Faith leaders urge Prime Minister to ‘take the politics out of child poverty’ and establish a cross-party commission to ‘eliminate the scandal of child poverty for good’

Letter to Prime Minister also includes calls for temporary universal credit uplift to be made permanent and for free school meal vouchers to be extended

A diverse group of faith leaders has written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson to urge him to 'take the politics out of child poverty' and establish a cross-party commission to ‘eliminate the scandal of child poverty for good’.

Alongside signatories including the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, and leaders of other faiths including Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have written to the Prime Minister calling for the urgent establishment of a cross-party commission to tackle child poverty in England to address their growing concerns about hunger and poverty among children.

The letter highlights that the issue of child hunger and poverty is not a new one but its profile has been raised by the rising use of food banks, the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on families, and Marcus Rashford’s school meals campaign.

As a result, the faith leaders call for immediate joint action -

‘More than twenty years ago, the government of the time promised to eliminate UK child poverty within a generation and yet child poverty has remained stubbornly high under the leadership of all political parties. No one can take the moral high ground, because this is endemic to our economic structure and seems to fall outside our moral imperatives. We can and must do something together to remove this injustice.’

While the letter welcomes the support offered by all sides in last week’s House of Commons debate on the extension of free school meals vouchers, it suggests -

‘… instead of politicising this issue and arguing over individual policies, we urgently need to establish a cross-party commission with the mandate and resources to tackle child poverty in England, once and for all.’

To that end, it sets out key recommendations for how the new commission should tackle the issue, the letter recommends -

• temporary measures in the short-term offering free school meal vouchers during the lockdown to ensure that children in low-income families do not go hungry during the pandemic, especially over school holidays;
• in the medium-term, making the temporary increase in universal credit permanent, extending the increase to cover those on legacy benefits, and committing to increasing working-age benefits at least in line with inflation; and
• in the long-term, establishing a coherent, cross-government and cross-party strategy to tackle the underlying causes of child poverty, including low pay, educational disadvantage, and the shortage of affordable housing and childcare, as well as measures to promote social mobility and racial justice.

Urging the Prime Minister to take up their recommendations, the faith leaders -

‘Urge you to act with decisiveness and compassion, to ensure that children are protected during this exceptionally challenging winter. But we also urge you to look beyond the current crisis and to use this as an opportunity for us to make a collective commitment to eliminate the scandal of child poverty for good.’

For more information, see Archbishops join faith leaders call for cross-party commission to tackle child poverty from archbishopofcanterbury.org