Charles Dickens learned about poverty in the least desirable way, by being poor. It gave the author a lifetime interest in the pain it causes. The return of “character” as a critical determinant of poverty to public debate is something that would be familiar to Dickens. He would no doubt deplore its use, especially as a way of dodging the facts. About 1.8m households in the UK are today classified as destitute, meaning they are unable to afford essentials including food, shelter and heating. Yet as Gordon Brown wrote in this newspaper last week, a “wall of silence” surrounds this crisis and limits public discussion. Full awareness of the suffering it entails is lacking.
The situation in Mr Brown’s home town of Kirkcaldy is the worst he has ever seen. In some of its neighbourhoods, 70% of children are living in poverty, leading him to describe the UK as haunted by a level of deprivation “we thought had been consigned to history”. A large volume of research supports this claim. Increasing numbers of children lack their own beds, rough sleeping in cities including London is up sharply, and malnutrition has increased across the country. Last week, a study showed that the austerity policies of the early 2010s were associated with an increase in age-related frailty, particularly in the oldest people – meaning that their health deteriorated more rapidly.
