Chances are it’s got fewer beds than the hospital it replaced, too.

J. you forgot to mention that the number in poverty was 24% in 1995 (a convenient omission on your part, you cheat!).

What we also have to acknowledge is how much more difficult it is to close the gap between rich and poor when GDP growth is high (as it has been throughout new Labour’s tenure).

In this respect the Conservatives with two massive recessions had an advantage. Obviously during a recession that causes high unemployment, the highest earners that lose their jobs and those with the most investments are going to see the largest falls in incomes, so the gap could close while at the same time poverty increases.

Despite the advantages of these recessions, Thatcher still managed to increase inequality on a massive scale while Major increased it slightly. This was an impressive achievement of the Tories.

As for J’s comment on New Labour being Thatcherism redux I suggest you re-read the OP. Child poverty fell by big numbers with a Labour government. Not enough, but a lot.

And as for New Labour promising to make a change: have you used an NHS hospital lately ? Chances are it has been rebuilt since Labour came to power - just like large parts of my kids’s school. Funnily enough that never happened under the Tories.

I despair for British politics, I really do. Career politicians just will not learn.

A fact that was corroborated that same year by a report in the Observer stating: child poverty has increased as much as three-fold since Margaret Thatcher was elected. The result of which being that up to 2 million British children are suffering ill-health and stunted growth because of malnutrition, due to the fact that “one-third of all British children live in poverty,” while the number of adults living in poverty doubled between 1997 and when Thatcher was elected in 1979. Of course, not everyone views these dismal statistics with disdain. Time Magazine says in 2005 that the Chancellor Gordon Brown was “lucky because he inherited the impact of Margaret Thatcher’s economic reforms - in particular, severely weekend trade unions and deregulated labour markets.”

However, in 1997 when Tony Blair said “it is a time for change” how much change was really being suggested? New Labour has turned out to be not so much a successor to Thatcherism as a continuation of it. Blair has extended privatization well beyond anything Thatcher envisaged introducing market forces into the justice system, including parts of the prison service. Here the market has been inserted into the core of the state itself - a move that in Thatcher’s time only the right-wing think-tanks supported. In this, as in a number of other policies such as the deregulation of postal services and his push to inject market forces into the National Health Service, Blair went further than Thatcher dared, or even wished to go.

What is more, the effects these policies on society should be well understood by the government. The pro-New Labour think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy’s report states that “the gap between rich and poor has continued to grow since Labour came to power… The wealthiest 10% of the population now own more than half the country’s wealth – up from 47% to 54% over the past 10 years.” Meanwhile the Governments own survey of economic trends reports that post-war improvement for the poor “has been put into reverse [since 1979]. Income has not trickled down but filtered up from the poorer sections of society to the richer ones”.

The CPAG comments on the effects of this in its 2005 fact sheet stating that the amount of people living in poverty in Britain “increased in the 1980s and 1990s: from 13 per cent in 1979,” to “21 per cent by 2003/04” caused by “high income inequality”, “worklessness” and an “inadequate safety net”. They are also very clear on the methods needed to solve this problem “Work towards better jobs, not just more jobs”, “Introduce free at the point of delivery, good quality, universal childcare” and “Reduce the disproportionate burden of taxation on poorer families.”

Of course, it would be unfair to say that everyone is doing badly out of New Labour’s “booming” economy. BBC news reports in 2001 that “Boardroom pay continues to grow at a blistering pace” following “a recent series of controversial pay awards to directors – including some who had conspicuously failed.” In fact the median salary of the FTSE-100 top directors has grown by 92% in the last 10 years, while inflation rose by only 25%.

Perhaps it might be a good idea to address this before expecting any serious change to this shameful feature of British life.