Child Poverty Action Group

Over two million children are in families that are cutting back on food or heating their homes as a result of the decision not to raise children’s benefits in line with the cost of living, new research from the coalition End Child Poverty reveals.

 Low-paid parents can be helped to overcome the greater barriers they face in striking the right balance for their families between work and parenting through better childcare support, more responsive employers and a stronger and more effective social security system, according to a report published today by Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) commissioned by the Webb Memorial Trust.

In response to the Work & Pensions Committee report on benefit sanctions, Alison Garnham, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group said:

 “This powerful report should be read by everyone who wants to sort out the benefit system’s administrative problems or cut food bank queues.

In response to the latest inflation figures, Alison Garnham, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said:

“Today’s welcome inflation figures are simply not enough to loosen the big squeeze suffocating family budgets in recent years.

Responding today to the Chancellor’s Budget speech, Child Poverty Action Group Chief Executive Alison Garnham said:

“The chancellor made claim to a truly national recovery but this is a ‘see no poverty, hear no poverty’ Budget which continues to leave children and the low paid behind.

Supreme Court judges have criticised the Government’s benefit cap for breaching international law on the rights of children. However, the Court declined to overturn the controversial policy, leaving the issue to be settled “in the political, rather than the legal arena”.

 5th March 2015

Responding to reports that a three-child limit on child benefit is being considered, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group Alison Garnham said:

Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has welcomed the partial restoration of central government funding for Local Welfare Assistance schemes (LWAs) - the successor to the Social Fund – and hopes the funding levels of recent years will be restored in the near future.

Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has strongly criticised the government’s decision, announced today, to cut local authorities’ budgets for discretionary housing payments by 24% (from £165m in 2014 -15 to £125m for 2015-16)1

• 1. Discretionary Financial Assistance Regulations 2001 SI No. 11167 p1599

Responding today to reports that the Government wants to impose a more severe benefit cap of £23,000 pa per household, Alison Garnham, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said:

“Let’s be absolutely clear. The benefit cap is at least nine times more likely to affect children than adults (1), and the majority of adults it hits are lone parents, many of whom have children so young even the Government recognises they should not be required to work.