Hana Rajabally talks to campaigners tackling child poverty in London

Sadiq Khan (credit GLA) — Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has introduced measures to tackle child poverty (credit GLA)

Charities fighting against child poverty in London have renewed their calls for the two-child benefit to be scrapped following the release of figures which reveal staggering levels of inequality within the nation’s capital.

The newly released data was compiled by the End Child Poverty coalition, which is made of 120 organisations including child welfare groups, social justice groups, faith groups, trade unions and other organisations who campaign for a UK free of child poverty.

The data shows the massive discrepancy in rates of child poverty within London, with 48% of Tower Hamlets’s children living in poverty, and 42.6% in Hackney, whilst the figures only comes to 12.4% in Richmond-upon-Thames. The average rate of child poverty across London is 31.7%.

Katherine Hill is the Strategic Project Manager of 4in10, an independent campaigning organisation with more than 450 members including food banks, baby banks, community centres and charities that aim to fight child poverty in London.

Katherine said: “The data doesn’t surprise us. We know that child poverty has been holding around similar rates for some time in London. It’s not a shock to find this out.”

Katherine explained that the figures in the data reflect London house prices as one of the underlying causes of child poverty in the UK’s capital city.

She said: “The main drivers of child poverty in London are really around how expensive it is to live here. So house cost figures are what really impacts the data on child poverty in London. If you look at the same figures with housing costs taken into consideration, London doesn’t stick out from the national data in the same way.”

“But in certain parts of London you can really see the effect that high housing costs have as far as the main underlying causes of these high levels of child poverty.”

Katherine also mentioned other London-specific factors such as high childcare costs, with childcare in London found to be up to a third higher in London than the rest of the UK according to a study conducted by London Assembly Economy Committee earlier this year.

The data reveals that inequality in London is more pronounced than anywhere else in the country, with the 35.6% difference between the percentage of children living in poverty in the local authorities Tower Hamlets and Richmond-on-Thames being almost nine percentage points higher than the second largest difference within the UK, which is the West Midlands at 26.7%

However, Katherine cautioned against drawing any firm conclusions on the varying levels of poverty across London, emphasising that even boroughs with apparently low levels of poverty still have much work to do to help kids in families struggling to make ends meet. After all, even the lowest figure of 12.4% in Richmond still reflects a grim reality of more than one in 10 children in the borough living underneath the poverty line.

Katherine stressed: “What you probably find if you went down to ward level is that there is also quite a lot of inequality within say a borough like Richmond. So you might get an overall figure that doesn’t show the full picture. London is very unequal down to streets, as well.

“One of the things we’re bringing attention to as an organisation is that poverty is across London and there aren’t any boroughs that should think they’re off the hook because they’ve got a low level of poverty – they will know that there are families who are suffering in their borough.”

When the results of this latest data are combined with End Child Poverty coalition’s previous work on the impact of the two-child benefit cap on families, there appears to be a clear correlation.

In Tower Hamlets, the local authority identified as having the highest rate of child poverty last year, 19% of children are living in a family impacted by the two-child cap, which is the 5th highest figure for all local authorities in the UK.

In Hackney, where 42.6% children were living in poverty in 2022/3, 23% of children are living in families impacted by the two child benefit cap, which represents the highest total in the UK.

Outside the capital in Birmingham, which had the second highest percentage disparity in the percentage of children living in poverty, 20% of children live in families affected by the two child benefit cap, providing greater evidence of this apparent link between this policy and the numbers of children living in poverty across the UK.

In response to this finding, Katherine said: “The impact of the two-child benefit cap is really important to point out. The policy is really pushing particularly large families into poverty and also deeper into poverty as well.

“What we’ve also seen is that over time children have slipped further below that line and in some parts of the country, such as the constituencies that have a very high level of poverty, not only will lots of children be experiencing poverty but they will be experiencing deep poverty as well.”

The poverty line is a fixed measure of below 60% of total median household income after housing costs for that year, and households falling deeply under the 60% of the median household income constitute as being in deep poverty.

Katherine echoed End Child Poverty Coalition and Child Poverty Action Group’s calls for the two-child benefit cap to be scrapped, but emphasised that poverty in London must be tackled locally as well as by Westminster.

She told Barnet Post: “In terms of what we want, we want two things. We’ve been asking the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and the GLO for some time for a child poverty strategy for London to look at the impact that child poverty has on children and on what can be done across the city.

“What these figures show is huge inequality, but London is also a very wealthy city, the sixth wealthiest city in the world. So it’s also about how the city redistributes wealth, how the city addresses poverty.”

“Things like the two child benefit cap are made at Westminster, UK government level. We absolutely want to see that cap scrapped, but we also feel that there is a role for the Mayor of London, particularly when thinking about things like housing.”

Stressing the need to develop a strategy to address the housing crisis, which ensures that there are enough houses that are built for larger families in the areas where they need to be and that are truly affordable, Katherine said that tackling the housing crisis will do much to help alleviate child poverty in London.

Although she applauded London mayor Sadiq Khan on his measures to address child poverty such as providing free school meals to all primary school aged children in London, she said that much more needed to be done, especially when considering the fact that there are currently 86,000 children living in temporary accommodation in London, who don’t have any home at all.

Katherine explained that the situation is so dire that charities of all types are having to bear the brunt of the cost-of-living crisis and provide help for struggling families in London.

She said: “Baby banks report the highest level of referrals. There’s hugely more demand than they can often meet. Lots of charities that run youth clubs are having to offer substantive snacks or meals as well because they know that children attending might not be getting fed at home. So even charities that haven’t got ‘food bank’ on their label are having to respond to very basic level needs.”

The strategic project manager told Barnet Post that her team has also heard from the network that teachers are having to put their hands into their own pockets to provide uniforms for students.

She concluded: “We need affordable housing, affordable childcare, we need decently paid work. That’s why we’re calling for a strategy, because there are so many different aspects. All these things need to come together to create a more equal society and reduce that inequality that exists as these figures have highlighted.”

Although 4in10 wrote to Sadiq Khan after he was re-elected as London Mayor back in May, there has not been any acknowledgement of their letter as of yet. And despite the assurances of the newly elected Labour Party Prime Minister Keir Starmer on plans to reduce child poverty across the UK, he has remained steadfast in refusing to commit to scrapping the two-child benefit cap despite continuing pressure from campaigners to do so.

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