Coalition ”could increase child poverty”

Campaigners have warned that massive reductions in UK child poverty might be reversed by the coalition government and it could have the worst child poverty record of any government in a generation.

According to the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), the child poverty approach between 1998 and 2010 was broad-based, made a significant and long-lasting difference to families with children and reduced child poverty on a scale and at a pace unmatched by other industrial nations during the period.

However, while the ambitious 2010 target set by the last government was missed, if the rate of poverty reduction over the past decade could be sustained, the 2020 target for eliminating child poverty in the UK would be achieved by 2027.

Labour called the findings “yet another nail in the coffin for compassionate Conservatism”.

CPAG chief executive Alison Garnham said: “The verdict is clear that prioritising child poverty across government improved the childhoods and life chances of millions of children and strengthened our economy; but even so, much more needed to be done given the size of the challenge.

“The warnings for the current government are crystal clear. Under current policies they risk wiping out all these hard-won gains. Unless their strategy improves, their legacy threatens to be the worst child poverty record of any government for a generation.

“Some critics of the targets to reduce child poverty say we should downsize our ambition and move the goalposts. But that would destroy the life chances of millions of children and force future governments and taxpayers to pick up the bill for the massive and miserable social and economic costs of poverty.”

Kitty Stewart of the London School of Economics said that without Labour’s changes to the tax-benefit system, there would have been around 1.8m more children living in poverty today.

“Claims that money was thrown into tax credits with little measurable return are simply mistaken,” she said, “[and] the evidence shows that the investment paid off, with future benefits still to come.”

Stephen Timms, Labour’s shadow employment minister, said: “After all the rhetoric the truth is becoming increasingly clear – this government is undoing a decade of progress in tackling child poverty. Ministers have taken more than twice as much from families with children as they have from the banks. With the government’s own estimates predicting an increase in child poverty, ministers cannot claim to be serious about protecting some of our most vulnerable children.”