DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Childhood blighted by poverty of ambition

Following her wide-ranging study of the conditions in which young people are growing up across this country, children's commissioner Rachel de Souza offers some bleak conclusions.

A third of five-year-olds are unprepared for school, one in eight children feel unsafe in their neighbourhood, over half fail to achieve an acceptable standard in GCSE maths and English and at least one million get referrals.

There are stark local variations. A quarter of children in Croydon feel unsafe, while pupils in Blackpool are nearly 30 times more likely to be missing school than in Lambeth.

Ms de Souza says we are in the throes of a national childhood emergency successive governments have failed to address. And it is not, she adds, only about deprivation. 'Even the best areas have problems.'

She recommends an emergency fund to ensure children's services reach a minimum standard over the whole country and a new tier of deputy mayors to oversee it. But aren't there more fundamental issues here?

Towns such as Blackpool and Middlesbrough (cited in the study as the hardest place for a child to grow up) have been in sorry decline for many years. Deindustrialisation, high unemployment, family breakdown, rising criminality and lack of investment have left them desperately short of hope and ambition.

The problems children experience in such places, hugely important as they are, are symptoms of a wider malaise.

Generations of the same family living on welfare, paucity of opportunity and often the preponderance of drugs have sapped morale and work ethic.

The first part of any solution must be to re-establish law and order. Policing is often too light and sentencing too lenient to act as a deterrent. Crime cannot be seen to pay.

Secondly, living on benefits is fast becoming a lifestyle choice. This is unaffordable for the country and deprives the young of the dignity of work. The nettle has to be grasped.

Thirdly, Labour must end its war on business. High taxes and overweening regulation have made firms risk-averse and reluctant to hire, meaning even fewer entry-level jobs.

It isn't only the low-skilled and those from deprived areas who are suffering. Young people are coming out of university with an average £50,000 debt and slim prospects of fulfilling work. Is it any wonder so many suffer from anxiety?

This study is commendable, but children's life chances, especially in 'left behind' towns, won't really improve until their whole communities are lifted and the economy allowed to grow. Only connect!

European disunion

The rioting in France, now spreading to Belgium, Italy and Portugal, is indicative of a continent increasingly ill at ease with itself.

Debt as a percentage of GDP is far worse in France and Italy than here, growth more stagnant and cost of living pressures even more intense.

In Germany and several other EU nations the hard-Right is on the rise and Euroscepticism rife. So, why on earth is Andy Burnham so keen to reattach the UK to this faltering project?

The BBC constantly vaunts its editorial impartiality, yet we now discover it has been allowing civil servants to write articles and 'verify' facts on contentious issues such as migration and the Covid pandemic. 

This could hardly be a clearer breach of trust or protocol. Our national broadcaster is meant to be an independent conveyor of news and information to the public – not a stooge of Whitehall.