Brown

(Reuters):

The number of children living in relative poverty in Britain has risen for the first time in six years, dealing a blow to the government's target of halving child poverty by 2010.

Official data yesterday showed 2.8 million children were living in households where income was below 60 per cent of the national average in 2005-'06, up from the previous year by 100,000.

Chancellor Gordon Brown has made eradicating child poverty a priority of his tenure at the treasury and has pledged to cut the number of children living below the poverty line to 1.7 million in 2010.

Brown is widely expected to succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister this summer.

Ambitious

"The government's target always looked very ambitious and it now looks even further out of reach," said Mike Brewer of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

In last week's Budget, Brown earmarked an extra 1 billion a year in tax and child credits that he said would lift 200,000 children out of poverty.

However, a study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year concluded the government would need to spend an extra 4 billion a year to achieve its target.

The government put a brave face on the figures, noting that child poverty in Britain had fallen faster in the last 10 years than in any other country.

"We have made considerable progress against our historic goal to end child poverty," said Secretary of State for Work and Pensions John Hutton. "But we need to go further towards what is a very tough goal to reach."