As the MP for Edmonton I come face to face with child poverty on a daily basis. Child poverty severely impacts on educational outcomes, life chances and social mobility. In Edmonton as a whole, 45% of children live below the poverty line and in certain areas, including Edmonton Green and Lower Edmonton, that percentage rises to over 50%.

Under the previous government I supported the establishment of the Child Poverty Act and the goal of eradicating child poverty by 2020. In 1998/99 there were 4.4 million children in the UK living below the poverty line. By 2009/10 that figure was thought to have fallen to 3.5 million due, in significant part, to investment in tax credits, Child Benefit, jobs growth, lone parent employment and support for services such as Sure Start.

The Coalition Government also committed itself to the 2020 goal, yet failed to introduce measures in the Budget that would have downwards pressures on child poverty and broke the obligation contained within the Child Poverty Act to publish a strategy on child poverty by 25 March. We are still waiting.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that by 2013 levels of child poverty will have started drastically rising again due to social security and welfare benefits cuts that will total £18 billion per year by the end of the current Parliament. The Government's reductions in benefits, including Jobseekers' Allowance, Income Support and Employment and Support Allowance, plus the cap of Housing Benefit and three year freeze on Child Benefit - coupled with high unemployment and the rapidly rising prices of food and fuel compared to incomes - will all negatively affect levels of child poverty.

Whilst some cuts are necessary due to the country's economic situation, it seems particularly unfair that the spending settlements provided to local authorities by the Government for 2011/12 and 2012/13 are less favourable for those with higher rates of child poverty, like Enfield, and more favourable for those with lower rates of child poverty. For child poverty targets to be achieved, the Government must logically target areas with high child poverty and low employment vacancies for job creation programmes and economic regeneration.

Child poverty costs the nation billions of pounds every year. Financially we can't afford for it to continue. But, more importantly, humanitarianly we simply must not let an increase in child poverty be allowed to happen. We owe this to our future generations.

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