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4th September 2022
01:32am BST

In the UK, 45 million people are forecast to face fuel poverty by January 2023, and Marmot and Sinha said “millions of children’s development will be blighted” with lung damage, “toxic stress” that will affect brain development, and deepening educational inequalities as children struggle to keep up with school work in freezing homes. Across all age groups, the cold crisis will cost thousands of lives, they warned.
Thousands of cash-strapped households are preparing to turn heating systems down or off when the energy price cap increases, and Dr Simon Langton-Hewer, the president of the British Paediatric Respiratory Society, also says child deaths were now likely.
“There will be excess deaths among some children where families are forced into not being able to heat their homes,” said Langton-Hewer.
“It will be dangerous, I’m afraid. It’s simply insupportable in Britain in the 21st century to have so many people that are fuel insecure.”
Marmot, who is one of the world’s leading experts on public health inequalities, added:
“The government needs to act, and act right now. It’s clear we are facing a significant humanitarian crisis with thousands losing their lives and millions of children’s development blighted, leading to inequalities that will last a lifetime.”
This news comes just as a UK-based thinktank predicts Britain is facing the deepest living standards squeeze in a century, and the cost of living crisis lasting well into 2024.
The thinktank forecasts that three million more people will be living in absolute poverty, and relative child poverty will hit its highest level since the peaks of the 1990s, in a “frankly terrifying” outlook for living standards.
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