I AM curious as to why we as a society are not more outraged at the current prevalence of poverty in our society, particularly as poverty levels are expected to increase.

Under one measure, 20 per cent of children in Cumbria are in poverty. Food banks are heavily used and many people just can't afford to heat their homes properly. Yet we don't hear very much about poverty.

In South Lakeland we have more than 2,000 children who are considered to be in poverty (after housing costs) and the number is expected to increase materially in the next four years. This is not just disgraceful in a wealthy society like ours, it is also a dreadful waste of resources (If you want to check the statistics, have a look at www.endchildpoverty.org.uk).

Many of the children in poverty are in households where there is at least one income earner. So poverty is not directly related to unemployment. Indeed if it was, we would have a very low level of poverty, as we have a low level of unemployment in the district. Actually our issue is that wages are too low, and the benefits system is not adequate.

I am not only horrified and embarrassed by the anxiety, stress, and malnutrition that poverty can cause, I am also shocked at the wastefulness. Children born in poverty have significantly less educational achievement, shorter lifespans, and less opportunities in adulthood. We talk about wanting a highly skilled population and then we condemn so many of our children to suboptimal life chances.

I also suspect that if people had better opportunities, we might see less crime.

But faced with these facts we seem to be legislating in the wrong direction. I have just seen an analysis by the Child Poverty Action group and the National Union of Teachers. This analysis shows that under government proposals, schools with the poorest children face significantly greater financial cuts per pupil than those schools with the most affluent pupils.

[Primary schools with the most deprived pupils are set to lose £519 per pupil on average while the most deprived secondary schools face reductions of £757 per pupil. This compares with £355 losses per pupil for the least deprived primary schools and £476 per pupil for the least deprived secondary schools . Source: FT, April 18]

Why are we not making more fuss about this?

It is not as if there are no solutions. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently wrote an excellent paper entitled: "we can solve poverty in the UK" in which it laid out a series of sensible recommendations to alleviate the effects of poverty on our citizens. Yet it got hardly any attention and minimal political take-up.

Is this because we assume that the poor will always be with us, or that we just think it is too hard a problem or because we see the threat of poverty as an inducement to hard work?

We are all directly and adversely affected by high levels of poverty. I am not sure why it is that we do not express our anger more vocally. Perhaps if we did, ideas like those of the Rowntree Foundation would attract more attention.