Events | 2010.03.27
Labour's failure on child poverty | Theresa May
After years of muddled policies, Labour has proven itself unable to tackle the root causes of child poverty
The chancellor\'s budget statement on Wednesday was more notable for what it left out than what it contained. As usual with this government, it is only by going through the detailed documents published after the chancellor has spoken that we get the true picture. Alongside the usual stealth taxes and other cons, this year we have also discovered details of Labour\'s startling failure on one of Britain\'s key policy priorities: ending child poverty.
Hidden away in one of the budget documents was an admission from the government that it will miss not only its 2010 target of halving child poverty , but that on current trends it will also miss its 2020 target of ending child poverty. The government has now admitted that there will be 600,000 more children living in poverty than would be necessary to meet the 2010 target – and, more shockingly, the figures also show that if current trends continue the 2020 target will not only be missed, but will be missed by one million children.
These figures expose the extent of the failure of Labour\'s child poverty strategy. Far from abolishing child poverty as they claim, the government is on course to leave more than a million children still living in poverty by 2020. This is desperately disappointing, if not surprising. It has been clear for some time that Labour\'s one-dimensional approach – relying on tax credits to mask the symptoms of poverty rather than tackling the root causes – is not working. Child poverty has risen since the last general election, when Labour made a manifesto commitment to reduce it. However, they cannot blame it on the recession as it was rising even before the downturn began. Independent experts from across the political spectrum have warned that the government\'s top-down approach will not work.
Although tax credits have a role, simply focusing on using tax credits to tackle the financial effects of poverty has meant the government has failed to implement a broader strategy to prevent people falling into poverty in the first place. By contrast, Conservatives have long argued that a successful strategy to tackle poverty must target its causes, including poor education, family breakdown, debt and worklessness. We have set out the co-ordinated approach that we would take in government, including radical welfare reform to improve back to work support for everyone on out-of-work benefits, increasing the number of good school places and ending the couple penalty in the benefits system.
Labour\'s failure on child poverty has been symptomatic of their failed approach in other key areas of social policy. Rather than taking action to tackle the causes of crime, or unemployment, or inequality, and trusting the front-line professionals and voluntary organisations who have the answers to many of these problems, Labour\'s top-down response has failed vulnerable people.
As David Cameron has made clear, a Conservative government will be determined to make progress on ending child poverty. It is an important and ambitious aspiration for any government – and a moral imperative as no decent society should allow children to grow up in poverty. With no new solutions in the budget, this week has shown how much work a new government will have to do.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]7/labour-child-poverty-failure
