Opinion: The Minister's view - The next steps to help eradicate child poverty

Despite significant reductions since 1997 in the numbers of children living in poor families, 22 per cent of children in the UK are still living in poverty, and families with children aged under five are more likely to be living in poverty than those with older children.

Poverty stunts a child's opportunities. It limits their educational chances, blights their health and happiness, and often curtails their aspirations too.

This Government has already demonstrated its commitment to tackling this problem when we made our historic commitment to halve child poverty by 2010 and end it by 2020. By measures such as introducing tax credits, we have already lifted 600,000 children out of poverty, a great achievement, but we have more to do.

Last week we took our commitment a step further, when the Prime Minister announced that we would enshrine our 2020 objectives in legislation. This shows just how seriously we take this goal. Despite the tight fiscal climate, and the many competing issues we face, we are determined to do more for these children.

Our Children's Plan will help bring together aspects of children's policy across Government. It recognises that life chances are usually determined in the first months and years of a child's life. That's why our investment in childcare and good quality early years services is so critical.

The free childcare entitlement for all three- and four-year-olds is the cornerstone of our commitment to early years, and it's great that over 96 per cent of eligible children take it up. And so I'm especially pleased that the Prime Minister last week also showed his commitment to lifting children out of poverty by outlining how we intend to extend this entitlement to 20,000 disadvantaged two-year-olds.

Early years care and education can contribute towards the reduction of child poverty in two ways: in the short term, by enabling parental employment, and in the longer term by improving children's own educational outcomes and thus reducing their risk of poverty as adults.

The risk of poverty for children in families without work is 61 per cent, compared with 14 per cent for children in families where one or more parent is in work. That is why getting parents of disadvantaged children back to work is one of the most sustainable routes out of poverty, and why at the start of September we announced that next year a new £75m programme will give free childcare to 50,000 low-income families across the country so that they can access training and return to work.

By making this offer, we are helping parents who would otherwise find it difficult to get financial help for childcare to gain the skills and the confidence they need to return to work. We want to give all parents the ability to balance work, training and study, with caring for their children.

This weekend, Ed Balls and other Government ministers will join an End Child Poverty march to show the Government's renewed focus on this crucial area and to illustrate how we must all work together to tackle it. I look forward to hearing from readers of Nursery World as we work with stakeholders on how we can develop our strategy for the next decade to reach our historic goal.

Beverley Hughes is the Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families. Further information is available from the Department for Children, Schools and Families at www.dcsf.gov.uk.