3.5 million UK kids live in poverty: Oxfam

A report shows that 3.5 million British youths are living in poverty across the UK, with the figure expected to soar to 5 million by 2020.

The report, prepared by international aid agency Oxfam, is due to be published on Monday.

This is while the British government has set 2020 as a deadline to end child poverty.

The aid agency also revealed that 20 million meals were handed out in food banks nationwide last year, as parents struggle to feed their children.

The report follows a recent open letter by medical experts to British Prime Minister David Cameron, denouncing the rise in food poverty in the country. The experts wrote that British families “are not earning enough money to meet their most basic nutritional needs” and that “the welfare system is increasingly failing to provide a robust line of defense against hunger.”

In April, the Trussell Trust charity revealed that the number of people using emergency supplies from food banks in Britain increased by 163 percent in the past year.

The UK’s coalition government adopted austerity measures in order to tackle the country’s mounting debt and sluggish growth, but the policies have sparked public protests in recent years. Critics say the measures have resulted in a mismatch between stagnating wages and surging living costs.