If you are going to eat healthy like the
Government tells us, you have to spend a lot of
money. But you can't go out and buy these salads
and green vegetables living on £60 a week.

The Government's promise to end child poverty

In 1999 Barnardo’s welcomed the Government’s historic commitment to eradicate child poverty in a generation. However, 10 years on, Barnardo’s is concerned that this promise will be broken.

The Government targets to halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it by 2020 were very promising. But one year away from the 2010 target, we are extremely concerned that for the last two years the numbers of children living in poverty has gone up, not down. In the last year alone 100,000 more children fell into poverty. Meeting the target will now cost even more.

There are now 4 million children in the UK living in poverty. Their families have only £10 per day per person to pay for everything they need including food, heating, toys, clothes, electricity and transport.

As our economy sinks further into recession it is the UK’s children and their families living in poverty that will be hit hardest. Making the government stick to its child poverty targets is now more urgent than ever.

As a leading member of the Campaign to End Child Poverty, Barnardo’s has been working hard to build public support for the call to Government to keep its promise and commit at least £4 billion this year to get back on track to meet the child poverty targets.

The budget provided only a fraction of what is needed to tackle child poverty. The government needed to invest £3 billion to reach their target of halving child poverty by 2010. Instead a mere £140 million was pledged. Barnardo's is now even more concerned that the government will not meet its target.

It seems increasingly unlikely that the government will be able to meet their 2010 target and will undoubtedly put the chances of keeping their promise to eradicate child poverty by 2020 at risk. Click here to find out more about the government's child poverty targets.