IN 1999 Tony Blair made a bold pledge: to halve child poverty in the UK by 2010 and eradicate it by 2020. It was an ambitious, even idealistic goal. But the numbers dropped: by 2004 more than half a million fewer children were living in poverty. Then they flatlined and, last year, started rising again.

Think-tanks have put the cost of halving child poverty at £3.4 billion. Martin Narey, chief executive of Barnardo’s, was optimistic that the 2008 Budget would commit funds to reversing the slide. Instead came a pledge to match Conservative promises to slash inheritance tax. The cost? £3.4 billion. “I wish Labour had argued the moral case for putting money into easing the dire poverty of the most disadvantaged. But they decided to offer further advantage to the most well-off children.”

Politically there is little incentive to prioritise child poverty, he says. The electorate is unsympathetic. “There are caricatures of people in poverty, that it’s something that happens in Africa. We have 3.8 million children living in poverty in the UK, the fifth richest country in the world. To some extent we, in the voluntary sector, have to accept that we’ve failed,” he says.

One pervasive caricature is that of “feckless people on benefits”, he says. Half the children living in poverty have a parent who works. “I have particular concern [for] children whose parents are doing all they can to work their way out of poverty. If you’re on minimum wage, then frankly you won’t be able to.” He advocates tax credits for poor workers and “cranking up” the minimum wage to encourage benefits claimants to find a job.

Worklessness is an increasingly intergenerational problem. “You meet young people [whose] grandparents have never worked.” Their inherited disadvantage is apparent almost from birth. A child from a very poor family falls behind one from a comfortable background at 22 months. Everything the education system does subsequently only widens the gap. Given this, it seems surprising that Narey supports the government plan to raise the school-leaving age to 18. Will children failed by the education system benefit from two more years in the classroom?

“I don’t think Ed Balls (the Children’s Secretary) is so naive as to think that ‘more of the same’ is the answer.” Vocational schemes can be an eleventh-hour turning point, he says. “Too many young people think the world of work is nothing to do with them. I hope we can show the most disadvantaged that there is a way out of poverty and it is called work.”

After two decades in the Prison Service, the worst-case alternative is one Narey knows well: children from disadvantaged backgrounds are overwhelmingly more likely to offend. In tackling child poverty, he hopes to sever the seemingly inevitable link with crime.

Prison can work, he says. “I saw young people who got the first qualifications in their life in prison.” Controversially, he also believes in prison for children, as a last resort. “When all else has failed . . . then they should be prosecuted.” But child prisons have a “dreadful failure rate”, he says, and there is “no intellectual defence” for locking up 3,000 children a year. Society needs to overcome its savage intolerance of community sentences and give greater support to those serving them. “These children lead chaotic lives. We give them community penalties; when they trip up we catapult them into prison.”

Despite glimmers of progress, in the scramble to try new initiatives ministers too are guilty of failing to see things through, he says. With two years to go until the 2010 deadline, is there any hope that the Government will meet its pledge? “It can still turn this around. But time is running out,” he says.

Born: August 5, 1955, Middlesbrough

Career: Graduated in 1977 from Sheffield Polytechnic and began his career in the health service. In 1982 he resigned to train as a prison governor and worked in a local prison, a borstal and a top security prison before taking various posts in Whitehall. Was the youngest director-general of the Prison Service when appointed in 1998. Joined Barnardo’s in 2005.

What he says: “In all the time I was managing prisons, the number of young people we incarcerated from middle-class backgrounds I can count on one hand.”

Little-known fact: Was honoured to be asked to feature in Middlesbrough FC’s match-day programme as a celebrity fan.

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