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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Jessica Murray Social affairs correspondent

Children in England ‘living in almost Dickensian levels of poverty’

child gripping a scruffy toy
Dame Rachel de Souza said children shared harrowing accounts of hardship in a new report on child poverty. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Children in England are living in “almost Dickensian levels of poverty” where deprivation has become normalised, the children’s commissioner has said, as she insisted the two-child benefit limit must be scrapped.

Young people said they had experienced not having enough water to shower, rats biting through their walls, and mouldy bedrooms, among a number of examples in a report on the “crisis of hardship” gripping the country.

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