13,600 children live in jobless households

MORE than 13,000 children in Oldham are growing up in homes dependent on jobless benefits.

Figures from the Office of National Statistics show the problem is worst in Oldham West and Royton, with 6,920 under-18s being raised in a home reliant on benefits, including job-seekers’ allowance, incapacity benefit or severe disablement allowance.

A breakdown reveals 5,200 children in Oldham East and Saddleworth and 5,740 in Ashton, which includes Hollinwood and Failsworth, live in homes where a parent or guardian is claiming means-tested benefits.

The overall figure for Oldham borough is 13,600, of which 4,090 are children under four-years-old.

Across the country, 2.39 million under-18s live in households needing to claim benefits.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Theresa May said: “This is yet more evidence of Labour’s failure to tackle worklessness and welfare dependency.

“These figures show even before families started to feel the full impact of the recession far too many parents were stuck in benefit dependency.

“We have the highest proportion of children growing up in workless households in all of Europe.

“We desperately need to turn this situation around. The only solution is the kind of radical welfare reform that Conservatives have been calling for.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said the Child Poverty Bill currently going through Parliament will commit this and successive Governments to eradicating child poverty by 2020.

A DWP spokesman said: “Since 1997, we have lifted 550,000 children out of poverty, and there are now over 290,000 fewer children living in workless households, but we are not complacent.

“We know that work is the best route out of poverty, which is why we committed £5 billion to getting people back to work. This is in addition to our welfare reforms which will keep everyone who can work, close to the labour market.

“Investments made since the Budget 2007 will lift a further 500,000 children out of poverty.”

The figures come days after the latest unemployment figures showed the number of people claiming jobless benefits in Oldham has fallen for the fourth consecutive month.