#Labour #announces #plans #lift #children #poverty #politics #live #Politics
Key events
Prime Minister Keir Starmer is about to speak in south Wales. We’ll be sure to post video as soon as it is available but until then, please follow along while we cover his remarks.
Eleni Courea
A perennial head-scratcher for progressives is how to craft a simple, compelling message on the economy. One Labour MP found the answer in a few packets of M&S biscuits.
Gordon McKee, who represents Glasgow South, has racked up more than 3.3m views on X with an 101-second video in which he demonstrates the UK’s debt to GDP ratio using stacks of custard creams and chocolate bourbons.
It may not seem like a major feat when several of the world’s most impactful politicians – Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Zohran Mamdani among them – have used sleekly produced short-form videos to spread their campaign messages with considerable success.
But in the parliamentary Labour party McKee is a pioneer, and the only backbencher known to have hired a digital content creator.
Read more here:
Following on from my colleague Chris Osuh’s story, which sums up community concerns over the government’s “cruel” asylum overhaul, I’ve had this point raised to me by an academic that the child poverty measures still won’t help many immigrant families, currently barred access to benefits.
“This is not a strategy for every child, as the government claims,” says Dr Jonathan Collinson, from the University of Sheffield.
He points out that there are an estimated 382,000 children – including British citizen children – who are in poverty because of the government’s “no recourse to public funds” policy- i.e. withholding welfare benefits until their parent is settled in the UK.
That number will only increase if increase if the government goes through with proposals to withhold welfare benefits until their parents obtain citizenship, which the government also wants to simultaneously make harder to achieve, he says.
“One government department releases a strategy for decreasing child poverty, whilst another creates policy which will consign more children to poverty.”
‘Stop choosing cruelty instead of compassion’ – community groups tell Mahmood
Chris Osuh
Shabana Mahmood has been urged not to “play into the hands of those seeking to build division” by more than 200 community groups across the UK who have described the home secretary’s plans to overhaul the asylum system as “cruel” and “ruthless”.
Last month Mahmood announced policies intended to tackle bogus asylum claims and reduce the numbers of people trying to cross the Channel in small boats.
These included the end of permanent protection for refugees, the escalated removal of families with children whose claims have been refused, and scrapping the legal requirement to support destitute asylum seekers.
The changes would also formally end the automatic right to family reunion for refugees before it was suspended in September.
In an open letter seen by the Guardian, 225 organisations, including charities, businesses, sports, faith and arts groups told Mahmood they rejected the plans.
In communities up and down the country, we are proud to show warmth and kindness to refugees … We know that your cruel new plans do not represent us, our communities or who we are as a country.
You said it was a moral mission to resolve division. We agree. The responsibility to end the divisive politics, racist rhetoric and demonising language of the past lies with all political leaders.
Your ruthless new plans to erode refugee rights and the harmful language used by politicians in recent weeks will only feed the hostility in our communities. We know, given the chance, refugees do so much to enrich our communities.”
Lack of measurable targets among criticism
The chief criticism of the child poverty reduction plan really is the absence of hard targets.
The government says half a million children will be lifted out of poverty by 2030 – a task largely achieved through the scrapping of the two-child benefits cap introduced under the Conservatives, which denied payments to 1.7 million children.
-
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said there was “considerable uncertainty over how large a reduction in measured poverty these policies will ultimately deliver, partly due to genuine economic uncertainty”.
-
Starmer announced the plan last night in Glasgow. Scotland’s Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne-Somerville welcomed the overall aims this morning, but said there was a “lack of ambition” compared to Scotland’s eradication plan where “we have statutory targets to drive down child poverty”.
-
The Conservatives have largely mounted the attack that the £3bn cost of scrapping the two-child benefits cap is spending the country can’t afford. Shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately said: “You don’t lift children out of poverty by making the whole country poorer”, adding that work was “the best way out of poverty”.
-
Campaigners who have been fighting for years to stop the slide of more children into poverty say the spending shows leadership and “genuine long-term thinking”. “[The government] is recognising that the benefits of lifting children out of poverty will be felt for years to come,” said Fairness Foundation chief Will Snell.
‘Concerning inbuilt bias’ in Home Office’s facial recognition technology
And here’s a really strong story from Rajeev Syval, our Home Affairs editor, on the racial bias detected in facial recognition technology used by the Home Office.
Ministers are facing calls for stronger safeguards on the use of facial recognition technology after the Home Office admitted it is more likely to incorrectly identify black and Asian people than their white counterparts on some settings.
Following the latest testing conducted by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) of the technology’s application within the police national database, the Home Office said it was “more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results”.
Police and crime commissioners said publication of the NPL’s finding “sheds light on a concerning inbuilt bias” and urged caution over plans for a national expansion.
Facial recognition technology scans people’s faces and then cross-references the images against watchlists of known or wanted criminals. It can be used while examining live footage of people passing cameras, comparing their faces with those on wanted lists, or be used by officers to target individuals as they walk by mounted cameras.
Images of suspects can also be run retrospectively through police, passport or immigration databases to identify them and check their backgrounds.
Analysts who examined the police national database’s retrospective facial recognition technology tool at a lower setting found that “the false positive identification rate (FPIR) for white subjects (0.04%) is lower than that for Asian subjects (4.0%) and black subjects (5.5%)”.
The testing went on to find that the number of false positives for black women was particularly high.
58 babies died in settings where temporary accommodation was a factor
We’re expecting to see Starmer in Wales shortly but other ministers have been doing the rounds this morning.
Speaking on one of the new measures – making sure mothers and newborns aren’t discharged from hospitals into B&Bs or other unsuitable emergency housing – Homelessness minister Alison McGovern noted the deaths that had occurred in such settings.
“It really, really shocked me to find out that in the five years to 2024, 74 children, including 58 babies, died,” she told BBC Breakfast. “And one of the causes that was attributed to their death was the effect of temporary accommodation and that’s because of poor healthcare.”
She said she would “consider myself a failure” if newborns were still being discharged to B+B accommodation when she finishes in her job.
Homelessness charity Crisis has said this has “the potential to save lives, as we know young children have tragically died in unsuitable temporary accommodation”.
-
The government’s new child poverty reduction strategy reads on page 67: “Newborn babies should never be discharged into B&B or other unsuitable shared accommodation. The government commits to ending the practice of discharging newborn babies into B&B or other unsuitable shared accommodation. We will work with local authorities, supported by robust NHS pathways, to make sure safe and appropriate alternatives are available and used.”
Readers may be aware, going into the weekend, that Edinburgh airport had to temporarily suspend flights this morning due to technical issues.
The delays lasted about an hour. A report here:
Number of ‘statutory homeless children’ has increased by over 100,000 in past 14 years
A bit more context on the issue of families living in bed and breakfasts. As of June this year, the records showed there were 2,070 households with children in England living in B&Bs for more than six weeks.
By law, such accommodation is meant to be used only as a temporary measure in an emergency and for no longer than six weeks.
The £8 million announced is going to Emergency Accommodation Reduction Pilots, aimed getting families in the 20 most-affected councils into more stable housing. There are plans to continue the programme for the next three years.
According to government data, since 2011, the number of statutory homeless children, mostly in temporary accommodation, has increased from 70,000 to 172,000.
This is an all time high – reflecting an affordability crisis, particularly in the private rental sector and a shortage of housing.
I mentioned earlier the latest calls from Holocaust survivors demanding Nigel Farage address the reports of his teenage anti-semitism and racism at school.
The Reform UK leader has said he never racially abused anyone with intent but may have engaged in “banter in a playground”.
But in a letter to Farage seen by the Guardian, the 11 survivors said: “As Holocaust survivors, we understand the danger of hateful words – because we have seen where such words lead.
“Let us be clear: praising Hitler, mocking gas chambers, or hurling racist abuse is not banter. Not in a playground. Not anywhere. When allegations arise about invoking Nazi attitudes toward Jewish children, the responsible response is honesty, reflection, and commitment to truth.”
“So we ask you: did you say ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘gas them,’ mimicking gas chambers? Did you subject your classmates to antisemitic abuse?”
Their intervention follows comments made by Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, to describe the testimony of more than two dozen people as “made-up twaddle”. He called them all liars.
Read more from my colleagues Henry Dyer and Daniel Boffey:
The PM will be at a childcare center in Wales from midday. He’ll most likely speak to families alongside First Minister Eluned Morgan before heading to Cardiff. Meanwhile, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is at a school in the north-east.
A recap of the new measures to help reduce child poverty:
-
£8 million pilot injection to stop families from having to live in B&Bs for more than six weeks
-
Extending the eligibility of those on Universal Credit to receive childcare costs upfront when returning from parental leave
-
Imposing a new legal duty on councils to notify schools and GPs when a child is placed in temporary accommodation
Child poverty is being measured by the UK government on two metrics- income and access to material foods.
Relative low income is what’s used to judge the overall child poverty rate. That is how much income a household has after deducting taxes and housing costs, adjusted for the number and ages of people in the home.
Anyone living in a household with less than 60% of the income of a household in the middle (median) of the income distribution, is defined as being in relative low income after housing costs.
The second measure- deep material poverty– comes from asking families whether they can buy the basics.
Families are asked whether they can afford 13 items identified by the public as the most essential, which cover needs such as food, heating and housing.
If a family is lacking 4 or more of those items for financial reasons, they are judged to be in deep material poverty, says the government.
It takes into account more than just income when people are asked whether they can actually afford something – there’s the cost of items, their overall financial situation, whether they face extra costs due to disability, for example, and if there’s any support they receive locally.
Link to full government strategy
There’s a lot of reaction coming in on the plan – some believe the new elements aren’t ambitious enough and it’s just a consolidation of previously announced measures.
The National Children’s Bureau said it also wanted to see “binding targets” for the further reductions over 10 years “but this level of ambition is sadly missing”.
Here is the full strategy from Keir Starmer’s government, 16 months in, to tackle and reduce the rate of child poverty in the UK.
There are about 4.5 million children living in poverty in the UK currently – a historic high that is a shocking statistic. “Should any of this really be happening in a country like ours?” the PM said this morning.
In 2023/24, there were 4.5 million children in relative low income, 900,000 more than in 2010/11.
There are two million children in deep material poverty – the label used to describe when families can’t afford four or more of 13 essential items, e.g, food, heating, housing.
Charities welcome ‘invaluable’ changes but say it’s just the first step
Poverty charities have reacted positively to the plan, which was originally intended for spring but then delayed as the government wrestled with the fiscal and political repercussions of removing the two-child limit.
The abolition of that cap from April next year will cost £3bn and lift 450,000 children out of poverty. The suite of other measures will help 80,000 more.
The government “has put its money where its mouth is on the manifesto commitment to reducing child poverty”, said Katie Schmuecker of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, saying that the removal of the two-child limit was “the single most effective policy decision” ministers could have made in tackling child poverty.
Under the limit, introduced by the Conservative government in 2017, 1.7 million children lived in households affected by the restriction – menaing one in nine kids missed out on help worth £3,514 a year.
Lynn Perry, the chief executive of Barnardo’s, said she welcomed the plan, adding: “Whist this is a landmark moment, we must also remember that even with these important changes, close to four million children are still set to be living in poverty in 2029. We must work together as a society to change this.”
Alison Garnham, the chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said the changes were invaluable but “only the first step”, adding: “There is much to do and we must now build on this momentum to achieve more tangible change for children.”
Fairness Foundation chief executive Will Snell said the measures from lifting the two-child limit to alleviating childcare costs would “help arrest the deep unfairness of too many children growing up locked out of opportunity.”
“It is now vital that the government builds on this momentum.”
Too many families still ‘struggling without the basics’ – PM
Too many families are still “struggling without the basics – a secure home, warm meals, and the support they need to make ends meet”, Starmer said in the statement announcing the full plan.
“I will not stand by and watch that happen, because the cost of doing nothing is too high for children, for families, and for Britain.
“This is a moral mission for me. It’s about fairness, opportunity, and unlocking potential. Our strategy isn’t just about reversing the failures of the past, it sets a new course for national renewal, with children’s life chances at its heart.”
Families to be offered help to leave temporary accommodation under UK child poverty strategy
My colleague Peter Walker has a full report on the plan, the key new elements of which I’ve pulled out for you below:
As part of what Keir Starmer has described as a “moral mission” for his government, the strategy will include an £8m investment in a pilot scheme across 20 councils with a particular prevalence of homeless families in temporary B&B accommodation, to ensure they are all moved within six weeks.
There will also be a new legal duty for councils to inform schools, GPs and health visitors when a child is put in temporary accommodation with their family.
In a parallel policy strand, ministers will work with the NHS to prevent mothers with newborn babies being discharged back to B&B hostels or other similarly unsuitable housing.
Rules will also be changed to make it easier for working parents receiving universal credit to get help to pay upfront childcare costs.
The new proposals in a strategy that was originally due to come out in the spring are in addition to the abolition of the two-child limit for some benefits, which will have the greatest impact on poverty, at a cost of £3bn during this parliament.
Other recent poverty-related policies include an expansion of free school meals in England, funding for more breakfast clubs and a project to set up a wave of new Sure Start-type family hubs.
Welcome: Labour announces plans to lift 550,000 children out of poverty
Happy Friday and welcome to our UK Politics blog, it’s Frances Mao with you this morning.
Today we finally get Labour’s long-awaited child poverty strategy – which they say will lift more than 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030.
For Starmer, this has been a “moral mission” of his government – the measures include childcare boosts, more free school lunches and a major pilot scheme to get the most vulnerable families out of temporary accommodation.
Too many are still “struggling without the basics – a secure home, warm meals, and the support they need to make ends meet”, Starmer said. He and his ministers will be up and down the country today championing the measures, which follow, of course, the major boost to alleviating policy, which is the scrapping of the two-child benefits cap, announced in the Budget last week.
In other news, we’ll also see how the BBC and ITV respond to Farage’s claims that broadcasters themselves used to peddle racist nonsense. The Reform leader has tried to turn the focus back on those outlets after their reporters yesterday questioned him on his alleged teenage racism and antisemitism.
The Guardian has led the reporting on Farage’s alleged racial abuse as a schoolboy, and since we broke the story a fortnight ago, 28 of his former classmates and contemporaries have come forward with recounts. A group of Holocaust survivors this morning are demanding Farage apologise for his alleged antisemitism.
Recent Comments