With a new Labour government taking power, the Women’s Equality Party has launched a campaign, created by Quiet Storm, to raise awareness about child poverty — an issue that wasn’t talked about nearly loudly enough during the election — and demand that the newly elected government lift the two-child benefit cap. No child can flourish when they’re hungry, right now, a third of all children in the UK are in poverty, and the two-child benefit cap is directly linked, leaving 300,000 children on the breadline.
The digital campaign doesn’t use political language and instead speaks in a way we understand – the language of food ads. Riffing on Snickers’ tagline ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’, the campaign shows the hardship hundreds of thousands of children face as a result of the two-child benefit limit. It calls on the audience to contact their MPs and hold the government to account for ending the two-child benefit cap.
The collaborative campaign broke on 16 July, and marked the launch of the Women’s Equality Party’s long-term campaign to bring an end to child poverty and the two-child benefit limit.
Sophia Moreau, Deputy Leader of the Women’s Equality Party, said: ‘This campaign is all about shining a light on the crisis that was overlooked time and again over the election. It is shameful that right now, a third of children in the UK are living in poverty. The fact of the matter is that governmental failures have paved a path of destruction bulldozing through our NHS, cutting gaping holes in our local services, and it is women, minoritised groups and children paying the highest price.
Child poverty is out of control, and we cannot go on like this. Every child deserves to thrive. That’s why the Women’s Equality Party have launched this campaign with Quiet Storm to demand that the Labour Party delivers the ambitious policies that we need to reverse the years of austerity that got us here. Scrapping the deplorable two-child limit is the place to start.
Adele Meer, Head of Planning at Quiet Storm, said: ‘In the furore of an election it’s impossible to cut through politics with more politics, so we had to find a way to highlight the almost complete lack of policy on poverty from other political parties. The stats on it are staggering – it’s been 20 years and six prime ministers since the UK last saw a sustained fall in poverty.
The Women’s Equality Party is right to demand that the new government must make poverty a priority. Single parents are most likely to live in poverty, 90% of whom are women. And if we can’t create a society where children don’t go hungry, we will never live in an equal society. We know the Snickers campaign has had a huge impact — bravo AMV — and so if it takes piggy-backing on that to get poverty on the agenda, so be it.’
