A charity tackling poverty has called on the Government to take urgent action over fears that child poverty will worsen when families are hit with a second energy price hike this year.
By April, households could be facing an increase of up to 50% in their electricity and gas bills, as energy regulator Ofgem is due to announce a hike in the price cap for 15 million households, reports The Mirror.
Average bills already soared to £1,277 at the start of October for 15 million households after regulator Ofgem upped a price cap to allow suppliers to claw back some higher costs.
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Now, industry experts are warning that the default tariff price cap could be hiked to £1,865 this year, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under pressure to act on soaring energy prices, which charities fear could push more families into 'very deep poverty'.
Shocking figures released by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), a charity which conducts and funds research aimed at solving poverty in the UK, showed that 1.8m children were growing up in poverty before pandemic.
New analysis from JRF also found that households on low incomes will be spending on average 18% of their income after housing costs on energy bills after April.
It was also revealed that lone parents and couples without children will spend around a quarter of their incomes on energy bills.
JRF said it's worrying findings show that without support from the Government, people already living in poverty are likely to find a sharp increase in energy bills "very difficult to cope with", and say urgent action is needed to ease the pain of the cost of living crisis.
Katie Schmuecker, Deputy Director of Policy & Partnerships at JRF urged the Government to intervene and stop "the rising cost of living to knock people off their feet".
"No childhood should be defined by a daily struggle to afford the basics. But the reality is that many children growing up today won’t have known anything else," she said. "The fact that more children are in poverty and sinking deeper into poverty should shame us all.
"Rising energy prices will affect us all, but our analysis shows they have the potential to devastate the budgets of families on the lowest incomes. The Government cannot stand by and allow the rising cost of living to knock people off their feet. The alarm is sounding loud and clear and the case for targeted support to help people on the lowest incomes could not be clearer.
"But this must go hand in hand with urgent action to strengthen our social security system, which was woefully inadequate even before living costs began to rise. Our basic rate of benefits is at its lowest real rate for 30 years and this is causing avoidable hardship. The Government must do the right thing and strengthen this vital public service."
Director of the North East Child Poverty Commission Amanda Bailey also called on urgent action from the Government to protect "North East babies, children and young people" who are in crisis.
"The North East was already facing a child poverty crisis before Covid-19, a situation made worse for far too many families across our region as a result of the pandemic," said Amanda. "Many thousands are now facing a cost of living emergency, thanks to a toxic combination of incomes which are simply far too low and rapidly rising household bills.
"Today’s report adds yet more weight to the huge amount of data we have on the scale and depth of poverty in this country, and the mountains of evidence on the lifelong and damaging effects that experiencing poverty in childhood can have, with a large and growing number of the youngest children only knowing a life of hardship and deprivation.
Amanda also said that the Government's commitment to 'level up' the North are "meaningless" if they do not result in improving family's living standards.
"If a reduction in child poverty in the North East isn’t going to be one of the main ways of measuring the success of levelling up, what on earth is?" she adds.
"What we – and North East babies, children and young people – urgently need is concrete action from the Government to protect people from crisis now, and meaningful, joined-up plans to dramatically reduce the number of families trapped in poverty in the months and years to come."
