Child poverty target will be missed, says government commission

The commission’s second annual State of the Nation Report says there is "no way” the government can meet its own target to eradicate child poverty within the next six years.

Instead it predicts 2020 will mark the end of the first decade since records began in the 1960s without a fall in absolute poverty.

The highly critical report says despite a strong economic recovery and a record number of people in work, too many families are trapped in low-pay jobs and have no prospect of home ownership.

A raft of measures are being called for to bring child poverty to an end under a new timescale.

A living wage is seen as key and should be introduced by 2025 at the latest, as low-income families “can no longer rely on tax credits to do all the heavy lifting”.

More needs to be done to slash youth unemployment and the commission wants to see at least half of all large workplaces offering quality apprenticeships.

The gap in attainment between the poorest children and their peers also needs to be addressed. It calls for drafting in the best teachers on enhanced salaries into the worst performing schools, with the aim of ending illiteracy and innumeracy in primary schools by 2025 and halving the attainment gap in secondary schools by 2020 – something that will take 20 years to achieve without such a move.

Universities and employers need to do more to improve the employability of young people, with the commission calling for unpaid internships to be made illegal and a pledge for 5,000 more pupils who have been eligible for free school meals to go to university by 2020.

Another recommendation is for childcare tax breaks for families where one parent earns more than £100,000 a year should be removed and diverted into a national parenting campaign.

Commission chair Alan Milburn said: “The circumstances are so different, the challenges are so great that the old ways of thinking and acting that have dominated public policy making for decades will simply not pass muster. What worked in the past will not serve as an adequate guide for the future. A new agenda is needed.”

The report condemns all three main political parties for failing to have “sufficiently ambitious plans to tackle entrenched levels of low pay".

The report adds: “They are all guilty in our view of being less than frank with the public. They all seem content to will the ends without identifying the means.”