But social mobility’s not the same thing as tackling poverty, and Clegg’s own Commission on Social Mobility found that countries with the lowest levels of inequality also tended to have the greatest social fluidity. Despite the introduction of a host of new measures in the child poverty strategy to track children’s outcomes across a range of indicators, I couldn’t see a measure of inequality. 

I don’t object to tracking progress across a broader basket of indicators – indeed, I regretted Labour’s decision some years ago to abandon the highly useful suite of measures that we’d published annually in Opportunity for All. When I mentioned this to Clegg the other day, he seemed totally unaware that Labour had ever used such an approach. He was just as surprised by my suggestion that indicators of progress needed to be tracked locally as well as nationally – and when I came to read the child poverty document, I was  concerned to note that while recognising the importance of local action, and the need for measurement of progress locally, the government seemed more concerned about the ‘burden’ this could impose on local authorities than the role of monitoring in ensuring the best child outcomes. 

I’m also very concerned that the real thrust of the child poverty strategy is to play down the importance of family incomes. We know the Tories have never liked the relative income poverty target – though they are signed up to it in the child poverty act. Of course, it’s right that the experience of poverty is felt in many ways. But there’s plenty of evidence to show that children’s outcomes across a range of measures are closely and causally related to their family incomes.  

The government’s lack of enthusiasm for this can be seen in their policies, of course, which will put family budgets under great pressure. It can also be seen in the decision announced this week to amend the requirement in the child poverty act for the appointment of a child poverty commission, so that it will become instead a child poverty and social mobility commission, with a wider remit. There really isn’t a need for this: the act doesn’t envisage that policy should only address incomes, but contains a list of ‘building blocks’ which the strategy should cover. These include parental employment and skills; information, advice and assistance to parents, and promotion of parenting skills; physical and mental health, education and social services; housing, the built and natural environments and the promotion of social inclusion – as well as financial support for children and parents.  

So the real purpose of the change is to divert attention away from income. The government often claims Labour’s strategy to reduce income poverty didn’t work, citing two years in which child poverty rose. But in fact the results prove the reverse – those were the two years when Labour didn’t invest enough in its own strategy for tackling income poverty, and child poverty rose as a result. I’d expect that the poverty figures for 2009-10 (due in the next few weeks) will  show that when Labour began again to invest in family incomes, poverty reduction started to come back on track.  

But the challenge of eradicating child poverty remains massive, and will be made even harder when wage growth returns, since the government’s decision to link benefits to the consumer price index will widen the gap between the incomes of those on benefits and the median income measure of poverty. And that means there’s now a huge danger that the ambition to eradicate child poverty will be seen as unrealistic, unachievable and unaffordable. 

That would be a tremendous setback, and it’s one that Labour should fight. Too many Labour politicians have been apologists for paying less attention to income, but the risk of falling backwards, and widening the income equality gap as happened in the 1980s and 1990s, is one we simply cannot allow to go unchallenged.  

People say poverty’s not about money – it’s hard to see what could be more fundamental. Money buys access to goods and services, of course, but it’s also about autonomy, dignity, participation, and choice. In a country as rich as ours, there’s no reason to deny any child those. There’s nothing inevitable about high child poverty levels, but if we were running up a down escalator under Labour, the danger now is that the lift’s plunging to the ground.

Photo: Richard McKeever