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Still a long way to go on child poverty

Leading public health campaigners have urged the government to speed up its efforts to reduce health inequalities and warned that higher taxes are the only sure route to success.

The government had made significant moves towards its goal of eradicating child poverty within 20 years, David Piachaud, professor of social policy at the London School of Economics, told the annual conference of the UK Public Health Association, in March. But it now needed not only to maintain but probably accelerate action to achieve its target.

He applauded moves in the Budget, including increased child benefit, which would lift an estimated 1.2 million children out of poverty by the end of this Parliament. But child poverty was still extremely high.

He warned: ‘I cannot see any alternative to more redistribution towards poor families and children. That means higher taxes.’

He also called on the government to do more to promote healthy lifestyles for young people by increasing the number of breakfast clubs in schools and clamping down on cigarette sales to children. But he argued that the 25 pence hike in a packet of 20 cigarettes, announced in the Budget, would hit poor families – and their children – hardest.

His call for wealth redistribution was backed by David Purchon, president of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. He told the conference he understood the government was reluctant to move to explicit wealth redistribution. But he said: ‘There is no alternative to that if it is going to improve the public health of the poorest.’

Sir Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology and public health at University College, London, agreed that the tobacco price rise would hit poor people — those least likely to give up – disproportionately hard. Sir Michael, who was a member of the recent Acheson inquiry into health inequalities, was also concerned that while the government was alleviating extreme poverty it was not tackling inequalities up and down the social gradient.

Other speakers argued that the £2bn boost for the NHS in the Budget would do more to promote health if it was spent on education or housing.

Public health minister Yvette Cooper said the NHS increase represented a ‘unique opportunity’ for a debate on how best to improve health, including tackling inequalities which were ‘morally wrong’. She accepted Labour had ‘a long way to go’ to eliminate child poverty.