'Scrap two-child benefit cap to help our poor'

CAMPAIGNERS are stepping up the pressure on the Government to scrap the two-child benefit cap after figures show tens of thousands of young people in the North East are growing up in poverty.

- GRAEME WHITFIELD

The annual figures from the End Child Poverty Coalition show a total of 120,600 children in the region 30% of its young people are in poverty.

The highest levels, 43%, are seen in the Newcastle Central and West constituency, while more than 30% of young people are growing up poor in Newcastle, Sunderland, South Tyneside, Gateshead and County Durham.

The figures for 2023-4 cover the last year of the Conservative Government but still put pressure on Labour, which has made reducing child poverty a stated aim at both a local and national level.

Government sources have in recent weeks been floating the possibility of scrapping the two-child benefit cap, which is widely agreed to be the best single way of bringing hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, co-chair of the Government's Child Poverty Taskforce, last week gave the strongest indicator yet that Ministers could get rid of the cap brought in by the Conservatives in 2017.

But campaigners have called on the Government to "turn pledges into real action for North East children", with the warning that Labour risks seeing child poverty rise during this Parliament unless it moves soon.