Tackling Poverty Requires a Joined-Up Plan

Earlier this week the Joseph Rowntree Foundation hosted a moving drop-in session. Their passionate work shines a vital light on the state of poverty across the UK.

Their latest report contains some sobering figures. In 2023-2024, over 6.8 million people were living in deep poverty, with average incomes 59% below the poverty line. By October 2025, 4.1 million people were going without essentials – families budgeting to the last penny, skipping meals, or going to bed cold. For far too many, daily life remains unacceptably hard.

The removal of the two-child limit, a long held Liberal Democrat policy, is a welcome and important step forward. But with DWP forecasting that over 4 million children will still be in poverty by 2029-2030, a joined-up plan is needed to address the wider causes and consequences of hardship.

Across housing, social security, and living costs, we need to create a fairer and more compassionate system:

• Unpaid carers are the backbone of our economy, but under current rules they can lose their entire allowance if they go £1 over the limit. Replacing this cliff-edge with an earnings taper would provide security and dignity for those who depend on it.

• Sky-high rents and service charges are dragging people below the poverty line. The Liberal Democrats will continue to push the government to build the social homes we desperately need and bring costs down for leaseholders.

• Alongside structural reform, we need to ease everyday pressures. This includes cutting VAT by 5% for the hospitality sector to help local businesses and families alike.

  
  

How has it come to this? Two decades of fragmented and reactive policymaking, followed by a pandemic and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, has trapped people in severe hardship. Piecemeal interventions won’t fix a system that lacks long-term investment: you do not feel the advantages of an improved labour market if your benefits are being cut, nor do lower interest rates help if you are stuck in expensive private accommodation.

Across Newbury and West Berkshire, poverty often hides in plain sight. Ours is seen as a prosperous constituency, but that masks the families quietly struggling behind closed doors – parents in work but reliant on food banks, older residents choosing between heating and eating, and young people whose educational prospects are limited by SEND delays and long waits for mental health support. High housing costs in particular mean that even moderate incomes can quickly tip into hardship. The reality is that poverty here may look different from inner-city deprivation, but it is no less real – and it deserves the same urgency and attention.

The UK has the tools to build systems that lift people out of poverty rather than trap them in it. We now need the urgency and ambition across multiple fronts – work, housing, social security, and living costs – to make real change.