London has 3 of 10 poorest areas

Three of Britain's 10 poorest constituencies are in London, a child poverty study shows today.

Camberwell and Peckham, Hackney South/Shoreditch and Bethnal Green and Bow are identified as the capital's most seriously deprived areas. However, Glasgow constituencies occupy the three worst places in the table.

The other poverty areas are Birmingham Ladywood, Manchester Central, Glasgow Bailleston and Liverpool Riverside. The United Nations rating system takes account of life expectancy, unemployment, income and illiteracy.

The list is in a new report by the Child Action Poverty Group (CPAG), which calls on the Government to do more to tackle poverty.

Martin Barnes, CPAG director, said the Government's pledge to eradicate child poverty had not gone far enough, and there remained a widely held view that poverty was not a serious problem.

"The poverty of today is often forced behind closed doors - driven there by stigma, isolation and embarrassment," he said.

Although Britain has the fourth largest economy in the world, 13 million people live in income poverty.

The wealth divide is greater than ever, and four million children live in poverty compared with 1.4 million in 1979, the report says.