The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s latest state of the nation report has said that there is a 700,000 increase in the number of children and older people living in poverty.
Stephen Morgan, Member of Parliament for Portsmouth South, said:
“Fourteen million Britons are now living in poverty as families and the elderly are hit by rising food and energy bills.
Startling figures show almost 400,000 more children and 300,000 more pensioners are living in impoverished conditions than four years ago.
With adult social care and the NHS in crisis, pensioners are facing uncertainty in their old age. This isn’t the world that we promised them. We promised homes fit for heroes, and the Government is letting them down”.
In total four million children and 1.9 million elderly people were said to have faced severe austerity due to rising household costs, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) said.
Debbie Abrahams MP, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said:
“A 700,000 increase in the number of children and older people in poverty is totally unacceptable.
The last seven years of flat-lining wages and austerity cuts, now combined with sharply rising costs of household essentials is a truly terrifying prospect for millions trying to make ends meet. The cuts to Universal Credit, which were not addressed in the recent Budget and mean that ‘work does not always pay’, will push even more children and working age adults into poverty.
Even the Government’s own social mobility commission has resigned over their failure to act.
The Prime Minister should stand aside, and let Labour deliver a £10 an hour minimum wage, end zero hour contracts, transform our social security system and build the genuinely affordable homes Britain needs.”
