Cold homes will cost children’s lives and cause long-term damage, warn experts

Winter humanitarian crisis' will damage children's lungs and brain development

• UK households' spending power to drop by 3,000, warns thinktank

Cold homes will damage children's lungs and brain development and lead to deaths as part of a significant humanitarian crisis" this winter, health experts have warned.

Unless the next prime minister curbs soaring fuel bills, children face a wave of respiratory illness with long-term consequences, according to a review by Sir Michael Marmot, the director of University College London's Institute of Health Equity, and Prof Ian Sinha, a respiratory consultant at Liverpool's Alder Hey children's hospital.