‘Renewed effort’ to tackle child poverty

The government has pledged to review its strategy to halve child poverty by 2010 as part of its Opportunity for All programme.

The eighth annual report of the initiative, published this week, highlighted figures initially published in March showing the government had missed its first target to reduce child poverty by a quarter from 4.1m in 1999 to 3.1m by April 2005.

Work and pensions secretary John Hutton said the government needed to “renew our efforts” to meet its 2010 target.

“We must now focus on families where one parent works but the family remains in poverty,” he said.

Save the Children said the government was “still way off target” in eradicating child poverty.