Government in child poverty pledge

from ITV

Work and pensions secretary Peter Hain will later reaffirm the government's commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020.

Mr Hain will tell the Barnardo's conference Paying The Price of Child Poverty that helping people into work is crucial to lifting children out of poverty and breaking a cycle of dependency which can condemn families to a lifetime of poverty.

Official figures show that 600,000 children have been lifted out of poverty since 1997. According to Peter Hain there at least a million young people to help.

Mr Hain accepted that more needed to be done and insisted that the new Child Poverty Unit would help break the cycle of poverty for many more youngsters.

The new unit will feature officials from the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

It will work with local government and agencies to co-ordinate efforts to eliminate child poverty.

Independent policy adviser Lisa Harker, who was asked to review the government's child poverty strategy in 2006, said on Monday that the government was falling behind their targets.

"It has achieved a lot - 600,000 children out of poverty in the last seven years, which is a major reversal of the trend we have seen for the last 30 years," she told BBC radio 4' Today programme.

Martin Narey, chief executive of Barnardo's, said there was an economic case for ending child poverty.

"Research in the US shows that the failure to tackle child poverty there, in additional health and criminal justice costs and in reduced tax revenues, amounts to 3.8% of American GDP or $500 billion every year," he said.