Why the cynics are wrong about children in need

Children - 20 per cent of the population but 100 per cent of the future - do not choose to be born. Thus when in March the Prime Minister said "Our historic aim will be for ours to be the first generation to end child poverty. It is a 20-year mission", it was a brave declaration. Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Social Security, will this week present the Government's report on tackling poverty and social exclusion, the first such report of any British government. What has been done and what will it achieve?

The Government's approach has been straightforward. It has been to promote paid work as the route to more income and independence. The carrot is the subsidy for low-paid families in the Working Families Tax Credit; at the same time the Child Care Tax Credit will assist those paying for registered childminders. The stick is the New Deal with its "war on the workshy". Alongside these measures, there are higher child benefits for all children, in 2001 a new child tax credit which excludes higher-rate taxpayers, the minimum wage of pounds 3.60 per hour, and falling unemployment.

What will all this do to poverty? On the latest figures, there are about 14 million living in households below the poverty level, of whom 4.5 million are children. So one in three children is being brought up in poverty. My research shows that in five years from the election of New Labour, poverty will have been reduced by nearly 2 million, child poverty by some 800,000. This is real progress, yet poverty in 2002 will still be twice what it was when Labour left office in 1979. There can be no doubt of the scale of the task, a product of the enormous growth in inequality in Britain.

While child poverty should be reduced by 2002, is there any real prospect of it being abolished in a generation? There are at least half a dozen reasons for cynicism and doubt. First, it has all been said before. But if the record is not good - and much of Old Labour has a mindset of defeatism and expectation of betrayal - this is not a reason for not trying. There is nothing inevitable about child poverty, and most European countries have far less than Britain.

Second, cynics doubt that what the Government is doing will work. Subsidising incomes with credits paid through the pay packet, relying on employers, has not been done before; it could be an administrative disaster. But the Working Families Tax Credit is basically the old Family Credit revamped and greatly increased in value. It should work. What it also does is give the Treasury more control over welfare programmes. For the Treasury to take an interest in poverty is novel and welcome - although it does have other, inconsistent concerns.

A third cynical response is to regard the target of ending child poverty as meaningless, since poverty is an ill-defined concept. Yet, on this, the Government is clear. The 4.5 million chil- dren in poverty are in families with below half the average income level - now around pounds 10,000 pa for a two-child family. That this level goes up as incomes rise is surely right if the poor are not to fall further behind. Income poverty is a clear concept and its abolition, or not, can be measured.

Less well-defined is the goal of equalising life chances. Mr Darling in a recent Fabian pamphlet wrote: "Children born in run-down estates should have the same opportunities as those born in leafy suburbs, the same good health, the same decent education and the same hope for their future." The cynic may say "dream-on" but the pursuit of dreams is what idealism is all about. Inequalities in health, education and aspirations can be greatly reduced.

A fourth response of the cynic is that poverty is all the fault of parents. Some see more lone-parent and workless families as the product of moral decay. For sure, some parents are more capable than others, but there is no evidence of widespread or growing child neglect. Some "poor little rich kids" have far more deprived lives than many in workless households. The aspersions of the prosperous on the morals of the poor may foster a "culture of contentment" but there is no evidence it contributes to ending child poverty.

A fifth objection to the Government's attack on child poverty is that it misses the real sources of inequality. Globalisation threatens the low-paid, the incomes of chief executives soar, and earnings become more unequal. As the gap between rich and poor increases, the Government never mentions redistribution. It is, however, trying to tackle some of the causes of poverty and there is some redistribution by stealth. If it does not do more it is presumably because it regards electability as more important that egalitarian purity.

The sixth and final ground for cynicism is the over-selling of government policies. Every policy change is not merely "new" but a transformation, a corner turned. There are no losers in New Britain. The more expectations are raised, the more disappointment there is likely to be.

What needs to be done? There is, as yet, no plan, strategy or Third Way of ending child poverty that extends beyond Labour's first term. This reflects a Europeanisation of policy-making. In the EU, it is customary to put forward a visionary goal and only later fill in the steps required to get there. What are those steps?

There is no simple answer to child poverty. Full employment is fundamental. More training for the low-paid and unemployed continue to be important. More redistribution from the childless to families with children is essential - and not just to the poorest, for to target them alone would only worsen the poverty trap and divide them from the rest of society. For those families that cannot rely on paid work, social security benefits must provide genuine security - which means indexation in line with earnings, not with prices, as happens now. More support for child care is necessary - not confined to those who pay for childminders but extended to all who sacrifice earnings to look after their own children.

It is not only the Royal Family that is dysfunctional; as the recent BBC television documentary Eyes of a Child vividly showed, some children have chronically blighted childhoods with parents addicted to drink or drugs. It is not enough to channel all support via their parents; there is still a crucial role for nutritious school dinners and, in some areas, there need to be school breakfasts if children are not to spend the school- day hungry and incapable of learning. More discouragement of premature parenting and assistance to improve parenting generally can only help - and it is surely time to recognise that parenting is economically valuable work which all, especially boys and men, need to learn much more about.

Such "joined-up" government will not come cheap; whether voters can be inspired over the next 20 years to pay that price, or are mired in short- sighted selfishness, is the key question. What should not be doubted is that, even if child poverty may not be eliminated in a generation, it can be massively reduced.

Sometimes politics can be a noble art. Just as striving to overcome racial discrimination is the right thing to do, so the Government's adoption of the goal of ending child poverty is right and just. It is not a politically convenient goal and it goes far beyond anything New Labour aspired to before the election. When politicians surprise us, cynics should suspend judgement and academics should help rather than harass. New Labour has made a good start towards ending child poverty. There is still much more that can and needs to be done to give all children a good start.

The writer is Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics.