Brown Must Do More To Cut Poverty, Say Charities

Campaigners urged Gordon Brown today to use his 11th and last budget to put the government back on track to meet its target of halving child poverty by 2010. In a letter to the chancellor, the Child Poverty Action Group said it was time for a “different and more radical approach”, after the government missed its interim target of reducing the number of children in poverty by 1 million by 2005.

{mosimage}Tomorrow’s budget comes in the wake of a report by the United Nations’ organisation for children, Unicef, which placed Britain bottom in a league table of the wellbeing of children in 21 rich-world countries. And it comes after the Freud Review recommended new measures to encourage single parents to work, including requiring them to look for jobs when their youngest child reached 12, rather than 16 as at present. In her letter to the chancellor, the CPAG chief executive, Kate Green, dismissed the Freud Report as “an ill thought-out response to complex problems”.

She urged Mr Brown to “prioritise strategies that support and do not penalise parents, protect families who are unable to access employment and ensure that people who move into work access sustainable, well-remunerated jobs that lift them from poverty”.

Figures released last year suggested that 3.4 million children are living in households below the official poverty line of 60% of Britain’s median (average) level of household income, when housing costs are taken into account.

A key change which could lift many families with children out of poverty would be bringing the rate of child benefit for second and subsequent children in line with that for the first, said CPAG. At present, £17.45 a week is paid for the eldest child and £11.70 for the rest, which campaigners say penalises larger families who are often in most need.

CPAG also called for increases in income support, action to improve take-up of disability benefits and improved advice services to help poor families claim the benefits and tax credits to which they are entitled. An estimated £12.5bn in benefits and credits go unclaimed each year.

Ms Green also said the chancellor should ensure that lone parents are not docked income support if they receive maintenance payments from absent parents under the new arrangements replacing the Child Support Agency.

The charity One Parent Families called for more support for lone parents to get into work.The One Parent Families chief executive, Chris Pond, called for more help to get child maintenance to the children who needed it and for lone parents to find and keep jobs. Some 57% of lone parents were now in work, but more support would be needed to ensure that the government’s target of a 70% lone parent employment rate by 2010 would be met, he said.

He called for the introduction of a “work related activity premium”, proposed in the government’s 2006 green paper on welfare reform, which would provide additional financial support for lone parents preparing for employment. And he said there should be a national roll-out of the “in work emergency fund” which helps lone parents who have found jobs to meet one-off emergency costs, allowing them to stay in work.

Clare Tickell, chief executive of children’s charity NCH, called for Mr Brown to use the budget to provide tax breaks, childcare and better benefits for Britain’s poorest families, at a cost of £4bn.

Ms Tickell said: “Britain’s poorest families are being failed by the government, having seen a decline in their annual income since 1997. If this outrageous trend is to be reversed, Gordon Brown must prioritise vulnerable families in this week’s budget, announcing better tax breaks, accessible benefits and quality childcare.

“The government must use the budget to show a real commitment to their target to halve child poverty by 2010, and take a serious step towards changing the lives of those children and their families who are currently overlooked, but who need it the most.”