Child poverty rise across Britain ‘halts progress made since 1990s’

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http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/20/child-poverty-rise-uk-halts-progress-charities-claim



Children playing in the streets in Brierfield in Lancashire where nearly 35% of children live in poverty.

Child poverty rise across Britain ‘halts progress made since 1990s’
Jamie Doward and Toby Helm
Saturday 20 June 2015 18.53 EDT

Child poverty is on course for the biggest rise in a generation, reversing years of progress that began in the late 1990s, leading charities and independent experts claim.

The stark prognosis comes before the release of government figures which experts believe will show a clear increase for the first time since the start of the decade.

It also comes as the chancellor George Osborne and work and pensions minister Iain Duncan Smith announced they had agreed a plan to slash a further £12bn a year from benefits spending. In a joint letter they pledged to attack the “damaging culture of welfare dependency”, and said it would take “a decade” or more to return the welfare budget to what they called “sanity”.

The introduction of the bedroom tax and cuts in benefits between 2013 and last year are blamed for fuelling the rise in the number of families whose income is below 60% of the UK average – the definition of relative poverty.