Goal to eradicate child poverty will be missed, says Milburn

10 Jul 12
There is ‘not a snowball’s chance in hell’ that the government will reach the statutory target to eradicate child poverty by 2020, former Labour minister Alan Milburn said today.
By Richard Johnstone | 10 July 2012

There is ‘not a snowball’s chance in hell’ that the government will reach the statutory target to eradicate child poverty by 2020, former Labour minister Alan Milburn said today.

Appearing before the education select committee in a pre-appointment hearing as the government's preferred candidate to chair the new Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, Milburn said that the government should ‘publicly acknowledge’ the target will be missed.

The target was enshrined in the Child Poverty Act of 2010, but Milburn said that on current trends, ‘it’s not going to be 2020 when we abolish child poverty, it will be 2027’.

An earlier target for no more than 1.7 million children to be living in households officially classed as being in poverty by 2010 has already been missed by 600,000. A household is defined as being in poverty if its income is below 60% of median levels.

Milburn added: ‘I think it is time for all political parties to put up or shut up. I think there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that we will reach the 2020 target. I think that’s privately acknowledged, and should be publicly acknowledged.’

Asked whether the Act should be repealed as a result, he said that was ‘a question for the government’, but added: ‘I wouldn’t repeal the Act. I would set out what the plan is to hit the target and by when, and I don’t think that has happened under any government.

‘You have annualised incremental progress, but what there hasn’t been is a working back of where you want to get to.’

He added there was ‘a danger that if you say the target is never going to be met, it takes the pressure off to meet it’.

However, he said that ‘some incremental objectives’ should be set towards meeting the target in the future. ‘For me, the priority would be a cohort of kids under five who are in deep poverty, about 800,000 of them. I would focus on them with early years education.’

The commission has been established to hold the government to account on its objectives of increasing social mobility and reducing child poverty. It will produce an independent annual report on the progress that has been made.

Milburn told MPs that the government’s ‘overall approach’ to social mobility based on ‘life chances’ was right. He said the commission would now provide ‘a bit of a bully pulpit’ to promote social mobility.

‘It is capable of holding to account not just the government but all of those – schools, career services, universities and local government – who have a role in these issues. That’s what I hope to do.

‘For me the most important thing is to ensure that regardless of background there is an equal opportunity for people to progress.’

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