Child poverty strategies

Child benefit is one of the strongest tools we have in reducing poverty, and it is vital that it is protected. But it can’t do the job on its own. We urgently need a comprehensive, action-focused strategy for reducing and then ending child poverty. The road ahead is long, and so we must start by protecting what we already have.

On 25th June the Department for Work and Pensions will release updated figures on poverty, including child poverty, for 2013-14. These figures were delayed until after the election, meaning the last government went into a General Election with child poverty figures available only up to the end of March 2013 –  that’s before most of the austerity-driven benefit cuts had been implemented.

Read our response to the Glasgow City Council consultation on breakfast club provision in primary schools here.

Newly re-elected, David Cameron has appointed his cabinet to lead the 2015 government. But what will he, and his ministers, do to turn back a rising tide of child poverty? In addition to the Prime Minister himself, George Osborne and Iain Duncan-Smith will be back in their pre-election roles of Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

We contributed an essay to a new publication by the Centre for Labour and Social Studies: The first 100 days - what should a progressive government implement? The essay highlights the child poverty crisis the new government will face, with the number of children growing up in hardship on the increase for the first time in a decade.

Whoever wins on May 7 will be confronted by a child poverty crisis. That’s why CPAG today publishes its Programme for Government, a document setting out what the next Government must do to put the UK on track to end child poverty.