THERE has been a “shocking” widening of the life expectancy gap between northern and southern England since the early 1990s, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported yesterday.

Boys born in Blackpool in 2012-14 will only live to 74.7, the ONS estimated, due to harsher inequalities relating to poverty and health.

Counterparts from families living in the west London borough of Kensington and Chelsea meanwhile will live to 83.3, benefitting from comfortable lifestyles funded by average salaries of more than £100,000.

Girls born during those three years in leafy Chilterns, a Buckinghamshire suburb of London, have the longest life expectancy at 86.7.

But in Middlesbrough, girls will barely reach their 80th birthday.

The industrial town, where 35 per cent of children grow up in poor families, ranks 16th in a list of local authorities that have the highest percentages of young people experiencing hardship, according to charity End Child Poverty.

“Persistent poverty” is the root cause of a “damning and gross indictment” on the town, Middlesbrough MP Andy McDonald told the Star.

Mr McDonald, who campaigned against the closure of the town’s SSI steel works, added that he has no faith in the Tories after they rejected pleas last month to renationalise the plant to save 1,700 jobs.

He continued: “The Tory attacks on family budgets through tax credit cuts and their callous abandonment of steel workers and their communities gives me little faith that the government has the political will to respond to the shameful inequalities existent in Britain.”

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady criticised the government for overseeing a “postcode lottery” with residents of richer areas gaining tens of thousands of pounds in state pension payments as the populace of poorer regions die young.

The state pension age for women born on or after April 6 1953 will rise from 60 to 65 from 2016.

The age for both sexes will then increase to 66 from December 2018, and to 68 by the 2030s.

Ms O’Grady added: “Ministers need to realise that further rises in the state pension age risk making these inequalities worse.”

Babies living in wealthier regions can expect to live up to five years longer compared to 20 years ago, according to ONS statistics collected in 1991-93.

The Department of Health failed to respond to repeated requests from the Star to comment.