Poverty

Food poverty has grown in the UK to a point of national health emergency - and benefit cuts are to blame.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the scientists and public health experts said the rise in starvation and food bank use bore the hallmarks of a national medical emergency.

In a letter the group points the finger at the government's benefit cuts, citing evidence from the UK's biggest food bank provider the Trussell Trust:

The poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer, a Guardian study has shown.

The trend is likely to get worse: the Office for Budget Responsibility says that, even though the poorest in the country saw an income rise up to 2012, planned cuts in government spending will see them receive 3.4% less income between 2007 and 2016.

There are three main ways of judging the issue, and all show a downturn in the fortunes of the worst off:

Moving into work does not end a family's poverty, the Children's Society has revealed.

While 150,000 fewer children are living in workless families now compared to a year ago, in-work poverty has been rising as the government's cuts to tax credits bite.

This is a long term issue, with working poverty increasing since 2004 as the value of wages for the bottom half of earners has fallen consistently even as those at the top outstrip inflation.

The new Universal Credit system could help cut poverty, the TUC has suggested, but only by spending more money on it.

Writing in its ToUChstone blog, Alison Garnham says that current benefits policies, including increasing them by less than the rate of inflation, are designing poverty into the system and ensuring the number living on an insufficient income is increasing.

She points out that increasing key elements of Universal Credit, including the value of the child elements or the limit up to which a family can retail earnings, could lift more children out of poverty.