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The government-backed child poverty taskforce is likely to recommend the return of the early years service Sure Start, the Guardian understands, though there are doubts in government about whether it could be funded.
Senior ministers including Rachel Reeves, Liz Kendall and Bridget Phillipson have praised the service in the past, citing it as one of the crowning achievements of the last Labour government.
But despite widespread admiration for the service, its fragmentation after cuts under the coalition government means restarting it would be difficult and costly.
“The child poverty taskforce has recommended bringing back Sure Start but it would take huge investment to do it and over the past 15 years services have become very fragmented, so it wouldn’t be an easy thing to do,” one government source told the Guardian.
Senior figures in No 10 are understood to have been keen on the original Sure Start, pointing to all the benefits it brought to poorer families when Labour was last in power. However, it has not yet featured in any serious policy discussions “despite everyone thinking they were excellent,” a source said.
Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies found recently that Sure Start children’s centres in England generated £2 of financial benefits for every £1 in costs – and created £2.8bn in savings and revenues at the scheme’s peak.
The programme was disbanded by the Conservative-led government from 2010 onwards, when it had 3,600 centres in England. Austerity cuts reduced government funding by two-thirds, with local authorities scaling back or closing most of the centres by 2018.
Starmer is also said to be convinced of the need to lift the two-child benefit limit as a response to the government’s child poverty taskforce, now delayed until the autumn.
This week the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, is due to make a speech in which he will attempt to outflank Labour on welfare – calling for the restoration of the full winter fuel allowance and the end of the two-child limit.
Farage will set out plans to woo working-class Labour voters in a speech this coming week, the Sunday Telegraph reported. He will say: “It’s going to be these very same working people that will vote Reform at the next election and kick Labour out of government.”
Starmer has already pledged that the government will restore the winter fuel allowance to some pensioners, in a partial reversal of the government’s most unpopular policy.
The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, has suggested Starmer could set out more details of the winter fuel allowance U-turn at the spending review next month. However, she said she could not guarantee the payment would be restored in time for this winter, amid reports that the Treasury was looking at restoring the allowance to all but the richest pensioners.
“I think that we’ve got the upcoming spending review, and I’m sure that the chancellor will set it out when we’ve got the opportunity, at the first opportunity, she will set out what we’ll be able to do,” Rayner said.
Asked on Sky News if more detail would come at the spending review in less than a fortnight, she said: “I mean, the prime minister has announced it, so logically to me that indicates that the prime minister wants to do something in this area. And if the prime minister wants to do that, I’m sure the chancellor is going to look at how we can achieve that.”
The prime minister had previously said details of the reversal would be set out “at the next fiscal event” – meaning the budget in the autumn.
Asked on the BBC if the government would bring back the allowance in full for pensioners, Rayner said it would depend on the state of the economy and said she “can’t guarantee” it would return in time for this coming winter.
The Sunday Times reported that civil servants had raised concerns about their ability to build a new system of payment allocations for pensioners in time for the winter, because of ageing computer systems.
The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, speaking on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg programme, said the Conservatives would immediately restore the winter fuel allowance to all pensioners but would keep the two-child benefit limit. She called for the immediate restoration of the winter fuel payment.
“We would never have taken the winter fuel away. We kept it for 14 years, we brought in the triple lock, we look after pensioners,” she said.
But Badenoch defended the two-child benefit cap, calling it “absolutely the right thing to do”.
Badenoch said Farage was making empty promises to gain power, telling Sky News that Farage as prime minister would be “very bad for this country”. She said: “Nigel Farage is someone who is going to say whatever he wants in order to get into power. I am taking the hard road – I’m not going to do that.”
