Last Friday morning I attended a meeting of the county council’s Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny committee, where one of the agenda items focused on the current levels of child poverty in County Durham. Please go to the following link for details: https://democracy.durham.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=122&MId=13105
The presentation accompanying the report revealed that child poverty in County Durham is on the rise, with almost 28% of children under the age of 16 living in ‘relative’ poverty and 22% living in ‘absolute’ poverty. In addition, over the past five years, the number of school children eligible for and claiming free school meals (used as one of the measures to gauge levels of poverty) has increased by a staggering 50% to 20,300 pupils.
During the time set aside for members’ comments and questions after the officers’ presentation I thanked officers for the report - and I commend officers for their application and commitment to tackling the impact of poverty on families and communities across County Durham. However, I also expressed my disgust that here in the 21st century, in the fifth richest country in the world, we are having to find ways to address entrenched and deepening child poverty when it could be virtually eradicated if the political will existed.
I urged that government must act now to tackle the blight of inequalities within and between regions to make sure that left-behind communities can catch up with the rest - especially now that the latest phase of the pandemic appears to be receding. Government must also take measures immediately to ensure that struggling communities aren’t abandoned again to the mercy of an extended pandemic which has already taken its toll disproportionately in deprived areas.
I also said that it was alarming to be sat here in the 21st century - in the fifth richest country in the world - talking about deepening child poverty caused by austerity and sustained by a grotesquely unfair and disproportionate distribution of wealth to the tiny minority at the top of society.
What I heard on Friday morning reinforced the notion that the government’s ‘levelling-up’ agenda has been exposed as nothing more than pie-crust promises and empty rhetoric. We must bring pressure to bear at the highest level of government to force them if necessary to bring an end to their failed and damaging austerity project, and instead redistribute wealth to areas of need to reverse the impact of child poverty and the deepening regional inequalities at its root.
Make no mistake, poverty doesn’t just happen by accident. It’s a consequence of government policy designed deliberately to marginalise working class communities and hold our people back. Unless and until the government is forced to recognise the extent and impact of child poverty in County Durham - and the role they’ve played in sustaining it with over a decade of unnecessary austerity - our communities will continue to suffer the consequences.
