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Ending child poverty must be only the start
The Covid-19 pandemic has further exposed the deep and entrenched levels of poverty that exists in our country — we need a bold new programme, writes JON TRICKETT MP

TORY Britain, 2020. The great thing about our country is that everywhere you look there are folk organising to help each other. At work, in the community, in churches, neighbourhood groups, trade unions, schools, food banks and clothes banks and universities.

The question is how to tie all this spontaneous activity together into a movement for real change. It is no longer time to play the usual rules of politics. And it’s certainly not the time to abstain on one Tory proposal after another. It’s time to resist.

The statistics are stark: 1.9 million emergency food parcels; 4.3 million children and 1.9 million pensioners living in poverty; 17,000 deaths a year caused by cold housing; over a million households in desperate need of social housing, with 100,000 waiting for more than ten years; 4 million people living below the breadline, despite working, and a 141 per cent increase in people living on the streets since 2010.

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