News

Anti-poverty campaigners are protesting  about government plans to wipe a million children from the official poverty statistics by ignoring housing costs.

The coalition End Child Poverty is urging the government to drop a proposal to change the way they measure family poverty from one based on income after housing costs, to before housing costs.

ECP says today’s official child poverty count of 3.8 million would be immediately cut to 2.7 million if housing costs were ignored.

According to the campaign the government is developing more detailed measure of child poverty but claims it is making the change to before housing costs to bring UK figures in line with Europe. But housing costs tend to be higher in the UK and ignoring the high cost of housing will also ignore a major cause of child poverty.

ECP director Jonathan Stearn commented, ‘To avoid any suggestion that the government is moving the goalposts the secretary of state should today commit to including housing costs in all top line figures on child poverty both now and in the future”.