The Labour government could go out of office having failed to meet its target of halving child poverty in Britain by 2010, one of the most-respected campaigning organisations on the issue has warned.
The Labour government could go out of office having failed to meet its target of halving child poverty in Britain by 2010, one of the most-respected campaigning organisations on the issue has warned.
New projections by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, based on current policies and the potential impact of the recession, suggest that the numbers of children in poverty will fall from the current figure of 2.9 million to 2.3 million by 2010 but this will still be 600,000 short of the government target of halving child poverty by then.
Child poverty is defined as children living in families whose income is below £226 a week, which is 60% of the median average of the whole population.
The JRF report warns that unless an extra £4.2bn is spent on raising tax credits the Government will miss the target by 600,000 children by 2010 when a General Election is expected to be held.
The government has allocated an extra £2bn a year to tackle child poverty in each of the past two Budgets, but calculations by the Institute of Fiscal Studies for the report show that figure needs to be more than doubled to meet the targets that are a cornerstone of Labour policy.
Aware that it is due to miss its 2010 targets, the government last month promised that it would introduce new legislation to strengthen its commitment to reducing child poverty.
A new Child Poverty Bill that will enshrine in legislation measures to reduce the proportion of children in households earning less than 60% of the median - about £15,000 a year - to between 5% and 10%.
The Joseph Rowntree research, building on a 2006 report that also called for vastly increased resources to tackle the issue, indicated that the recession may not increase the number of children living in poverty but many will find themselves further below the poverty line as a result of increased unemployment.
Two effects of the recession are expected to cancel each other out. Some children will enter poverty as their parents lose their jobs. Others, with parents in low-paid jobs, could move out of relative poverty, as Child Benefit and tax credits rise faster than average earnings.
The report said: "Overall, it is possible that recession will bring a net increase in children's hardship even though it does not raise the child poverty total. This is likely to raise the cost of tackling child poverty, since it is more difficult to lift children out of severe poverty."
Research carried out for the report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) said it would cost £4.2bn a year to tackle the problem. That could be done by raising the child element of child tax credit by £12.50 a week more than currently planned.
Failing to meet the 2010 target will make it more difficult to reach the 2020 goal of eradicating child poverty. The report estimates that without any new policies to help low-income families, child poverty could rise to 3.1 million - almost up to the 3.4 million level when Mr Blair set the target in 1997.
Donald Hirsch, the report's author, said: "The challenge in a recession will be to build on the progress already made in reducing child poverty. But it is unrealistic to assume that planned welfare-to-work measures will bring large increases in the number of parents with jobs."
"During the recession, those families who remain out of work will need extra money if they are to avoid severe poverty, which can do irreparable harm to children who grow up in such circumstances."
The Conservative shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Philip Hammond, commented that the report demonstrated the scale of the challenge that the government had set itself. "It also exposes the fundamental failings of Gordon Brown's approach, which has been to tackle the symptoms of poverty instead of its causes," he said.
