Prime Minister announces strategy to cut child poverty by 550,000 by 2030

The Prime Minister has announced a new strategy to cut child poverty numbers by over half a million by the end of the decade.

Keir Starmer unveiled Labour’s proposed Child Poverty Strategy during a visit to Glasgow on Thursday night.

The plan comes as approximately 4.5 million children are currently living in poverty in the UK.

“Every child deserves the best possible start in life, with their future no longer determined by the circumstances of their birth,” Starmer said.

The Government is seeking to justify the decision to hike taxes in the Budget by £26bn, with a significant amount of the money used to fund welfare payments.

The Prime Minister said tackling child poverty would “alleviate pressure on our public services” and ease cost of living pressures for the working poor.

He said the 116-page strategy “is a symbol of the promise we made to the British people”.

The Government has said the overall effect of its strategy will be to lift 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030. In Scotland, the decision will impact around 95,000 children.

It comes after the Scottish Government announced earlier this year that it would effectively scrap the two-child limit in March 2026.

Save the Children UK said the strategy contains “bold measures to improve childhoods – not the sticking-plaster measures of the past”, while The Children’s Society said: “If fully delivered, the commitments made today have real potential to transform children’s lives.”

However, Scotland’s social justice secretary has said she is disappointed by a “lack of ambition” in Labour’s proposed Child Poverty Strategy.

Shirley-Anne Somerville said on Friday that the initiative was a consolidation of previous policies rather than anything new.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, Somerville said: “It’s a good thing that the UK Government are now eventually getting rid of the two-child limit. The Scottish Government was due to mitigate that early in the new year, and the UK Government is stepping in. That is good news. There are good policies in there that the UK Government are announcing.

“But what I would go back to is the lack of ambition. The First Minister wants to eradicate child poverty. We have statutory targets to drive down child poverty in Scotland.”