The national picture of child poverty is a worrisome one. House Below Average Income figures for 2023/24 indicated that 4.5 million children are living in poverty across the UK. The 2022/23 statistics show a 0.2 million increase from the year before. When you look closer at the figures, a concerning trend emerges where the most at risk in society are also those on the margins.
24% of children living in White British families are doing so in poverty, but when a child is growing up in a Black, Asian, or ethnic minority (BAME) household, this number almost doubles. For households with three or more children, 44% of children are living in poverty. 44% of children from single parent households are also living in poverty. What we are seeing is not mere chance or misfortune, but poverty by design. In other words, structural poverty: the predictable outcome of policies and social arrangements that fail to protect the most vulnerable and instead perpetuate inequality across generations.
Around 170,000 children, nearly one in three, are growing up below the poverty line. In Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, it is more than half. In Newcastle Central and West, it is 43%. These are not isolated extremes: two-thirds of constituencies across the region record child poverty rates at or above the national average. Yet, the issue of child poverty is not an evenly spread one, hitting the areas worst hit by industrial decline and a lack of investment and opportunity hardest.
Benefits are a much-needed lifeline for families living in poverty, and yet, the two-child benefit cap prevents larger families from accessing vital support. Introduced in 2017, the policy capped welfare support to the oldest two children in a family accessing benefits. The policy was cruel in its simplicity because larger families are punished and children fall further into the cycle of poverty through no fault of their own.
Constituencies with the highest poverty rates are also those where the two-child limit has the greatest. In the North East, this means that communities already hit by unemployment, low pay, and poor housing face an added layer of hardship.
Looking to Downing Street, Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to tackle child poverty, but his line on the two-child benefit cap is less clear. He acknowledged the importance of tackling the issue in the North East, but made no real commitment to scrapping the cap, despite calls from groups in the region. Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, however, said that scrapping the cap is "on the table" and co-chairs the task force looking into the issue. She described the policy as a "spiteful attack on children" who "were punished and pushed into hardship through no fault of their own".
The sentiment is clearly there, but sentiment is meaningless without true action.
Starmer said there was "no silver bullet" in tackling child poverty, and would prefer to wait for the recommendations of the task force. To an extent, he is correct. Child poverty is a complex and multifaceted issue with no definitive solution. But waiting is in itself a political decision, and every month the limit remains in place, another child in the region faces state-imposed hardship.
To quote the Prime Minister, the North East has been overlooked for far too long, and he hopes to plug this gap through the Pride in Place funding. This will see thirteen individual communities in Middlesbrough, Sunderland, County Durham, Newcastle, Gateshead, Stockton, and South and North Tyneside get up to £20m each over 10 years. A further £1.5m each has been allocated to Newcastle, Sunderland, South Tyneside, Gateshead, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough, with local communities given control over how they spend this funding.
One can only hope that this funding leads to meaningful change for the region, rather than throwing money at a serious issue and hoping it goes away. Child poverty has massive generational implications, and should be treated just as urgently as other government priorities. However, any country that allows half its children in Middlesbrough to grow up in poverty has not just failed on policy, it has failed on principle.