In 1999, the government announced that it meant to end child poverty by 2020. Making progress towards that objective is now the responsibility of the Coalition; how well is it likely to do?

Tony Blair’s pronouncement, made out of the blue at a meeting in Toynbee Hall, was a typical coup de théâtre, and it even surprised his own cabinet. It illustrated Mr Blair’s strengths – reassuring supporters who worried that new Labour had lost touch with their Party’s traditional values and at the same time neutralising critics from the other end of the spectrum. For a generation, inegalitarians had succeeded in identifying the welfare state with scroungers and malingerers but anyone who demonised poor children would simply make themselves look heartless.

This strategy was so successful that, at the general election, every mainland party with Parliamentary representation was signed up to the child poverty objective. In March, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats both voted for the Child Poverty Act, which commits them to ending child poverty measured on four dimensions: relative poverty, absolute poverty, persistent poverty and material deprivation.

In the debates on the Bill, Steve Webb criticised the target it set of having fewer than 10 per cent of children in relative poverty on the reasonable grounds that it would still leave 1 million children in poverty, but was otherwise very positive. The Conservatives were more grudging, but in the end, they also supported the Bill.

Labour failed to achieve the targets it set itself, but it did make progress: the number of children in poverty using the relative measure fell from 3.4 million in 1998/9 to 2.8 million in 2009/10. The Treasury estimated that, if the policies of 1997 had been maintained and uprated in line with prices, an extra two million children would have been in poverty measured on this dimension.

Both Coalition parties have been critical of Labour’s failure, which suggests that they will do better than this, and make real progress towards ending child poverty by 2020.

What will it take to achieve this? The last government’s plans, set out in a strategy document called Ending Child Poverty, involved getting more parents into paid work, plus a set of ‘early interventions’ focused on health and education, including Sure Start children’s centres, the Health in Pregnancy Grant, extended maternity pay and work in partnership with local authorities and regions.

Interestingly, this strategy could be seen as a response to consistent Conservative criticisms that policy should concentrate on “tackling the causes rather than the symptoms of poverty.” Reports have repeatedly shown that the health of mothers and young children and the quality of early years education have a tremendous cumulative effect and early intervention is much more effective than repairs carried out later in people’s lives. Support for babies and toddlers and the health of young mothers and their children are terrifically important.

But I don’t think this goes far enough. While redistribution by itself is unlikely to deliver a durable end to child poverty, it has to be part of the story. This is because work, by itself, is not going to be a durable solution either – even a successful welfare-to-work policy will still leave a significant number of parents and their children out of work. They may be disabled parents who find the labour market difficult to break into, parents of disabled children who don’t have the time or energy to spare for work or parents who are also caring for other family members. Or they may simply be mothers and fathers who try and try to get jobs but fail in the end.

And if the benefits they have to live on are too low, we will fail to end child poverty.

In the debate on the Child Poverty Bill, Steve Webb made this point more clearly and effectively than any other leading politician for a long time.  He said it was the ‘central question’ of the debate: “If there is a goal to abolish child poverty in a meaningful sense, and benefit levels are below 60 per cent. of median, some families will always be in child poverty.” He thought that it was possible that benefits for an unemployed family were “not far off” 60 per cent of the median, but he suggested that the definition of the adequacy of benefits should relate to the level at which people would be in income poverty.

Helping parents into paid work, investing in the health and education of young children and mothers and, eventually, setting benefit rates at a level that takes people out of poverty; that would be a good strategy for ending child poverty.

It has to be said that the Budget was not a good start:

• Freezing Child Benefit for three years is a direct hit on the incomes of children. For some parents, the increase in Child Tax Credit will compensate, but not for those who need to claim Housing Benefit to pay their rent: while CB is disregarded when calculating Housing Benefit, CTC is not.
• A whole series of cuts will hit the youngest children. These include the Sure Start Maternity Grant, worth £500 to low income pregnant women, the £190 Health in Pregnancy Grant, the £545 baby element of tax credits and the £208 a year toddler tax credit planned by the last government. They add up to cuts of up to £1,293 a year in the income of poor families with babies and toddlers.
• About one third of Housing Benefit claimants are families with children, who will be hit by the restrictions in Local Housing Allowance and the ten per cent cut for claimants who have been unemployed over a year.
• Around 12 per cent of Disability Living Allowance claimants are children, who will be hit by the eventual 20 per cent reduction in caseload and expenditure.

It is entirely possible that Liberal Democrats in the government stopped even worse cuts and won the £150 increase in the Child Tax Credit that partially offsets the cuts listed above. But these cuts are not how I would go about ending child poverty. Given the severe criticisms both Coalition parties made of the last government’s performance, something more should be expected of them.

Richard Exell is Senior Policy Officer, Economic and Social Affairs Department, Trades Union Congress.

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