The Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has called on political leaders to use the party conference season to produce a “road-map” to end poverty in the UK. Introducing JRF’s report A UK without poverty, Julia Unwin said there needs to be a “seismic shift” from party manifestos introducing individual policies to addressing underlying dynamics, saying “we have to move from treating the symptoms of poverty to fundamentally tackling its causes”.
Alice at Whitehouse welcomes the publication:
The report rightly states that poverty, as a waste of human potential, and a strain on the public purse, is a financial burden the UK cannot afford. Indeed, child poverty alone costs the country £29 billion a year.
Party manifestos are a last opportunity for UK politicians to lay out robust strategies for curbing the rise of poverty before 2020 which, without action, will see one in three children, and one in four working age adults, living below the poverty line.
We need cross-party commitment to a comprehensive approach joining together Government, business, civil society, communities and individuals to transform the deep-rooted structures which keep people poor.
