After more than a year in power, Labour has failed to reverse the cuts to social security that have worsened health inequalities and driven up child poverty, an expert claims.
Speaking at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow on 23 October, David Walsh, senior lecturer in health inequalities at the University of Glasgow, highlighted the worsening levels of child poverty in England but said the current government did not have the “political will” to turn things around.
Currently 4.3 million children in the UK are living in poverty, with a higher prevalence in England (30% of children) and Wales (29%) than Scotland (24%) and Northern Ireland (23%).
In 2023 a Unicef report said that, in comparison with 38 other EU or OECD countries, the UK had seen the greatest increase in the number of children in poverty between 2012 and 2021, with a 19.6% rise in the child poverty rate.12
However, …
