Figures published this week by the Campaign to End Child Poverty show that more than a third of children in Brighton Pavilion are living in low-income families.
According to the umbrella organization, which includes UNICEF, Save The Children and the TUC, 37 per cent of children growing up in the parliamentary constituency live in a home where either no adult is working more than 16 hours a week or the family is reliant on benefits.
The figure for Brighton Kemptown is even more shocking: half of all children are in the same predicament.
Green Party leader and South-East MEP Caroline Lucas said the figures were a shocking indictment of life under a Labour Government and a Conservative Council.
Caroline, who hopes to become the city’s first Green Party MP at the next general election, said: “It’s pretty clear that life is hard – and getting worse – for thousands of children and their families in this city,.
“Labour promised to halve child poverty by 2010 – and these figures reveal how far the Government is from actually delivering.
“We need to introduce a range of new initiatives to make a practical difference to child poverty and worklessness: free healthy school meals all primary pupils, for example, a roll-out of free insulation to cut fuel bills and winter poverty and massive support for ‘green’ industries to get the 17 per cent of families suffering joblessness back to work.”
“But instead Labour and the Tories are dithering around talking about freezing council tax and bailing out the bankers who got us into this mess in the first place.”
Campaign Against Child Poverty chairman Martin Narey said the figures showed there were “more children than originally thought being failed by the system.”
ENDS
Editors’ Notes:
For more data see:
http://www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/news/news/child-poverty-under-the-micr...
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