UK

Starmer and Reeves’ approach is wrong – we can tackle inequality and poverty now!

HubMP

SEPTEMBER 24, 2025

 Vincent Conquest

For all the recent talk of ‘patriotism’, has anyone talked about the fact that one of the biggest staples of living in Britain is just how much poverty there is all around us? The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) estimates that 4.5 million children are currently growing up in poverty – equating to an average of nine children in a classroom of thirty. Most worryingly, poverty rates in the UK have been relatively stable for years now, with successive Conservative governments seemingly uninterested in mediating this problem. The right-wing will have you believe that patriotism is when you wave a flag, while enacting, backing or advocating policies that push vulnerable people – often disabled people, pensioners, and children – further into poverty. But a better society is possible – one where poverty and inequality are tackled for good.

Tackling the structural reasons for poverty in and of itself is not necessarily easy in light of the Government’s commitment to neoliberalism, but there are very simple ways that poverty could be dramatically reduced in the short term. CPAG predicts that if the two-child benefit cap, introduced in 2016 by the Tories, were removed, then 350,000 children would be lifted out of poverty, and a further 300,000 children would be living in less deep poverty. Critics will say that this costs a lot of money, and people should think about the cap before having children in the first place. Even if that argument is taken as legitimate – which it isn’t, not least because more money would be circulating in the economy and boosting growth –  why should children go hungry and be punished? If there is enough money to increase military spending on Donald Trump’s orders, there is surely enough money to support children in the most critical years of their lives.

If this Labour Government were serious about tackling poverty, removing the two-child benefit cap is an absolute bare minimum – so it was very telling as to this Government’s priorities when seven MPs were removed from the parliamentary Party for voting against it. Since then, the pressure on the Government to act has ramped up, and calls for the two-child benefit cap to be removed have grown louder. Indeed, both candidates in Labour’s Deputy Leadership race, Lucy Powell and Bridget Phillipson, have made noises indicating that the lifting of the cap would be an absolute priority – though they both voted to keep the cap last year, so whether this will actually come about is a different question.

CPAG also predicts that 900,000 children in England alone miss out on free school meals. Labour has made welcome moves on free school meals: from the beginning of next year, every pupil whose household is on Universal Credit will have an entitlement to free school meals, benefiting over 500,000 children and saving affected parents £500 a year. Clearly, this is good policy and the type of thing you would expect from a Labour Government, but universal free school meals have to be looked at if Labour are serious about not only alleviating poverty but eradicating it.

As mentioned previously, poverty affects everyone, but particularly already those groups such as disabled people effected by the ‘free-market’s’ structural inequalities. The Government’s planned cuts to disability support may have been watered down as a result of months of campaigning from disabled people and their allies, but cuts to the Universal Credit health element remain. Though we do not have a full idea of what the cuts will look like once passed, we know it will hurt disabled people, pushing lots of them into poverty, and pushing those already in poverty further into poverty.

More generally, racial and regional inequality affects poverty rates, too. 65% of children of Bangladeshi origin and 59% of children of Pakistani origin live below the poverty line, with the highest rates of poverty in inner London, the West Midlands, and the North West. In order to tackle the most basic staples of inequality, poverty in these communities must be reduced, and taking the measures outlined above would be a good first step.

Overall, a wide range of economic redistributive measures are needed to tackle inequality and remove poverty from society. Poverty is not an inevitability, and many people in politics got involved in politics to try to eradicate it. It seems that many politicians have forgotten this fact, and Labour would do well to remember that reducing poverty is a key priority for their voter base – even if that should not be the main reason for doing so.

It should be the super-rich and the corporate profiteers who pay to improve our broken society, not the poor. Remove the two-child benefit cap, expand free school meals so they are universal, and introduce a wealth tax rather than any further cuts to welfare. Bring back universalism and start to build a better society for all.

• LIVERPOOL EVENT: We CAN tackle poverty and inequality. Sunday September 28th, 12.30pm. Join Neil Duncan-Jordan MP, Ian Byrne MP and other guest speakers. Register here.

Vincent Conquest is an Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas Volunteer and Young Labour member.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/53941041@N00/4103261671/ Licence: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed