Children's rights and spending cuts - irreconcilable concepts?

The drip-drip of information coming from the coalition Government over the past weeks and months finally came together in the Spending Review announcements yesterday: £81 billion cuts in total, and an £18 billion reduction in welfare spending. The Government calls it economic necessity. The Opposition says it is a political choice. But what does it mean for children?

It is generally accepted that poverty has a profound impact on children's health, education, aspirations and life chances, and well-recognised that poverty is one of the most significant barriers to children being able to realise their rights. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child gives every child the right to an adequate standard of living, and places duties on governments not only to support parents to provide this for their children, but also to ensure that the maximum extent of available resources are directed towards fulfilling children's rights.

Two years ago, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called on the Government to prioritise tackling poverty and inequality among children when taking decisions about the allocation of resources, yet the Spending Review decisions appear to make few concessions to this. In his statement, the Chancellor re-emphasised the Government's commitment to ending child poverty, yet all the experience of Ministers and officials has achieved no more than an assertion that the cuts will have 'no measurable impact' on child poverty for the next two years. But what about the next three, the next four, the next five? How can we possibly meet the ambitious target, now enshrined in law, of eradicating child poverty in the UK by 2020 if we simply stand still until 2013? Increases in the child element of the Child Tax Credit, the extension of the entitlement to free childcare, and the £2.5 billion pupil premium are all very welcome, but they are fundamentally just a sticking plaster that does not mitigate the overwhelmingly negative impact of the cuts on the poorest children in the UK. Yes, a tiny proportion of the £2.5 billion saving from the Child Benefit cut is being reinvested to pay for the tax credit increase - but why no more?

What children now need from Government is transparency about the fairness test that drives their planning. They need central and local government to do two things: to undertake full child impact assessments to ensure that plans following the Spending Review have a positive rather than negative impact on children's lives, and to be clear about exactly what is spent on children across all their areas of responsibility. Local government must be held accountable for its expenditure on children to ensure that the removal of ring-fenced grants does not result in lower priority being given to children and young people in the clamour for funds. The UK child poverty strategy, due in March, must take a rights-based approach to tackling child poverty and inequality, and set out real measures supported by real resources to ensure an adequate standard of living for every child. And finally, the Government must invest substantially in children, using a progressive Robin Hood tax on the financial sector to raise money - a potential £20 billion a year to ensure no child is made to pay for the cuts needed to reduce the deficit.

Fulfilling children's rights is by no means irreconcilable with tackling the deficit, but children's rights will certainly be limited by the path the Government is taking. In order to step up to its moral and legal obligations to children, the Government must look again at its spending cuts to ensure that the economic crisis does not become an excuse for failing our most vulnerable children.