world’s most severe food crisis with its entire population facing high levels of food insecurity.

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Ethnic minorities in England ‘need more GP visits’ before cancer diagnosis

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One in five people on average need at least three interactions – but for ethnic minorities figure rises to one in three

Ethnic minorities and young people require more visits than other people to the GP before being diagnosed with cancer, according to new analysis.

On average, one in five people across England require three or more GP interactions before being diagnosed with cancer. But for people from ethnic minority backgrounds, the figure rises to one in three, according to analysis of the NHS cancer patient experience 2022 survey by QualityWatch, a joint programme from the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation.

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One in 52 Blackpool children in care as poverty soars in north of England

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£25bn of public money would have been saved between 2019 and 2023 if north had same care entry rates as south, report says

One in every 52 children in Blackpool are in care compared with one in 140 across England, leading to calls for more to be done to urgently tackle the widening north-south divide, brought on by “decades of underinvestment”.

Nine in every thousand children are in care in the north, compared with six in the rest of England, according to a report by Health Equity North.

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Revealed: how companies made $100m clearing California homeless camps

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Public spending on private sweep contractors is soaring across the state – and unhoused people allege poor treatment

This story was produced in partnership with Type Investigations with support from the Wayne Barrett Project

On an October morning, a small army arrived to evict Rudy Ortega from his home in the Crash Zone, an encampment located near the end of the airport runway in San Jose, California, Silicon Valley’s largest city. As jets roared overhead, garbage trucks and police squad cars encircled Ortega’s hand-built shelter. Heavy machinery operators stood by for the signal to bulldoze Ortega’s camp.

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Covid pandemic made poorest countries even worse off, World Bank warns

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Poverty reduction drive all but halted across many nations as Bank calls for more money to tackle a ‘great reversal’

The devastating impact of the pandemic on the world’s poorest countries has brought poverty reduction to a halt and led to a widening income gap with nations in the rich west, the World Bank has warned.

In a report released to coincide with its half-yearly meeting, the Washington-based organisation said half of the world’s 75 poorest nations had seen income per head rise more slowly than in developed countries over the past five years.

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