Charities give cautious welcome to latest child poverty figures

The number of children living in poverty in the UK fell during the last year of the Labour government, official figures showed yesterday.

In 2009-10, 20 per cent of children (2.6 million) lived in households earning below average income, representing a two per cent decrease on the previous year.

Children’s charities offered a cautious welcome to the Households Below Average Income statistics, Barnardo’s hailing them as “good news” but warning the fall might be temporary.

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But the Government said the figures – which also covered working-age adults and pensioners – showed “a country in crisis as income inequality stays at record levels in the last year of the previous government”.

After housing costs were taken into consideration, the number of children living in relative poverty was bumped up to 3.8 million (29 per cent).

This represents a more modest fall of one per cent compared with the previous year.

The figures for adults in poverty remained fairly static, with 16 per cent of the working age population (5.7 million) living in relative poverty before housing costs are accounted for.

This represented a slight fall of 100,000.

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Some 18 per cent of pensioners (2.1 million) were living in relative poverty before housing costs, representing a two per cent fall on the previous year but no change after housing costs were paid.

The Government said the figures signalled a poor return on the huge investment in the benefit system made by Labour.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said: “This gap between the poorest and richest in our society has accelerated over the last five years despite an astonishing £150bn injected into tax credits alone.

“The end result has been to make benefit dependency and worklessness inherent to the UK way of life with middle and low income earners picking up the bill.”

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Barnardo’s warned that public spending cuts could lead to a rise in the number of children living in poverty and cautioned against complacency.

Chief executive Anne Marie Carrie said the figures should not be used to hide the reality of the depth of poverty still experienced by millions of families in the UK.

“We remain concerned that numbers may well rise again due to cuts and the economic downturn. We fear these figures show only a temporary reprieve in the battle against child poverty.”

The programme manager of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Chris Goulden, said that although the figures were “good news”, the future looked bleaker.