Was it a children's budget?

The Chancellor's Budget speech on Wednesday afternoon contained very little to give hope to many families living in poverty in the UK. On first glance, a positive change in the Government's child benefit proposals - removing it gradually from households with a person earning £50,000 or over, rather than immediately from households with a single earner on £43,000 - signals a recognition that more must be done to support children out of poverty and to prevent more children falling below the poverty line.

However, in reality, child benefit rates have remained frozen and there were no substantial announcements among the slew of business-dominated policies from the Chancellor that will offset the daily challenges faced by families trying to make ends meet. With the cuts announced in the last spending review due to hit next month, childcare costs far from affordable, and youth unemployment rising, this lack of a child focus in the Budget alongside existing changes to tax credits in particular is putting family incomes and children's futures even more at risk. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, child poverty will continue to rise - and rise significantly year-on-year - if there is not an immediate change in direction of government policy.

With another spending review on the cards that will see further cuts to the welfare budget, and the huge barriers that soaring living costs are putting in the way of children and their families, the coalition Government must take radical action if it is genuinely committed to ending child poverty in the UK by 2020. More of the same is no longer an option if we do not want children to become the victims of austerity politics.

So was it a children's Budget? The answer, sadly, is emphatically not.