Children's minister casts doubt on reaching child poverty target

from Children Now

Cathy Wallace,

Junior children's minister Kevin Brennan has admitted he does not know if the government will reach its target of halving the number of children in poverty by 2010.

Since Labour came to power 600,000 children have been lifted from poverty but to hit the target another 900,000 would need to be removed from poverty by 2010. The government has pledged to abolish child poverty completely within a generation.

Speaking at a Save The Children fringe event at the Labour Party conference last week, Brennan said: "There is no point setting easy targets. We have to set challenging targets and take criticism if we aren't able to hit them. I can't tell you for certain if we will hit this target because it is such a difficult, challenging target and a moving target." Children's charities and the End Child Poverty campaign have called on the government to invest £4bn a year between now and 2010, saying that is the only way the objective will be achieved.

Young people at the event implored Brennan to push for the money, saying the government was spending £9bn on the 2012 Olympics and £5bn on the controversial ID card scheme.

When asked directly if he thought the target would be reached, Brennan said: "I don't know. I hope so, and it's a priority for government to try and do it."

But at a separate conference event, schools minister Jim Knight said: "We shouldn't get too hung up on resources to tackle child poverty, when we can do more on variability in how services work with families."

And elsewhere at another fringe event, Kate Wareing, director of poverty at Oxfam UK, said: "Work does not always lift people out of poverty and childcare costs is the reason." She added some families where parents are in work are still in poverty.