Keir Starmer should reflect seriously on Frances Ryan’s article (The Tories have created a new poverty – one so deep and vicious it requires Victorian vocabulary, 24 October) before committing the Labour party to adopting this government’s approach to fiscal responsibility, which – as the new Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s research has shown – has doubled the number of people living in destitution in the past five years to 3.8 million, including more than 1 million children.
As an earlier editorial (31 August) advocated, there is a comprehensive, equitable and morally just case for introducing an “essentials guarantee” into the benefits system. This would lift children out of destitution and poverty, which – as Sir Michael Marmot’s review comprehensively evidenced – seriously damages their health, education and welfare, incurring both short- and longer-term personal and economic costs.
