"Severe poverty" affects 1.3 million UK children

LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) One in ten children in Britain are living in ''severe poverty'' in families surviving on an average income of 7,000 pounds a year, charity Save the Children said today.

''It is an outrage that in such a wealthy country, parents are struggling to get by on such low incomes and children are missing out on basic things like living in a warm house, having a proper diet or going on a school trip,'' the charity said.

Using a new measure that combines household incomes with adult and child deprivation, the charity calculated that 10.2 per cent of children -- or 1.3 million -- were living in what it called ''severe poverty.'' The government disputed the measure, accusing the charity of producing a ''misleading analysis''.

In a report, Save the Children said conditions were worst in London where severe poverty affected one in six families, living on incomes well below the national average of 19,000 pounds a year.

It said 84 per cent of families in severe poverty could not make regular savings of 10 pounds or more a month. Three-quarters cannot afford to replace worn out furniture.

Adair Turner, the ex-head of the Confederation of British Industry, in a forward to the report said more help was needed from the government.

''As a former Chair of the Low Pay Commission, I became aware of the blight that low incomes can have on many people's lives, including children,'' he said.

Save The Children Chief Executive Jasmine Whitbread said the government needed to invest a further 4 billion pounds to ensure it meets its target of halving child poverty by 2010.

''We can't let these children slip below the radar,'' she said.

''They're the children who are hardest to reach, need the most help and the greatest investment to lift them out of poverty.'' Official data in March showed that child poverty had returned to the rising trend Labour inherited and that poverty across the population as a whole had risen for the first time since Labour won office in 1997.

Some analysts fear the position could get worse as, after years of extra public spending, the government is forced to tighten its purse strings.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said 600,000 children had been lifted out of poverty since 1997.

Measures announced in the last budget would raise a further 200,000 children out of poverty.

''Save the Children are right to join us in raising this important issue, but unfortunately, this kind of misleading analysis does not help genuine understanding of the problem,'' a DWP spokesman said.

''Experts agree that it is very difficult to measure 'severe' poverty in any reliable way, not least because many families recorded as having little or no regular 'income' are not in fact poor.

''By contrast, our methodology for measuring poverty is the one used and recognised internationally.'' REUTERS RJ RK0918