Child poverty campaigners ‘enormously disappointed’

8 Jun 09
Campaigners have described the Budget as ‘an opportunity well missed’ to help the government meet its target of halving child poverty by 2010

24th April 2009

By Alex Klaushofer

Campaigners have described the Budget as ‘an opportunity well missed’ to help the government meet its target of halving child poverty by 2010.

The chancellor’s announcement of a £20 annual rise in the child element of the Child Tax Credit from April 2010 – which will cost the public purse £140m – falls far short of the £3bn in extra benefits and tax credits that campaigners have been saying is needed to meet the target.

‘We think the Budget really fails children in poverty,’ said Hilary Fisher, director of the Campaign to End Child Poverty, a coalition of 150 organisations. ‘We’re enormously disappointed.’

Campaigners have calculated that the extra money will leave each child only 38p a week better off. It is also likely to mean that the government will miss its target for reducing the number of children in poverty in 2010 by 700,000.

‘This was the government’s last chance to make the necessary investment to meet its own target of halving child poverty by 2010. This target is now almost certainly unachievable,’ said Lisa Harker, co-director of the Institute for Public Policy Research.

Fisher said that the knock-on effects of child poverty meant that missing the target would cost other public services, particularly health care. ‘While we recognise there’s a recession, we know that not ending child poverty is costing £25bn a year,’ she said.

‘When you think of the amount that’s gone to bail out the banks, £3bn is not much at all. It’s an opportunity well missed.’

Kate Green, of the Child Poverty Action Group, called the Budget measures ‘woefully inadequate’. ‘Given that the government has so publicly nailed itself to this cause, I am genuinely surprised that there’s so little in this Budget,’ she said.

Campaigners are also concerned that missing the 2010 target will jeopardise the longer-term aim of eradicating child poverty by 2020, which the government has promised to enshrine in legislation.

‘If the 2010 target is not reached, the chances of reaching the 2020 target will be really hard, if not impossible,’ said Fisher.

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