Delaying child poverty plan until autumn budget is ‘right call’, says Brown

Gordon Brown said ‘only a gambling or banking levy … can generate the £3bn that can take nearly half a million children out of poverty’. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

Gordon Brown has backed the government’s decision to delay its flagship child poverty strategy until the autumn, arguing ministers need to take the time to secure funding for changes that could lift hundreds of thousands of children out of hardship.

The former prime minister said Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’s decision to wait until the autumn budget was “the right call”, despite some criticism from Labour MPs who think the delay signals a lack of urgency on a critical issue.