Former prime minister Gordon Brown is calling for a multibillion-pound programme to tackle childhood poverty.
He is urging Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to use a mini-budget later this year to announce a £3 billion drive to tackle the issue.
Mr Brown warned that without help, the number of children living in poverty could increase to a record 4.5 million.
He published a paper setting out potential emergency anti-poverty measures including bringing back the Sure Start programme, supporting the low waged and unemployed into better paid jobs, and extending the household support fund.
READ MORE: John Swinney: I'll dedicate every fibre to economic growth
Mr Brown said: "The sprawling nature of the poverty crisis - which has tentacles reaching into health, education, work, community, energy transport and more - should banish any illusion that this is a challenge that can be safely led from any one department.
"Instead, a cross-government task force will be required, not something separate from the departments that control the levers of delivery, but a body staffed with senior people embedded in each relevant ministry who then combine to advance a strategy in a single forum away from the usual silos.
"Coordination and administrative support in a comprehensive and integrated way at the centre of government would be one natural way to arrange this.
"But it has to have the chairmanship and thus the enthusiastic blessing of the Prime Minister for it to succeed. Without this level of high level sponsorship and true willingness to take big decisions, so-called 'task forces' can exert disappointingly little force."
The new First Minister John Swinney has said boosting economic growth to reduce child poverty will be a central goal of his government.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel