Child poverty is the defining issue of this Labour government. Tony Blair pledged to reduce it; Gordon Brown turned that into a target to halve it by 2010 and eliminate it by 2020.
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Poverty on the rise
Child poverty is the defining issue of this Labour government. Tony Blair pledged to reduce it; Gordon Brown turned that into a target to halve it by 2010 and eliminate it by 2020. The latest figures, which show a 100,000 rise in the number of children in relative poverty from 2005-06 to 2006-07, bringing the total to 3.9 million, suggest the target can now be reached only with an enormous increase in spending.
