THE UK Government is set to miss its target of halving the number of children living in poverty by around one million, MPs warn today.
The Commons Work and Pensions Committee said that it was still possible to turn the situation around before the target date of 2010 — but only if ministers were prepared to make more resources available.
The target to halve child poverty — with a view to eradicating it completely by 2020 — was first announced by then prime minister Tony Blair in 1999, when the number of children living in poverty stood at 3.4 million.
Since then the number has fallen by 600,000 to 2.8 million — still well short of the goal of 1.7 million.
On current trends, the committee said that the Government will miss the target by about 1 million — or 1.5 million if housing costs are taken into account.
“We believe the 2010 target could be met, but only if further investment is forthcoming,” it said.
The committee pointed to the way some groups of children had a much higher risk of growing up in poverty, such as those who were disabled or had a disabled parent.
It was “particularly concerned” that one-in-five families with a disabled child were so hard up they had to cut back on food.
Poverty rates among Pakistani and Bangladeshi children were twice those among white children, while black children also experienced higher rates of poverty than whites. The rates were particularly high in London.
The committee endorsed the Government’s strategy of lifting families out of poverty by helping parents find “sustainable” work.
However it expressed concern that the Jobseekers Allowance was too inflexible to cope with the “complexity” of many lone parents’ lives, particularly those with disabled children.
It also urged the Government to do more to change public attitudes towards poverty at a time when sympathy for the poor was at a “low level”.
“Many assume that poverty is only a problem in developing countries and the UK’s economic success means that if someone is poor it must be due to their own poor choices or personal failings,” it said.
“The Government needs to take a lead on challenging these misconceptions.”
Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell said that the Government had made significant progress, but acknowledged that more needed to be done.