Child poverty rises

THE LATEST report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that 200,000 more children were living in poverty in 2005-6 than the year before. The total was 3.8 million, or one in three children, if housing costs are taken into account.

In 1999, Tony Blair promised to halve the number of children living in poverty within 10 years and eradicate child poverty totally within 20. The government still remains 500,000 short of the interim target that it had pledged to reach by 2004-5.