Government Might Fail to Halve Child Poverty, Charity Warns

A children's charity recently warned that the government will fail to halve child poverty in Britain by 2010 unless it spends another £3.8bn, a leading children's charity has warned.

Barnardo's, one of the UK's leading children's charities, said ministers were a long way from honouring the pledge Prime Minister Tony Blair made eight years ago.

One million children who should have been lifted out of deprivation by the end of the decade will still be in poverty, the charity's research suggests.

Barnardo's said that the number of children living in poor families had fallen slowly but steadily in the late 1990s, but that progress had now stalled altogether.

The charity said the Government needed to invest a lump sum in addition to the £1bn already earmarked for tax credits in the 2007 budget in order to meet the 2010 target.

The charity said the required figure was less than half the cost of staging the Olympics and represented less than half the £9bn paid in City bonuses last year.

But the report did congratulate the Prime Minister for his original "historic and ambitious" target of halving the number of children living in poverty from 3.4 million to 1.7 million by the end of the decade.

Martin Narey, Barnardo's chief executive and chairman of End Child Poverty, said the future Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, still had a chance to continue the battle against child poverty started by Mr Blair.

"He has a unique opportunity," he said. "His actions as Prime Minister could make the United Kingdom a better place for our children."

He said poverty caused children to miss out on what "most would consider essentials".

"These effects can last a lifetime - children growing up in poverty have worse health, worse exam results and, very frequently, will end their adult lives still in poverty."