One might expect the Labour government to give such projects a more central role, given its stated intention to transform Britain's 3,000 most deprived areas. The Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) launched ...its 800m New Deal for Communities soon after Labour came to power. The unit invited "partners" - for example, local authorities and health authorities-to bid to become pilot pathfinder areas.
Income support, the minimum wage and the WFTC remain low because the government refuses to ask the most basic question: what is poverty? New Labour takes as its poverty line half of the average ...household income. When Gordon Brown and Tony Blair proclaim that they are abolishing child poverty, they mean that they are taking families above this line. Even so, atthe present rate of progress, child poverty will not be abolished until 2019.
