On Monday, on the front page of his newspaper, we read that the recent revisions to the government’s planned cuts to personal independence payments (pip) will lift 50,000 children out of poverty. On Tuesday, Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner warned that too many children in our country ( still the 6th richest in the world. https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/where-uk-ranks-among-world-160000783.html) are living in almost “almost Dickensian levels of poverty”. By April 2024, 4.5 million of our youngest citizens were experiencing deprivation that would sicken the founders of the welfare state. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/27/children-poverty-government-benefit-welfare-cuts-uk
You won’t see them on Tik Tok -so let me use words to take you through these sadlands. I go there, have seen some shocking stuff. Cried. Come into Jo’s one bedroomed flat in a tower block. She’s raising her 3 kids there, one just eleven months old. He was conceived when Jo was violently raped by her husband. He is in prison for other crimes. She left her home town to protect herself and the kids. I have changed her name. (We first met when she tried to steal same nappies in a supermarket. I told security staff she was with me and paid for them. I now take them nappies as well as sanitary napkins for the oldest, a girl. Jo is always grateful, but I see anger and humiliation in her blue eyes.)
For her, the 2 child benefit limit has been the cruellest cut. The kids never have birthday celebrations, treats or breaks. Their clothes and faces are worn. They look listless. They can only shower once a week, and even then, the water trickles, sometimes warm, often cold. The windows don’t open, so there is no ventilation. You see mouldy patches. The older kids, one 12, one 15, share the double bed. The mum and toddler sleep on an old mattress. A few broken toys are on the floor. They eat tinned food most days. Cooking costs too much. Jo, worked in the local supermarket till the third child was born. Her mother took care of the older ones, but now is too far away to help. Jo gets no child benefit for the youngest boy who has eczema. His little arms are bleeding, making him irate. Jo is dreading the summer hols. In school, some teachers were handing them food vouchers, washing their clothes or giving them books.
The commissioner states categorically that such kids need, ‘a safe home that isn’t mouldy or full or rats, with a bed big enough to stretch out in, ‘luxury’ food like bacon, a place to do homework, heating, privacy in the bathroom and being able to wash, having their friends over, and not having to travel hours to school.’ The most deprived kids are fatalistic and have ‘worryingly low expectations for what they should be entitled to’. Who voted for such planned degradation of the younger generations? What future awaits a nation which does that?
Never forget that Conservative ministers, with lavish lifestyles and publicly funded expenses, restricted child tax credits and benefits to two kids per family. The Child Poverty Action Group estimates 109 children are pulled into poverty every day by the limit. The commissioner wants the limit scrapped. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates reversing the policy would lift 500,000 children out of relative poverty. That’s 450,000 more than the number saved by the pip U turn.
Poverty is always the result of political choices. Starmer is spending billions on US jets which will carry US nuclear bombs and wanted to cut disability benefits . If the latter had gone through, the savings would have been minimal. He wanted to show his party was now tough on welfare. MPs who rebelled against these measures believe in the original party mission.
Sure Start was brought in by Blair in 1999. It too was driven by political passion. He believed everyone deserved a good childhood and decent education. The transformative programme set up hubs in deprived areas proving breakfast clubs, nurseries in deprived neighbourhoods, parenting training, essential help and advice to disadvantaged families. The Institute for Fiscal Study concludes that Sure Start greatly improved educational attainments and motivation and reduced depression and anxiety. Michael Gove and other Tories loathed the initiative and did all they could to wreck it.
The education secretary Bridget Phillipson, is bringing back Sure Start, renamed Best Start. This, too, is a political decision, but a damned good one. One thousand centres, properly funded -they say- will be rolled out across the country. The right will shriek about the cost. Let them. It’s a proven pathway to save left-behind children. In the next decade, child poverty could become a nightmare that passed. Because politicians cared about them. That’s the hope.
Published in the I paper in July 2025