One in four British children are living in poverty... worse than Poland and Portugal, reveals damning Unicef report

Mr Bull added: 'This report shows it is possible in difficult times to protect the wellbeing of our poorest children. If they can do it in Poland, Canada, Germany and Australia, why can't we? It really should be a wake-up call for this country that we need to do something different.

'It is no accident - that's the key message from the report. It's possible to make better choices than we've made. We have to pay attention to what we're doing.

'We need to look at decisions about taxation, welfare, benefits, minimum wage. It's the sum total of all those policies and decision that is leaving us in a position where child poverty is worsening. Living in poverty can have serious impacts for children. It can set back a child's ability to achieve and be successful in education and damage their entire life chances.'

But a Treasury source said the figures showed 'the cost of Labour’s Great Recession'. He said: 'Under this Government child poverty is down by 300,000.' 

Unicef attacked the Government's cuts to benefits for contributing to a rise in child poverty since 2008

The child poverty rate was measured using a relative poverty line defined at 50 per cent or 60 per cent of median annual income in 2008, which in the UK amounted to £202 per week for a single parent with two children aged under 14 and £288 per week for a couple with two children aged under 14.

Mr Bull said the majority of the vulnerable children have working parents who are 'not being paid enough' and not receiving enough contributions from the Government to escape poverty.

He warned that the report shows a 'worrying trend' in child poverty rates which are likely to worsen. 

Mr Bull added: 'What's important is that we haven't seen the worst of this austerity and its impact.

'This report only goes up to 2012 and everybody agrees there's a lot more austerity measures to come and if we don't really focus out attention on making sure the most vulnerable are protected then things are going to get worse when they need to get better.'

The Government has put forward a strategy to end child poverty by 2020 but a recent report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission said the plans fell far short of what is needed to prevent the numbers rising.

Bad parents should be given 'Supernanny' classes on how to cuddle their children, says Government-backed report to tackle child poverty

Bad parents should be given government classes on how to cuddle their children, according to a major new report published last week.

Politicians have been reluctant to ‘call out’ bad parenting, despite this having a bigger impact children than money or schooling, the former Labour minister Alan Milburn said.

Mr Milburn, who was brought in by David Cameron as the Government’s social mobility Tsar, attacked MPs for being ‘tentative and timid’ about bad parenting.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (left) has attacked the Tories for blocking the introduction of ‘meaningful’ new child poverty targets following Alan Milburn's report into social mobility

He called for a national parenting campaign, funded by cutting childcare tax breaks from families with at least one parent earning more than £100,000 a year.

Mr Milburn’s report also calls for the best teachers to be paid more to work in deprived areas, action to close the gap in GCSE results between rich and poor youngsters and for universities to admit 5,000 more students from disadvantaged backgrounds by 2020.

It also says that unpaid internships should be made illegal, and that the ‘living wage’ should be introduced by 2025.

The recommendations come amid warnings that the generation of workers will stay poorer than their parents throughout their lives unless 'urgent action' is taken to boost wages and slash youth unemployment.

Mr Milburn said the UK was at risk of becoming a ‘permanently divided’ nation, with the poorest in society left behind.

It says that the country is likely to see an unprecedented rise in child poverty over the next decade, amid the biting impact of welfare cuts and low pay. 

Modern day poverty in the UK: Save the Children 2013 advert