NINE thousand York families could be left struggling to buy essentials if the Government goes ahead with tax credit cuts, a charity has warned.

Barnardo’s has launched a campaign calling for the ‘lifeline’ benefit to be retained, following signals that they may be reduced as part of a plan to axe £12 billion from the welfare bill.

It said the plans ware expected to be announced in this week’s Budget and it had calculated that 42.5 per cent of York families - approximately 9,000- containing 37.4 per cent or 16,500 of the city’s children, currently used tax credits to top up low incomes.

It said this helped them to buy essentials such as food and clothing for the family.

A spokesman said tax credits, which included child tax credits and working tax credits, were introduced in 1998 as a response to rising child poverty, and since then, the number of children living in poverty in the UK had fallen from 35 per cent to 19 per cent.

He said the Government should instead focus on tackling the low wages and high living costs that drove hardship amongst families, and the charity was asking York residents to email their local MPs.

He added that increasing the personal allowance would largely benefit second earners, often in better off families further up the income distribution, and do nothing for the poorest families, who were workless or already under the personal tax threshold.

Barnardo’s Chief Executive Javed Khan said: “Without this income, many parents could not afford their weekly food shopping, let alone school uniforms and books. With low wages and high living costs stretching budgets across the country, tax credits are an everyday lifeline for British families.

“Children who grow up poor are more likely to be ill, do worse at school and be jobless in future. If as a society we fail to invest in children now, we will all bear the costs in the future.

“Families would be better off if the government focused on tackling low wages and high childcare costs, instead of cutting struggling families income.”

A Treasury spokesman said he could not speculate on what would be in the Budget, but Prime Minister David Cameron has recently promised an end to what he called the "ridiculous merry-go-round" of taxing low earners then handing them money back in benefits.