Cost of living focus for new child poverty strategy

A draft child poverty strategy for 2014-17, published today, pledges to cut the average energy bill by £50 in 2014/15, reduce water costs by capping bills for low-income families with three or more children and reduce food costs through the existing Health Start Vouchers scheme.

Attempts to boost education centre around increasing the number of disadvantaged children getting quality pre-school education through the government's free childcare offer and the pupil premium.

The government also wants to help parents provide the “best possible home environment” through parenting classes and free books, and giving schools increased freedom to develop children’s “character” skills.

Controversially, the government’s so-called bedroom tax policy, which critics claim results in more children ending up in poverty, is listed in the strategy as a way of freeing up housing stock.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said the draft strategy “builds on the good progress we have made so far in tackling child poverty”.

In a written ministerial statement he said: “Despite the tough economic climate, employment has increased by 1.3 million since 2010 and the number of children in workless households has fallen by 274,000.

“Poor children are doing better than ever at school; the proportion of children on free school meals getting good GCSEs including English and maths has increased from 31 per cent in 2010 to 38 per cent in 2013.

“Alongside our strategy, we are publishing an in-depth evidence review which identifies what leads families to be stuck in poverty and what leads poor children to become poor adults.

“By identifying and understanding the root causes of child poverty, now and across generations, we can target action effectively. This is an important step in our mission to eradicate child poverty.

“Based on the evidence in the review, our strategy sets out the action government is taking to tackle child poverty.

“It sets out how we will tackle poverty now through supporting families into work and to increase their earnings, support living standards through decreasing costs for low income families and prevent poor children becoming poor adults through raising their educational attainment."

There is no mention in the strategy of new indictors for measuring child poverty, although ministers have vowed to develop better ways of recognising the root causes of poverty including entrenched worklessness, family breakdown, debt and drug and alcohol dependency.

Matthew Reed, chief executive of the Children’s Society, said that while the government’s continued commitment to ending child poverty is welcome, the new strategy contains no new ideas on how to make it a reality.

“It falls far short of what is needed to prevent a significant increase in the number of children living in poverty by 2020,” he said.

“Too many of the strategy’s measures will fail to end child poverty. Some will make the problem worse.