JULIA'S ANGER AT CHILD POVERTY REPORT

2.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 30th Sep 2008

Julia has expressed her anger at the news that millions of UK children, and half of all children in Falmouth and Camborne, are living in, or on the verge of, poverty.

A report from the Campaign to End Child Poverty, a coalition of organisations including Barnardo's, Unicef and the NSPCC, says that 5.5 million children live in families classed as "struggling".

These new figures show 174 of the 646 constituencies in Britain have 50% or more children living in, or on the brink of, poverty. In Falmouth and Camborne itself, 50% of children are in low income families.

Commenting, Julia said;

"Gordon Brown's promise was to halve child poverty by 2010 and end it by 2020. It is evident that this is a promise the Government have failed to keep in Cornwall.

"Deprivation in rural areas like Cornwall remains a huge problem. While today's report will come as no surprise to people living in the county, the government have failed to recognise the issue, let alone take sufficient action to tackle it.

"Without a range of measures to tackle the unique combination of difficulties that many local families face - high water bills, low wages and high housing costs, these problems will continue to worsen."