Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called for the formation of a permanent Four-Nations, all-party anti-poverty alliance of charities, foundations, businesses, faith groups, and civic society, working with all tiers of government to tackle the evil of rising child poverty.

He issued his appeal in a speech this morning in central London to mark the 60th anniversary of the Child Poverty Action Group, in which he cited new polling revealing that a majority of voters in every one of Britain’s 632 parliamentary constituencies are in favour of a gambling levy to fund relief measures for the 4.5 million UK children growing up in poverty.

The poll, conducted on behalf of campaign group 38 Degrees by Survation, showed that voters across the UK supported raising gambling taxes by a margin of 4:1 — 64 percent to 14 percent — in order to directly fund measures to reduce child poverty by abolishing the controversial two-child benefit limit, which has driven up child poverty figures and pushed Britain to the bottom of European child poverty league tables.

Standing at a 60-year high, the 4.5 million children growing up in poverty now rank alongside the 7.4 million people on NHS waiting lists as an issue of public concern, according to a separate YouGov poll for PersuasionUK. Its results showed that reducing these numbers is regarded as a litmus test of political fairness.

Mr Brown backed proposals for a combination of actions — securing more jobs for the unemployed, better pay for the low-paid, more Sure Start centres, breakfast clubs, and free school meals. He also supported the full abolition of the two-child benefit cap, which the Resolution Foundation said would result in 480,000 fewer children growing up in poverty by 2029–30.

Abolition, he argued, is also necessary to meet the government’s objective that 75 percent of children be school-ready at age five. Brown disputed George Osborne’s claim that those affected by the two-child benefit cap are work-shy, indolent, or feckless, citing figures demonstrating that the majority are in work or about to enter work.

He cited today’s 38 Degrees poll results as evidence that British voters “want us to do right by all our children and ensure that all children have the basics they need for a decent start in life.”

A Hope Not Hate poll found that if a levy on banks were also needed, there was 87 percent support for raising the 3 percent bank levy to pay for child poverty relief.

“We need a new coalition of compassion for children that will create a chain of hope for children right across our country,” Brown said. “This is urgently needed to take half a million children out of poverty from April next year and to meaningfully tackle Britain’s shameful epidemic of child poverty.”

He warned that “what has become a UK-wide child poverty emergency is not only the biggest cause of social division in our country but — because of the failure to equip young people for future work — it is also the biggest threat to our long-term economic future.”

Brown said he was “optimistic” about the possibility of cross-party political consensus because reducing child poverty is central to the stated aims of all political parties, which are each respectively committed to:

Cutting the cost of living — with anti-child poverty initiatives, Brown said, we can raise living standards for the families hit hardest by the cost-of-living crisis.

Meeting the test of fairness — remedying the reductions in living standards imposed on children born to low-income families in the last decade and a half will bring fairness to those Brown calls “austerity’s children.”

Making the right long-term decisions by investing in young people to guarantee our country’s future — for which, Brown said, there is no better example than the Sure Start evidence, a cost-effective way of planning for the long term that delivered £2 in benefits for every £1 spent.

Mr Brown noted that the child poverty problem, which has exploded in the last fifteen years to engulf a record 36 percent of under-fives, will, on present trends, increase the number of poor children to over 5 million in the early 2030s.

Almost half of children in poverty — 2 million, which is 50 percent more than a decade ago — are now experiencing very deep poverty, with their families living on less than 40 percent of median income.

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1 million children are classified as destitute or near destitution, lacking three of six basic essentials such as shelter, regular meals, or basic toiletries.

Britain now lies shamefully near the bottom — 37th out of 39 countries, below Turkey and Colombia — for its failure to help what Brown called “austerity’s children,” the victims of the last decade and a half of austerity policies.

But Mr Brown said that “despite the arithmetic of despair,” he was “optimistic” that new public opinion showing overwhelming support for action on child poverty would lead to a new Four-Nation Alliance Against Child Poverty.

In addition to majority support in every parliamentary constituency, 38 Degrees reported 187 constituencies with nearly 70 percent support for a gambling levy, rising to 75 percent among voters over 65.

And a YouGov/Persuasion UK poll showed that if, by the end of this Parliament, the rate of child poverty has not fallen, voters would be as concerned about that as about the failure to reduce the 7 million–long NHS waiting list (see Note 2).

Brown proposed an urgent overhaul of “the broken, postcode-lottery crisis support system” to ensure that foundations, individual philanthropists, and charities can benefit from reform of the Gift Aid system, which could raise up to £1 billion more for anti-poverty work.

Brown said that “a stated national objective is fairness, and there is no greater threat to fairness — as the polling shows — than denying one-third of our children the best possible start in life.

“A stated national priority is also to cut the cost of living, and no group has been harder hit by reductions in living standards than the poorest families with children — 65 percent of whom have at least one adult in work.

“A national priority is also to banish short-termism with a long-term vision for our future. And there is no better or more cost-effective way of planning for the long term — as the Sure Start evidence shows — than investing in our children’s future, which saves £2 for every £1 spent.

“We need to come together to redress Britain’s lamentable record on child poverty relief in recent years and begin again to ensure every child has the best possible start in life.”