One of the crowning achievements of the last Labour government was a significant reduction in child poverty. This was achieved not only by supporting more parents into work, but through significantly increasing the generosity of financial support paid by the state to low-income parents. Today, that ambitious New Labour goal to halve child poverty feels like a distant memory as this government looks set to preside over a significant rise over the course of this parliament.
That financial support was slashed away by Conservative chancellors from 2010 onwards, meaning that Labour has inherited a tax and benefit system that is far meaner when it comes to children living in financially precarious families. The poorest tenth of families with children lost on average £6,000 a year as a result of tax and benefit changes between 2010 and 2024. On top of that, it is the poorest households that have been most sharply affected by the cost of living crisis. This explains why the UK’s child poverty rate rose the fastest of 39 OECD and EU countries between 2012 and 2021, a symptom of the lack of priority and care afforded to poor children by successive Conservative governments and the product of policy choices to cut taxes in a way that disproportionately benefited better-off households rather than protect children from growing up in families where it is a constant struggle to put food on the table and keep homes warm. Almost one in three children live in relative child poverty and one in four in absolute poverty in households with incomes of less than 60% of the median income in 2011, adjusted for inflation.
