Britain pilloried again on child welfare

There have been three reports in as many years on the state of child welfare across the world, by UNICEF in 2007, Save the Children in 2008 and now the Child Poverty Action Group. In only one, the simplest in terms of expectation, did Britain come out anything like smiling and that was the 8th place in a world poll of Save the Children and they simply took the mortality rate of under 5s, the number of under 5s who are underweight and the number of infants enrolled in school.

In the other polls which asked far more wide ranging questions, Britain came bottom in the world in the UNICEF poll of rich nations (see below) and now, in the CPAG survey, a miserable 24th out of 29 countries in Europe. These are not figures to be proud of, particularly after 12 years of Labour government. Only Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta were lower than the UK, and given our relative wealth, that's a pretty depressing set of nations to be lumbered with.




The CPAG has acknowledged, in fairness, that the British government is trying to tackle the problem through Sure Start, the Children's Plan and tax credits but says more funding needs to be allocated to the problems.

The issues that seem to have done for us are primarily the high numbers of children living in families with nobody in work and in bad environments, added to the poor rate of pick up on immunisation - a really serious worry - , the inability of British children to communicate well with parents and, another major problem, bad diet and consequent child obesity.

The Dutch came top of the list for child welfare, followed by the Scandinavian countries and Britain clearly has a tough job to get among the leaders, where a nation as rich as ourselves ought to be. Tax policy is clearly an issue, and the reluctance of New Labour to commit to a tax policy which meets the nation's social needs, instead trying to avoid Tory flak of being a 'tax and spend' party, is a majo factor.

We need to go back to basics, unlikely under the present lot, and determine how much we need to spend to provide the United Kingdom with the social framework it deserves, rather than how much can we afford to tax people without giving the Tories ammunition. Labour has simply fallen between two fences, neither satisfying the country's social welfare needs or satisfying the electorate that it is necessarily the sounder choice.

Of course there will be those who read the statistics and immediately blame one parent families and the breakdown of the family unit in the UK for much of this. But Scandinavia, which is frequently lauded to the skies, has almost abandoned traditional marriage as a precursor to raising children and most kids are brought up outside a traditional married environment. The difference is that state policy and high taxation has allowed more flexibility in the way children are targetted for benefit, regardless of the status of their parents.

It's not just the government, of course. There needs to be a substantial mind set change on diet, particularly among poorer families, on the provision of junk food for children. The statistics on child obesity make horrifying reading, and while the problem is growing across most socio-economic groups, it is among the poor that the issue is most significant. The common excuse that other foods are too expensive is simply not true and there is a fixed food attitude problem which needs urgent re-education if Britain is to make any strides out of this rather ignominious depth.

This week there is a budget and it is yet to be seen whether Alistair Darling will grasp the nettle and allocate the resources necessary to boost the well being of Britain's children to the degree required to drag us out of this rather shameful position. I'm not holding my breath.