Labour's pledge to eradicate child poverty received a blow yesterday when Whitehall figures showed the government in danger of missing a key target of lifting more than a million children above the breadline by 2005. Although child poverty has fallen by 400,000 since the government set the goal in 1998, poverty experts warned that progress is still too slow. "The government is less than half way to meeting its target, and is now further behind schedule than it was a year ago," said Alissa Goodman from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.