TORY austerity is driving hundreds of thousands of vulnerable children into misery, a new report has revealed.

Lack of help and support can leave children suffering from issues such as bullying and depression about their appearance, as social media increasingly focuses on images of how they should look.

The Children’s Society, which released the report, said the decline in children's happiness is a “national scandal” and exposes “huge failings for the country’s most vulnerable children.”

The report prompted Labour to call on the government to act, saying: “After nine years of austerity the government’s response to the issue of child health has been piecemeal as it continues to squeeze the NHS and take money from our public health system and schools.”

The Children’s Society report uses key “wellbeing” factors to measure how happy or unhappy children are with themselves and their lives. It found that 219,000 children reported being unhappy with their lives as a whole.

Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth MP said: “It’s shameful that so many children report being so unhappy and this report should act as a wake-up call to ministers.

“Our children’s health should be a national priority, yet after nine years of austerity the government’s response to the issue of child health has been piecemeal as it continues to squeeze the NHS and take money from our public health system and schools.”

He said Labour would develop a national strategy to “tackle health inequalities, attacking the wider determinants of ill-health and putting prevention first.”