Charities test government over Child Poverty Strategy
EMBARGOED UNTIL: 00:01am 3/12/24
- End Child Poverty Coalition publishes eight tests for the government’s Child Poverty Strategy
- The right strategy can halve child poverty in ten years, Coalition says
- Recommendations include immediately scrapping the two-child limit to benefit payments and setting legally binding child poverty reduction targets
The government’s Child Poverty Strategy must have legally binding targets and enhance support for families who rely on social security if it wants to be successful, a coalition of 120 children’s charities has warned.
The End Child Poverty Coalition has developed eight tests for the upcoming strategy – set to be published by the government in Spring 2025 — based on their collective expertise and conversations with families who have experienced poverty and frontline professionals.
The recommendations focus on key areas the government must address in next spring’s Strategy.
The Coalition is advocating for the government’s strategy to set a clear goal of halving child poverty in the next ten years, and completely eradicate it in the next twenty, through a series of measures including:
- Legally binding targets set out in a Child Poverty Act, holding all levels of government in the four nations accountable for real progress.
- Scrapping the two-child limit to benefit payments, which would immediately lift 300,000 children out of poverty – followed by further fundamental reform to the social security system.
- Additional tailored support for children and families most likely to experience poverty, acknowledging the multiple challenges they might experience on top of poverty. A shift is needed, the Coalition claims, where funding and social security must be considered a down payment for healthier, happier generations in the future and adequate support for children and families now.
This includes immediately scrapping the two-child limit, currently affecting 1.6m children in the UK. This policy pulls 109 children into poverty every day, and the Coalition warns that if it remains in place, the child poverty strategy could fail and little else could be done to mitigate the impacts of this policy.
The Coalition is calling on the government to be ambitious and insists that tackling poverty will open the doors to many others of the government’s missions, such as breaking down barriers to opportunity and raising the healthiest generation of children ever.
The overriding test for the strategy must be the number of children it lifts out of poverty and whether it truly puts us on a path to eradicate child poverty for good, the charities have said.
The latest official figures show that 4.3 million children, or 3 in 10, are growing up in poverty in the country. But a new study by the Social Metrics Commission argues that the real number is closer to 5.2 million children.
Joseph Howes, Chair of the End Child Poverty Coalition and CEO of Buttle UK, said:
“Child poverty is a blight on our society and is also completely avoidable. If the government is serious about tackling and ultimately eradicating child poverty in this country, it needs to be bold and ambitious in its investments – including immediately scrapping the two-child limit to benefit payments. Our Coalition’s eight tests offer a clear pathway to ensuring no child grows up in poverty, and we will continue working so that next year’s Child Poverty Strategy includes the right actions.”
ENDS
Contact details: media@ncb.org.uk / 07721 097 033.
About the End Child Poverty Coalition
The End Child Poverty Coalition was set up in 2003 and is made up of over 120 organisations including child welfare groups, social justice groups, faith groups, trade unions and others. Together with a group of Youth Ambassadors, the Coalition believes that no child growing up in the UK should live in poverty. The Coalition asks that this and future governments commit to end child poverty. It is currently hosted by the Child Poverty Action Group.
