Regional Inequalities: Child Poverty

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for having secured this debate. Sometimes we can become numb to poverty and inequality, and we can allow the symptoms of poverty that should appal us to become fixtures in society. Food banks, anti-poverty charities and now clothing banks, although they are great sources of good and bring out the best in us, should not be necessary in 2022, yet in County Durham—as in too many places—the evidence that our communities are becoming ever more reliant on them is all around us. I also read the briefing from the North East Child Poverty Commission, and the figures for poverty in our region are indeed scandalous: the UK’s second highest. That means that in our region, in an average classroom of 30 children, 11 are living in poverty.

Growing up in poverty can have a corrosive effect on a child’s life chances. Their social, educational and health development is likely to be reduced compared with that of their richer peers. Growing up in a poor household can reduce a child’s expectations, and an absence of clear opportunity can reduce aspiration for what can be achieved in life, creating a cycle in which poverty is repeated from generation to generation. Many of us will have witnessed those tragic problems in our own communities. In the village of Witton Gilbert in my constituency, I recently met with volunteers from Children’s Hopes and Dreams, a community group whose food bank and other support activities for children have become a vital community safety network. With the cost of living crisis that is hitting many families at the minute, the work of that charity is needed more and more each day.

However, charity alone cannot eradicate poverty or regional inequality. The Government cannot stand idle and ignore poverty as a natural tragedy; they are not powerless to counter it. The daily decisions of Government can reduce or increase children’s life chances, and as we have heard, poverty is a political choice. We have witnessed this at first hand in the north-east—the region that saw the largest drop in child poverty during the last Labour Government, yet the largest rise since the Conservatives took power over 12 years ago. Consistent policy choices and spending priorities at every level of Government are needed to tackle a decade of worsening regional inequality, which has been exacerbated. We should not forget the view of Philip Alston, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty, who said that the Government’s approach to poverty is

“not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one”.

The levelling-up White Paper should have been the moment at which every lever of Government was seized to counter that tragedy. However, we have been left without a proper industrial strategy for reversing economic decline and, in the opinion of Michael Marmot, we do not have the funding to meet the Government’s goal of reducing health inequalities by 2035. If the Government had committed as much money as they have rhetoric to levelling up areas such as Durham, that goal would be in reach, but sadly, it is increasingly clear that the opposite is true.