[UK] 'Shameful' poverty across country

from The BBC

The leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales has said there were still areas of "extreme and shameful" poverty in the country.

There has been record welfare spending but the very poor were often "barely protected", Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said.

He said the church was now providing charitable services once thought of as being the responsibility of the state.

The government has said it is winning the war against poverty.

In a conference speech in Cambridge to the bishops' social action group Caritas, the Cardinal highlighted the importance of charitable work for Catholics.

But he said faith-based groups found it difficult to obtain government funding to carry out such work.

'Precarious' standards

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said poverty was multidimensional, where as the welfare state was "too often one-dimensional".

"There is a safety net, but it is full of holes and increasing numbers of people fall through it," he said.

Catholics should think about helping migrant workers in their parishes who can endure "precarious" living standards but are increasingly making up the congregations in cities, he added.

Chancellor Gordon Brown set out a range of new measures in his Budget as part of the government's pledge to eradicate child poverty by 2020.

And the Department for Work and Pensions said the most recent available data shows there were 800,000 fewer children and 1m fewer pensioners in poverty in 2005 than in 1997.

"We know there is more to do," a DWP spokeswoman said.

"Our strategy rests on three pillars. Firstly, work is the best route out of poverty. Secondly, financial support for those who need it most, when they need it most.

"Thirdly, delivering excellent public services that improve poor people's chances of breaking out of cycles of deprivation."