“The fact is that thanks to the Welfare State and our benefits system, no child in Britain can possibly be said to be living in that kind of poverty — without food or heating — unless their parents are grossly misusing their handouts.”  

(Douglas Murray, The Henry Jackson Society think-tank, writing in the Daily Mail, September 2012)

“Even with the benefits I receive, I find it hard to pay all the bills, and I cannot afford proper uniform or shoes for my son, so he gets picked on at school.”

(Jamelia 28, one child under 14 in This is Child Poverty, Citizens Advice Bureau, 2008)

“I’ve told them I won’t leave them with a childminder…They’re my children. I had them. I should obviously look after them and I understand yes, that I should be working and I shouldn’t be claiming money from the Government and what have you, but I will eventually go back to work and I’ll pay back, in my eyes, what I’ve had from them.”

(Megan, mother of 5 children under 13, Living with poverty, a review of children’s and families’ experiences of poverty, Tess Ridge, DWP, 2009)

Child poverty…in the UK?

This week, Save the Children launched, for the first time in its 93-year history, an appeal to alleviate poverty in the UK. The report, entitled “It Shouldn’t Happen Here”, included the results of a survey of children aged 8 to 16 in 35 schools across the UK and a survey of more than 5000 parents. It reported that “one in eight of the poorest children in the UK go without at least one hot meal a day”.

The next day, the backlash began. And not just in The Daily Mail. In The Times, Ross Clark wrote that Save the Children “should be ashamed of this propaganda” and claimed that the charity had “evolved from an aid charity into a political pressure group against cuts”. The thrust of the argument is that it is wrong to talk about poverty in the UK when famine causes children around the world to die of starvation.

Who is right?

My own family didn’t have HUGE amounts of money when I was growing up. In no way were we on the breadline but I can’t be alone in remembering avoiding asking for things at the end of the month, living in hand-me-down clothes and getting a My Little Pony Castle made of cardboard instead of the real thing (ok, that one might just be me).

From the time I was 12 we were a single-parent family. Dad working in an ok-ish paid job but with three kids to get through school.

But we always had enough to eat. We weren’t cold. We didn’t worry about losing the house. Are there really children in the UK who DO have to worry about these things?

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