The shocking and shameful situation of child poverty in our area.

The UK is widely regarded as the fifth richest country in the world. You could be forgiven for thinking that every child in our rich country would be properly clothed, housed, educated and fed. But nothing could be further from the truth.

MP Ian Lavery's Wansbeck Child Poverty Report makes grim reading. In all cases the North East fares worse than the national average with 35 per cent of children in the North East living in poverty compared to a UK-wide figure of 30 per cent.

Just think of that. In 2019, in one of the world's richest countries, one in three children are living in poverty. These children are the innocent victims of a government which has heartlessly and ruthlessly taken away resources. Children do not end up living in poverty by accident.

What makes it worse is many of the families affected are those with no connections, clout or say in their future. This is the worst type of bullying imaginable. Pick on the most vulnerable and wear them down until they feel powerless to do anything about it.

Poverty affects health. And poverty affects life expectancy. The Wansbeck constituency has a higher proportion of children who go hungry in the school holidays, have higher rates of tooth decay. Dedicated and concerned teachers are stepping in to provide the things that parents can't, and the state - for some reason - chooses not to. In his report Ian highlights children whose parents keep them off school because they don't have coats and one child even turned up for school in her grandmother's shoes. Those of you with elderly relatives will tell you what is was like when families couldn't afford to put shoes on their children's feet and food in their bellies. Surely, in 2019, this is not a place where a country like ours should be.

We're being promised spending by our current government as a sweetener to get us to vote for them in the next election. In actual fact they are returning some, but by no means all of the money they took away in a decade of swingeing cuts. I sincerely hope there is no one going to the ballot box thinking the Tories have their interests at heart. Quite clearly in terms of our children and the North east, they don't.

In my role as Shadow Cabinet member for Children's Services I would like to pay tribute to Ian for the considerable amount of work and research he and others have done to produce this report. It presents a stark reality, but we do not have to live in this reality. A Labour government would work tirelessly for a world where all children are clothed, housed, fed and educated properly. This is the least everyone should expect in a modern, developed, rich country like the UK.

You can read Ian's full report at https://www.ianlavery.co.uk/wansbeck-child-poverty-report-2019/