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A councillor has been ordered to apologise after claiming "no kids are dying in Stockton" and saying all children in the town are “physically fit”.

Cllr Andrew Stephenson told Stockton Town Hall he couldn’t understand council funding being given to school holiday hunger programmes, during a heated budget debate last night.

Stockton Council put £50,000 into a programme last summer to help youngsters and families get hot meals before they went back to school.

But after responding to criticism of his party on Wednesday evening, the Conservative hit out at cries from council opponents saying kids were dying in the borough.

Cllr Stephenson said: “No kids are dying - no children are obese in Stockton town centre - they’re physically fit.

“That’s why when Cllr (Jim) Beall said he was going to do this hunger thing during the school break, I thought, what is he talking about?”

(Image: Dave Charnley Photography)

“Get a heart,” cried Cllr Beall.

Figures from the “End Child Poverty” group show 37.4% of Stockton borough's youngsters are deemed to be living in poverty.

However, the report from the Stockton Local Children’s Safeguarding Board has updated the figures - showing 34% of children were shown as in poverty after housing costs were taken into account.

This compared to 35.6% of youngsters across Teesside and 30% nationally.

Council statistics from 2019 also show Stockton town centre ward is the most deprived place in the borough - with an above average number of pupils eligible for free school meals.

The ward also scores worse than the England average for numbers of mothers who smoke during pregnancy, low birth weight babies, mothers who breastfeed, children who are “not ready” for school and 11-year-olds who are classed as obese.

Cllr Lisa Evans, cabinet member for children and young people, invited Cllr Stephenson to attend some of the programmes the council funded during the school holidays.

The Labour member added: “I’d like to invite you along to have a look at how many of them are obese and how many of them need that meal.

“I hope you take me up on the offer, come back to this chamber and apologise to the children out there that need that meal in the school holidays."

The heated exchange came ahead of a vote to increase council tax by 3.9% in April.

After the meeting, Judith Cavanagh, from the End Child Poverty coalition said the “uncomfortable reality” was that more children were “trapped in poverty” on Teesside.

Ms Cavanagh added: “It leaves them with worse physical and mental health than their peers, doing less well in school and with fewer opportunities in the future.

“We would urge any local or national politician who is unconvinced by the levels and impact of child poverty to go out into their communities and hear directly from families caught up in poverty, of how difficult it is to break free from and how distressing it is to see their children unjustly face barriers that their peers don’t.

“Without this we will not get the changes to national policies on welfare, housing or pay that are needed to release the 4.1 million children that the government says are living in the grip of poverty in the UK today.”