News

Child benefit policy forces families to cut back on food and heating

Pastoral issues Government policy
More than 2.5 million children are living in families that are cutting back on food or heating because of the government's decision not to increase children's benefits in line with inflation.

This equates to one in five families, many of them low-income working families, which are struggling to provide their children with the basics.

The claims are made in a new analysis from the End Child Poverty coalition – Short Changed: The true cost of cuts to children's benefits.

The paper has looked into the effect of the policy decision not to increase Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit in line with the cost of living over the past three years.

In 2010, the government decided to freeze Child Benefit for three years and to link Child Tax Credit to the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rather than the higher Retail Prices Index (RPI).

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