Child Poverty Highest In Manchester

23 February 2011, 10:34 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

There are calls for the Government to draw up an emergency plan to help children in Manchester living in poverty.

New figures from Save the Children have found 27% of children in Manchester are living in Poverty. It also found that Liverpool has 23% and Blackpool has 22%.

With unemployment rising and a shake-up of the welfare system, the charity fears the number of children living without the basics will rise unless action is taken.

To measure severe poverty, Save the Children combines both income and material deprivation. The charity wants the Government to adopt this measurement because at present there is no official way to find out how many of Britain's 13 million children are living in severe poverty.

Sally Copley, Save the Children's head of UK policy, said, "Children up and down the country are going to sleep at night in homes with no heating, without eating a proper meal and without proper school uniforms to put on in the morning."

"No child should be born without a chance. It is a national scandal that 1.6 million children are growing up in severe poverty.''

A Government spokesman said, "We are fully committed to the goal of eradicating child poverty by 2020 and will set out the Government's first strategy on how to do this in March.''