Stephen Cottrell is the archbishop of York and primate of England
With all children across the UK back in school as of this week, I am reminded that almost one in three are in poverty. That statistic is shocking enough - but behind every number is a child, and what this statistic means is children arriving at school hungry, living in insecure housing, and missing out on the activities that help them thrive.
I visited a school in the north-east of England a couple of years ago where many of the pupils turned up with empty lunchboxes. There was a breakfast club that fed them on arrival. They were eligible for free school meals, so got a hot lunch. After school, trestle tables were set up in the playground laden with food donated from the local food bank. As they went home, they filled up their lunchboxes so that they could have some tea.
I have rarely been so shocked. This is the reality of child poverty. This is the normal situation for far too many children and families. Childhood should be full of opportunity. For too many, it begins and ends in struggle.
Last week, I spent the morning at the Junction Multibank in Middlesbrough, a town where more than 40% of children grow up in poverty. The organisation brings together charities and companies to ensure surplus goods - clothes, furniture, sanitary products - reach those who need them. In less than a year, it has distributed 1.5m items to more than 224,000 people. The work is inspiring, but also deeply sobering. That so much crisis support is necessary in a wealthy country such as ours should be a source of national shame.
Of course, leaders face difficult choices with public finances. But let us be clear: policies such as the two-child limit and the benefit cap are not neutral. They deliberately hold back hundreds of thousands of children, restricting support worth £3,500 a year for each third and subsequent child in low-income families. This policy may appear to save money in the short term, but it stores up far greater costs for the future. Children who go to school hungry are more likely to fall behind, and those lost opportunities reverberate through their lives as adults - economically, socially and personally.
You only get one childhood. If it is blighted, you may never recover. If so many lives are blighted in this way, the whole of society suffers. There is therefore no route to ending child poverty that does not first end the two-child limit. Scrapping these welfare caps would lift up to half a million children out of poverty overnight.
As a church leader, I often reflect on the moral principles that underpin and guide our society. Surely, commitment to children should be something we can all agree on. But I worry about our commitment to the flourishing of every child when we design policies that deny support to so many because of the accident of their birth order. And even if you think that parents should not have more than two children, what is gained by making the child the one who suffers and store up so many more problems for the future?
We need creative thinking and ambitious action. But above all, we need the will to make the right choices for our children. The cost of such change is real and must be paid for. Gordon Brown makes an interesting suggestion that simply raising a handful of gambling taxes in line with other comparable countries would be a good way to start raising the revenue needed. But if we don't do anything, the cost of inaction - to the next generation and to our society - will be far greater.
Local initiatives such as the Junction Multibank and countless other community and church projects play a vital role in supporting families in crisis. But charity alone cannot solve a problem on this scale. Only government can make the systemic joined-up changes required to reduce poverty and restore dignity.
Jesus said, love your neighbour as yourself. How can we tolerate a society where only some children have such opportunity, and so many have none? In one of the richest countries in the world, the level of child poverty in the UK at the moment is quite simply unacceptable. We can do better than this.
I already see hope in the compassion and resilience of communities such as the ones I visited in Middlesbrough last week, the tenacity and creativity of local church and community leaders, and the generosity of those determined to help. But there is more to do and if we seize this moment, we can turn that hope into change. This must include ending the two-child limit and benefit cap. Other more holistic changes to the benefit system will be needed as well. We must try to take these issues out of party politics and see that it is in all our best interests for children - all children - to have a fair start in life. Because every child, without exception, deserves the chance to thrive.