Gordon Brown demands urgent action on child poverty left behind by 14 years of Tories

The food bank count in Tory Britain has rocketed from 35 in 2010 to 2,600 today, issuing more than three million parcels a year. Now there’s not just food banks but clothes banks, bedding banks, hygiene banks, furnishings banks, and baby banks too.

Scotland has led the way with the multibank that started in Fife with help from the largest retailer, Amazon, to the smallest. It is now providing around £20m worth of clothes, bedding, toiletries and furnishings as well as food to families in need.

In the last few months satellite hubs have opened in Dundee, Edinburgh and Perth with plans to cope in the west of Scotland soon.

There’s a good reason why charity has had to expand to take the place of the social security system. Food banks have replaced Universal Credit as the last line of defence against destitution for the generation that have been born and are growing up in austerity Britain.

Look into the eyes of some of the youngest Scots and it'll quickly become apparent there's a crisis depriving them – austerity’s children - not just of basic necessities like clothes and medical care but, most tragically, of hope.

A child I know of in Fife sleeps on the sofa one night in three as he and his two brothers take turns trading the comfort of the small couch for the discomfort of a cold, hard floor.

Every week a secondary school teacher I know hands out toilet rolls to her class, so worried is she about families unable to afford basic hygiene goods.

A school I know has introduced a launderette so worried is the headteacher that the mothers she knows cannot afford the washing machine needed to keep their children clean.

It’s other basic goods like fridges and cookers that many families don’t have. Recently the multibank provided a microwave to a young mum who had nothing, and that was life changing.

And when a fire destroyed all the worldly goods of a number of other families, the multibank was able to step in.

But at an age when their whole life is in front of them and they should be able to dream of a successful future ahead, children should not be deprived of hope.

And while their stories are unlikely to make the front page of any newspaper, these are the increasingly common stories gripping the country - a poverty crisis that has been creeping up and is still careening upwards.

Even after the introduction of its own child payment by the Scottish Government, child poverty remains at record levels and is still the most urgent social issue across the country.

Tonight, and every night, I estimate that 100,000 Scottish children have no bed of their own on which to sleep. Nearly 300,000 children are skipping meals due to lack of food.

Almost one child in every three across our country Is officially in poverty and even more children - 500,000 children - don’t have an adequate standard of living and are left behind, missing out because they lack the money to join in the activities their school friends enjoy.

Their fates are tied to the stocks of food banks that are themselves now struggling to make ends meet. Their hardships are a stain on the soul of our country and the sorrows of millions of desolate children will remain forever on our country’s conscience until action is taken.

Going around the country, I have seen houses without heating, bedrooms without beds, kitchens without kitchen utensils, floors without floor coverings, and even toilets without toilet rolls.

And I see charities and food banks struggling to cope — short of cash as generous donors who have given a little to those who have nothing find they are out of cash.

This year is actually worse than Covid or the heating crisis years. In March, we saw the end of emergency payments, and September will see the end of the household support fund — the last line of defence against destitution.

Scotland is better than this. That’s why Labour is committed to a root and branch review of the universal credit system that has produced the two-child rule, the bedroom tax, the benefits cap, the housing benefit limit, and the deductions taken every month from half its claimants — deductions for loans that have to be taken out in the transition to the benefit and make the department of work and pensions the biggest debt collector in the country.

We have to quickly restore children’s services like Sure Start that has been savagely cut under the Tories. That demands all levels of government – local, Scottish and UK – to cooperate in the interests of children.

That’s why, some months ago, I and others proposed a UK wide £1bn children’s fund - a fund financed by social investors, where the government pays out based on results to fund services from a revived Sure Start for the under-fives and breakfast clubs to youth spaces and multibanks.

For 14 years, children's support has gone into reverse as a result of Conservative neglect.

It's time now to say that instead of developing only some of the potential of some children in some parts of the country, we will develop all of the potential of all children in all parts of the country. At a time of profound political division, that’s something we all can get behind.

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