Toynbee Hall’s response to child poverty figures and the benefits reform green paper

27 March 2025 – today the UK broke a new, terrifying record: 4.45 million children are now living in poverty.

This news comes the day after the Chancellor’s Spring Statement previewed welfare changes which her own government assesses will push a further 250,000 people – including 50,000 children – into poverty.

Our social security system is a safety net for us all. Slashing it ruins lives and darkens futures for children, disabled people and others in vulnerable circumstances.  

The government’s commitment to ending child poverty is ringing extremely hollow. It should be reversing policies that drive poverty, like the two-child limit, rather than cutting vital support for disabled people and their families.

This follows the government’s proposed benefits reform green paper. We published our response to this on 20 March.

The proposed reforms will slash eligibility for vital support, which will inevitably push many into deeper poverty. Court documents related to the previous government’s plans to similarly scrap parts of the disability benefits system revealed that 100,000 “highly vulnerable” individuals would have been pushed into absolute poverty.

This government has failed to provide any sort of impact assessment so far, which means we do not yet know the extent of the harms of these proposed reforms. However, the indications are grim. For example, the severity of the new eligibility standards means that someone who needs help washing and dressing below the waist and requires supervision to eat could lose out on disability benefits under the new system.

We are alarmed that, rather than considering reforms to the social security net on the basis of the vital needs of the people it serves, the government started from the point of cutting billions to meet pre-determined savings targets. We believe the benefits system exists to provide essential support, not as a funding reserve to be raided to absorb economic downturns.

We urge the government to listen to disabled people and engage in genuine consultation with them to understand and remove harms from their proposed reforms.