So far, in hard cash alongside these social projects, the attack on poverty has produced a minimum wage, a higher working families tax credit, higher pensions for the poorest, more child benefit, new child care tax credits and an expectation that these will all rise considerably more than inflation over the years. But labour traditionalists don't quite believe in all this new money because it didn't come with a punitive income tax rise and they say it's still not enough - which it isn't yet. But benefits on their own will never produce the massive shift of opportunity and wealth towards the poor that has to be made if Tony Blair is to meet his target on child poverty. He knows that, which is why so much effort has gone into getting the poorest into work, and paying them good in-work subsidies. There is a crucial missing ingredient.
Children are poor because their mothers are poor.
Many more children are now poor than 20 years ago largely because more depend on their mothers' incomes alone, and mothers of poor children earn far too little. Recognising this, almost all the benefit increases have been targeted on women, but still most will never have good enough incomes until their pay rates rise. The disastrous pay gap between women and men's earnings lies right at the heart of poverty and is the root cause of child poverty. Blair's target for children can simply never be met until women earn the same as men. Equal pay isn't an add-on or a gender fairness issue, it is the most fundamental poverty issue of all.