Child poverty commission unveiled

Deputy prime minister says body will monitor this and future governments in attempts to increase social mobility in UK and reduce child poverty Nick Clegg has sought to ease fears that he is downgrading child poverty targets by announcing the establishment of a child poverty and social mobility commission – a measure charities feared had been shelved. The commission, which will be set on a legal footing, will monitor the government and future governments in their attempts to increase social mobility in the UK and reduce child poverty. The statutory body will be headed by the government’s adviser on social mobility, the former Labour MP Alan Milburn. The official launch of the social mobility strategy was delayed by an hour after Clegg was summoned to the Commons by Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, to make an urgent statement. Harman claimed Clegg “gave up the right” to launch a social mobility strategy when he “betrayed a generation of young people” and told MPs that, for many young people, mobility now meant a “bus down to the job centre”. She said: “I’m afraid you gave up the right to pontificate on social mobility when you abolished Educational Maintenance Allowance [EMA], trebled tuition fees and betrayed a generation of young people.” The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) charity is considering launching a judicial review as targets for reducing the number of children living in poverty set by previous governments are missed. CPAG has been disappointed that the commission of experts the government had been legally obliged to set up had not so far been established. Such a commission is intended to draw up the child poverty reduction strategy and set out how targets could be reached. Though the focus is intended to be the government’s strategy to uncouple the link between a child’s life chances and the social class into which they are born, the government has also had to defend itself against charges that reducing child poverty has become a lesser political priority for it. Charities have voiced fears that a new emphasis on social mobility meant a downgrading of existing child poverty figures, with the government newly concerned with improving relative life chances for the poor but bright, suggesting a reduced concern with levels of absolute child poverty. Government officials hope the new commission “more than alleviates” those fears. The bid to put the body on a statutory footing met resistance inside Whitehall, with some in the Cabinet cautious about creating a new legal monitor at a time when it was trying to reduce the numbers of such bodies, but Clegg insisted on the legal standing. The Labour government committed to reducing the numbers of children living in poverty to 10% by 2010. In the last year for which figures were available, 2008-09, 22% – 2.8 million children – were living in poverty, defined as those living in homes where income is 60% less than the median in the UK before taking into account housing costs. In December, the Institute of Fiscal Studies predicted that changes to the welfare system would increase relative child poverty figures by 200,000 in 2012-13 and 2013-14. Justin Forsyth, the chief executive of Save the Children, said: “Save the Children strongly welcomes the government’s new move to create a severe child poverty measure, but there won’t be social mobility for the poorest children without urgent action to provide extra childcare support, to get their parents Clegg also said the government will aim to end the culture of people being given internships because of “who they know, rather than what they know”. He admitted that improving social mobility was not going to happen “in a few months or a few years”, but stressed that he wanted the present government, and future governments, to be held to account over their attempts to “make Britain a fairer and more socially mobile place”. The push to open up internships is one of the measures outlined to ensure career progression is less dependent on “who your father’s friends are”. The national internship scheme will ask firms to pay young people doing work experience and warn that they could otherwise risk a legal challenge under the national minimum wage legislation. As part of a multi-pronged effort to narrow differences in achievement between social groups, a number of firms have been enlisted to give people without family connections experience in competitive fields of work. The government will encourage firms to use name blank and school blank applications, and will signal that legislation on the payment of the national minimum wage should be taken more seriously. People will be encouraged to blow the whistle on unpaid internships. Clegg and Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, said in a joint article in Tuesday’s Telegraph that many families are seeing their aspirations for their children dashed because private education is out of their reach and they lack the right connections. Denying suggestions that the strategy would involve “social engineering”, they cast their drive to open up internships as a way of preventing “the lucky few grabbing all the best chances”. “This is mobility for the middle, not just the bottom,” they wrote. Social mobility Social exclusion Children Nick Clegg Iain Duncan Smith Harriet Harman Alan Milburn Hélène Mulholland Allegra Stratton guardian.co.uk

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