Children’s commissioner: Next PM should forget tax cuts and spend billions on protecting kids

Billions of pounds earmarked for tax cuts by Tory leadership rivals should be used to “mend broken childhoods” instead, the Children’s Commissioner for England has said.

Anne Longfield is calling for an extra £10bn a year investment in services for vulnerable children from either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt if they become prime minister.

A new report by the commissioner’s office estimates 2.3 million children in England are growing up with a vulnerable family background.

This number includes 830,000 children who are “invisible” to support services, according to the research.

Children from vulnerable backgrounds include those with parents with mental illnesses, addiction problems or domestic violence issues.

Ms Longfield told Sky News: “This report, for the third year running, shows the level of vulnerability of children in England and shows the staggering one in five children who are living vulnerable lives.

“That may be that they live with families where there is severe alcohol problems, severe drug problems, mental health conditions or domestic violence in the home.

“That all means that those children have huge challenges when they are growing up and will often go to school behind their classmates, often struggle and never catch up.”

The report estimated that “support is unclear or non-existent” for 1.6 million children from a vulnerable background.

It said that all the vulnerabilities identified can “pose a risk to children’s wellbeing” and long-term life chances.

Ms Longfield said the type of support these children receive is of “huge concern”, with two thirds of those children “getting very little discernible support”.

She said: “We know that more and more support services are now solely helping children with very complex needs, and that means that the help available for children as problems develop is fading away”.

The research found that new data on funding to help vulnerable children “shows a system that is spending increasingly high amounts on a very small number of children with acute needs.

“A quarter, 25%, of the amount councils spend on children now goes on the 1.1% of children who need acute and specialist services – such as children in care.”

A child in the most intensive residential placements costs on average £192,000 a year to look after, the report revealed.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated the cost of Mr Hunt’s corporation tax plans as £13bn a year, while Mr Johnson’s income tax changes come in at £9bn per annum.

Ms Longfield said this money should instead be spent on vulnerable children.

She will also demand more investment in early years initiatives, Sure Start, family hubs and parenting support.

The commissioner will call for schools to open later and in the holidays and youth services to tackle gang violence.

The Children’s Commissioner will say: “I want to challenge the contenders for the Conservative leadership and the keys to Number 10 what they intend to do about this.

“I’ve heard them talk about runways, immigration, Islamophobia, even model buses – but not about children. They should.

“I’ve heard contenders for the Conservative leadership pledge corporation tax cuts amounting to £13bn, higher NI thresholds costing £11bn, a raised threshold for the higher income tax rate which would cost £9bn.

“Labour’s promise to abolish tuition fees will cost around £8 billion – but where is the promise to the children who might hope that one day they too will go to university?

“Our initial calculation suggests it might cost in the region of £10 billion per year to fix this broken system.

“It might be more, it might be less, but what I do believe is it’ll save money in the long term. The cost of social chaos is immense.”

Among other findings, study also found that two million children are “living in food poverty”, 723,000 children receive statutory intervention from the state and 398,000 children in so-called “troubled families” are being worked with among other findings.

(c) Sky News 2019: Children’s commissioner: Next PM should forget tax cuts and spend billions on protecting kids