WHILE the wealth of the richest has been skyrocketing, poverty has been steadily increasing, made worse by the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis.

Only last week I saw a huge group of people queuing on a road in my area. What were they waiting for? Food parcels from the local foodbank. It was an alarming sight which has become all too familiar in my constituency and across northern England.

But perhaps most poignant is the increase in the number of children growing up in poverty. Indeed, our children’s lives and futures are being blighted by obscenely high levels of child poverty here in the north.