Labour pledges to support North East's child poverty rates

New figures show the North East now has the highest rate of child poverty in the country. The region experienced by far the steepest increase in child poverty across the UK in recent years, moving from being just below the national average to having the highest rate of any region in just six years.

Six of the region’s local authorities feature in the top 20 areas where the rates are highest. Redcar has nearly four in 10 children living in poverty.

“The rate of child poverty after housing costs in the North East now outstrips London, which suggests that the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda has a long way to go where child poverty is concerned,” a report by the End Child Poverty coalition concluded.

High levels of debt, financial insecurity and fuel poverty in England’s “left behind” neighbourhoods mean residents will be hardest hit by the cost-of-living crisis, research suggests. Grangetown in Redcar and Cleveland ranks highest in terms of financial vulnerability (42,554 compared to 20,347.2 on average across England.

Read more: Labour announces Levelling Up pledge to help struggling communities

Resolving these issues has been identified by locals as a key part of the Government’s levelling up agenda, but Shadow Levelling Up Secretary Lisa Nandy argued that “the Tories’ commitment to levelling up is dead” during a speech in Darlington on Monday. But she moved to put a Labour stamp on the policy, adding that “levelling up is not dead, not for the millions who voted for change”, and vowed that “Labour is going to meet this moment”. 

Lisa Nandy gave a speech at The Forum, in Darlington, on Monday

Ms Nandy pledged to invest in North East communities when asked by The Northern Echo how Labour plans to tackle the issues which continue to affect the region more than anywhere else.

“We’re going to invest in order to support those young people and to make sure that those impacts and those shocks aren’t felt for a very, very long time to come,” she said.

“We have been calling on the government to bring up benefit uprating because it is now lagging way behind soaring inflation rates. There are measures they could take right now to ease the pain and pressure on families.

“But we’re also very mindful that there are large parts of the country, including here in the North East, for whom decisions to take us out of lockdown caused serious problems, and as a consequence many of our children have spent longer out of school than in other parts of the country.

“That’s one of the reasons why we’ve committed to a Covid education recovery fund to ensure that children who fell further behind during the pandemic have every chance to catch up. Child poverty isn’t just years in the making it’s a generation in the making, and people in Darlington know that only too well, and are still grappling with the decisions that were made in the 1980s.”

Read more: North East has highest child poverty rate in the country

The Labour Police and Crime Commissioner for County Durham and Darlington, Joy Allen

The Labour Police and Crime Commissioner for County Durham and Darlington, Joy Allen, also highlighted the need for greater support for North East families.

She said:“For too long residents living in these areas have markedly worse socio-economic outcomes than the residents of other equally deprived areas. As Police and Crime Commissioner I want to ensure that these towns and their people are not forgotten or left behind. We desperately need a plan to help improve health, education, employment, skills and household income, and the sooner we have a Labour Government the better chance we have creating safer, stronger and more resilient communities.”

But the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said the Government has reduced the Universal Credit taper rate from 63 per cent to 55 per cent, and increased work allowances by £500 per annum. The department said it is effectively a tax cut for the lowest paid in society worth around £1.9 billion in 2022-23. 

A Government spokesperson said: “The latest figures show there were 500,000 fewer children in absolute poverty after housing costs than in 2009/10.

"But we recognise people are struggling with rising prices which is why we are protecting the 8 million most vulnerable families with at least £1,200 of direct payments, starting this week.

“Through our £37bn support package we are saving the typical employee over £330 a year through a tax cut this month, allowing people on Universal Credit to keep £1,000 more of what they earn and in April we significantly increased the National Living Wage to £9.50, the largest ever rise.”

“In addition, we have expanded access to free school meals more than any other government in recent decades, while vulnerable families in England are being supported by the Government’s Household Support Fund – which was recently boosted by another £500million.”

Darlington MP Peter Gibson said: "Labour let Darlington, and the wider Tees Valley down for decades, we know that Keir Starmer dismissed the establishment of the Economic Campus here describing it as ‘giving up’ meanwhile Rishi, Ben, Myself, the other Tees Tory MPs and our hardworking local conservative councillors who incidentally have a better track record of work than their Labour counterparts are working together to deliver a better Darlington and Teesside.

"Towns Fund, T Levels, CPI, Bank Top Station, RHQ, Teesworks, CCS, Airport, the list of projects that are levelling up here is a testament to our efforts to restore our local pride and ingenuity."

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