In 1999, a prime minister not noted for bold visionary statements made a visionary statement. In the Beveridge Lecture, delivered on 18 March 1999, Tony Blair committed his government to abolishing child poverty within 20 years.

For the first few years, he did pretty well (with a bit of help from his Chancellor). Knowing it would take a massive boost to the income of the poorest families, he made it happen through tax credits. And it worked for several years, with the campaigning children’s charities finally getting together to speak with one voice on the issue and call out for more, and faster. But by the time 2005’s figures were published, it was clear that we were off-track, and the quarter-way target was missed.

So, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation asked one of their bright people to sit down and work out what it would take to even get as far as halfway, given that the good start was faltering. The answer, published as time was getting shorter in mid-2006, was that halving child poverty by 2010 would take about £4 billion more than currently planned to be spent on tax credits and benefits. (That’s 0.3% of GDP; oh, and far from being an ongoing commitment, halving child poverty is a gift that goes on giving as the not-poor children do better in school, are healthier and happier, and cost less in crisis and second-chance services later on.)

In the meantime, Unicef publish a report comparing the outcomes of British children with those elsewhere in the world, and the UK and by extension the government get pilloried. No matter that some of the statistics were out-of-date, no matter that giving equal weight to whether a child feels good about itself, important though that is, with whether they have enough to eat is a bit odd; still the government gets a kicking. The Tories get in on the act, signing up to the aspiration, even if they have no plans for getting there that actually would put them on the right page of the map.

So: there’s a government with a totemic pledge, which they were doing quite well on; no shortage of public outrage about how unhappy our kids are; a robust piece of research letting them know how to do it; enough cross-party cover to get on with it.

And given all this, what’s in that nice Mr Balls’ Children’s Plan? Lots of cool stuff. Youth clubs, play areas, nurseries, a new primary curriculum. Lovely. But not a sniff of the money we need. Cos all the back-to-work schemes in the world, all the things-to-do and mentors and climbing frames don’t get us to a 50% drop in child poverty by 2010. We need £4 billion, spent on tax credits and benefits. You promised, Mr Brown.

As usual, nothing I write here represents the views of any person or organisation other than myself.